Well tuesday and it will only be the immediate changes, not of the combat or civilian bits

Yes the cost will be large but not 'huge', all current ranks will be compensated and that should cover most of the change.

Well it can be used to layer your target lists in interesting ways, from control positions. Besides this i can see nothing else for rank to do....

no changes to pirates being able to add who they want for free.

After talking to some of my more warlike colleges I must admit that this pension thing has the potential to make any sort of large scale combat (more than a couple of ships) impossible. We are looking at 15-20K$ costs every time you lose a 100 Hull warship. So not only does your fleet get a hammering but it bunkrupts the affiliation in the process. Not a problem if you are only having the occasional skirmish but it makes fleet operations impractical - thus wiping out several current storylines in a stroke.

Theoretically, all the Confederacy has to do is pass some laws that require their crew to waive this right and that should be that.

War is expensive.

I think we need something like the $100 per dead crew member in order to make light / XL suicide ships not-practical.

If not pensions then is should be considered funeral / memorial expenses or something (or, in the case of HVE etc, just an artifical mechanic that we have to put up with).

Fleet operations shouldn't be done, just for teh hell of it, but because what you stand to gain from conquering a strategic location is judged to offset the losses.

Err, according to some reports, you already made yourself bankrupt building your fleet in the first palce. I'm sure 'The EEM' will sub you.

Fair enough - but crew signing onto a heavy hulled warship knows exactly what they are signing on for. If they are going to insist on this pension thing then make it on a sliding scale - the lighter the hull the more the pension. This means traders get dumped on more as their soft civilian crews demand more compensation for what should have been a safe job. Loss of a naval military vessel, while tragic, comes with the territory.

Likewise they should not be so expensive that they become impractical. Affs like the CNF and IMP are based on being a military power. If they cannot fulfill that role then why would they keep playing?

No arguements with that, so long as the HH pension doesn't disappear entirely.

Affs need to adapt with the times. The IMP woul have been the front end of an Imperial machine, financed in part by the MegaCorps (I imagine).

Likewise, the Confederate Naval Forces are supposed to be the military power of the Confeds... thus it would make sense if the rest of the confeds let them carry out this specialised role and helped to finance the CNF fleet, instead of constructing vast warfleets of their own.

How they want to play it is up to them, but if the BHD, CIA and all the Noble houses are busy throwing everything into ship building for themselves then the role of the CNF is by definition diminished?

I believe the point is that pensions are partly to address the use of 'suicide' ships, to help avoid building umpteen xlight ships to throw against a smaller number of heavy hulled ships.

Having a sliding scale is not a case of trying to make light/x-light hulled ships to pay for heavy hulled ships - it is to discourage their use in a scenario you wouldnt expect them to be thrown into. Hovever - it seems odd to apply the same level of expense to ships that were obviously designed with conflict in mind

...and when you add the pension cost, to maintenance/repair cost, and/or the cost it would take to replace a heavy hulled ship it just discourages combat further

The other alternative would be to have some kind of clever code that would mean a ship with light/x-light hulls with torp/missile launchers and only enough ammo for 1 round of combat would would run the risk of mutiny...

Despite some views to the contrary, the Confederacy is not bankrupt.

Average wage per warship is $120, i.e. 120 crew, the complete loss is $12,000.
During the last 100 aside warfleet action was it about five 100 hull ships lost?
To date there has been approximately 12 lost to an affiliation since conversion.
So 12*12,000 = $144k per 1.5 years or $100k per year.

Call me a GM if you want, but surely this is not bankruptcy?

Even if we quadruple this amount I know that it will not be the end.

Would everybody like us to publicise total affiliation wealth along with wages and how much of dint the entire loss of a fleet would make into this stockpile of stellars?

I get a daily list of each affilaition and their wealth. I can find out who has what and can even look how it has changed every single day since we discovered the stellar bug. Better yet, I can even look at affiliations and determine where they can expand their merchandising in order draw in large amounts of ready cash should they desire.

I know who is poor and who is merely pleading poverty.

Admittedly I had not considered the tactic of feeding ship at a time into a hostile force causing the complete loss of the warfleet.

My apologies.

OK - using those numbers then its not a huge problem.

However looking at a couple of potential Confederate scenarios we are projecting huge losses to achieve our goals. This is why the CNF in particular have been building their fleet over the last year or so. Now with the updated combat rules making kills more certain the situation is even worse. Then you add pensions on top of this.

I would not be surprised if the pension payments ended up in 0.5-1.0 Million stellar brackets. We are not pleading poverty - just getting seriously concerned that the Confederacy will not be able to function after the changes - unless we all exclusively become traders.

