What does this mean?

Change C:

This sounds good. What about specific positions on defend/support lists though? If I have both my whole affiliation and a specific position on my defend list, I would want to defend that specific position in priority over the affiliation.

I would also want to target based on all defend lists before considering support lists. I can see situations where that might not be the case; possibly there ought to be an option to choose whether to defend first or support first (i.e. take a defensive role or an offensive role)?

Change D:

Screening ships would definitely be a useful tactic, especially for freighter escorts or for defending a flagship (admiral).

Changes E & F: also sound good to me.

Richard
AFT

There is a 100 stellar charge for all political actions, as i remember. So its not free to change rank, just very cheap.

Sounds more complicated than it needs to be - why not just a multiplier to pay, effective on the ship's maintenence day? That means you wont have to worry about 'X' - they'd get paid extra for every maintenence day they went through. Seems more realistic to me: A ship under battle orders for two weeks would incur two weeks combat pay, a six month 'tour of duty' would incur six months combat pay (only if they get through it).

Of course, people would try to subvert this, by adding to combat lists just after maintenance, and removing just before - but I'm sure the extra cost for a single week could be incurred as part of the 'add to list' order.

TonyH

Sorry, mistake on my part - i missed a lot of words from that one I have ammended it .

Its a one off payment to add to a list and X will be defined for all cases before we finish. So you will beable to see what your crew is paided every weeks and hence will know what the one off payment will be.

Yes and this is why a one off payment is kind of necessary, solutions to the exploits that ppl would do would make a wages situation more complicated. Cost per issue will cost more in the short term and less in the long term.

Basically i want to make it less complicated in general. Maybe its just better to have a fixed cost per item added to the list. This would most likely balance over each ship.

Is this just intended to apply to ships?

Would be a killer if it applied to starbases aswell.

Presumably this extra transfer charge would only apply to ships (only ships?) with active lists? So you wouldn't be bankrupt by the normal moving of personal with unarmed life carriers (thus no lists)...

Yup. Also it will be paid to whoever destroys the position. We will presume that there is some intangible but definite proof of destruction (before the specials roll in to not only remove ships from other aff's posted lists, but also collect the bounty to boot) - some things have to be a game mechanic.

But only for war ships - so no change for starbases and when a war ship is badly damaged it may well slip out of the warship definition - so in that way the payment is dynamic.

Yes and i think the cash should be taken at the time the bounty is issued to provent unpaid bounties. Removing the bounty would pay the money back.

Would screening only be effective against LOS weapons?

Yes, screening is not just physical but also electronic, so the screening ship, sitting virtually on top of the screened ship effectively appears to be the target ship. View it more of a case of stealing the lock from the screened ship.
All screening is reconfigured each day as the attacker realises their mistake and attempt to re-lock.

We view space combat to be analogous to the naval battles of eighteenth century. In place of smoke and noise however are huge distances and electronic chaff distorting sensor images and communication.

Don't see that at all, can you explain why larger affiliations have proporationall more cash per ship ?

I'll have a look at affiliation balances then so see how the picture is at the moment.

There is nothing 'civilian' about the way we have the current setup. The starbases are not really ment to be representative of a planets civilian population, they are power bases that tend to be well defended.

As for the reason for increasing military wages - its to cover for the fact that there will be no cost for rank and we don't want the game going 100% military.

Increases in warship wages would affect everybody with a high warship-to-starbase ratio not just the FGZ. What we should be looking at is first what end result is needed for overall game balance, and second how to ease the pain of transition.

Having warships suddenly double in wages overnight would most likely cause cash difficulties for half the affs in the game. But you're viewing this in isolation, not in the light of other changes proposed/in the pipeline as well. As one example, when we get the Infrastructure update we will (hopefully) be able to increase income on our existing planets. For a while at least that will give us all room to increase our income without having to double the number of starbases we run.

