In X years an affiliation will have 500 warships. Rather than spread these around the affiliation territory, they are used as a single entity to kick the crap out of a single location. This may be insufficient to destroy a particularly well defended world. We know this is true, because large singular fleets are currently a facet of the game.
In X+Y years an affiliation will have Z warships. Where Z is sufficient warships to strike any single location and reduce it to rubble irrespective of average defences spread throughout the defending systems. Game has become a wargame - glorified or otherwise.
So the problem is a combination of maximum fleet capable of being supported and its ability to function as a single entity.
So any guff about expansion costs etc, is simply that - not worth the time taken to write. What is important is longterm strategic stability and standing warfleet based on territory owned, financial situation and underlying factors....
Based on current rate of expansion, we estimate that within 4 years any single HQ world (including all starbases) will be susceptible to a fleet attack on a single day, despite their best efforts to build defenses.
We were going to add functions to the game allowing fleets to be weighted against infrastructure (wages/soveriegnty/officers etc). The basics though have met with widespread dissention (wage increase). As everything was to be weighted against the stellar (our original estimations were slightly out), we cannot see at this point a way forward. We will therefore concentrate on fixing bugs rather than designing longterm mechanics until such times as an acceptable solution is forthcoming.
In layman's terms, there isn't any point in allowing improvements in infrastructure that will in turn generate even more stellars if all it does is increase rate of warfleet expansion.
We were very close with our estimations during design phase of the game, but as any cosmologist will tell you, the difference between eternal expansion and a big crunch is very small indeed.
So the crux is, would players prefer us to tinker with some basic mechanics or wait a few years and watch homeworlds burn?
We have very good mechanics drafted to sort this out, it just needs a little faith from players that we are not on a personal crusade against any one faction.
No rush, we have roughly two years before we hit the point of no return however do note, that we will at the time of implementation, add to affiliations sufficient compensation.
I personally think dynamic wages (as an example of the changes suggested) will add far more to the game than it could possibly take away. And as you say, if some affiliations are too adversely affected they will be compensated, so no one should have hardship over it.
Mark
Brett
leave the system changes till the 2 year dead line and let what we have started have time before doing use up the wrong one again
chris a
We have to accept that phoenix is a power game, and that we all have our different styles of play. Building up large fleets, then send them against one target is one style of play. Using more underhand tactics is another. But if you tweek one, you only shift the balance in the direction of the other.
With all games of this nature, there will always be the 'Super weapon' that some groups will exploit to it's maximum. There will always be one group of players who run riots over the rest. There will always be the weak that get picked on. This is a fact of these games, and will always be so.
To say, we need to do Y to prevent X happening the future is totally subjective. To place linear mechanics on a game that is dependant on so many non-linear facets, is like trying to predict the future trend of the British house market... Everyone has an idea how things will pan out, but no one gave say for sure what will happen.
I say let the game play out, see what happens. Introduce these major changes that have been discussed till recently (infrastructure, etc). Lets continue to enjoy the game, without worrying about what will happen in two years time.
what I mean is the wIMPs are getting it right at the moment we will get it right next it will even it all out.....I think
Titus Grip
| QUOTE (Mandible @ May 18 2004, 06:01 PM) |
| i say go for it now too! Just let us know implementation dates and as full a detail of the changes as possible :-) |
yep. I agree with mandible.
Some players might not like it now... but I think in 6 months, or a year, or even two years, they'll like it a whole lot less (sry guys, just how I see it).
| QUOTE |
| Some players might not like it now... but I think in 6 months, or a year, or even two years, they'll like it a whole lot less (sry guys, just how I see it). |
When you consider that the confederacy have now wasted over 6 months hard work already and that yet another goal is disallowed because the posts keep moving then it gets frustrating. How can any one have aims and objectives in a game that changes everytime some one attempts to have any goals?
I cant imagine how much stellar worth has gone into New Genesis, I am not even going to look at real money, or the fact that the IMP appear to have the upper hand because of the strains of the project on resources, real time organisation and the stress of keeping everyone up to date on its progress.
I think that it should carry on and we should at least see the rewards for our efforts, it is not our problem that others cannot keep up if they are using their resources in other area's.
Brett
When it gets to 30 months real time, thousands of pounds more money and uncountable more man hours, dont get upset if all the bad guys have buggered off because of flawed underlying game mechanics and you find youself with 9840358343 Warships and no-one left to fight.
Also, I would imagine that the confeds are not the only ones who've been busy expanding their fleet... is it not possible that, for example, the GTT might currently be producing 2 capitals for every one produced by the NG project?
As I understand it, Phoenix was always developed with the idea that stellars would be the limit on expansion. The ability to produce warfleets, build up starbases, etc, would be limited by available stellar income. The current problem is that the original limit is too high - there is still sufficient room for expansion of income that it is not putting any brake at all on the expansion of costs (warships, complexes, etc).
I have a suggestion as to a possible solution. Rather than trying to change the costs side of the equation, why not have a look at the income side? And it has been said that this is not a problem now, just a future one, so there should be no need to change current income.
My suggestion would be to change the balance of local and global merchandising income on all garden worlds. The local merchandising income should be drastically reduced, and the global merchandising income increased to compensate. The net effect should be to have zero effect on global income at th etime of the change. What this will do is make the expansion of income, needed to finance those large warfleets, that much more difficult, as it will require expansion to new worlds rather than further expansion on the existing worlds.
The idea is that this should not cause problems for people now, as it will have no effect on current income. Instead, it will just impose more of a brake on escalation in the future.
Comments?
Richard
AFT
The confederacy wage war with large numbers of ships. This is our tactic. we button down the hatches, wait till we have the over whelming numbers, that strategically select our target and go for it. This is our way of waging war, it may be basic, it may lack guile, but it is our way. This in itself mean that we have one major offensive once every so often.
In order to play the overhwelming numbers game we require three major factors, production, research, and stellers. We spend alot of time building up our production, during which we are open to attacks, it takes alot of effort to get the research in place, during which we cannont concentrate on other research avennues, and it cost a shed load of stellers to build and maintain our fleet. Net result, many of our politicals run at a loss each week. Now, we careless about the loss we make, we are not buisness men, just simple warmongers. For us, making a loss is not a problem, running a shed load of ships is what makes us happy.
Now taking into account that we already make a steller loss to run the ships we have, increases the costs (be it directly through wages, or indirectly through reduced income) would mean that we would have to curtail the amount of ships even more, or run superfolous (bad spelling) merchandising bases. The fact that we make a loss is our problem to deal with, and we will find a way round it. But to have our incomes dropped even further, well thats just a kick in the nads.
So as it stands, we spend months setting up the production, researching the required BP's. during which time, we can concentrate on little else, fight the war on only one front, and incure huge steller costs. We then, build up our fleet, incurring even more steller costs from standard wages, and I assume the officer changes will come in here too. All this, and apparantly it would appear that it's to easy to build up a massive warfleet?
| QUOTE (MasterTrader @ May 18 2004, 09:09 PM) |
| Comments? Richard AFT |
good thinking.
Also, some items have changed their TMs since the game started, why not do the same for heavy hulls?
If heavy hulls needed 1 fibrillium (or somthing), then each warship would require 100 (rare ore).
Light / normal hulled ships would be unaffected.
The current expansion plans of the major blocs would not be derailed overnight, but ther ewould be some long term limits on the amount of heavy hulled ships around etc
| QUOTE (DMJ @ May 18 2004, 06:17 PM) |
| I would also like to point out, as i always have, that getting to the level where you can build an operate a large naval feet is no easy task. When you consider the amount of time it takes to build factories, build the supporting mines, the BP's, etc. To do so takes dedication from a group of players, and much sacrafice of short term goals. I feel that anyone willing to go through all this, is well deserved of the chance to run large fleets. We have to accept that phoenix is a power game, and that we all have our different styles of play. Building up large fleets, then send them against one target is one style of play. Using more underhand tactics is another. But if you tweek one, you only shift the balance in the direction of the other. With all games of this nature, there will always be the 'Super weapon' that some groups will exploit to it's maximum. There will always be one group of players who run riots over the rest. There will always be the weak that get picked on. This is a fact of these games, and will always be so. To say, we need to do Y to prevent X happening the future is totally subjective. To place linear mechanics on a game that is dependant on so many non-linear facets, is like trying to predict the future trend of the British house market... Everyone has an idea how things will pan out, but no one gave say for sure what will happen. I say let the game play out, see what happens. Introduce these major changes that have been discussed till recently (infrastructure, etc). Lets continue to enjoy the game, without worrying about what will happen in two years time. |
I agree with what you are saying, but I believe it is the GMs job to make sure the game stays functional - both now and long term. Its their livelyhood! If they see a problem now, even if it doesnt affect us for another few years, they should fix it now.
If a Super Weapon is developed, then its developed because it can exploit a specific fault in the game mechanics and its the GMs job to correct this when they see it. As everyone knows, there are not supposed to be any Super Weapons that are superior to any other type of power play; an unstoppable Uber Fleet is a game destroyer. If the game was not designed to have that (and obviously the GMs dont believe it was), then the GMs should do what they feel necessary to correct that problem.
People may get burnt along the way, but mica has already said those so affected will be compensated.
| QUOTE |
| ok carry on. At least now it's only 6 months down the drain. When it gets to 30 months real time, thousands of pounds more money and uncountable more man hours, dont get upset if all the bad guys have buggered off because of flawed underlying game mechanics and you find youself with 9840358343 Warships and no-one left to fight. |
We both know from experience with other games, that no matter how much we try to predict what will happen, some one will always find the loop hole and exploit it.
At least if endless amounts of ships is the 'powerplay' way, it's exploitation is governed by production and research, plus contary to current opinion, stellers too.
Anyone can build large amounts of merchandising bases to support as huge a fleet as they like, so in effect it wouldn't be in game stellers as the controlling factor, but RL money.
I agree it is a difficult job to balance the game out. However....
| QUOTE |
| an unstoppable Uber Fleet is a game destroyer |
Remove this, and something else will take it's place. At lest with it being uber fleets, production is a major issue.
| QUOTE (MasterTrader @ May 18 2004, 08:09 PM) |
| Unfortunately, I don't think that increased wages for warships is going to be the answer. The reason is very simple: the AI Combat Navigator. Most of the major power blocs have at least one affiliation that has been going very heavily into research (GTT, SMS, BHD, DTR, to name but a few). These power blocs will just develop the combat AI navigators, and voila, the limit imposed by wages disappears for them (or at least, becomes a lot further off). As I understand it, Phoenix was always developed with the idea that stellars would be the limit on expansion. The ability to produce warfleets, build up starbases, etc, would be limited by available stellar income. The current problem is that the original limit is too high - there is still sufficient room for expansion of income that it is not putting any brake at all on the expansion of costs (warships, complexes, etc). I have a suggestion as to a possible solution. Rather than trying to change the costs side of the equation, why not have a look at the income side? And it has been said that this is not a problem now, just a future one, so there should be no need to change current income. My suggestion would be to change the balance of local and global merchandising income on all garden worlds. The local merchandising income should be drastically reduced, and the global merchandising income increased to compensate. The net effect should be to have zero effect on global income at th etime of the change. What this will do is make the expansion of income, needed to finance those large warfleets, that much more difficult, as it will require expansion to new worlds rather than further expansion on the existing worlds. The idea is that this should not cause problems for people now, as it will have no effect on current income. Instead, it will just impose more of a brake on escalation in the future. Comments? Richard AFT |
Whether its increased costs, or reduced income surely makes no difference. its the net effect that matters ie. in either case you end up with less stellars to play with. So really, either (or both) options are as viable as each other - its just whichever is easier to code, makes more sense, or is more acceptable to players :-)
But the ways around it will be the same - AIs for ships, slaves (an dother free labour) for starbases, etc.
i agree with any changes that come into play, to say we have been working on a project and its took us 6 months etc etc etc, havent we all...............
i am now in a position where i have been back in the game 1 year, and i have personally built a large fleet of main ships, and bearing in mind for 6 months of that i only had 1 starbase, ships production and weight of weapons is too high.
im only one small cog in our "Empire", add all the cogs together and the picture becomes frightening. I am in a position at the moment where i have too many ship turns to do every night, but i have to keep building the ships, because you are. therefore today i send 50 ships into battle, next month 55, the month after 60, on the potential that the target is increasing by the same amount.
i think if something isnt done now, then it will be harder later.
| QUOTE (DMJ @ May 18 2004, 09:28 PM) |
| Now taking into account that we already make a steller loss to run the ships we have, increases the costs (be it directly through wages, or indirectly through reduced income) would mean that we would have to curtail the amount of ships even more, or run superfolous (bad spelling) merchandising bases. The fact that we make a loss is our problem to deal with, and we will find a way round it. But to have our incomes dropped even further, well thats just a kick in the nads. |
(and also Mandible just now...)
The whole point of my suggestion is that it does not reduce current income. The change would have to be factored so that income at the time of the change remains exactly the same. What it would do is put a more effective brake on the further expansion of that income.
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE |
| The whole point of my suggestion is that it does not reduce current income. The change would have to be factored so that income at the time of the change remains exactly the same. What it would do is put a more effective brake on the further expansion of that income. |
Currently running at a loss
The idea was that we would keep doing so for the short term, few months, before expanding to re-copperate the defecit. A break would mean, that would not happen, or would take forever to happen.
| QUOTE (DMJ @ May 18 2004, 08:33 PM) |
| We both know from experience with other games, that no matter how much we try to predict what will happen, some one will always find the loop hole and exploit it. At least if endless amounts of ships is the 'powerplay' way, it's exploitation is governed by production and research, plus contary to current opinion, stellers too. Anyone can build large amounts of merchandising bases to support as huge a fleet as they like, so in effect it wouldn't be in game stellers as the controlling factor, but RL money. |
But the crux of it, is whether you see it as the GMs job to plug those loop holes and stop that exploitation. Yes, players will always find another "trick", but the GM will always be there to try to stop it.
So it really comes down to this - do you trust the GMs? Whether we agree with their approach or not, do you trust what they are doing is being done with the best of intentions for the game?
They really dont want to screw up a game that makes them their living...but players can (and do) screw up games, simply for the pleasure of walking away with the proud knowledge they didnt mess it up, they instead won an open ended game (something that isnt really possible).
I am not directing this at anybody in particular - just general observations. I have been there and done it; built a position so powerful that it made the (open-ended) game untenable and it had to fold. Because I ,as a player, couldnt help myself and the GM did not stop me.
I do not believe the GM is saying Fleets are no longer an option for powerplay, but that the existing system makes it too unbalanced. And from my own experience with the game, its true - within a year (depending on the starting condition of the base) you can easily mass produce ships. With a garden world, with very few paying positions you could build 100's of hulls worth of ships a week. If the GM believes that is too quick for an open-ended game, then its too quick.
Basically it needs a simple solution which is going to prevent the arms race getting out of hand. It will no doubt have ramifications in the game but it would be stupid to think that we are going to screw ppl's existing setup to solve things. There is no immediate rush get a solution but sooner the better.
After a week of thinking of patches to the problem, it seems that we may have to think more radically to get a solution. Currently its no clear course of action, so to say things have been wasted is kind of mad.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 18 2004, 10:09 PM) |
| Actually what is scary is that everyone is close to, or running at a loss. However the next interesting point is that less than 5% of wages are spent on ship crews (and thats for most affiliations, some getting as low as 2%) |
Hence why my proposal is to put a brake on expansion of income (and thus on the starbase production that is absirbing all those wages...), rather than increasing ship costs...
Richard
AFT
I've no problem with anyones style of play.We all pay our money,we all have the right to play how we choose!!
I love this game by far best one I've played in my long pbm hobby(started in 1979!!!).
But for me the arms race and continual warfare is wearing a bit thin.It is stopping me doing the things I want to do in the game,if all I have to look forward to is building more and more warships just to counter the more warlike players I may as well call it a day.But like I say every player is entitled to play how they like and it's a very difficult job for the GM to keep all players happy,but if one style of play dominates the rest that'll be the end of the game!!!