The point I was making here is that if you lose a large number of ships in an engagement not only do you have the now vastly harder job of replacing them (I don't have any issues with that) but you have to pay through the nose for the privilige. Crews of Naval ships know exactly what they are signing up for.

That will change as lights and xlights will become vastly easier to build (comparitively).

Damn cheap and easy to build?

Oh, only a million, for a moment I was beginning to doubt myself. So the Confederacy is seriously concerned it could only do this every month for the next couple of years based on its current stockpile?

Yes, comparitively, not absolutely. Every single heavy hulled ship becomes immediately worth four times as much - a massive, unrepeatable bonus with those with the forsight to have done so already.

The only response I've seen to this question is "You'd never have caught up anyway". Well, maybe not. But for 20% of the effor I'd expect to get 20% of the fleet. Not 5%.

A possible solution for this:

compesate every hull produced by ever aff .

For each HH produced since inception you get no bonus.
...
...
For every XL produced so far an aff is compensated with and extra 15 hulls

This levels the playing field in terms of production capacity, but need kjc to have reliable ercords of how many of each item have been produced at each starbase.

This would suddenly see loads of hulls appear overnight though, which might casuse roblems in itself.

Since up to now 1MU produced = $1, then each aff could be accomoded accordingly?

Those producing loads of XLs will now get a bit richer , but fair's fair.

I would prefer not.

Last time this occured, i had a major headache trying to work out how a political that left the aff many months previous was sustaining 'apparantly' keeping the aff out of the red.

Though actually, I would be really interested in seeing the BHD one in private.

Dave

I would say that this would depend on the hull for compensation. I'm not sure that aff's should be given HH just because they worked on building XL's that would be way too silly.

These changes were never introduced to level the playing feild, but to halt expansion. As it stand, there will still be a ratio difference in HH ships between aff's, just in this case the ratio numbers will be smaller.

I agree that it maybe easier for military aff's to now build XL ships, but assuming that XL ships are not allowed to carry large weaponry, the only thing they could use them for is moving things around, sensor ships, etc.

Some of us (including David) have seen how effective the Xlight missile ships can be. The words devestating spring to mind.

I agree with you on this. XL should be able to defend themselves, but should not become an offensive combat option. As the chance for exploitation is way to high.

I meant compensating like with like (ie, if HH suddenly get a *8 mod and XL get a 0.5 mod, then for every XL hull a player / aff has produced, they deserve to get a bonus 15 in compensation).

It's a very fair point.

But the equivalent stellar-compensation solution would be preferable.

If they can carry fighterbays for interceptors (to defend themselves), then they can carry space fighters just as easily.

Hmmmm, yeah. Well stopping them from carrying offensive weaponry as such would have to be one of those, non-real rule things.

I.e. Code to prevent it.

You appear to be assuming that Affiliations that currently focus on building heavy hulled warships are suddenly going to switch to building light hulled ships.

Personally I would have thought that whilst there may be a bit of toying around with lighter hulled ships, it is more likely that the political affiliations will still have the bulk of their production geared towards heavy hulled ship production.

Attrition of current fleets will likely affect us more than neutral trading affiliations, so in time there is even a chance that the neutrals could even surpass the fleet size of those currently with more HH ships.

There is a lot of truth in what you say in that existing HH ships are now worth a lot more - but they will also cost a lot more to maintain too: so saying that a HH ship is worth 4 time as much as an XL is wrong, because the XL does not have the same running costs {Remember also that there are penalty costs for a ship in combat with low integrity - so whilst integrity loss is less on a HH ship than on a XL meaning fewer maintenance visits, you can afford to let the integrity drop on an XL ship (...assuming its use is for freight) much lower than you would on a HH}

What if an affiliation is not able to produce ships of a certain hull type?

What if an affiliation - for whatever reason - has not been building heavy hulled ships? They have the same fleet that they had before, why should they be given something because someone else chose to build heavy hulled ships?

Heavy Hull ships now require more maintenance than any other ship type. This is the reverse to what it used to be. I now have to have more factories and mines (plus shuttle ports & command complexes etc) to support my heavy hulled ships. I have to invest more resources and stellars to maintain my ships, this will inhibit the growth of my assets in other areas. Now all those people who were operating other ship types while I was busy acquiring heavy hulled ships have markedly lowered maintenance costs compared to me. Will I be compensated? Will I be provided with a bonus of infrastructure to compensate?

Platforms are now more effective at defending starbases and require no maintenance compared to the high cost of a warship. If I'd known this was going to happen I would of built more platform hulls. Its not fair that all those people who were building 10x more platform hulls than me have 10 times as many platform hulls. Will I be compensated for the platform hulls I chose not to build?