Perhaps we could not have a blanket doubling for warships - but different modifiers for the various classes of warship - ranging from slightly more (say x1.1) for troop ships to x2 for capital ships? Not sure exactly what ranking we should/could give to the classes but this might also affect people's choices in shipbuilding and the wider implications with regards to existing blueprint designs also needs considering. It would also give a way to phase the changes in though, with all warships going to x1.1 wages then most going to (say) x1.25 then a smaller subset going up to the next level and so on until we get the last couple of classes going up to double wages.

If that was pre-announced - both the final levels and the timescale for each step, then each aff has the chance to review their capability for economic growth,and adjust their expansion plans (warship building and everything else!) accordingly. As with all things, there will be winners and losers to an extent. But the game can't go on expanding the size of the military forever, and this type of proposal will hopefully serve to put an upper limit on expansion rates, rather than bankrupt any aff.

There are already some politicals that are losing stellars every week, but still insist on building more warships etc. If (long term) they continue to do then there could be no complaints when the stellars run out... But there are others who are being responsible within the current framework but who would need to cut back their growth if this kind of change is implemented. Changes to the cashflow equation should be phased in, not just implemented (and especially not implemented without warning, which is why this kind of discussion is so valuable )

Dan

If the affls wants to have this player to run such a high number of warships, then the aff should give the player involved some stellars to run his ships.

If the player insists on running more warships then his economy can sustain, then *he* is in problems.

If you want to take on the warmongers... run warships.

To give people the chance to hinder trade, causing reduced income, is just going to screw those who run battle fleets much more.

Has a similar change of wages been though of for trade ships, freighters and the like. Using the same logic applied to battle fleet crew, you would probably find that freight crew are paid just as much (i.e Merchant Navy) simply due to the monotony of the work. Heck, most people in the military are there cause they want to be there, a decent wage is a co-incidental bonus. However, those in the merchant navy are more likely to be there for the money, unless shipping of cargo really does float their boat.

It seems this change in wages is becoming biased against the aff's that maintain large warfleets. I mean, after all it doesn't cost much in game cash to opperate bases capable of building such ships, researching the bp's for the techs to go in them . Most would agree that it is easier to build freight ships (in terms of tech), than it is to build warships.

Spot on. What happens when you max out on merch and still need to generate more cash?

The proposal governing alert status was designed to be applicable to all ships. This means that in times of peace (off alert status) - everybody gets the same wage.

We could even push this on to starbases
This would mean that surprise attacks could be devastating!

If I did, I would. I dont want to take on a warmonger in battle - I just want to be able to say "trade somewhere else".

This game is turning into a "power block" game, where having a big battlefleet is all, and everything else just follows along afterwards. (Unless that is whats wanted? - by the GM, not the warmongers). Having a trade embargo option might bring it back the other way, just very slightly. And I dont think it would be much effort compared with the effort required for the ever more esoteric combat options being discussed. How about something to make the game more interesting for us non-wargamers?

TonyH

I think i missunderstood what you were saying...

Response amended...

A few lines of mass production on missiles and launchers will do the job for you.

Okay. So the idea is to bung loads of AI's into ships, to avoid this change stinging too much. But open yourself up to other types of attack, which freighters will be prone too.

But would this sort of a change just lead to less and less space battles? I don't know about other aff's cash flow, but I can imagine some nightmare cases where people will not be able to finacially maintain their current fleet. This sort of option would cripple them.

Hehe, one attack, bankrupts entire affiliation. Now thats a tactic.

If an affiliation wants to fight it will find a way of financing it, even it if means going to a rich merchant affiliation for a loan (or taxing them). How do you think the crusades were paid for?

True. I forgot about the taxation proposal.

I already have plenty of both. For illustration only, lets pretend that the BHD were friendly to the IMPs, and allowed to trade in IMP space, where my current main colony is located. I use BHD only to avoid the real aff(s) who might be offended.

I COULD put 'all BHD' on my starbase enemy list. This would cause a massive space battle the first time a BHD ship arrived in orbit - even if it didn't cause a defensive response by the neighbouring IMP starbase, which would probably destroy my own, it would probably get my aff thrown out of IMP space.

All I want to do is provent them trading with me. So, I should be able to, without causing a massive space battle. The diplomatic response from the BHD would be far more proportionate to what I was trying to achieve, and the IMPs probably wouldn't particularly be bothered. Much more appropriate for a trader aff.