I personally run a fair few warships as well and any change will also hit me hard as it will others.
We're all the the same boat(game)here.Please let's trust the GMs to help make the game more balanced for all playing styles before it all comes crashing down and we lose the game we all love and the GMs have to get proper jobs!!
The Heavy Hull is too good, it takes 400 battle damage to destroy 1, so presuming the armour hasnt stopped the majority of the incoming weapons effectiveness, it takes a lot of weapons at a starbase to destroy a ship.
make the normal hull 75 instead of 100, and the Heavy hull 150 instead of 400.
this would have 2 effects, 1, being every time there is a major engagement such as 2 weeks ago, where several hundred ships attacked each other over in trinity, the losses incurred were minimal. i received a few sctratches and thats about it. where as if quite a few ships were destroyed and the ones which survived need lots of patch, then production will need to be shifted to compensate for more inert items, rather than shipping. it would also mean that after one major engagement you have a potential of quite a few repairs, which doesnt mean that you can go and immediately attack a second base shortly after the first.
it may be worth looking at weapons damage to mass ratio, rather than budgetary constraints.
OR
ships are too easy to build, we collect the materials together and whallop ive got a ship every week, make the shipyards unable to produce 1 ship a week, make it so they can only build 1 every month.
there are all sorts of other options, non of which are ideal, but are probably less detremental to some affiliations but have probably more impact on the result.
What is there to stop any aff with this maximum just carrying on and building all the raw materials and required complexes in place to be able to replace their entire warfleet in a day (5 colonies on the case covering monday to friday). Having stockpiles of basic materials and items doesnt cost anything.
You can still go and level things, it just takes a few days longer whilst you move from A to B at 100 ships a day.
The core of the issue is that apart from build a) defences/weapons and b ) ships there is little else to use production, stellars and resources on that doesnt contribute to your ability to have more/bigger weapons or more/bigger/better ships...
The solution therefore is to introduce something that doesnt fit into those categories but does take lots of resources/time and effort and you've got a winner. Some storylines currently looked at by special actions are examples of this of where people spend lots of money for little real in game gain apart from the roleplay or gains that dont add to factors a) or b ) (e.g. game knowledge advancement/storyline discovery/planetary problems like the fires the dtr sorted out/the inner empire stuff people have done/stellar cartography leads etc..)
Make any sense to anyone?
| QUOTE |
| Also, some items have changed their TMs since the game started, why not do the same for heavy hulls? If heavy hulls needed 1 fibrillium (or somthing), then each warship would require 100 (rare ore). Light / normal hulled ships would be unaffected. |
I think this is worth giving some serious consideration. Obviously Mica would have to be real careful in checking that everyone would be affected the same - if the GTT has a massive Fib resource it would be very unfair!
| QUOTE |
| If a Super Weapon is developed, then its developed because it can exploit a specific fault in the game mechanics and its the GMs job to correct this when they see it. As everyone knows, there are not supposed to be any Super Weapons that are superior to any other type of power play; an unstoppable Uber Fleet is a game destroyer. If the game was not designed to have that (and obviously the GMs dont believe it was), then the GMs should do what they feel necessary to correct that problem |
If a super weapon is produced, it is in the game! you dont take into acount the time,effort,money that goes into such a project and then to see it taken away because one or even two sides have it .......just not fair
I know large fleets are getting larger but why is that spoiling the game, it must be what the players want, maybe not all but some. What compensation is being offered to the affs that will be most effected? we cant all be traders..
Titus
Using real world examples that were used in another thread, take a look at the amount the United Kingdom spent on it's annual defense budget as opposed to the total budget of every other area the year before last, and compare it to last year when the armed forces became much more active (shall we say).
Not having looked into the figures myself, I cannot say for certain - but I am 99% sure that instead of having the country completely and perpetually on a war footing (aka World War 2 era factories reconfigured from producing tin cans to aircraft armour), the vast majority of the UK budget was spent on infrastructure, government employee wages, etc etc ad nauseum.
As much as it pains me to say it, the focus needs to be shifted from production of war resources (Hulls, armour, weaponary, ship blueprints) to more infrastructure/trade based - perhaps with an increase in warship running costs (based on defend/support lists). Whilst this is somewhat unpalatable, especially for those with already existing large standing warfleets and starbases configured to produce ever more ships, if an end is needed to the warfleet expansion then this is the fundamental problem that needs resolving.
Using the GTT as an example... they're a trading affiliation. An affiliation that should be producing trade goods and starbase-expansion (modules), working on infrastructure (freighters) to tighten their grip on the trade economy. And they're the single largest warship-building aff in the game (I believe?). Now, I can picture the GTT having a huge factory base available to them, requiring a large number of employees, who in turn need paying a vast sum of stellars every week. Yet the local merchandising factors alone for each warship production starbase on a garden world probably cover the wages for the employees and 50 ships to boot.
Which brings me back to Richard's comments on local and global factors...
Castrate the cash produced from merchandising complexes, expand the available global values to compensate = more starbases having to produce modules/infrastructure/freight ships = less starbases knocking out 2 warships a week.
Short term yes, very painful. This could be mitigated somewhat by expansion on other worlds/in other systems (Infrastructure again, anyone?), redistribution of fleets between players, which would likewise lead to more widespread warship useage (patrols, border defense) rather than the focused sledgehammer fleet useage we're seeing today. Which in the long term, leads to more interesting game combat development - as affiliations test each other's defenses and fleet coverage in different areas.
| QUOTE (Gandolph @ May 18 2004, 09:47 PM) |
| there are possible alternatives to the monetary angle: The Heavy Hull is too good, it takes 400 battle damage to destroy 1, so presuming the armour hasnt stopped the majority of the incoming weapons effectiveness, it takes a lot of weapons at a starbase to destroy a ship. make the normal hull 75 instead of 100, and the Heavy hull 150 instead of 400. this would have 2 effects, 1, being every time there is a major engagement such as 2 weeks ago, where several hundred ships attacked each other over in trinity, the losses incurred were minimal. i received a few sctratches and thats about it. where as if quite a few ships were destroyed and the ones which survived need lots of patch, then production will need to be shifted to compensate for more inert items, rather than shipping. it would also mean that after one major engagement you have a potential of quite a few repairs, which doesnt mean that you can go and immediately attack a second base shortly after the first. |
If this post is appearing twice, I am sorry guys, because I can't find the previous one anymore..
An possible other way, is making battles more intense. People are now spending lots of efforts, time, stellars and rl money to create an big warfleet. And then they toss it onto an battle and hope for the best.
This does remember me to an old game I used to play years ago. It had basically two types of battles...
First the one for small groups.. Just an couple of troops against each other, the computer plays it couple of rounds, you will get an report and thats it. But then an major battle...
At that moment things got ugly. You get an report showing who and what is where.. And then you have to station your troops on the battlefield.. Give orders for each and every unit available and hope for the best again :-)
I think this kind of battle-system could be modified to get into play with Phoenix.
One of the advantages of this system, is that you don't need to give funny orders as try to protect this ship... in the standard software, but you can do it into the battlesoftware.
| QUOTE |
| Ok, lots of stuff here about slowing down the expansion to stop warfleets of say 500 rolling around killing things. Say for example we make X, Y and Z changes to the game and having 100 standing warships is now the realistic maximum for being affordable. What is there to stop any aff with this maximum just carrying on and building all the raw materials and required complexes in place to be able to replace their entire warfleet in a day (5 colonies on the case covering monday to friday). Having stockpiles of basic materials and items doesnt cost anything. You can still go and level things, it just takes a few days longer whilst you move from A to B at 100 ships a day. The core of the issue is that apart from build a) defences/weapons and b ) ships there is little else to use production, stellars and resources on that doesnt contribute to your ability to have more/bigger weapons or more/bigger/better ships... The solution therefore is to introduce something that doesnt fit into those categories but does take lots of resources/time and effort and you've got a winner. Some storylines currently looked at by special actions are examples of this of where people spend lots of money for little real in game gain apart from the roleplay or gains that dont add to factors a) or b ) (e.g. game knowledge advancement/storyline discovery/planetary problems like the fires the dtr sorted out/the inner empire stuff people have done/stellar cartography leads etc..) Make any sense to anyone? |
Completely. This is an example of how, no matter how many restrictions are placed on something, there will always be a way round it.
The first point is that the game Phoenix, is and always has been, in an extended Beta stage. That's been stated again and again. It's at a pretty stable stage now, and it's certainly "viable" as a game, but one of the things Mica and David are doing is looking at the long term game, not the short term gains.
Everyone, apparently, felt that BSE was broken, so the majority of players supported the change to Phoenix. Now they are blocking any attempts to stop Phoenix going the same way. Would you rather have a bit of inconvenience every 6 months or so for the first few years, or go through a conversion (one hell of an inconvenience) every 2 or 3 years?
Out of everyone involved with Phoenix, only Mica and David know the *whole* picture. You might have a suberb intelligence network, but you can't see everything. Only the GM-gods can do that. They are obviously observing, modelling and projecting trends into the long term effects of the game.
Why on earth would they have any intention of "screwing" their player base? What possible gain would they have?
There is a lot of selfishness going on I'm afraid to say. Yes, I know many players have spent an awful lot of money on the game and I can sympathise with them up to a certain point, but hey, reality check - this is not an investment! It's entertainment. You want a return on your money put it in a bank, or buy shares.
Any changes in this thread will effect everyone in the same way (that's the whole point), Mica or David is not "out to get" the CNF or the IMP or the WMB. Okay, so some changes will affect one aff more than another. If that happens they will be *compensated*! You will lose something that is no longer so important and gain something that is.
Couple of points about this thread I've picked up on.
1. Like conversion a major change such as this, affiliations will be compensated.
2. David made a very interesting point that only 5% of an affs wages is spent on warships which means the wage change on warships should be manageable. So any change implemented should not have any major impact for the here and now. Putting it into perspective if we say an aff has 200 100hull warships with 100 crew on each, that's 20k stellars a week to run. Doubling the wages makes 40k stellars which is one decent starbase on a garden world. If we extend that to 500 warships it becomes 100k stellars which is 2.5 decent starbases. Doubling wages should be implemented but as a broader package of changes.
3. Richard Williams made an exellent suggestion on how to limit further expansion on exsisting worlds with the change between local and global factors. This needs some more thought particularly on large garden worlds but could be one of the ways forward.
4. This game should be about infrastructure expansion and the support of that. The changes proposed will force affs to develop new worlds and therefore new systems. As David Jones said the way round the proposed changes is to build more merchandising bases. In my opinion this is good and is what the game should be about, the affiliation expanding with more starbases and assets. Warships should increase in line with increased expansion and colonisation of new worlds. The proposed infrastructure changes should go ahead as well to give all affs a chance to expand.
5. Personally I beleive all affiliations should manage their finances and not go into debt. In fact there should be stringent penalties for doing this. My reasoning is that every affiliation is a government or company in one form or another supporting their population or staff. If that government or company goes into debt / bankrupt then there should be real implications of doing this just like inthe real world. I understand players not wanting to manage this. I think some in the Confederacy were principle in their disention in this as they want to play their profile on a warfooting, however you still have to support the people who make up your organisations by not going into debt. Warfootings are all well and fine but war over many years as many have been doing is just not sustainable in the real world or in game and should be penalised as such. If you don't want to play these aspects fine but let someone in your affiliation do it such as a finacne minister or somesuch to tell you how much you can spend on the fleet.
6. Mica raised the point that he does not want Phoenix to turn into a wargame. He foresaw 500+ ships stomping on a garden world in a couple of years. I don't have a problem with this happening but perhaps it should be extended a few more years to give affs a chance to defend themselves properly with platforms etc. I can see that the proposed infrastructure changes will extend this and therefore should be carried out.
Andy
We, the IMP, could expect to be penalised by the proposed changes but I do not feel that this is a good reason to prevent or delay them. Go ahead and let us all find a new way forward in the new economic environment.
Geoff
Make the changes and let us know what is happening (on here and on the main e.mail forum) and let's fix the cracks so that we can get back to planning. Imposing them 6 months down the line will just mean that it will hit the war Aff's harder than it would now. Also please don't do it over night, give us a couple of weeks to sort and get things in place (unlike the platform thing
) so that when it comes along we are all prepared....I do like the changes that are proposed (officer creation, ranks on ships etc) but you will never ever get everybody to agree to it all. We shall have to adapt once the full story is known
Cheers
Jons - SMS
After reading the 38 or so posts before this one it is obvious that there is a problem. Changing wages and such I believe is not the right way of confronting this.
I have read two very good ideas.
The first was mentioned by Gandolph. Make it easier to destroy a warship. We have had some huge battles but never more then a few ships being destroyed
(it seems from reading here). Make it easier to destroy a battleship and the numbers of ships will never reach 500 or more, unless someone prepare for years before an attack. Then they are worthy of that advantage. 
The other was mentioned by Richard and have been discussed somewhat more than Gandolphs suggestion. Limit further growth on garden worlds by changing between global and local values.
| QUOTE (kilanuman @ May 19 2004, 04:37 PM) |
| The first was mentioned by Gandolph. Make it easier to destroy a warship. We have had some huge battles but never more then a few ships being destroyed (it seems from reading here). Make it easier to destroy a battleship and the numbers of ships will never reach 500 or more, unless someone prepare for years before an attack. Then they are worthy of that advantage. |
One of the points about Phoenix was that it was designed to stop ships blowing up in one day! In BSE you entered a battle not knowing whether you would be hit and destroyed or just missed.
The main problem at the moment is that people are gear for producing ships. The tactic is to produce enough ships to hit and destroy one ship in one day. This is effectively the same as BSE but you need 50 ships rather than 5.
Nic
for instance 1 heavy hull requires 400 damage to be destroyed (potentially less) that is the actual amount of damage getting through the armour. now take into account a starbase has weapons such as Photon Batteries which is 1000mu's in size, the actual damage sent out isnt going to be enough to destroy more than 2 hulls per battle on the assumtion the starbases weapons hit, especially as armour and hulls increase in tech.
Where as, the ships in orbit firing down at the starbase, have no armour to penetrate, the chances of the scintillators being high are slim, the shield depth isnt enough to stop more than 4 points of damage etc etc, the impact of that weapon onto something at the starbase is very effective. (in my opinion) therefore a starbase assault in theory may actually be easier than attacking 300 ships etc etc.
The actual mass of wepons required at a starbase to effect a reasonable defence is large, and the only way of achieving this is probably for the affiliations who are using 398 factories a week to build 1 battleship/sol etc etc to convert that to weapons production , then you may stand some form of chance in 2 years time. Maybe.........................
| QUOTE |
| (in my opinion) therefore a starbase assault in theory may actually be easier than attacking 300 ships etc etc. |
Whats the thoughts on a starbase having the option for platforms to provent an attack on the SB - ie you can not attack the SB (and visa versa) until the platforms are elimated ?
| QUOTE |
| Whats the thoughts on a starbase having the option for platforms to provent an attack on the SB - ie you can not attack the SB (and visa versa) until the platforms are elimated ? |
A great idea. logically you would think that any sort of invader would have to take out the platforms before hitting the base.
Would make alot of sense
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 20 2004, 01:22 PM) |
| Whats the thoughts on a starbase having the option for platforms to provent an attack on the SB - ie you can not attack the SB (and visa versa) until the platforms are elimated ? |
I like it, but I don't think it should be an all or nothing prospect. How about platforms can only screen against a maximum number (influenced by size?) of ships, and have a % chance to be successful against each.
The starbase should still be able to engage with non-LOS weapons (missiles & fighters) against ships that have been blocked/screened by a platform.
Perhaps ships attacking with directfire weapons should be easier to block, than those attacking with missiles/fighters/rail-guns?
It has been mentioned earlier about the vunerabilty of bases if 500+ warships arrive to flatten it,saying how it's easier to take out a base than ships.
Shield and scint factors being too thin to be effective.
Am I right in remembering that an atmospheres optical depth affects energy weapons the same as scints??