Xlight ships are now cheaper to build. They're more attractive to my affiliation now. But we cant build them because we havent invested in the research to do so. But that was before we knew about the changes. Maybe we should be given the chance to reshuffle around some of the things we researched. And maybe if we'd had those xlight ships earlier we could of made more money, and certainly shifted resources around quicker. Maybe we should be given some more money as well.

Affiliation X built 5 light and 5 heavy ships compared to affiliation Y that built 0 light ships and 10 heavy ships. Now after these changes affiliation X has 5 light and 5 heavy ships while affiliation Y has 10 heavy ships! What an outrage.

---

If the changes between ships are balanced when implemented (and I have every confidence that Mica + David will strive to make it so) then the end result is also balanced.

Ship numbers remain unchanged, the ships are intended to be balanced and it costs the same for everyone to make the same ship type.

I accept that there may be situations where the changes do have an unfair impact on an affiliation, and I'm sure that these will be taken into account. In the main however I don't see the need for compensation.

well... when you put it like that...


<-------- feels likr the guy in the pub from the fast show who cant make up his mind

Production limits everyone. Having a large number of ships is the reward for getting production to those levels. I fail to see why people should be rewarded just because they decided to build XL ships.

Heck, most warlike aff's can't build XL ships, should we request more stellers as compensation because we didn't have the XL trade capacity.

That sort of solution would prove greatly unpopular.

It isn't a bonus. These ships were not built when the rules changed, and had the rules not changed there would not have been a bonus. Once again, this was not an exercise to level out the playing feild but to prevent expansion.

Some might argue that it is the merchant aff's fault for not concentrating on HH ships.

Your viewpoint is a bit dim - the merchant probably would have concentrated on HH ship fleets if they'd known that the costs were going to quadruple.

The military affs can still research light or xlight designs for the same price you ever could - Or you can buy the tech from the EEM for less than the cost of two 100-hullers (which is something that couldn't be done for heavy hulls, and still cant). Wheras,even if the merchant affs did their research into a heavy-hulled blueprint, the ships themselves now cost four times as much to build. Why should I pay four times as much to acquire the same in-game assets that you've grabbed?

The GM is imposing an unfair benefit on the mega-battlefleets. As a recipient of one of the GM's 'balancing measures' I can assure you that I do not feel remotely compensated, and will not be taking it.

Affiliations probably wont... not that they could now anyway. Individuals might want to.

The game started with eight or so affs, which started out fairly small, and equal. All had one class 3, one class 4 and one class 5 colony. I was involved with building up a class 3 to a class 5, and a class 6 (by then) HQ colony to 7. Later in the game, new affs, including the CNF were added - at the same size as if they'd been developing all along. This has continued for years. The FEL for instance were deposited in Cluster with a class six colony and several class fives (not quite building up from nothing, as is claimed).

Anyway the GM has decided that this wont happen any more. No more fresh starts with mega advantages. If you want an empire you've got to work for it... Fair enough. And the way to do this - do I just get my courier and start building?

No, you start making money. And THEN you start building. Join a trading aff, make a couple of million. Then start building, Including a military fleet, with stuff you've earned.

Now, the costs for military have been quadrupled. I get to work with phantom balloon-ships in compensation, and pay tens of thousands in funeral fees?

I say, if the costs of the military fleet are to quadruple, the size should be quartered. Just the cheap ones with the position numbers > 9999 (which allows a few through too). Because if it's not a problem for a military aff to have a fleet of 120 SoLs built within the last eighteen months, I can see why I should put as much effort to get one of only 30.

I say, if this basic principle of fairness is overridden the game might still be worth playing, it's just not worth paying for. Or, lets have another GM-created mega-aff to wipe out the cheap fleets. I'd pay to be in that. But of course, that would upset people...

To take the math a step further you need to build in the maintenance costs.

A 100 ships at 100HH will cost 25,000mus every week just to maintain. That SOL a week the IMP were building is gone - they have to use those factories just to break even. And if they use their fleet, they than have to pay the pensions and pay for the damage they take - even if the entire fleet only suffers 1% damage, thats an entire 100HH - 50,000mus (or more) every time the fleet is used.

That will need some serious factory power just to stay the same.

The 100 Lights have the same maintenance as before (20 per week), so for the 100 ships, only 2000 production. And as these are AFT I assume its non-combat, so no additional maintenance costs. In effect they have at least 23,000mus of production more per week than the IMP, simply because they dont have a 100 HH fleet to maintain. And its probably a lot higher than that (depending how often battles are fought).