TonyH

I agree with Tony. And that other idea that my troops on a starbase will need to pay double wages is horrible. Troops are expensive at this moment.. Troops on a starbase are used defensive, most of them are doing nothing at all, especially compared to the troops in ships. Also an base without troops is a sitting duck, it can't even move away...

About an trade-embargo, you already have this option. If afls XYZ is making troubles, just remove the unqiues he is making from your market, and stop moving goods to his base. If traders just refuse to carry those goods with him, he will have problems selling his goods... theoretically, because in practice those affls would just trade internally.. which is still to commen.

I am BTW still missing the planetary upgrade... I recall reading about them in 2002.. (some of the messages are that old) would it be possible to get those done, before any new warlike-only updates are created???

I guess so. Limited who can trade with your base would make common sense.

What about a warship crewed mostly by vet soldiers / marines?

The handful of crew can get danger money if they want it... I dont see why the soldiers should get more just for being stationed somewhere dangerous... that's their job afterall.

just the same as you would now - increase your income another way, or stop expanding....

Dan

There would be a case for veterans being paid higher wages....but not as much as two crew.

The point is that "military" crew on warships currently get the same as "civilians" in trade ships, and this proposal would change that

Dan

One word answer: trade.

Or, as Mica suggested, there is certainly the possibility for inter-affiliation loans in the game (all enquiries to the Free Trade Bank, Ariel ).

I quite agree with Tony's comments about the problems for non-wargamers, and I also think that the Alert status idea sounds good...

Richard
AFT

Long reply: Why should players with no interest in trade beforced to play the trade game. Is it not enough that the cost of maintianing the research, and production facilities to produce such ships is there. this is not cheap.

I'll even place my cards on the table and point out that at present the BHD is a loss making affiliation, this new introduction will only mean that we either run less ships (against our whole personna), run more bases (yeah get more players and that might happen), spend hours sorting out trade runs (when we have to spend ages building and maintaining a warfleet), or see more drastic consequences (players dropping out etc).

I've never understood the reason for these increased wages in the first place, it might be nice if someone went over it again? If it is simply to encourage trade, why not do something to make trade advantagous rather than a neccesity. Reward those who make the effort.

As a player with only a small amount of ships, but actively in trying to find ways to earn a living, I must say that having warships only isn't a bright idea.

Face it, wages need to be paid, so you need a way to generate money. The way to do so, is by trading. So, all affls *should* have some players who are earning money for their affl.

If you don't have enough, you should try to recruit some, or try to make things easier for the traders. I have seen multiple bases which are offering goods for sale, but they don't make their location public.

Lets think it like this. If I got some (example) Falconian Wool available for selling, I am trying to get the best deal. So, if I am going to sell to the open market (and I am shipping it myself) I will chech the bases which are buying it. If I see an great price, but I can't see the location. Then I won't try to trace it in my old turns, but just move along. Also, I would like to have an return trip. So, if I can get 10 stellars profit without an return trip or I can get 9 stellars profit plus an profit of 1.5 on my return trip, I will take the second one.

At the moment you base income is no longer high enough, you should make it easier for others to reach you. One of the reasons I never went into DTR space is the big restrictions there. I don't mind not being able to enter orbit... but to prevent people just moving through it, make it far harder for them to consider going into it.

Example (again): lets assume I start from Spritzer (256)/Yank going into Cyprus (791)/Venice.
Technically its one jump (100 tu) moving from Gamma13 to Alpha1. So, you normally jump from Yank to Venice (100tu) go to Gamma1 then move to Alpha1. With an ISR4 ship it would be 100 + (leave orbit + enter orbit) 12*4 to got to Gamma1 and then 2*4 to get to Alpha1. An total of about 156+two orbits. But I can't access Gamma9. So I need to move from Gamma10 to Beta10.. costing me another 40 TU's. Increasing my traveltime with about 25%.
Ofcourse its no problem if you start on Alpha10 or so... but its still a hassle

This is just an example why restricting access to traders isn't a smart idea.