If so attacking fleets would have to rely on missles/torps/fighters which are countered by Gatling Lasers and Phalanx missiles!!!
I think big,well defended bases are harder to take out than anyone imagines,even with 500+warships having a go!!
Now someone will prove me wrong by flattening Tortuga!!!!
and yes i think the platform idea could be used to better effect, as currently i personally think platforms havent quite been as useful as originally thought, this would also give the defending forces a chance of getting ships there for defence. which in my opinion is more realistic
also using maths here, 500 ships carrying on average a payload of between 1000 and 1500 mus of wepaons each thats a potential of 750000 mu's of weapons being bought to bear on one target location. Have you got an increase of that amount to shoot back with, AND destroy 5 million mu's of heavy hulls which requires 20 million battle damage (past the armour) to destroy it.
if so then yes Tortuga is safe as houses.In addition, platform numbers should come into play - two 200-hull platforms should be better at screening that a single 400-hull platform.
Another thought - possibly platforms ought to get a targeting bonus for ships that are targeting the starbase? (triangulation from the platform's own sensors and those of the starbase)
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ May 18 2004, 03:18 PM) |
| In X+Y years an affiliation will have Z warships. Where Z is sufficient warships to strike any single location and reduce it to rubble irrespective of average defences spread throughout the defending systems. Game has become a wargame - glorified or otherwise. So the problem is a combination of maximum fleet capable of being supported and its ability to function as a single entity. [...] Based on current rate of expansion, we estimate that within 4 years any single HQ world (including all starbases) will be susceptible to a fleet attack on a single day, despite their best efforts to build defenses. |
I challenge the claim that the aforementioned observation constitutes a problem!
Reason 1: The game already has rules to prevent the above situation. You could obviously set up in secret systems, create hidden starbases, etc. - simply don't put all eggs into one basket and you will be okay (including the option to retaliate).
If someone buggered up and makes himself vulnerable then there is absolutely no reason to save him. Especially as affiliations can never truly die in this game.
This will also keep people on their toes, looking for new frontiers, which can only be good for the game.
Nobody should have the right to sit back and remain invincible!
Reason 2:
Mica is basically complaining that starbases are not invulnerable. He fears that players might turn their back on the game if whatever they built up over the years is shot to pieces by somebody else.
My opinion is that if starbases were even harder to take out, the game would be static and not worth playing.
(I recall the DD&D attack on Parrot which was percieved as very one-sided, and yet was a logistical nightmare/masterpiece.)
Has anybody ever played StarCraft in multiplayer mode? Many games stalled because players entrenched their position and ignored offensive capabilities (the game is weighted slightly in favour of defensive action). When the resources had dried up, nobody had a chance to overcome the others.
Anybody who runs a position in this game must face the fact that he could lose this position at any time, even on a single day and without prior notice. Player action can move huge fleets in orbit to bomb a starbase into oblivion. Or a GM run faction could do it. Or a rogue asteroid simply crashes into your precious starbase. Or the sun goes nova. Or whatever.
For all we know, New Tate could sit on top of a dormant volcano (we never checked). Jax might still be unaware of that incoming asteroid because the IMP cannot be bothered to patrol their space. It might also have slipped the attention of Cape Horne that their lousy security means their slaves will take control of the starbase in a few days. The SMS might be digging out a Balrog at Moria. The main body of the Hexamon might arriving in Acrux yet, the Architects may be plotting the downfall of the DEN and at this very moment, Naplian terrorists may be recalibrating the Yank system weapon to destroy the planet of Mobile Bay with all resident starbases. Perhaps the Flagritz will revert into psychos all of a sudden and start yet another blitzkrieg on humanity.
If any of the above is a problem for you, why are you playing this game??
I don't think we need a change to the rules. This said, I must admit I like the idea to make starships slightly easier to destroy. This will help to melt away the military buildup without tampering with the underlying economics layer of the game, and should allay Micas/Davids fears.
That doesn't mean I want the game to turn into a Wargame only. Not by a LONG shot! Prehaps there are other possabilities apart from any finite ship limits. Certainly making it harder/costlier to have huge fleets is a viable option (IMHO), but are there any other methods?
Before I make the next suggestion, I'd like to state that I have oooh... ZERO ground combat experience (having the drunk crew of your ship shot up by odds of 5:1 does NOT count!
). So I may be well off the mark, and I'm sure some of you (namely the people doing the combat that know what's going on!) will correct me. If you want/need to change/adjust/maintain the great defence abilities of a starbase, how about making adjustments to the balance of Ground Combat vs. Space Combat?
If a Starbase is incredibly difficult to claim/destroy from orbit using warships, then players/aff will be encouraged to use more Ground Assaults when it comes to starbase battles - and therefore construction will be taken away from only Warships and have to go into ground equipment AND transport ships.
This kind of idea gives those mass-warfleet affs 2 choices.
1) Carry on with their current mass-fleets but take heavy losses combating installations.
2) Switch some of their production to ground-based to take those fore-mentioned installations.
Discuss, rip to shreds or build from the idea. Just thoughts....
platforms at present have little purpose, and a network of platforms in orbits for a phase 1 defence seems not only viable but logical.
for instance if a major power block attacked anothers home city, in this game at present the only warning you get is when 500+ ships turn up in orbit, the platform idea does give 1 extra days + warning which is getting more realistic.
| QUOTE |
| I challenge the claim that the aforementioned observation constitutes a problem! |
I have now had time to look at the sort of growth that is occuring in the game and we definatly have a problem. I don't want to see ppl _having_ to run 500 war ships each, its simply not what the game is about. The shear volume of turns that you have to create mean that the only ppl who can play this sort of wargame are programmers. There is simply no rubber band effect that is absolutly required to stop things going pear shaped
The actual assault on starbases is less of a problem that the actual numbers of ships been used. Ships are simply not valuable anymore.
| QUOTE |
| I don't think we need a change to the rules. This said, I must admit I like the idea to make starships slightly easier to destroy. This will help to melt away the military buildup without tampering with the underlying economics layer of the game, and should allay Micas/Davids fears. |
We need to see a change because i'm looking at a game that i would not want to play in a years time.
One thing to remember is that until i actaully looked at the situation in the game (by doing the stats), i thought everything was peachy. I'm rather concerned now.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 21 2004, 09:36 AM) |
| Ships are simply not valuable anymore. |
Is that getting, or starting to get to the crux of the matter?
I actually liked the idea posed early on by, I'm sorry I can't remember, about making ships more expensive to produce.
The suggestion was adding Fib (insert any rare ore here) into heavy hulls.
If you are going to add it to hulls, though, it should probably be normal as well (less needed maybe).
If it's more a concern about *war*ships, then make weapons a lot more expensive too?
But are ships just generally too easy to build?
Is it likely that you could build a space ship in a week? How long does it take to build a modern naval vessel? (I have no idea, it may well be a week, but I doubt it) Fleets of 500 ships (500 _big_ ships) are just not "realistic" in my opinion. (yeah yeah, realism/playability balance and all that)
Look at any decent sci-fi (well any I can think of). Even Star Trek/Babylon 5 et al. If, e.g., the Federation are faced with a huge threat (the borg say) they gather their entire mobile fleet (or 80% of it) to face the enemy. The fleet they have is 20,30 maybe 40 ships. They don't have hundreds of ships to throw around.
Of course, once we are looking at space battles with smaller numbers of ships, we really should have a lot more strategic and tactical depth to battles. As things are its really just a matter of biggest/most wins. There is a small element of paper/rock/scissors in terms of should I install more scints or more armour etc, but once the fleets meet that's pretty much the end of your control.
But that is probably getting off the topic again.
Some people prefer combat,some trading etc ,etc!!!
Every player has the right to play how they like,otherwise what's the point of playing!!!
But having said that when one style dominates the rest,in this case warfare it makes it difficult for others to enjoy the game as they can't play how they want too.Everyone is trying to keep up in the arms race an it degenerates into a pure wargame!!!
It is difficult to get the game balence right and KJC are trying to sort it so no one loses out.
Some questions.
What happens when an aff runs out of money?
If they have a large wage bill for troops crew and employees what happens when those people can't be paid?
Do base employees say if you can't pay us we're off home,thereby shutting down the base?
Would ship crews refuse to fight?
If the warmonger affs want large fleets fine,that's their prefered style,but if the stellars dry up they have to face the consequences of bankrupcy(sp)!!
| QUOTE |
| What happens when an aff runs out of money? |
If politicals run out of money currently they just go more and more negative every week as the EEM foots the bill for wages. At this point you can not do anything that requires money and there are a surprising number of things that covers (like most political orders). It does not stop everything but it does require you to make sufficent money to get yourself +ve again. So while restricting you badly if you go -ve , its not the end of the world and you can get out of it again.
However i don't think income/stellars will be where any change will be focused, as most affs are already negative or cose to negative situation on a weekly basis. Suddenly making that far worse will not be a teniable solution.
| QUOTE |
| However i don't think income/stellars will be where any change will be focused, as most affs are already negative or cose to negative situation on a weekly basis. Suddenly making that far worse will not be a teniable solution. |
I think it's the current negatives in income that some aff's face that is making us fear the change.
Personally I would prefer the system where ships were easier to destroy, rather than the situation where rare ores are required for hull production. Quite simply, so affiliations might be sitting on a huge deposit of the ore, and once again the power game is shifted in that direction.
If the GM's forsee a huge problem in the game, then I guess we have to avoid it. I guess insted of being negative, I would rather work with the GM's to get some sort of resolution that will aid us all.
Dave
We all want to play the game differently but Phoenix has stripped our differences away. We can only play the game differently by how we play and what our goals are, if it's war then so be it but this is not a wargame in total. As has been stated, each Aff feels that it HAS to have a good standing warfleet to combat the other standing warfleets, the SMS is no different to this. In order to protect our neutral status we are building warships because we understand that starbases can be broken. As Gandolph said, the amount of damage that warships can sustain is huge, in a recent battle 8 SMS SOL took on an outpost and platform and over 2 days of fighting and approx 600 missiles fired at 2 of my ships they took 0.2 armour loss and about 100 hull damage...
IMHO ships are too easy to build and too hard to destroy and given that even we, a humble mining Aff, can churn out a couple a week, they have lost there value. I feel that in order to correct this, the God's/GM's need to put forward measures that help the game to get back on track. I do not want it to come to the point where stationing 50 warships above each starbase is the only way to protect it and spending 5 hours a night doing turns for 500 warships is what the game will become. If it is stated that crew is a general term for people on a ship and that warship crew are paid danger money (ie x2 or x3) then so be it. If it needs officer training complex at the main starbase churning out 1/2/3 per week to control the build up then so be it, I'm sure a market will soon develop to sell spare to the Aff's that need them. If it requires the planet upgrades to be done and all the figures rejigged to take the GM's worries into consideration then so be it.
I think this forum is good to air views and opinions but at the end of the day, it is a game that we have all played for years and enjoy. I think we should either take a vote on suggested methods to correct the problems or this debate will go on until it gets to the point where it is too late....
I have no objection to the IMP/Confed blocks having huge fleets to duke it out between them, lets face it, that's what they exist for. I don't want it to be what the game degenerates into, a warship race with the war Aff's
Cheers
Jons - SMS
| QUOTE |
| As Gandolph said, the amount of damage that warships can sustain is huge, in a recent battle 8 SMS SOL took on an outpost and platform and over 2 days of fighting and approx 600 missiles fired at 2 of my ships they took 0.2 armour loss and about 100 hull damage... |
Yes thats whats supposed to happen - its kind of a bad example as if you had been hit by 600 kinetic missiles, you would have taken about 18,000 damage. Again it would not have fraged the ship but it would have dented it. ¬Normal missiles bounce of armour 80 ships.
I think there will be some steps to differentiate between ships that are blown up (immediatly in the battle) and ships that lose structural integrity after a battle (we could alter any ship loses at this stage). The way all the combat works is actaully well balanced.
| QUOTE |
| I think we should either take a vote on suggested methods to correct the problems or this debate will go on until it gets to the point where it is too late... |
Debate is good but voting on what to do will just get you 50%/50% responces as you just get ppl voting for what they _think_ favours them. I realise that some ppl scream at any change but in the end we all want a game that wil be stable in the long run.
It would create smaller battles, though it wouldnt stop ship escalation if players can still handle multiple battles on multiple fronts (you still have 500 ships, but 25 spread in 20 battles, for example).
it would need to be combined with an increase in the rare resources needed for ships.
Mark
| QUOTE |
| What about having warfleets have an efficiency drop (accuracy penalty perhaps) the more there are in a battle the worse they get (like the 10% Drop applied to merchandising and special resources, etc). |
I already put that idea forward - in neighbouring thread: 'Proposed Combat System Changes'.
I't be nice to have responses (other than the 'shoot down in flames' ones) from the GM et al, occasionally. Even if it's just a "Hmmm... Not keen..."
TonyH
| QUOTE |
| What about having warfleets have an efficiency drop (accuracy penalty perhaps) the more there are in a battle the worse they get (like the 10% Drop applied to merchandising and special resources, etc). |
Main issue with anything like this is that there are no sides in space combat. You just have a list of who you are personally attacking and even if this is the same as someone else this does not necessarily mean you are on the same side....
The other thing is that i'm not quite sure how much sence it makes.
Essentially me and mica have been talking about this for obscene amounts of time on the phone in the past week (we had a record 5 hr phone conversation on wednesday). Lots of things have come up and been dismissed for various reasons so its not like we are not discussing this a lot. It just really nice to have fresh ideas all the time, so even if they are not commented on, they may well be useful.
For instance i liked the idea for platform screening starbases through a similar process to what will be used for the ships. And maybe ships could do that as well - i thing that needs to be thought about for a while. But maybe platforms are more built for this purpose and have a much better chance than ships in the orbit of a starbase - we have never been specific about what platforms really are.... other than defending the starbase. So perhaps the screen would not be 100% but depend on the platforms involved.
in disguisehaving a reduced targetting effect in my opinion is unrealistic, infact if you consider the exchange of information between vessels targeting the same ship in theory it would triangulate the position of the enemy better not worse.
the platform issue for starbases, has to be an improvment
| QUOTE |
| quite obviously if you were on the phone for 5 hours to each other, you are both WOMEN in disguise |
No we are worse. I'm scared when the phone rings during the day. There has not been a day in the last 2 weeks that i have not been on the phone for at least 1 hour over this.... except today since he was off driving today and apparently underwater phones don't work.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 21 2004, 06:38 PM) |
| Main issue with anything like this is that there are no sides in space combat. You just have a list of who you are personally attacking and even if this is the same as someone else this does not necessarily mean you are on the same side.... The other thing is that i'm not quite sure how much sence it makes. |
The Commander of a faction would be the senior officer in an affilation - that makes sense to me. Affiliations are the source of the authority to promote officers, and I cant see any circumstances where ships in the same aff should be fighting each other. The bonus/penalty would be provided by the commander, to all ships with the same aff flag.
This might mean that a faction might end up being attacked by two or more enemy factions at the same time. Seems fair enough - having two or more powerful affs against you should be more serious than just one. And if one faction in a side is the overwhelming contributor to that side, it hardly makes much difference anyway.
Possibly officer leadership could be extended to cover ships of affiliations which are formally allied to the commanders' - giving a nice in-game reason to have allied affs, which is a cosmetic feature at the moment. Again, allied affiliations shouldn't be shooting at each other.
TonyH
The line that David & Mica are taking is absolutely right - sooner rather than later, but comprehensive not bodged. Personally, things that would work well in tandem include the rebalancing of local and global factors (zero net difference now, but limiting long term expansion), platform changes to make them more effective (but notso much so that they become the ultimate weapon either)...
...and perhaps one idea that was in the original game design but was dropped for being too much hassle - the concept of maximum integrity. Every ship starts at 100% maximum, but this drops every time a maintenance visit or repair visit is needed... It would effectively put a "design service goal" on every ship - eventually no matter how much you maintain the ship, it will start to go wrong and get extremely flimsy.