What it means is, if all things are equal - you have the same production capabilities as IMP, but no fleet you are not worse off because their fleet is now 4x in value, you are better off! Before the change, the IMP would ALWAYS have 100 more HH than you, because you have the same production and are building the same number of ships. Now, IMP have to stop building ships to improve their infrastructure, whilst you can continue building ships. As your fleet gets bigger, your maintenance will also go up - so effectively your maintenance over the same period is half IMPs. Ignoring combat, thats 12,000mus extra production you have per week, when before you had equal production.

Ok, the 12kmus now gets you less of a ship, but its still more than your opposition is getting.

How is this unfair to those without HH? On paper, the IMPs "book value" might have gone up 4 fold, but the practical reality is different.

Mark

You can use other solutions then an higher funeral cost for Xlight.

Will you need to pay when a tradeship gets blown up?? Please note that merchant ships are easy to shoot down.. Hunting the merchants ships down will clean out the merchants within a couple of weeks.

The easiest solution would be to make big war-items less efficient on Xlight/Light hulls.
Or to make it impossible to put them in.

If the new production rates had been in from game start, would you have still built XLs, or would you have made HH? (I assume you would have still built XL - when they were both equal you were building XLs, so why would you suddenly build them now they are more expensive?)

If you would have still built XLs, then you have not lost anything. Youve still gained the ships you wanted. Though if XLs are 50mus (in size, which is what I thought - unless thats changed again<g>), then yes you have lost production because you could have had more ships. But not twice as many. When it was 100mus, then a 100 hull XL would cost 19000mus to build a ship (10,000mus for hulls and 9000 internal). Now it costs 14,000 (5000 for hulls and the same 9000 internal), so you could have built 40% more ships.

The ships are not four times bigger, better, faster or more resiliant. They are - aside from a large increase in running costs - essentially the same.

Your ships have not become smaller or less useful.

Arent the proposals for hull sizes now 50mus XL, 100 L, 200 normal and 400 for HH?


So if this was in at conversion, KJC would be saying all those with merchantships, your 100 main can now have a bigger cargo capacity and whats more be cheaper to make. Those with 75 main warships, we are giving you 100 hulls, but they are going to be 4 times as hard to make. That looks pretty fair to me - traders are happy they are getting cheaper ships to build and its the war ones who are being penalised, but then they are getting more hulls too.


Mark

Just what I was trying to say - but you said it far better than I

no, not building up from nothing - but equally not a mega-startup either. Given 3xclass 5 and 1xclass 6 after the game had been running for about 10 years doesn't sound like too much of an advantage to me - Hell, Highstar has hugely more than that all on it's own and that has effectively become a new "aff"

I would certainly challenge any viewpoint that the FEL startup was overly generous - but this isn't really the thread for that

Dan

But the FEL could have been started with class 2 + 4 + 5 couldn't they? It wasn't overly generous, no. But they got the benefits as if they'd had dedicated players working for them for ten years, even though nobody was. It was just considered, by whatever GM, to be 'unfair' to start them without the benefit of a couple of years growth that they hadn't actually done. Wheras now, even if I did play through the shipping and colony turns I'd only get one-quarter the benefit as somebody did eighteen months, or less, ago.

Yes - wrong thread. Sorry.

In response to Harlow - I'm on here as Anon because my view definitely do not represent the views of my soon-to-be-ex aff, and others believe in collective responsibility where there is none. I was in the game at the start for a couple of years. I was a minnow then, spending £15/week and I'm a minnow now, spending £5. I just think my £5 should buy what £5 recently bought for the IMP/BHD/CNF/DTR. Not one-quarter as much.

As for the Highstar changes... sickening. Makes my aff pointless.

That would be silly I'll try another statment

'Troops/crew on a ship that are killed in the cause of space combat'.

I'm not so sure anout pensions anyway. Its got too many lose threads.

Thanks for the clarification - assume pensions means the payment made when they die.

Geoff

PS So we can't stick the opposition with a nice big bill by shooting the prisoners we pickup

See what i mean about lose threads..... i have no way of knowing where prisoners come from at the moment, so its a bit messy.

On the compensation front.

The heavy hull will be a 300 gain in production, so it will take at little over 2 years for a 100 hull heavy to balance itself, with the merch ships.

as in the additional costs for maintenance I assume?

In other words, whle if you look at next week in isolation those who have concentrated on heavy hulled ships have got an instant gain, over time they will not only be pulled back to an even balance - but after the two years will actually be worse off....

Looking at the big picture, long term, the underlying trends rarely match the headlines

Dan

The bounty will be on the posted list
I think it will have to be the same level of detail as

I plan to start the combat changes on tuesday/wednesday, and it should take roughly a month. I want to finish the order editor changes first as they were suppsoed to be done 2 weeks ago and got delayed due to the current mess.

The infrastructure is not something that _i_ have ever promased a date for.