The venice markets will probably be moving to Dalmatia in the near future so there should be no access problems, as well as fewer excuses for those that stray into restricted space.

Why should this be the only way. Why force people to play a part of the game they don't want to?

There are good reasons for keeping bases and systems private, i doubt the FCN need be reminded of this.

No it's a very smart idea. Keep all trading internal, the large warlike aff's control enough space to be able to play the dynamic markets. Shut off access to their own space, and use their reduced warfleet solely as a defensive option. prevent all others from entering their space. Research new systems off their space and keep them restricted.

Or pick on the trade aff's, that are more likely weaker, forcing them to maintain warfleets capable of coping with the warlike aff's, forcing them to play a style of play they may not like too.

In the end increased crew wages is simply going to punish the trade aff's, as when push comes to shove, they will be the easiest to raid, tax, steal from.

I would just like to add that some most people I know involved in maintian large fleets of battleships spend hours or real life time designing, building, reconfiguring, and maintaining these fleets. They also spend months to years getting the production capacity sorted, BP's in place, and designs researched. On top of all this they spend a large amount of stellers getting the BP's, maintaining employee wages for the research complex's, and factories, not to mention mines. Then add the amount of time it takes to ship in rare ores where needed, or even buy from private or open sources.

I think these costs alone justify why running warships is such a difficult task, and thats before you add the whole scouting out potential targets, etc. Contary to what people think running a warfleet is by no means an easy feat.

To add a few hours of trading each week onto this, would just push it over the edge. not to mention the fact that most warlike affiliation could probably not afford to run as many ships as they do now.

As Ewan says, if there is a reason to limit the number of ships in combat, do that. But please don't over complicate a system, solely for what appears to be some sort of reason to adjust the goal posts with respect to running warfleets.

Many of us feel, somewhat, confused as to the reasons for such an increase in wages? Is it because it is felt that some aff's earn too much? Because I think that affiliation finances, and political finances should be looked at more closely. Because many players, certainly this side of Yank, make routine losses each week. Affiliations make overall losses each week.

So the option appears to be should you want to run a large warfleet, you either need to run large numbers of merchandising bases (wooohooo BSE again, where real life money dictates the winner in space battles), spend hours working out trade routes (only so many hours in the day), or reduce your fleet and suffer against the war like aff's that have a large player base, or have players with the cash to run many bases (once again BSE all over again).

So far phoenix has lived up to it's namesake, and has risen from the ashes of BSE. Please, lets not go down that road again.

</essay>

No I don't. In fact that is my argument, it is not. But If I had to do that ontop of all my battleship turns, the turn process would be 6 hour job.

Sorry, but your completely wrong. This may be the case should we be simply pushing a few broadies into combat like a bunch of newbies. However, in order to run an active, effective fleet, running orders takes a lot of time. Ontop of this the colony order take forever to sort out. These ships don't juast appear from nowhere.

First of all. I think the the limiting factor in the number of ships you can run, should be time, and production capabilities. I think if you can get your bases to the size where they can build and maintian a huge fleet, well done on you. That process would of hardly been an easy, cheap one. Just imagine the wage costs.

Secondly, though i appear to making huge rumblings, these changes will mean that i will actually run many more battleships, as i have the seteller finances too. In fact I can carry on expanding. I just feel sorry for those who can't, those whose interest in the game is being lost because running warfleets is becoming over complicated and prevented.

More so with the proposed change. As smaller merchandising bases a quicker and easier to build that more ships producing bases. More players would give greater possibility for such bases and allow the running of more ships.

Ok the 3 times cost thing is a bit complicated but what about the x2 wages for war ships ? (thats simple)

This is not an attempt to mess with the current state of play. Its an attempt to limit the future, is it a good game that makes it _required_ that you bring 500 ships to a battle (the size of the battle is irrelevent to the program) - in may view this would be bad. I'm not looking at any one aff, i'm looking at the game in general.

@DMJ
Please calm down your posts, this thread is not about shouting to make your point.

Hi Finalstryke,

That would be appriciated.. This way people will have no reason to enter the sector!
Or you could restrict entering orbit instead of entering the sector..

sjaak

Good idea.