If this could be worked so that recovery of routine integrity losses had a much smaller effect on maximum integrity than that lost through "extreme manoeuvres" - wormholes, stargates, nebulae,etc. and of course battle damage, then merchant ships doing "milk runs" would have minimal losses to their maximum integrity, whereas ships doing more dangerous jobs (including some merchant runs admittedly - but more importantly warships) would not last forever and would have to be replaced not just patched up again
just a thought, but then that's what this thread is all about ;o)
Dan
| QUOTE |
| whereas ships doing more dangerous jobs (including some merchant runs admittedly - but more importantly warships) would not last forever and would have to be replaced not just patched up again |
This does appear to be a good idea frm a games mechanic point of view, however many of the ships I control at the moment have an in-game history, in fact my start ship is still running around after several years.
If this came into the game I would like something along the lines of 'Replace Ship' ie....you scrap the ship and replace it with another with the same position number and name just to keep the in-game history of the ship going. Well it worked for the Enterprise!
| QUOTE |
| ...and perhaps one idea that was in the original game design but was dropped for being too much hassle - the concept of maximum integrity. Every ship starts at 100% maximum, but this drops every time a maintenance visit or repair visit is needed... |
I think there is something in the use of integrity/maintenance. It certainly ties ships to a tangable asset and for some reason the current values for maintenance were set to a point where they have no real ingame effect.
And any change will be a batch of different things - certainly 1 change will not sort things out for the long term. I'm not sure about messing with merch though, there is already a cap on how much ppl can exploit one planet (other than the global values).
One point that has was raise by ewan is that there needs to be things to put production into other than warfleets. I think we can edge towards that (in infrastructure) later on as it is more of an addition than a change to the current situation. All the major changes need to done relativly soon though.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 22 2004, 09:15 AM) | ||
I think there is something in the use of integrity/maintenance. It certainly ties ships to a tangable asset and for some reason the current values for maintenance were set to a point where they have no real ingame effect. |
Still don't like the idea of a reduction in Max integrity due to Maint Visits, but maybe there is a place for reduced Maximum integrity for REPAIR visits. There can be a world of difference between general wear-and-tear on a ships systems and a having the arse end of your ship turned into molten sludge by a Nova Battery. A Maximum Integrity drop proportional to damage repaired would give a limited life at ANY ship (regardless of size, set-up, hull type etc) that recieves damage of any kind.
That Battleship may last for 100 Combats before it gets a little too shakey to be taking out for joy-rides, or take several poundings and only be good for 5. Of course, the indervidual players/affs can decide when the ship is no longer practical for combat!
The only problem I can see at present with this is what to do with these knackered ships? It doesn't make sense for them to be abandoned in space, so maybe a new order to "Recycle Ship" can be implimented. It would strip the parts out of the hulls and then break the ship up into bits that can be re-used. The proportion of items retrieve that are still usable could be linked to the Max Integrity of the ship. Scrap it sooner and get more back - fly it until bits drop off and get very little worth.
| QUOTE |
| Still don't like the idea of a reduction in Max integrity due to Maint Visits |
No we are not putting that back in
Its pure arse factor and it does not solve the fact that you stll have loads of warships to run (even if they are a bit pants due to max int). I was talking about increased maintenance mus/patch cost. | QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 22 2004, 08:30 AM) | ||
No we are not putting that back in Its pure arse factor and it does not solve the fact that you stll have loads of warships to run (even if they are a bit pants due to max int). I was talking about increased maintenance mus/patch cost. |
As well as more stellars, a Maintanence visit should cost 300 TUs (effectively, dry-docking the ship for a week). Also, R+R efficiency bonus shouldn't save TUs on a maintanence visit since it's the starbase crew doing all the work.
| QUOTE (Jons @ May 21 2004, 01:50 PM) |
| I think this forum is good to air views and opinions but at the end of the day, it is a game that we have all played for years and enjoy. I think we should either take a vote on suggested methods to correct the problems or this debate will go on until it gets to the point where it is too late.... |
If we vote on anything it should be just "do we allow the GMs to make any changes *they see fit* to stop the game getting broken, or developing in the wrong direction".
As I said, it's all very well us all having opinions, but none of us see the whole picture and how any one change would effect things globally (butterfly in Puru effect).
To go back to an early point. Do we trust the GMs or not? I do. I'm happy to let Mica and David have a fiddle around with things to try and address the problem they predict.
| QUOTE (Steve-Law @ May 22 2004, 06:57 PM) |
| To go back to an early point. Do we trust the GMs or not? I do. I'm happy to let Mica and David have a fiddle around with things to try and address the problem they predict. |
Absolutely! I only make sugguestions here to give ideas and possibly to prevoke discussion. Basic mental stimulation and think-tanking. If Mica and David come up with an answer that they are happy with, then I say go ahead and do it. If players can help in the process by making sugguestions then that's even better.
Just give us some warning and details!
(Glad we're not going back to decreasing Max Integrity though!
) | QUOTE |
| If we vote on anything it should be just "do we allow the GMs to make any changes *they see fit* to stop the game getting broken, or developing in the wrong direction". |
i was thinking something similar but then thats the bit where you send your pound shaped votes to KJC. So doing a vote of confidence has no real benefit. But as you say ppl have to trust us not to purposly screw things.
To explain my position: I'm not developing phoenix for huge financial reasons. So far i have put far more money and time into phoenix than i have got out, so i would like to think that i'm acting purely in the interests of the game. I think the changes needed to change the current situation will have to be harsh but we can not impliment anything that make a players position no fun anymore. There will be some ppl in a bad psoition in a game this size (with any change) so if a solution can be found to fit most ppl, a few induviduals will have to be compensated.
Note:I like it when ppl point out there position and why changes totally screw them. Generally something will not be implimented if i can not come up with an answer to 'This screws me'. I don't like it when ppl have a rant out how they would be ruined by a change and then i open up their positions and find that nothing could be further from the truth.
So, if the TU for Maint/Repair is set to 300 TU (out of game for 1 week) then the whole shipbuilding process must be adressed too. If it takes 1 week to run a maintainance check then it isnt 'realistic' to be able to build the same ship in 1 week too.
If you put a limit on hulls built per week (ie. 50 hulls) then a capital ship would take 2 weeks to build in a colony that has all the Shipyards. If there are only shipyards to build a 50 hull ship then a 100 hull ship would take 4 weeks. If you opt for a 25 hull/week production then it would be 4 weeks / 8 weeks instead.
As has been said earlier too, then the money spent on repair/maintenance/recreation visits shouldn't all go directly to the starbase. There should be some kind of 'loss' so you only get, ie, 90% of the income.
Soren
| QUOTE (finalstryke @ May 22 2004, 08:43 AM) |
As well as more stellars, a Maintanence visit should cost 300 TUs (effectively, dry-docking the ship for a week). Also, R+R efficiency bonus shouldn't save TUs on a maintanence visit since it's the starbase crew doing all the work. |
I like this idea... except maybe 3TU's per 1% integrity restored (I like doing my little configuration tweaks).
TonyH
| QUOTE (balakhayt @ May 22 2004, 10:59 AM) |
| As has been said earlier too, then the money spent on repair/maintenance/recreation visits shouldn't all go directly to the starbase. There should be some kind of 'loss' so you only get, ie, 90% of the income. |
But that causes problems with maintenance facilities being a marketable commodity. I offer maintenance facilities to various people. If I am spending the money to build the patches and spending the money to run the maintenance complexes, why should I not get the income?
This approach should not be necessary if the number of patches required for maintenance increases. The cost is then in producing the necessary patches, rather than losing some of the income.
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE (MasterTrader @ May 22 2004, 12:05 PM) |
| But that causes problems with maintenance facilities being a marketable commodity. I offer maintenance facilities to various people. If I am spending the money to build the patches and spending the money to run the maintenance complexes, why should I not get the income? |
And if you don't make a profit on selling maintence, what then? Less available maintenance for people, so war is even harder.
Although I can see the point you are making that this would effectively reduce your lines of business. But what kind of profit do maintence complexes generate? Would a 90% return still make profit?
| QUOTE |
In star wars and babylon five etc the cost and time of making ships was so big that no more than a few were done at any one time. in BSE this was tried to be done by adding thorlium to the hull requirements but now thorlium is not that difficult to get in large amounts (its hard but not difficult). At the moment heavy hulls mk1 and mk2 only need 40 mus of thorlium. Mk3 are harder as they need 5 jacium and mk4 15 jacium. It should be a higher level of thorlium say 80, increase Rare earth elements to 40 say and upping the jacium levels so that mk1 needs 5, mk2 = 10, mk3 = 15, mk4 = 20. This would mean more than 100 mus of materials to make a 100 mu item but then some of the ores are combined in manufacture so that 1mu + 1mu only gives 1.5mus etc hence why the 140 mus of level 4 materials only gives a 100 mu item. Or something along those lines - increase cost of hulls by adding more rare minerals and by increasing quantity of ores required. |
(And to get around the stockpile problem how about introducing a NEW mineral. Seed the deposits, and give each aff the same amount (or the same amount per base/player whatever))
| QUOTE (Steve-Law @ May 22 2004, 03:34 PM) |
| (And to get around the stockpile problem how about introducing a NEW mineral. Seed the deposits, and give each aff the same amount (or the same amount per base/player whatever)) |
OMG!!!!
while I like this idea, the thought of having th re-GPI 8903475843095834 planets for rare ores makes me feel sick.
| QUOTE (finalstryke @ May 22 2004, 04:08 PM) |
| while I like this idea, the thought of having th re-GPI 8903475843095834 planets for rare ores makes me feel sick. |
LOL. I think you might be exaggerating just a tad there ;)
To be honest I thought the same thing (I nearly didn't mention it) but I was trying to think of a fair way to do it :)
You could seed a deposit on every planet with shipyards maybe? But make the yield small enough to limit production to 1 ship per x weeks?
(I definately think ships are too easy/quick to build though)
Say
400 MUs production for hvy
200 MUs production for normal and platform
150 for light
100 for xlight
Firstly this effects everyone the same way, if you were building 4 hvy hull ship per week you now build 1. Changing build requirements or adding new ores may benefit one affiliation over another.
Increase the patch requirments in the same manner, a hvy now requires 4 patches per 10% integrity etc. Make combat engines 80 production, battle bridges 200, plate armour 200 and ablative 100 etc.
This makes platforms, much more cost effective as a defence and some of the affiliations who seem to prefer using hvy ships as a defence may think about platforms slowing down the arms race further.
Affiliations who have demands for new ships for new players are forced to either design new small hvy hull ships, or supply normal hull ships as warships. This will increase the diversity of the current battle fleets, and also the fragility of the fleets as well. Affiliations who want should be able to swap a few hvy ship bps for normal hulls.
Mk II and greater hulls now become significantly more desirable since they offer a real production gain. At the moment it is easier to just build 12.5% more ships than invest in sufficient bps to get 12.5% more defence.
1) Reduce the number of hulls a ship yard can assemble per week
2) Increase employees needed for ship yards
3) Add a drop% for ship yards (like mining/factories etc)
4) Add an actual maximum number of hulls that can be assembled each week (this one is a bit artificial though)
5) Make ships built in orbit rather than in dock (so they are more vulnerable to attack, so you won't just crank them out just anywhere) (advantage for affs like the DEN though maybe, with a lot more secure systems, so not really a goer - could make ships above a certain hull size only assemblable in orbit maybe...)
Any others?
For example, say the decision was to make all current hulls deteroriate, and introduce new hulls that don't, the story would be something along the lines of some galactic event, or rising levels of radiation X, or whatever.
This would depend on the change of course, and would probably be a nightmare to implement, but it's something to think about (a few IC posts I've seen that refer to it, tend to relate the BSE/Phoenix conversion to some IC event).
A build ship order could remove the hulls / internals from the starbase list straight away, but then the actual ship will take X weeks to build.
Each week the base will give you a run down on how long until the ship is built (like tooling MP lines, or tooling tech etc).
Downside is that affs organised enough to work the logistics can spread the ship building out to more bases, but they'll need to move the hulls / internals around as well etc.
pah.. I'm all out of ideas now, think I'll just get a nice cool drink, sit back and see what happens.
I did have this massive reply written but it was getting ridiculous so here's the abridged version.
* Game not real life!
* Emphasis on fun.
* Game balance not finite, it fluctuates to adapt to circumstance.
* Whens next pubmeet (guess you had to read full verson to understand<g>)
* Why need big fleet, know that and answer become clear.
* GM not screw themself by screwing you.
* Program only 20% of what make game!
* Can we have intergalactic missile then not need warship to attack starbase?
* Game also not exact model real life, star trek also not real life.
* Time not work in real world way, 1 week phoenix not represent 1 week rl yet also does and even crazier, factory take 6 month build and employ rl, take 1 week phoenix? Work game don't mean practical rl.
* Moral of story, take pinch of salt!
* Ideas good, even bad ones.
* Concentrate make game fun, not easy I know.
* This making sense to anyone?
* Platform fair idea, make optional ignore attack platform fist but at penalty to defense of ship then me like idea more. Make squat difference to original thread tho'.
* Make rules clear, very confusing even for long time player.
* Warn change first in plenty time even not know full plan and ppl not get so angry.
* Noone ever like every change, that life.
* Overall, find root cause of problem before try fix!
Worried will speak like this for rest of life, it addictive.
Questions?
Steve a.k.a. gog
| QUOTE (gog @ May 23 2004, 12:25 PM) |
| Hi, * Overall, find root cause of problem before try fix! |
Maybe the real problem is that ships don't get blown up often enough?? If the number of warships stays the same, than there is no problem...
Im not dismissing this out of hand, im just saying that it alone wouldnt be enough
this may well become a part of the game as well as other things to balance it out.
| QUOTE |
| And if you don't make a profit on selling maintence, what then? Less available maintenance for people, so war is even harder. |
Have you ever had a car seviced the cost is loads there must be some profit in there
I too like the idea of platforms to shield the starbases but I thought we had that now...
If I put a platform in orbit and arm it to the teeth, it will shoot down some of the ships atacking the Starbase which is cheaper than building another starbase and also devides the atacking fleet.
If I have got this wrong or missed the point please dont all flame at once
Titus
| QUOTE |
| I too like the idea of platforms to shield the starbases but I thought we had that now... If I put a platform in orbit and arm it to the teeth, it will shoot down some of the ships atacking the Starbase which is cheaper than building another starbase and also devides the atacking fleet. If I have got this wrong or missed the point please dont all flame at once Titus |
As things stand, platforms are there and can divide a fleet in the first instance. But a fleet can then choose to ignore them and only target the starbase, accepting whatever damage that results from the platform. The proposal would make this a lot harder to do - you would have to destroy (or evade?) them before targetting the starbase
Dan
| QUOTE |
| the only initial problem with making the hulls require more factories to produce, is that we will be in the same position 12 months down the line, as people will build more factories. |
Absolutly the issue - we can not add anything that simply _just_ delays things. It will not help in the long run. The core of the problem seems to be that merch was set too generously and therefore expansion has been far too easy. Its seems that most ppl have mercilessly exploited this as one would expect
I now have a much better statistical analysis of the game, so its easier to see whats happening. (i laughed my pants off when DTR had a negative expansion index
- it was a modeling cockup but hell it was funny for a minute). Essentially later in the week i think we can start to put together a package based on what has been said and what needs doing.
This changes the timescale for implementation drastically. Yup, we are going to do something very soon. The changes will have to be far reaching, but we will aim to give full disclosure.
It will mean that the individual value of ships will be drastically increased.
The best thing about this though is that it will pave the way quite nicely for infrastructure and every player that has worked hard constructing their fleet can be thankful their hard work was nothing compared to the future.
Some affl got access to mk3/mk4 tech, which would take an gigantic fortune to make with the current rules...if you decide to make the stellar income lower, it will mean that some affl might never be able to get so far.
Also, it would make starting an new affl basically impossible. As they would have an disadvatage which they would not be able to overcome.
Maybe its time to get an maintance costs for those techs or principles??
There does seem to be some concensus that ships are built far too quickly. Maybe there could be a construction time depending on the size of the ship (say 25 hulls a month).