Why not add more then one Acedemy.. The main one in the official capatical and the others in smaller substations. Make sure that the highest ranking officiers will be created in the capital only, and some lower ranks in the substations.

This way, an active player can send some of his best guys to the captical for some special training. Adding interacting within the affl and giving more char to the officiers involved.

And deny the player the pleasure of setting up their own... we wouldn't think of it.

Will this be extended to officers for ground parties and installations as well?

Great we go from a simple 3 stellar per crew charge for having active warships to something that looks complex.

My vote is for the 3 stellar charge.

For those players who want to make stellars but don't want to trade, I assume that this means moving trade ships, there is that excellent device call the Starbase market. Build modules, sell modules at 3 times MUs, make money. There are plenty of players out there who do like the trading side of the game.

If KJC want to stop warship build up spoiling the game then changing the ejump rules would be a better way. Currently the rules allow fleets to disengage too easily therefore ships are not being lost and everyone one if forced to build more warships to be certain that they are keeping up with the enemy.

Nic

Hi Sjaak,
I dont believe any current restrictions will be changed once the market location has been amended.
Like you say, even honest merchants like the FCN will have no reason to enter ring <10 once the markets have been moved, so ther eare not very many excuses left.

>We will add necessary or remove spurious officers at the time of the package upgrade. Those remaining will be assigned their specialist fields based on the ship they are in command off.<

Kindly define spurious. I have some experienced officers waiting for ships at a starbase and they are in no-way surplus to establishment or spurious.

Geoff

If experience>0 they are not spurious. We have plenty of backups of the game data to see if lots of surplus/spurious officers has poped up sudenly.

Enough is enough ? This kind of implies that there have been a lot of other changes that might cause upset ? Have there been ? Other than the mistake i made with not auto compensating platforms i thought the game had changed very little.

This to me is a vastly better suggestion than the wages one. Can you add more information on how the academy complex will work. Also will be some limits as to the number of academy complexes eacy affiliation can have since presumably the idea here is to limit the number of officers available (otherwise nothing changes). Will there be different types of academy complex, or will each produce a cadet of the type wanted?

Nik

Academies will produce cadets, not fully-fledged officers. It is what the players do with the cadets that will dictate whether they progress. We will be pushing the proactive gaming style.

I've just noticed this, which might have a major impact on me.

I must have created between one and two dozen officers, in order to 'personalize' and add a roleplay element to running ships, add the manouvreing bonus to escorts, etc... Only one of these has >0% experience, due to the virtual impossibility of acquiring combat-based officer experience while in a trader affiliation. Are all these going to be removed?

Perhaps some refinement to the winnowing process might be in order - removal of officers with zero experience after the first, per position they are located at?

An additional idea... How about making officers only creatable from veterans, of any type? Seems kind of appropriate...

TonyH

Yay!

I also shares Tony's concern about officers with 0 Experience - I also did the officer generation thing for RP reasons - all my ships have a captain. From what David said though, I don't think we have any worries :

I'm sure that the single officer won't get deleted from a ship just because it's at 0%. I take this to mean that if there are suddenly 10 Officers in one place, they will be removed AFTER old records have been checked to ensure that there isn't a historical reason for it - ie they've been there for ages before this thread got started.

Now that sounds pretty good to me - you could even go so far as allowing an officer to Captain a ship, but putting a hit on the ships efficiency unless he has a certain experience level.

Presumably - in terms of combat experience - there would be a means to expand on officer experience other than being a target?!

In other none combat experience catagories yes and there is some suggestions of having officer pop back to the Academy to learn from officers that you have stationed there (in the low levels)

I still don't understand how this will limit the current growth of fleets. If you have unlimited numbers of academies, then this doesn't limit anything and thus there is no change. So where is the limit with this idea?

Nik

I guess that it allows for GM control over the number of officers that can be produced. Also, I guess the idea is that putting a 'Green' officer into a warship, for example, will drastically reduce the ships life expectancy.

Just speculation though.

In effect this is what the acadamy is. An affiliations 'effective' fleet expansion is dependant on the number of officers it can produce.