If you want to limit ship building there have to be hard limits on time to build and number that can be built at once. Otherwise building a silly number of shipyards is a way around the problem and youre back to square one.
Could not a single item ('Ship core') representing all those things be introduced, which would be terribly expensive production- and ore-wise?
Like, make it a 50mu item requiring 1000mu production and made from:
500 basic elements
500 hydrocarbons
20 precious metals
20 rare earth elements
5 pulac
5 collidium
5 fibrillium
Whenever the shipyards start on a new project, one 'Ship core' is burnt for every 75 hulls (or fraction thereof) the ship consists of.
Also, there could be a fee of 1000 stellars for registering it with the EEM.
Does that sound like making individual ships more valuable?
| QUOTE (Sam_Toridan @ May 24 2004, 04:56 PM) |
There does seem to be some concensus that ships are built far too quickly. Maybe there could be a construction time depending on the size of the ship (say 25 hulls a month). If you want to limit ship building there have to be hard limits on time to build and number that can be built at once. Otherwise building a silly number of shipyards is a way around the problem and youre back to square one. |
I think changing shipbuilding to something like the current research process could solve this: A set number of shipyards might be able to put together 10 hulls per week, but doubling the number of shipyards wouldn't assemble double the number of hulls, and even 225 shipyards couldn't assemble more than 100 hulls per week, on an individual ship.
I assume this might have the advantage that lots of the code from the research process could be re-used.
Requiring 1 blueprint per 10 hulls (=1000 MU's) of production, in line with other blueprints, would bring the shipbuilding rate down even further.
Whatever you do about shipbuilding rates however does nothing about the final size of the fleet, it just makes it slower to reach it. Making ships a little easier to destroy seems like the best idea to me (even speaking as someone who cant replace my warships easily)
TonyH
| QUOTE (Sam_Toridan @ May 24 2004, 03:56 PM) |
| On the ship construction issue, there was an original proposal that ship BP were 1 shot items. Was this ditched because it was seen as making ship construction too difficult (thus worth looking at again) or just because it was an extra complication (therefore can stay ditched)? There does seem to be some concensus that ships are built far too quickly. Maybe there could be a construction time depending on the size of the ship (say 25 hulls a month). |
Blueprints seem just too harsh - the reason the idea was scrapped, but certainly increasing the time to build seems very sensible.
In BSE, building a ship was generally slow - a capital ship required approx (70mu+20mu)*120 = 10800 production, + 4 weeks of thorlium coating and pick-ups, while starbases only had 4300 production. This equates to roughly six weeks to get a warship up and running.
Limiting the maximum hulls that can be assembled per week seems like a good idea. This should not however prevent multiple lines being run, but then that is a case of a monster number of complexes - which will no doubt be standing idle for a lot of the time.
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ May 25 2004, 07:04 AM) | ||
Blueprints seem just too harsh - the reason the idea was scrapped, but certainly increasing the time to build seems very sensible. In BSE, building a ship was generally slow - a capital ship required approx (70mu+20mu)*120 = 10800 production, + 4 weeks of thorlium coating and pick-ups, while starbases only had 4300 production. This equates to roughly six weeks to get a warship up and running. Limiting the maximum hulls that can be assembled per week seems like a good idea. This should not however prevent multiple lines being run, but then that is a case of a monster number of complexes - which will no doubt be standing idle for a lot of the time. |
I totally agree with Mica about limiting the buildup of new ships..
What I would like to suggest, is to make the number of built huls depending on the type of hul. At this moment we have got four basic types, Heavy, Normall, Light and Xlight.
What I would like to suggest, is to keep the Xlight (and maybe the Light) at the same level as before... And give an penalty for Normal and Heavy hulls.
At this moment one shipyard can make 5hulls per week (if I recall correctly, anyway the website says so). Why not say thats 5 XLight hulls (the cheapest version)??
So it would be like: 1 Shipyard can make 5 Xlight, 4 Light, 2 Normal, 1 Heavy Hulls. So building an 100Heavy Hulls ship will take 100 complexes or an oustanding 1000 stellars cost. Or you could even make it worse... 8 Xlight, 4 Light, 2 Normal, 1 Heavy.
It would screw up some big plannings and it makes building up an big nasty fleet an real problem... but thats normal. It also compensates a bit for the fact that an Xlight hulls is degradings lots faster then a Normal hull.
| QUOTE (Sjaak @ May 25 2004, 08:22 AM) |
| What I would like to suggest, is to make the number of built huls depending on the type of hul. At this moment we have got four basic types, Heavy, Normall, Light and Xlight. |
Not sure I completely agree with this. I can see your point, but I can imagine a fleet of X hundred light or xlight disposible attack ships wiping out the much smaller heavy hull fleet (due to vastly superior number of weapons). You'll take a lot of losses of course, but then you can replace them faster anyway...
If we are trying to make a ship more individually important/valuable, shouldn't it apply to all ships?
Light and xlight ships are going to be mostly used for safe shipping/trading routes, and as such will be much less likely to ever be lost (and you shouldn't really be operating xlght for very long without access to a nearby maintenance yard). Heavy and Normal are more likely to be at the dangerous end of operations and so will be more likely to need replacing semi-regularly.
By making xlight and light easier to build you will also be forcing a choice on players (to some extent).
But then again, heavy hulls *are* a lot thicker than xlight hulls and so would logically take longer to extrude/weld/whatever. By the same token though, they would take less time to fit and configure internals (because there is less of them, the fitting process will be less delicate, etc)...
It's a tricky one.
| QUOTE |
| You'll take a lot of losses of course, but then you can replace them faster anyway... |
Complete losses would be more like it.
XL hulled ships can take about (9000+500)/2=4750 dmg before poping.
Light hulled ships can take about (7000+2500)/2=4750 dmg before poping.
They have no or little armour and therefore something like missiles would cut them down. 5000/200=25 missiles = death in 1 round. There are no weapons that can do single round high dmg ratio (torps can but you have to be faster than the heavy fleet to have a chance of hitting)
| QUOTE |
| By the same token though, they would take less time to fit and configure internals (because there is less of them, the fitting process will be less delicate, etc)... |
Not sure about that, they produced cargo ships like cars in WWII, but it was not the same with warship. Cargo ships are very modula but warships are fiddly.
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ May 25 2004, 08:04 AM) |
Limiting the maximum hulls that can be assembled per week seems like a good idea. This should not however prevent multiple lines being run, but then that is a case of a monster number of complexes - which will no doubt be standing idle for a lot of the time. |
I've been playing around with the figures, and here's my numerologically pleasing proposal for how the number of shipyard complexes should relate to the number of hulls assembled on an individual ship:
1 complex - 4 hulls (as now)
2 complexes - 7 hulls
3 complexes - 9 hulls
4 complexes - 10 hulls - the limit for a single blueprint. Thereafter going up in 10-hull jumps, each step up requiring an additional blueprint.
9 complexes - 20 hulls
16 complexes - 30 hulls
25 complexes - 40 hulls
36 complexes - 50 hulls
49 complexes - 60 hulls
64 complexes - 70 hulls
81 complexes - 80 hulls
100 complexes - 90 hulls
121 complexes - 100 hulls etc
This decreases in efficiency in a nicely gradual manor.
And in addition - how about requiring more than 500 work-hours per shipyard complex, and a fee of $100 per hull per ship started?
TonyH
PS As you may deduce, I have a boring job with internet access.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 25 2004, 09:16 AM) |
| You'll take a lot of losses of course, but then you can replace them faster anyway. Complete losses would be more like it. XL hulled ships can take about (9000+500)/2=4750 dmg before poping. Light hulled ships can take about (7000+2500)/2=4750 dmg before poping. |
This does remind me at one of the current problems in Phoenix, not enough ships lost.
What if we introduce an new complex: Space Defense.
Its acts like an sort of armour plate, and to built it you will need 20 Military Modules, 5 Structural Modules and some Armour Plates.
It adds some "Armour like" defenses just like ships have. And part of the damage done to the starbase gets applied to those Space Defenses. The nice part of the Space Defenses thats its act like an Armour, so the total damage done to the internal structures gets considerable reduces as long as the Space Defenses is there.
Ofcourse you will need an big amount of those SD's. Just like Domes and the likes.
| QUOTE (Sjaak @ May 25 2004, 12:47 PM) |
| What if we introduce an new complex: Space Defense. Its acts like an sort of armour plate, and to built it you will need 20 Military Modules, 5 Structural Modules and some Armour Plates. It adds some "Armour like" defenses just like ships have. And part of the damage done to the starbase gets applied to those Space Defenses. The nice part of the Space Defenses thats its act like an Armour, so the total damage done to the internal structures gets considerable reduces as long as the Space Defenses is there. |
A very good idea, but we already have a complex called bunker. I have built a few from time to time but I am not really sure what they do. Can't they have that role?
I still believe that we should make it easier to destroy heavy hulled ships. More lossed in space battles means less ships.
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 25 2004, 12:29 PM) |
| Again Human AFf players forget that the game doesn't revolve around their 100 hulled ship high achievement! |
Seems fair enough.
200 hulls in 1 week would be... 441 shipyard complexes and require 20 blueprints.
You could always take two weeks over it.
Super-carriers are 200 Xlight hulls too, you know.
TonyH
Super carriers aren't by far your commonly built ship. FGZ rely heavilly on 200 hulled ships, FEL, DEN, COH on 150 hulled ships. Why should these AFFs be penalized for having developed ships bigger than the Humans!!
Now if the 100% is shifted to the AFF ship size achievement, then maybe it has some merit. Otherwise 100 hull users, which mainly are the Imperial, Confederacy and DTR, will be cut short to the same penalty, leaving them basically level, while those using mainly ships over 100 hulls, which BTW already have more trouble assembling each ship, will be left worse.
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 25 2004, 12:46 PM) |
| I like that complex idea and Peters idea to use the bunkers...mabe they already do to an extent. |
Bunkers (1006) - Bunkers shield the civilian population of a starbase from attacks. Each bunker will give protection to 500 people. (25 SM)
So it seems that people are already protected by the Bunkers, but not the structure itself. Thats why we got shields, but I am not sure that shields are good enough.. We already have some protection against nuclear weapons, so why not get some more protection against normal weapons??
It might not be realistic, but it will reduce the importance of the warships a bit, giving people the chance to play an more defensive role.
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 25 2004, 12:46 PM) |
| Now if the 100% is shifted to the AFF ship size achievement, then maybe it has some merit. Otherwise 100 hull users, which mainly are the Imperial, Confederacy and DTR, will be cut short to the same penalty, leaving them basically level, while those using mainly ships over 100 hulls, which BTW already have more trouble assembling each ship, will be left worse. |
It is my understanding that in Phoenix ship size is merely the reward for research.
That everybody is striving to gain larger ships reflects their superior status. The ability to produce them is their own reward.
Is the logic that as only certain factions currently have access to them, they should therefore be easier to build at best specious?
In time every faction will have access to larger ships by means of their efforts.
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 25 2004, 01:46 PM) |
Super carriers aren't by far your commonly built ship. FGZ rely heavilly on 200 hulled ships, FEL, DEN, COH on 150 hulled ships. Why should these AFFs be penalized for having developed ships bigger than the Humans!! Now if the 100% is shifted to the AFF ship size achievement, then maybe it has some merit. Otherwise 100 hull users, which mainly are the Imperial, Confederacy and DTR, will be cut short to the same penalty, leaving them basically level, while those using mainly ships over 100 hulls, which BTW already have more trouble assembling each ship, will be left worse. |
Well, I disagree, and argue that big ships have too much of an innate advantage anyway - 150 hulls worth of damage to a 200 hull ship is severe, but still repairable. 150 hulls of damage to a squadron of four 50-hull destroyers is a 75% loss. And for the single ship you only need one bridge, one officer, one jump engine... How about one bridge per 50 hulls to even things up?... I thought not.
Also, if your fleet is so structured that the majority of the hulls are in 200-hulled ships I think your fleet is waaay too 'top heavy'. Just like the AFT's would be if the majority of ours were in super-carriers
TonyH
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 25 2004, 12:29 PM) |
| Again Human AFf players forget that the game doesn't revolve around their 100 hulled ship high achievement! |
Not forgetting that at all. You have bigger ships - seems logical they should take longer to build. Its not that you have any special skills at building them quickly - just that you know how to build bigger without the ship tearing itself apart. If you need to compensate for that then research MkII Shipyards which could be more efficient/quicker at putting ships together. Otherwise we are heading back towards affiliation special abilities.
What AFFs are currently capable of making the 500 ship fleets nightmare? I bet it's not any AFF with ships over 100 hulls!
Today they already need more shipyards and blueprints and I should say that it takes a tad bit more time to build them already!
The abbility to use them is a reward in itself...that's true, but why would an AFF used to build 150 or 200 hulled ships take more than 1,5 or 2 times to build a ship over 100? I'm sorry, but the choice of the 100 hulls is a little bit suspicious from my point of view!!! And once again I ask, what would that solve??? The huge Human fleets could still be assembled the same they are today and the little change will only make them stronger over the builders of bigger ships. That's not balancing, I call quite the opposite.
Some claim that a squadron of 4 50 hulled ships is at a disadvantage to a 200 hulled warship!! Well is it? Does the battle programme spread damage over 2 targets if the 1st volley overkills the first designated target? 4 ships firing are 3 targets too many and I do think that any losses would be more easilly replaced.
I'd stake a design I did when I was in the Hive against any current 100 hulled warship I've seen reports of until today!! Sure it was smaller, but they were far more efficient!! It's only a matter of what you design them to do. Would any of you use batteries to destroy x-light hulls? Or waste armour on a x-light?
My proposal would slow down shipbuilding for everybody - My five-shipyard outpost would only be able to knock out half as many 'coasters' - limited both by shipyard and blueprint limits.
The proposal aims mainly to prevent large, or even gargantuan ships being produced insanely quickly (i.e. 1+/week per starbase). Given identical numbers of shipyards it would still take twice as long to produce a 200-hull ship as it would a 100-hull ship. Exactly as it does now.
TonyH
IT DOES TAKE LONGER to build a 200 hulled ship. For one thing you have to build twice as many hulls, or 1,5 if it's a 150 hulled ship. You need more armour, more engines, more of everything, including more BPs if you want to build at the same rate as 100 hulled shipbuilders do.
True, that once built a 200 or a 150 hulled ship will perform better than 100 hulled ship, but than again, would there be any special reason why they shouldn't? I mean you could live with ships 50 hulls big couldn't you? Still we see many more 100 hulled ships, why is that?
Mica you said that it's an advantage just to be able to use them! I agree, but why should it be a penalty? I didn't say that just because an aff could build over 100, it could assemble ships 1,5 or 2 times as fast, but it doesn't assemble 1,5 or 2 times as slow either. And from the proposal I've seen one did need more than twice the shipyards to build a 50 hulled ship to a 100 hulled one´. in the same proportion a 150 or 200 hulled one would need more than 1,5 and 2 times as many shipyards.
I can even understand the reasoning, but the fact is that change would change nothing between the affs that build lots of ships. If anything else those that already have lot's of ships will be at an even greater advantage. Not that I don't believe that they deserve to be credited with the effort they took to build them in the first place, but come on, getting the change and still getting an advantage over the alien races???
I'm not saying it should be a penalty to have 200-hulled ships, just that taking longer to produce them slightly counters the overwhelming advantages that big ships have now. After all, why should the only sucessful strategy be the 'dreadnought' strategy - what about the 'swarm' approach, which seems to be totally missing from current phoenix space battles?
To be honest, I think my method has flaws - there would be nothing to stop you having dozens of starbases each with one blueprint, each assembling 10 hulls of a 200-hull ship. Your effective shipbuilding rate would be unchanged, just well-distributed. And maybe that would be a problem too, rewarding rich multi-player affs who can run 20 starbases.
TonyH
My point is that you already take longer to build a ships worth of components. You already need more BPs to assemble a larger ship at the same rate as a smaller one! You already need more shipyards to assemble a larger ship!!!