I like the addition as it will be adding something really interesting to the game, officer development.

How will the Academy limit fleet expansion? or, to put it another way, how will it be a more effective limit than the need for all those BPs to build a ship and crew it already limit fleet expansion?

Like Nik said, unless an Academy is limited (other than through needing a BP or something) then it doesnt limit expansion. It has to be a fixed number - one per affiliation, one per starbase, etc. or a fixed number of cadets being produceable - one per week, etc

I would like to see cadets/academies that could be developed however we wish them to be (ie we could enhance them via research/BPs). So if you want an officer who gives a dodge bonus, develop the BP. If you want one that makes transactions, or Jumping cheaper, add that research. You could probably get a research enhancement allowing an officer to reduce the maintenance requirements, improve integrity (tighter control of the repair crew, etc) - whatever you set your imagination to.

I cant see why - It would cost just as much to maintain 2,000 hulls, whether in the form of ten 200-hull base ships, or forty 50-hull destroyers. And having a larger production base/income would allow you to have more of either, which it is how it should be.

What it would stop would be a never-ending accumulation of a bigger and bigger warfleet, with no limit. Just like increasing crew wages, but a different (and I think better) approach.

TonyH

How about something like:

Ships can be organised into formations. The maximum size (in hulls) of a formation is determined by the rank of the commanding officer. The names of the formations would be individual to each affiliaton. Eg: Squadron, 300 hulls maximum, requires a Squadron Commander.

Ships in a formation have a level of 'Formation Experience' which they can use in place of the experience level of the captain. The Formation Experience starts at 0, and over time increases towards its maximum, which would be a % (influenced by the experience of the formation commander) of the average experience of all ships in the formation.

Increased wages for the different levels of officer

When the formation composition changes there should be a steep reduction in the Formation Experience.

Ships can only screen ships in the same formation as them?

This would:
- Encourage keeping ships together in 'formations' and varied/balanced task forces (esp. if the number of hulls for each level of formation is selected to encourage this - eg 325 hulls instead of 300)
- Encourage - but not enforce - promotion in steps throughout the life of an officer at appropriate experience levels
- Need not be restricted to formations of warships
- Probably be more trouble than its worth. (When would a ship be considered to be no longer part of a formation due to distance? Who becomes the command officer when the current one gets killed in action? How would it be kept track of?)

See email - was a joke post

Like that in principle. Current experience levels would of course need to be adjusted. Also the race elements would also have to apply to a ship design as well to prevent inexperienced FGZ/FEL/DEN officers being used to fly the larger human ships.

what that would penalise against, would be the xlight, light and normal hulls, due to their higher integrity losses... counterproductive, if your aim is to reduce the net increases in warships!

Dan

Good old planetary shields Me and mica had this conversation eariler in the week.

'BSE is a bit like starwars, isn't it'
'SOrt of....'
'How did they manage to make them have to ground assaults in starwars?'
'That would be the planetary shield generators'
'Well that seem to work for them, they didn't have mass fleets blasting the crap of of bases'
'No. They just blow up whole planets'
'Oh yeah....hmm maybe not then'

I think we are going down the road of platforms being the planetry defence network. There maybe some rope in increaing shield thickness for starbases though.

LOL. But seriously, planet buster weapons (death stars et al) are not possible in Phoenix, and presumably you will make it so they never are, so this argument is void...

And then again, if you did make planet busters available, you just have to make them very costly in terms of attacks (huge recharge/materials cost) and very vulnerable (say a big "self-destruct" button at the end of a corridor or something

(Anyone seen "Thumb Wars" btw?

Of course the other reason Star Wars didn't bombard a colony from orbit is that they just didn't have that many ships... (there can't have been more than 30 TIE or X-wings in any fleet, let alone big honking captial ships)...

Obviously Phoenix is working on too big a special effects budget

Well in Return of the Jedi both side had an massive fleet...

How many ships approx? (been a long time since I saw that one)

Makes sense - justify it by the fact that they only need to shield half as much surface area (unless the fleet attack through the planet -then we're back to Starwars Death star scenarios....

Dan