So, with a exponential increase on shipyards, proportional to ship size, you'll still keep up to par all those AFFs using the same ship size, while those that use larger ships will be left with needing more shipyards, or taking even longer to build it.
The great problem? All 100 hull users, which are the ones with the big fleets will be better off. Sure they need more shipyards to build further ships, but still on the whole, they'll still be at an advantage in respect to most Alien races.
Also maybe, just maybe, they can also build more complexes and ship components than the ordinary alien race, already.
Does that seem balanced? Oh and most Human races can build, if required all ship sizes up to 100. Some alien races cannot!!
About the swarming!! You didn't pay attention! One can already design ships that while smaller can outgun bigger ships and guess what, they also use up less resources and can be built faster. People just don't go for them, because it's just easier to build clone ships or they simply don't play around with their ships design tools often enough to see the advantages of using a mixed sized fleet
| QUOTE (ABBA @ May 25 2004, 03:37 PM) |
| I've lost it... as far as I can tell you are now arguing that it should take less than twice as long/twice as many resources to build a 200-hulled ship, as a 100-hulled? |
I think the implication is that on the above table a human AFF would need less shipyards to build 2 100 hull ships as it would the FGZ to build 1 200 hull ship as the two 100 hull ships get the benefit of two sets of higher production rates.
Whether two 100 hull ships are the equivalent of one 200 hull ships is another matter...(personally I suspect most people would take the one 200 huller)
I think there was a fair amount of logic in what you propose - the bigger the ship, the more difficult it becomes to build because the structural mechanics become far more complex. Admitedly that is what alien races are used to - but it doesn't mean that the physics change and the stresses and strains would be less on a Baseship as on possible future human 200 huller
Taking that point further, it may well be that human Aff's will have access to build larger warships in the future - surely, it is better for alien Affiliations to have these production limits in place before the human affs can start building larger ships?
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 25 2004, 03:00 PM) |
| Not less, but certainly not more than! |
In Tony's suggestion with the same amount of shipyards it takes twice as long to build a ship twice the size. Are you suggesting that it should take the same time? That a 200 hulled ship should be built in half the time of two 100 hulled ships?
As all players are probably aware, we have spent a considerable amount of time projecting the long-term trends. This has got us so worried that we will implement a number of changes to the game ensuring its continued success. These changes are designed to reign in fleet expansion but also make each ship count. Most of the changes are simply a jiggling of production and maintenance values in order to ensure that maintaining a large warfleet is a priority concern. To counter this though, we have increased operational life between maintenance visits for ships. While they require more resources, maintenance visits are less often.
So, even though we will be implementing these changes immediately, by restoring integrity of all ships to 100%, we effectively give players virtually an entire year to come to terms with the effect.
Despite changing the statistics for hulls and patches, we will not change the quantities present in starbases, therefore those players that have built stockpiles but not had time to build the ships will not be penalized.
By restricting warfleet expansion, we have also been able to review one of our tenets; this was absolute anathema towards fleet orders. We will be adding squadrons to the game, allowing orders to be applied to an entire fleet.
As the game is designed not just around war but also on diplomacy, trade and politics, we felt that more emphasis should be placed on these factors. It will of course normally be the case that the civilian government has similar views to the affiliations present on the world and by working together they can improve planetary conditions. By making civilian governments and planetary populations actively play a role in the game, it will not just be a case of annexing systems and exploiting the local merchandising; especially if the player controlling the government was in favour of the previous tenants. Obviously governments can change!
More details by subspace static.
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 25 2004, 04:00 PM) |
My point is that you already take longer to build a ships worth of components. You already need more BPs to assemble a larger ship at the same rate as a smaller one! |
No - A blueprint is needed to assemble 20 hulls at the moment, I propose changing that to 10 - the same whether the ship is large or small
| QUOTE |
| You already need more shipyards to assemble a larger ship!!! |
No you dont - you need more shipyards to assemble larger ships in the same time. Which seems common sense. If my proposed strategy was introduced, 9 shipyards would assemble 20 hulls a week whatever the size of ship, and a 100-hull ship would take five weeks to build and a 200 hull ten. Seems fair.
| QUOTE |
| So, with a exponential increase on shipyards, proportional to ship size, you'll still keep up to par all those AFFs using the same ship size, while those that use larger ships will be left with needing more shipyards, or taking even longer to build it. |
They insist on the 'capital ship per starbase per week' strategy. Which makes it too easy to build the uber fleet.
| QUOTE |
| The great problem? All 100 hull users, which are the ones with the big fleets will be better off. Sure they need more shipyards to build further ships, but still on the whole, they'll still be at an advantage in respect to most Alien races. Also maybe, just maybe, they can also build more complexes and ship components than the ordinary alien race, already. Does that seem balanced? Oh and most Human races can build, if required all ship sizes up to 100. Some alien races cannot!! |
No less balanced than it is already.
| QUOTE |
| About the swarming!! You didn't pay attention! One can already design ships that while smaller can outgun bigger ships and guess what, they also use up less resources and can be built faster. People just don't go for them, because it's just easier to build clone ships or they simply don't play around with their ships design tools often enough to see the advantages of using a mixed sized fleet |
So, if a mix including smaller ships is better... what's the problem? This would force a little more realism on the game. I have no experience in combat strategies however - my proposal was about making shipbuilding more realistic. I still say the best way to resolve the mega-fleet problem is to make ships easier to 'kill'. And 200-hullers will always have a big advantage there.
TonyH
| QUOTE (ABBA @ May 25 2004, 10:48 AM) | ||
I've been playing around with the figures, and here's my numerologically pleasing proposal for how the number of shipyard complexes should relate to the number of hulls assembled on an individual ship: 1 complex - 4 hulls (as now) 2 complexes - 7 hulls 3 complexes - 9 hulls 4 complexes - 10 hulls - the limit for a single blueprint. Thereafter going up in 10-hull jumps, each step up requiring an additional blueprint. 9 complexes - 20 hulls 16 complexes - 30 hulls 25 complexes - 40 hulls 36 complexes - 50 hulls 49 complexes - 60 hulls 64 complexes - 70 hulls 81 complexes - 80 hulls 100 complexes - 90 hulls 121 complexes - 100 hulls etc This decreases in efficiency in a nicely gradual manor. And in addition - how about requiring more than 500 work-hours per shipyard complex, and a fee of $100 per hull per ship started? TonyH PS As you may deduce, I have a boring job with internet access. |
At the moment you need to invest 25kmus in shipyards to build one 100 hull ship a week. The proposal simply changes this to needing to invest 121kmus in shipyards for one 100 hull ship. How does this differ to simply changing the factory cost of hulls (as has been suggested previously)?
As David pointed out, this will simply delay things, not solve them.
Mark
| QUOTE (Mandible @ May 25 2004, 05:19 PM) |
| There is also an easy way around the increase in shipyard costs. Instead of aiming for one 100hull ship a week, you aim for 10 100 hull ships every 10 weeks. Same return, but you only need to have a shipyard for 10hulls per ship a week (for 10 ships, so only 40 shipyards, instead of 121). |
...well the affect could be apportioned per ship being built at the starbase
- so, if building 10 ships the first complex would be building 0.4 hulls for each ship, the next 0.3 etc
Let me see if I got this straight!
A heavy hulled used to be 100mu, now it's 800???
So if I had say...159 factories mass producing hulls, I'd use up a hull BP and achieve the grand total of 10 hulls built
If I wanted to assemble, say a Baseship, I'd need no matter what, 20 weeks to assemble it, but I'd also need 20 weeks to build the 200 hulls...This means that grand achievement of a YEAR to a baseship using AFF, would be to build a ship...1 ship!!!
Meanwhile, the x-light hulls, which were crap awhile ago are now something every aff will have to own if it wants ships built.
The new x-light is 50mu and the same factories would build 160 hulls, that would be 16 times as many as the heavy hulls. A AFT super carrier could have it's 200 x-light hulls built every week if it had 199 factories mass producing hulls and could have a shipyard facility assemble it in 2 weeks. So worst case it would take like 4 weeks to build a x-light super carrier, but it would take 40 weeks just to build the hulls and assemble a 200 heavy hulled baseship????
Did I get this right???????????????????????
I sure hope not!! the other thing that doesnt make much sense to me and needs clarifying, ships yards can assemble more than 1 heavy hull at the same time, surely this doesnt solve the problem, it just means ill get 10 in one go every ten weeks (on the assumption we have production available of course, which in all fairness will take a bit of time)
I personally think the changes look good, but maybe this point of mechant ships needs a bit more attention
Will integrity loss for re-fitting ships remain the same? If it does, it means that refitting ships is alot more costly, and therefore making ship refits less attractive.
I would like to see a lower inegrity loss when refitting, due to the whole process taking place in a ship yard, more stable refits etc.
What's the point of discussing / proposing anything on here? If it's just for rules queries and GM announcements, it should state so.
I presume the current mega-fleets will remain, wheas myself - just commencing of putting together a small flotilla of warships, with planning going back MONTHS, have the building/assembly requirements octupled? I am well P***** *** by these changes.
TonyH
| QUOTE (Gandolph @ May 25 2004, 05:55 PM) |
| unfortunately and potentially i havent worked out the maths correctly yet, but yes, it does all of a suddent create a potential risk of people using freighters to carry weapons platforms, although yes it only requires 4750 mu's of battle damage to destroy 1, that is balanced out by the fact they are considerably cheap to build. |
It looks like that the changes (altough good in intend) got some holes in it.
One way to solve this issue is to re-consider what an warship is. And making building warships harder. A warship is a ship capable of doing XYZ number of hits. (which needs to be talked about) and building it (or retrofitting it) should be done with the lowered efficiency.
The retrofitting part is to prevent people building an XLight-Cargo ship and then putting the needed weapons in. You could easily claim that adding weapons to an ships needs more care
then putting an extra cargo hold onto it.
| QUOTE (DMJ @ May 25 2004, 07:28 PM) |
| Will integrity loss for re-fitting ships remain the same? If it does, it means that refitting ships is alot more costly, and therefore making ship refits less attractive. I would like to see a lower inegrity loss when refitting, due to the whole process taking place in a ship yard, more stable refits etc. |
If it's a full refit (using the "Refit Internal Items" order), then fair point.
If it's just a casual refit of a few items, then I think the relative increased integrity loss is fine - I think that it is too easy to change a ship's internal items as it is. They were originally meant to be fairly fixed blueprints, not a base which you can chop and change easily...
While on this topic, a point has come up on IRC regarding the changes mentioned in subspace static - what about blueprints? If blueprints stay the same, then each heavy hull mkII blueprint will allow 1.25 hulls to be produced per week. This will be significantly more of a limit (and a rather sooner limit) than the other measures, and also cause severe problems for those affs that only have a few, purchased, mkII hulls blueprints. Perhaps some compensating factor ought to be brought in here?
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE |
| If blueprints stay the same, then each heavy hull mkII blueprint will allow 1.25 hulls to be produced per week. This will be significantly more of a limit (and a rather sooner limit) than the other measures, and also cause severe problems for those affs that only have a few, purchased, mkII hulls blueprints. Perhaps some compensating factor ought to be brought in here? |
i think thats more of an oversight than an intention - so the production should jsut be scaled on those BPS.
Also, what's the point in having any warships now. 50-100 light hulled ships are the way to go. So what if they go bang in 1 round. If you can produce 8 for each heavy hulled ship then the simple numbers game will win out every time, especially with the amount of damage each can dish out. ca. 2.5 to 3 times a heavy hulled ship due to reduced component requirements.
Totally crazy. Don't see the point playing any more.
Nik
| QUOTE |
| My immediate thought is that we've been screwed. One of the big advantages of mkII armour was the increased integrity value which has diasppeared in a puff of smoke. There goes a few million stellars and x weeks research for no benefit. Also, what's the point in having any warships now. 50-100 light hulled ships are the way to go. So what if they go bang in 1 round. If you can produce 8 for each heavy hulled ship then the simple numbers game will win out every time, especially with the amount of damage each can dish out. ca. 2.5 to 3 times a heavy hulled ship due to reduced component requirements. Totally crazy. Don't see the point playing any more. Nik |
I totally agree with Nik, as do many of the confederacy.
I was told a while ago that shouting will get me no where. Well, I stopped shouting and gave the benefit of the doubt. It appears that in doing so we have been screwed. It may have been good to have at least had the suggested changes open for debate prior to blanketly posting them out to all players as 'decided' changes. Then this could have all been 'discussed'...
It was also mentioned that these changes would not screw players. We'll it's screwed our style of play, and it's screwed the smaller aff's. The benefit is for those who simply want to trade, as extra light ships are the way forward, and due to the increased value of war vessels, who wants to risk losing them in combat.
So thumbs up for traders!!!!
People could still rebuild the actual ships, but the experienced officers woulçd have died and the new ones still had to get hang of it? I say turn warships a beast difficult to master and force affs to train officers than get them to run a series of tour of duties of steadily increasingly powerful ships before being able to offer 100% efficiency at operating aff top of the line.
| QUOTE (Nik @ May 25 2004, 10:06 PM) |
| My immediate thought is that we've been screwed. One of the big advantages of mkII armour was the increased integrity value which has diasppeared in a puff of smoke. There goes a few million stellars and x weeks research for no benefit. Also, what's the point in having any warships now. 50-100 light hulled ships are the way to go. So what if they go bang in 1 round. If you can produce 8 for each heavy hulled ship then the simple numbers game will win out every time, especially with the amount of damage each can dish out. ca. 2.5 to 3 times a heavy hulled ship due to reduced component requirements. Totally crazy. Don't see the point playing any more. Nik |
I think the pension idea is to stop light and xlight warships. A 100 hull light vessel will require 2-300 crew which means you will loose 20-30k per loss. Throw a fifty fleet of lights and it will cost you 1-1.5m.
Hvy hulls last longer and if you play the battle correctly you can get the ship out.
Could I suggest however that the pension only be paid on a ship exploding otherwise the game may suddenly see a lot of carriers targetting crew.
While I can't see why it was necessary to reduce the integrity of higher mark hulls to standard, the mk II hulls still give 12.5% damage bonus which will effectively mean you get a 12.5% bonus to production. If the production that bps get is adjusted then those x million is not completely wasted.
Nic
| QUOTE (Romanov @ May 26 2004, 08:50 AM) |
| Hvy hulls last longer and if you play the battle correctly you can get the ship out. |
And one 'good' point of this? It encourages skirmishes rather than massive fleet devistation. I know people like the CNF prefer and argue that it is profile for them to use mass-fleets (and I'm not contesting that!) but it is a good thing for the game IMHO.
Affs that arn't in the big-boys league mayu have a chance to throw a small amount of weight around without fearing that big-Aff-X will squash them just for providing an excuse....
Also, given the vastly increased mineral costs it will give the smaller affs a much easier time of expanding their warship building (relative to the larger affs): it doesn't matter how huge the starbase factories and shipyards are, if you can't get enough minerals you won't be able to build the ships.
I expect that this will kick off exploration for new sources of throlium pretty rapidly though....
Dan
| QUOTE |
| My immediate thought is that we've been screwed. One of the big advantages of mkII armour was the increased integrity value which has diasppeared in a puff of smoke. There goes a few million stellars and x weeks research for no benefit. |
Can you explain this pls - do you mean hulls ? If that was a significant selling factor for the hulls then we will have to address that.
| QUOTE |
| Also, what's the point in having any warships now. 50-100 light hulled ships are the way to go. So what if they go bang in 1 round. If you can produce 8 for each heavy hulled ship then the simple numbers game will win out every time, especially with the amount of damage each can dish out. ca. 2.5 to 3 times a heavy hulled ship due to reduced component requirements. |
The explosions of XL and L ships will be tweeked to bring them in line after round 1. Other than the classic missile trick (which can be swashed quite easily) i'm not sure how you do all the dmg in 1 round.
Heavy > Normal > light > XL for combat. It has to be that way, if this throws that badly off then it will have to be addressed.
One thing to remember is that all the fine details are not always apparent. Its not intentional to totally wreak your point for playing the game but with wide ranging changes its very easy to do it by accident.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 26 2004, 12:22 AM) |
| Can you explain this pls - do you mean hulls ? If that was a significant selling factor for the hulls then we will have to address that. |
It is - the reduced integrity loss for higher mk hulls is definitely one of the most attractive features of the more advanced hulls. Especially if you are trying to operate xlight-hulled ships...
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE (MasterTrader @ May 25 2004, 11:32 PM) | ||
It is - the reduced integrity loss for higher mk hulls is definitely one of the most attractive features of the more advanced hulls. Especially if you are trying to operate xlight-hulled ships... Richard AFT |
SO would it be possible to keep an improved integrity loss for higher mark hulls - but not as much better as we currently have?
For example (Mk 1 to 4 for heavy hulls) 0.5>0.4>0.3>0.2 ?
| QUOTE (Dan Reed @ May 26 2004, 12:09 AM) |
| It seems like everybody is screaming about the changes. But to be honest they do exactly what it says on the tin... reduce the speed of fleet expansion. |
Yes, effectively to zero, for some. It will now take me 80 weeks to generate sufficient hulls from my single, unduplicatable (-12?) MkII heavy hulls blueprint in order to build a single ship from my single 'obsolete' 100-hull ship blueprint, not to mention the bunks and combat engines I've sucessfully researched at a -7 penalty. There's several hundred thousand stellars I might as well have flushed down the toilet. All because my 'long term' in game objective was to have a fleet of maybe half a dozen capital ships, personally owned, for when I choose to set up my own aff.
Wheras, If I'd joined one of the warrior affs I could have built up a fleet of ships at one eighth the effort it would take me now, and sod the stellar cost, because trading shouldn't have to be bothered with, by those who cant be bothered to.
TonyH
This "screws" everybody's warship production, but everybody seems to be trying to find some reason why they, personally, are more disadvantaged than anybody else. Put it this way, if the feared "uber-fleet" came knocking on your door in a year's time, your shipbuilding would be "screwed" then - just a bit more permanently, and only you, not all of us in equal measure.
I know I'm likely to be a fairly lone voice here - and I admit that I've probaly not worked through all the implications (as I doubt that anybody here has in totality yet) - but please people, try keep the whole raft of changes in the perspective of the effects this has on the whole game - which then rolls back onto us all - not just the immediate impact to each of us
| QUOTE (Dan Reed @ May 26 2004, 01:37 AM) |
| David has already said that the bp production limits on hulls will be scaled up accordingly - so that single bp will still build 10 hulls a week for you if you have enough minerals and factories. Heavy hulls Mk 2 would also only be a -5 for you (naval hulls missing, I assume?) |
Right, my problem is now that I'll need a 179 factory production line to make those ten hulls, as opposed to 21 before (definitely wont need another copy of the blueprint there - I'd imagine that there might well be a few being sold off for considerably less than I paid for mine anyway).
This change doesn't just screw me. It screws everyone who hasn't already invested all their game effort in building up a massive military fleets. Conversely, the CNF/DTR/IMPs etc can now build up merchant fleets to support their military fleets at equal or less effort than I spent building up mine over the last year - currently maybe 50% light-hulled and 30% extra-light.
Not fair, not balanced, not discussed, no warning.
| QUOTE |
| Not fair, not balanced, not discussed, no warning. |
As far as i can see there was no avoiding this sort of change. I can see you prefer the idea of letting things go pearshaped cos the part of the game you can see looks fine but that would not be very sensible for the game as a whole.
It has been discussed and there can be no warning for a production change. As for balanced, you are right its not - it needed to be far more draconian to be balanced by there is no way in hell anyone would accept that.
The principles outlined in the immediate changes are sound, however they are not and could not be perfect. There are a few tweeks that need making, so keep pointing out whats wrong and then we can fix it.
It does increase the value of warships immensely, and although traders are now comparatively easy to build is this necessarily a bad thing for the game?
David/Mica - is there any chance of getting more info on the integrity loss changes? The SSS piece seems to suggest that integ loss is to be set to the same rate as it already is, yet we are getting a hefty decrease for integ stabilisers.
OK, so "tough" is your response to my highlighting the way that these changes effect me. Fair enough.
Why wasn't the vastly fairer option of just making warships more 'killable' done? That would have impacted the existing maga-fleets and any new builds equally, and addressed the problem of the 800-ship armada being able to wipe any colony: An aff would have to nurture it's forces for years to get a fleet that big, carefully avoiding any serious military actions (in which a realistic 20-30% of a fleet might get destroyed) in order to attempt it, and they'd loose 50%+ of the mega-fleet in doing so - they might be able to destroy an HQ colony given years of preparation, which seems fair enough, but wouldn't be able to do it more than once because they'd take vast lossess doing so.
TonyH
| QUOTE (ABBA @ May 26 2004, 08:08 AM) |
| Why wasn't the vastly fairer option of just making warships more 'killable' done? That would have impacted the existing |
I fully agree with Tony.
| QUOTE |
| OK, so "tough" is your response to my highlighting the way that these changes effect me. Fair enough. |
Not at all. But its not 'gee everything suggested is wrong, lets scrap it' either. However if you are going to read it that way i can not help you. I have a lot more to lose in these changes than you, so while i'm keen to listen what ppl say, i'm also keen not to react to everything.
| QUOTE |
| Why wasn't the vastly fairer option of just making warships more 'killable' done? |
It would not work on its own, the current situation would just have allowed more to be built after this happened. Ships will be more killable with the new changes but it will start to actually matter.
| QUOTE |
| The SSS piece seems to suggest that integ loss is to be set to the same rate as it already is, yet we are getting a hefty decrease for integ stabilisers. |
Integrity loss has not increased but amount of patches used to fix the loss has increased. So by the same token integ stabilisers had to be reduced - however their real mu effect has been improved.
Now, the trade fleet is only worth 5million and the war fleet 80million. But the affiliations production base is the same. Will the trade fleet be given an extra 75 million resources compensation? The argument applies to those who invested their efforts in non-ship activities – they too have still been affected, because how can youprove they were not building their infrastructure first before embarking on ship building?
Im not saying what is fair or not, as I will await the results of the compensation for that :-)
As an example, a 200 normal hull baseship, is in combat with a 100 heavy hull ship. The 200 normal can give more damage, whilst the 100 heavy can take it; the 200 normal can take less damage, but is bigger so can soak it up. The battle surviviability of both is roughly the same (with an edge to the 100 heavy ). But the big downside is the 200 normal, under the old rules, took twice as much resources to make.
Now, the 200 normal is cheaper to make than the 100 heavy! It can also be built at the shipyards far faster too. It effectively makes the 200 normal a better ship than before and a better choice as a warship against smaller heavy hulled ships.
If that was the intent, Im ok with that, but it doesn’t seem to stack with the combat requirements for hulls.
This is the case throughout (though I still don’t think x-light are a battle option, they are now far more battle capable than before).
If this wasn’t intentional, then the production/cost of armour needs to also be increased, the amount of armour a hull can have and the defensive rating of the hulls needs to be changed, to keep the ratios as before.
Mark
| QUOTE (ABBA @ May 26 2004, 07:08 AM) |
| Why wasn't the vastly fairer option of just making warships more 'killable' done? |
Because it does not work
It would simply mean that fleets would only hit soft targets where overkill would ensure minimal losses.
No, surely not???
Yup, it bloody well happened for 10 years in BSE and the last year and a half of Phoenix, why the hell would it not be done in the future?
I advise you to do your sums with respect to maintenance costs.
So lets get this in perspective - the Military Affs are of the opinion that they have been screwed as are the merchant affs.
I think we must have got it about right.
To counter David Jones's point.... virtually all that we have implemented is in fact the result of what we have read on this board or have been sent as suggestions from players. We have however given a few things back.
To reiterate David Bethel's point. If we had given a few months notice with respect to production changes.... what would have happened? Everybody would have hammered everything into heavy hulls for the duration. What exactly would this have achieved and how would it have benefitted the game?
| QUOTE (Mandible @ May 26 2004, 07:37 AM) |
| The changes address the problems and affects us all equally, but my concern is about the historical situation and how compensation will be given to address this. |
We addressed the issue of spiralling fleets. This is in fact a two pronged beast, construction and maintenance. Unless both these issues were addressed, any changes would not count for much.
If we addressed only maintenance of a huge fleet, players would make disposable fleets.
If we addressed only construction of fleets, players would build-up forever and pound with impunity.
So those without a warfleet do not have a large proportion of their resources tied up maintaining a fleet while those with a large warfleet do not have to hassle of having to build one.
We felt that this was fair as it meant that specialisation was costly. A merchant guild without a fleet is vulnerable, but rich, a military affiliation is powerful but tied to maintaining what it has. The rest straddle the middle.
Yes, we realise that there are likely to be a few minor issues, such as Blueprint production limit changes and possibly some changes to hull values for higher mk's, but largely what we have created is what is needed.
on the assumption that Mica and David have done their sums and have accurately extrapolated the medium/long term results. I do feel that it must be linked to a "harder" line on economic mismanagement, ie there must be seeable and effective penalties for those who do not keep their expansion within their economic capabilities - ie paying all those employees and crews to run the infrastructure and ships.One interesting limiting item, if all hull material requiremenst are going up by a factor of eight, is that a 1,000,000 MU thorlium deposit will now provide enough hulls and armour for a lot less ships than before.
Geoff
Presumably private markets would remain private from the population - would there be a local equivalent, unavailable to traders? (to stop a rival affiliation plonking a carrier above your base every week and wiping out your market in the hope that it will reduce your Merch level...)....{though I guess to some extent that just replaces the sell to pop order with a 'local pop *can* buy this' order}
Am I right in thinking the implication is that local pop will be after a range of products - including more basic equipment produced by a base? If so - does this mean that there could now be too many unique goods in the game?.....is there a risk that perishable unique goods will become even more difficult to sell to other players (- because if a trader buys 1000 and puts them on their market, it may take x number of weeks to sell to the loc pop and thus a fair chunk will rot before they get the benefit, whereas before that may have been able to sell all 1000 in one go)?
If there is a demand for items such as consumer goods and food - will the value of these goods be reviewed so that it possible for a base to produce them with at least some profit?
Also - presumably it would become impossible to oversell to the local population (because they only buy what they need), and I assume that they will buy imported unique goods over locally produced uniques.
Finally, if local pop can buy from a bases market - can they also sell to it? For example;
Riva (1166) produces a fair number of Brooker Steaks each week. If unique good demand remains high, then it may well becomes prudent to buy additional steaks from the local pop - assuming that some of them are farmers and have produce to sell. These may then either be brought by other peeps in the local pop or by starships traders. Indeed - when you think about it - having a market to sell their goods to is probably as important to the planet population as having somewhere to buy from....
| QUOTE (HPSimms @ May 26 2004, 09:12 AM) |
| One interesting limiting item, if all hull material requiremenst are going up by a factor of eight, is that a 1,000,000 MU thorlium deposit will now provide enough hulls and armour for a lot less ships than before. Geoff |
Was this taken into account with the changes?
We will look at the production costs at the extremes; Xlight and Heavy. We will pull these a little towards the middle.
We will look at the mineral costs of hull production and compare these with resource availability to see if there is an issue.
We will look at the integrity bonus of higher mk hulls.
We will look at the ship building rates at 20 weeks is too long for a 200 heavy hull.
Seeing that KJC is still looking the the numbers, I'd like to point out something.
Heavy hulls take forever to be built (probably will need less after tinkering) and need more patches. However it takes 100 weeks to drop 50%, under normal circunstances, so in effect the only problem with heavy hulled ship maintenance is time spend in the dry docks.
Now take x-light. They are 16x easier to build, thursting them to a very viable merchant ship. Their downside being the integrity loss, it will take them just 12 weeks to drop to 50%, but they can be serviced very cheaply and very fast, too fast.
Meanwhile Mica says:
"...patch output per hull per integrity point fixed.
XL L N Hv
Patch Output 0.1 0.1 0.5 5.0
So:
Patch Output per Week
100 Heavy Hulls 250
100 Normal H ulls 50
100 Light Hulls 20
100 XL Hulls 40"
However:
Heavy
5 x 100 x 50% = 250 (as specified)
0.5 x 100 x 50% = 25 (not 50)
0.1 x 100 x 50% = 5 (not 20 or 40)
Now I could have gotten this idea twisted (and forgive me if I did), but if so where's the difference between the light and x-light that justfy one needing 20 patch output, 1/5th of a patch?? and the other 40??? They're both stated to have a patch output of 0.1!!
I don't get the time to complete the maintenance either!!! If it takes 1TU for every 20 pacth output used, or 1TU for every 0.2 patch how can a 100 heavy hulled ship take more TUs than patch output to complete the process. Shouldn't it be 250/20=12.5 TU???????
Once again, sorry if I'm being thick:)
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 26 2004, 11:41 AM) |
| XL L N Hv Patch Output 0.1 0.1 0.5 5.0 So: Patch Output per Week 100 Heavy Hulls 250 100 Normal H ulls 50 100 Light Hulls 20 100 XL Hulls 40" However: Heavy 5 x 100 x 50% = 250 (as specified) 0.5 x 100 x 50% = 25 (not 50) 0.1 x 100 x 50% = 5 (not 20 or 40) |
The patch output per week required takes in account the rate of integrity loss.
100 Heavy Hulls
5.0 Patch Output * 100 Heavy Hulls * 0.5 Weekly loss = 250
100 XL Hulls
0.1 Patch Output * 100 XL Hulls * 4 weekly loss = 40
But does that formula make sense? The x-light and light hulls are way to cheap and easy to maintain as compared to the amount of ships once can have around.
| QUOTE |
| But does that formula make sense? The x-light and light hulls are way to cheap and easy to maintain as compared to the amount of ships once can have around. |
They are very easy to lose though (even more so with explosion changes). If piracy increased then this factor would make quite a large difference...
How about making freighters, truly freighters, instead of allowing them to be paper thin warships.
| QUOTE (Avatar @ May 26 2004, 12:27 PM) |
| I mean a super carrier is a huge loss, but what a about a squadron of freighters, each one carrying a few bombers. |
Nope - don't forget internal is 90mu, plus the fighters on top of this - and the whole lot goes up in flames round one. The maths appears to be pretty sound.
Basically a fundamental rule is Heavy make the best ship:ship warship. If we find that there are loopholes, then we will fix them.
This does not mean that there are not special cases such as the xlight hull rail weapon ship for over the hill outpost flattening or the normal hull fighter carrier, but these have their place and are not a game winner.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 26 2004, 12:22 AM) | ||||
Can you explain this pls - do you mean hulls ? If that was a significant selling factor for the hulls then we will have to address that.
The explosions of XL and L ships will be tweeked to bring them in line after round 1. Other than the classic missile trick (which can be swashed quite easily) i'm not sure how you do all the dmg in 1 round. Heavy > Normal > light > XL for combat. It has to be that way, if this throws that badly off then it will have to be addressed. One thing to remember is that all the fine details are not always apparent. Its not intentional to totally wreak your point for playing the game but with wide ranging changes its very easy to do it by accident. |
I meant hulls rather than armour here, and this has been discussed.
My problem is thet biasing of ship production so far from heavy hulls to light that it's crazy. Take a 100 hull ship. I can build 8 light hulls for each heavy hull and then build the ship 5 times quicker. A 100 heavy hull ship has ca. 1200MU of weapons. A 100 light hull ship can have ca. 5000MU of weapons.
You configure a 100 light ship with mk1 items and AI (to avoid death duties) and ca. 40 photon cannon. You configure the warship to have 10 photon cannon. I can build 5x 100 hull light ships for each 100 hull heavy ship (taking into account internal items). I put them in a fight against each other. 200 photon cannon vs 10 photon cannon. Perhaps I'll loose 3 light hulled ships. But the heavy hulled ship will also go bang and I'll have 2 light hulled ships left. Note also photon cannon are not necessarily the best weapon for the light hulled ships either. Rail cannon attacks against Starbases and platforms will be nasty with this number of ships as well.
Nik
| QUOTE (Nik @ May 26 2004, 04:05 PM) |
| You configure a 100 light ship with mk1 items and AI (to avoid death duties) and ca. 40 photon cannon. You configure the warship to have 10 photon cannon. I can build 5x 100 hull light ships for each 100 hull heavy ship (taking into account internal items). I put them in a fight against each other. 200 photon cannon vs 10 photon cannon. Perhaps I'll loose 3 light hulled ships. But the heavy hulled ship will also go bang and I'll have 2 light hulled ships left. Note also photon cannon are not necessarily the best weapon for the light hulled ships either. Rail cannon attacks against Starbases and platforms will be nasty with this number of ships as well. Nik |
Hi,
while this is true. What you suggest about rail guns and starbases is equally valid under the old rules as ther has been little change to production rates for light hulls.
Main difference is that the starbase / platform will make a much bigger dent in your light hulled fleet fleet than it would have to a heavy hulled fleet last week.
I think before we were both having our cake and eating it.
The point about 5 light Vs 1 heavy is a good one though, would be nice if KJC could fin a way to get everything to work and give heavy hulls only a *4-*6 multiplier... *8 just seems harsh.
And not just with 5:1 or whatever, what about the big numbers of ships that have been common (especially in IMP/CNF/DTR battles).
(David, could you run a testbed on a few different battles and release the results? - not sure if you have a testbed server setup...)
And a little question from someone who hasn't looked at all the maths yet. Are light or Xlight *ships* (not just hulls) quicker to build now than heavies were before? If so, then maybe its a point, if not then the numbers of ships won't have changed, but the types of ships will (and if people start using light or xlight warships then the much-asked for "easier to kill ships" happens as well.)
I thought that light or xlight warships would be a loophole, but after talking it through in the chat room, and listening to all the arguments I'm not that convinced any more. They may have more of a war role than before, which is great - more diversity, more tactical depth - but I don't think they are a new uber weapon...
| QUOTE |
| I thought that light or xlight warships would be a loophole, but after talking it through in the chat room, and listening to all the arguments I'm not that convinced any more. They may have more of a war role than before, which is great - more diversity, more tactical depth - but I don't think they are a new uber weapon... |
I've done some sim's and XL don't explode like i would like in 5 XL vs 1 heavy but i know what to do to fix that and it can all be covered by explosion part of the combat change. Basically the senenrio should/will be:
5 XL vs 1 heavy -> 4 blown up XLs and 1 lightly damaged (~20%) heavy
5 L vs 1 heavy -> 2 blown up Lights and 1 lightly damaged (~30%) heavy
You can use missiles but the internal explosion is massive and with a slight tweek to missiles it does about 1000 dmg to the heavy for 600 missiles.
On produciton side its for 100 hulls:
with 800 (Hv) vs 50 (XL) -> 103k vs 14k (1 : 7.3)
with 800 (hv) vs 100 (XL) -> 103k vs 17k (1: 6)
with 400 (hv) vs 100 (XL) -> 63k vs 19k (1: 3.3)
400 (hv) vs 100 (L) -> 63k vs 17k (1: 3.7)
So i think we may have to tend towards the second senario. As stated by mica we will not be having a senario weher ewe swap a large heavy fleet for a large light fleet. I still have mine fields if necessary, i dare say they would be an excellent defence vers light ships.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 26 2004, 07:34 PM) |
| with 400 (hv) vs 100 (XL) -> 63k vs 19k (1: 3.3) 400 (hv) vs 100 (L) -> 63k vs 17k (1: 3.7) |
maybe 80 or 90 for xlight? (so that they there is still constant progression through the hull types, but not to a distorting extent)
Also, if patches are going to become a lot more effective each, will the patch prices on starbase markets (i.e. those used for maintenance visits) be automatically corrected appropriately? In particular, the "default" patch price for new starbases is still 5 stellars, which is far too low as things stand at the moment, let alone after the changes...
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE |
| Also, if patches are going to become a lot more effective each, will the patch prices on starbase markets (i.e. those used for maintenance visits) be automatically corrected appropriately? |
Yes it will be set to x10
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 26 2004, 06:34 PM) |
| On produciton side its for 100 hulls: with 800 (Hv) vs 50 (XL) -> 103k vs 14k (1 : 7.3) with 800 (hv) vs 100 (XL) -> 103k vs 17k (1: 6) with 400 (hv) vs 100 (XL) -> 63k vs 19k (1: 3.3) 400 (hv) vs 100 (L) -> 63k vs 17k (1: 3.7) |
Why is it 103k and 63k production?
Is it not 93k (80k hull + 10k armour + 3k internal) and 53k (40k hull + 10k armour + 3k internal) , or am I missing something?
Mark
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 26 2004, 08:37 AM) |
| Integrity loss has not increased but amount of patches used to fix the loss has increased. So by the same token integ stabilisers had to be reduced - however their real mu effect has been improved. |
Just balancing some figures tonight (Mainly using a little excel tool I threw together at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/verisimilitud...aintenance.zip), as close as I can work out:
1) A 100 light hull ship requiring 25% maintenance to be repaired would need 5 Mk1 patches.
2) A 100 light hull ship with a Mk1 integ stabiliser requiring 25% maintenance to be repaired would need 4.75 patches.
In other words, the ship in example 2) saves on 25 MU of production in patches.
Under the old system, a light hull vessel with an integrity stabiliser would save .2% integ a week. So, following on from the above example:
1) A 100 light hull ship requiring 25% maintenance to be repaired would need 25 Mk1 patches.
2) A 100 light hull ship with integ stabiliser fitted would require 22.5 patches, saving 25 MU (2.5 patches x 10 MU)
So yep, they stay the same, at least for light hulls where it matters most. My brain hurts too much to work it out for the other hull types.
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 26 2004, 06:34 PM) | ||
On produciton side its for 100 hulls: with 800 (Hv) vs 50 (XL) -> 103k vs 14k (1 : 7.3) with 800 (hv) vs 100 (XL) -> 103k vs 17k (1: 6) with 400 (hv) vs 100 (XL) -> 63k vs 19k (1: 3.3) 400 (hv) vs 100 (L) -> 63k vs 17k (1: 3.7) So i think we may have to tend towards the second senario. As stated by mica we will not be having a senario weher ewe swap a large heavy fleet for a large light fleet. I still have mine fields if necessary, i dare say they would be an excellent defence vers light ships. |
At the looks of things it means that the Xlight will be just as expensive as before, but the costs of patches will increase.. If I calculated it correctly it also means that the TU's spend on Maintaince will also increase, making Xlights a even worse choice for shipping as it is already.
To compensate this, I suggest making the 4 integrity drop a bit lower. Otherwise people will spend a lot of time having their ships in the yards.
Please don't make Xlights even worse then before. Another possibility will be adding an new type of Hull. SuperHeavy Hull which is even better then the current crop of hulls so people would like to build those... It also solves nicely the problem of the current Heavies as they get killed by the new SH's.
| QUOTE (Sjaak @ May 26 2004, 09:13 PM) |
| At the looks of things it means that the Xlight will be just as expensive as before, but the costs of patches will increase.. If I calculated it correctly it also means that the TU's spend on Maintaince will also increase, making Xlights a even worse choice for shipping as it is already. |
Hence my suggestion for making Xlight hulls actually need 80 or 90 MU's of production...
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE (MasterTrader @ May 26 2004, 08:29 PM) | ||
Hence my suggestion for making Xlight hulls actually need 80 or 90 MU's of production... Richard AFT |
No Free Maintaince!!
I got an big problem with giving everyone a free maintaince for all of their ships.
Lets look at the figures and the extremes, and consider on the 50% case.
An Heavy Hull degrade about 0.5% per week, so it will take them 100 weeks before its sofar.
An XLight Hull degrade about 4% per week, so it will take them 12/13 weeks to get sofar.
This means that altough the Heavys are more expensive to maintain it will take them at least a year before they need to do so.. Assuming an drop to 75% as acceptable. While if an Xlight takes that drop as acceptable, they will be paying for them in 1.5months.
So, I will suggest to reconsider giving free maintaince and/or to give out free patches for an even amount of time. Not even considering the fact that an Xlight will be at least as 8 times as many out of action.
| QUOTE (Sjaak @ May 26 2004, 10:59 PM) |
| This means that altough the Heavys are more expensive to maintain it will take them at least a year before they need to do so.. Assuming an drop to 75% as acceptable. While if an Xlight takes that drop as acceptable, they will be paying for them in 1.5months. So, I will suggest to reconsider giving free maintaince and/or to give out free patches for an even amount of time. Not even considering the fact that an Xlight will be at least as 8 times as many out of action. |
An X% integrity drop for a warship already means an X% in comabt effetiveness...
warships @ 80% will get creamed by identical warships at 100%.
Thus, if you want to keep your warships at >95% then maintenence will be required a lot more often than once per year.
| QUOTE (finalstryke @ May 26 2004, 10:06 PM) | ||
An X% integrity drop for a warship already means an X% in comabt effetiveness... warships @ 80% will get creamed by identical warships at 100%. Thus, if you want to keep your warships at >95% then maintenence will be required a lot more often than once per year. |
Well, this will solve the problem for the XLight or Light naval vessel quite well.
Most of my ships are normally at 80% or lower, because they drop so fast.
An XL of 80% will mean that it hasn't seen maintaince in 5 weeks. To prevent this you will going to need to do maintain every other week or so. So you can better keep your warships in the system.
I am not sure how much TU's an Maintain will cost for 20% of 100XL but with docking and undocking it will be a lot of time.
You might better keep your ship docked at your starbase. :-)
| QUOTE (Sjaak @ May 26 2004, 11:18 PM) |
| I am not sure how much TU's an Maintain will cost for 20% of 100XL but with docking and undocking it will be a lot of time. |
Look out for an AFT space station near you...
There are good reasons why Super Carriers never land, or dock with ground-based starbases.
Richard
AFT
| QUOTE (MasterTrader @ May 26 2004, 10:35 PM) |
There are good reasons why Super Carriers never land, or dock with ground-based starbases. Richard AFT |
AFT SHIP Queen of Carthage (26446)
xxxxxxx snip xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Printed on 19th May 2004, Star Date 204.20.3
Transactions
------------
Date 20.1: AFT Amythyst (282) installed 40 Shields mkIIs (116)
Installation reduced Integrity to 25%.
Date 20.3: AFT Amythyst (282) delivered 6000 Metals (1)
----------------------------------TURN REPORT-----------------------------------
Starting Location:
Docked at AFT STARBASE Amythyst (282) - Dryad System (173)
, or both A and B?Mark
| QUOTE (Mandible @ May 27 2004, 08:47 AM) |
| Regarding Screening - will this allow a Screen chain? eg. Ship A Screens Ship B, which in turn Screens Ship C. Ship C is then targetted - does only Ship B Screen it, only Ship A (as it is protectnig Ship B), or both A and B? Mark |
You would expect both wouldn't you:
Target C, B jumps in the way so you target B, then A jumps in the way (no, shoot me :) and you target A?
The other question related to this is, is there a delay in screening? I would accept a 1 round delay for the screening ship to react. (So in the above, C is hit on round 1, B on round 2 then A from round 3 on (until it is destroyed, then it's back to B...)
Oh, and how does screening work against multiple attackers?
E.g. B is screening C when X,Y and Z attack C. Can B screen against all three? (Seems unlikely, so what is the screening priority.)
Any more screening questions?
| QUOTE (Steve-Law @ May 27 2004, 09:16 AM) |
| You would expect both wouldn't you: Target C, B jumps in the way so you target B, then A jumps in the way (no, shoot me and you target A? |
Whether it works like that depends upon the intent of screening. If you can build chains, it makes it easier to abuse. eg. xlight and light become more of a war ship - because you can put them at the back of a chain, effectively protecting them from harm. The indication is that if the screener is faster than the attacker, then it blocks straight away.
Perhaps a one round maneouvre role would help like you suggest.
| QUOTE |
| When will the immediate changes come into effect? Have they already or will there still be a few days before anything changes. |
on monday i believe unless something else happens to mess that up.
| QUOTE |
| on monday i believe unless something else happens to mess that up |
OMG - I don't live in the real world you understand - so i guess get an extra day to make things work. So tuesday.
Thanks,
Nik
| QUOTE |
| Is it possible that we can have notice again of how the changes will be as things have altered since Mondays SSS - i.e. so that this happens before the changes come into effect |
Its only the immediate changes coming into effect next week and yes we will notify you of any changes to that.
| QUOTE |
| Also, more details if possible in some cases (e.g. in which situations do pensions get paid or not get paid) and the like. |
i will update you on the other changes as the details are fixed. Pensions should just be a case of X per crew member when the ship is destroyed in combat. The combat changes shoudl take about 4 weeks to do barring nastyness like talking to mica everyday about things.
Wow newbies are gonna be getting a lot of fee's I know I lost a couple of ships to being in the wrong sector at the wrong time or hanging out at the London stargate for too long :-)
As starting ships always remain under Player Ownership, there should be no re-course to the affiliation the player belongs to either.
Maybe Aff-Owned ships controlled by a player with no political should have any payments linked back to the Aff - they're deffinatly affiliation-employed crew!
| QUOTE (David Bethel @ May 28 2004, 12:38 AM) |
| I will update you on the other changes as the details are fixed. Pensions should just be a case of X per crew member when the ship is destroyed in combat. The combat changes shoudl take about 4 weeks to do barring nastyness like talking to mica everyday about things. |
This does not account for crew/troops rescued after the ship goes bang (or splurge). Destroying a ship does not automatically kill all the crew.
Geoff
| QUOTE (Rich Farry @ May 28 2004, 02:15 PM) |
| The pension/compensation change is going to encourage the use of AI to run a ship. Why risk ~ 15,000 stellars on top of the value of a warship when you can run it with computers? |
As you said in #phoenix Mojo, affs will risk troops in a boarding party to try and take any enemy ships suspected of being crewed by AI.
| QUOTE (finalstryke @ May 28 2004, 01:24 PM) |
| As you said in #phoenix Mojo, affs will risk troops in a boarding party to try and take any enemy ships suspected of being crewed by AI. |
As warships invariably never carry jammers it is an easy thing to get a scan of a warship once you are in combat with it. Then next time you spot it, 'boarders away'.
AI has another drawback due to its large size, one hit is the same as taking out a lot of crew. They are good, but have their flaws. Personally speaking, I would be tempted to put one on a ship, but not more.
Mark
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ May 28 2004, 02:29 PM) | ||
As warships invariably never carry jammers it is an easy thing to get a scan of a warship once you are in combat with it. Then next time you spot it, 'boarders away'. AI has another drawback due to its large size, one hit is the same as taking out a lot of crew. They are good, but have their flaws. Personally speaking, I would be tempted to put one on a ship, but not more. |
What about boarders? Given the 8:1 odds, it is already very expensive to the attackng side whilst boarding. Do you then have to pay pension on top of this? This could get very expensive as from experience you can loose hundreds of marines.
What about troop transport ships?
Nik
One suggestion regarding pensions which may make things alot better...
What if you have a stander pension that must be paid say (10 stellers), then a sliding scale linked to efficiency for the rest. You would also have the mechanic to set the pension you want, with 10 being the minimum. Therefore, by increasing the pension, you increase the efficiency.
Therefore, when one ship with 100 crew goes bang, it doesn't sting the hell out of your finances, but when ten 100 crew ships go bang, it does.
People may chose to increase the pension on ships to compensate for lower crew, drops in efficiency etc, and wil lpay the cost should the ship go bang.
Just an idea, and the minimum set pension of 10 maybe too low. But it would allow for pensions to be set into the game, and be kept at a level so that they sting, but don't bankrupt. Whilst also allowing people to gamble with them.
Actually, also, it would have to be set so that changing a pension is a 4 week order. Otherwise people would change the pensions in their ships when they get heavily damaged. Might even give you a sting in efficiency when it's changed.
Just an idea anyway.
Dave