Upkeep suggestion change of total awesome...

humm, that makes sense. but the best system imo is one that if i have a fleet cap of 500-900, i'll pay anywhere from 30-50% depending on the # of ships i have. a completely dynamic approach, where the more ships i have, the more upkeep i pay. I'll still have to research to gain higher limits, but if i have 0 fleet cap used, i'll pay 0% upkeep.

So basically, Warcraft III's style of upkeep.

Personally, while I do think that upkeep costs should be dynamic in some fashion (not permanent once researched like they are now), I also think there needs to be a penalty for reversing upkeep costs. Otherwise, there's really no compelling reason 'not' to simply max your logistics as fast as possible.

The idea behind the high and permanent upkeep costs is to make your fleets important, and not just throw-away units that you can afford to replenish without breaking a sweat. Any upkeep system that dynamically scales down based on the current number of ships eliminates the need to really be careful and "wise" with your fleet, and does actually make all your ships into throw-away units.

So, I wouldn't expect upkeep scaling down to happen, but I suppose upkeep scaling up slower has a chance to be if the argument for it is convincing enough.

Interesting. The cost of researching the fleet supply would still apply, and also the cost of building the ships, thus during the early game i dont think there would be much change. Upgrading supply too fast and you will find yourselve with a lot of supply but no ships. On the late game, powerful players with big fleets will have the full upkeep, if they the fleets, their upkeep goes down. Playing with the number of ships to pay low upkeep would be dificult, a ship once build is built, no way to scrap it for resources, and scuttling it means losing all the resources and time used to produce the ship.

On the bad side, the early game curve would change a little. Right now, I research the first level of supply, my upkeep is 9%, under this new system, my upkeep wouldnt be 9% until I max out the number of ships. Meaning I can have X number of ships, suffering only 3% upkeep, and would have more resources flowing in. Such a change should be closely studied to see its effects on the game pace.

Another bad thing, it could create a situation in which players end up fighting a war of attrition, by taking away the limits on our income. For example, playing in a large map, late game, full supply, my factories are 3 jumps from the nearest enemy planet. My enemy factories is also 3 jumps away from the same planet. I attack his planet, and destroy his fleet, while losing half of mine. With this new system, my enemy will have 75% more resources to make another fleet, while I still have more than 40% upkeep, plus i'll have to rebuild and upgrade the planet i captured. Thus when i move on to the next planet, i might find my enemy have rebuilt most of his fleet, while mine is only at 70% and many of my ships are still en route from my factories 3 jumps away.

I somewhat like this idea, but it has to carefully studied, as it can lead to games being decided simply by whom can make ships the fastest.

upkeep is fine

you need to scout your opponent(s) to decide wheter or not it is time to go hight taxe and big fleet!

which also mean you need to take care of your ships : carefully choose your battles, make sure to have better counter units, know when to retreat...

That's worse than 'whoever loses the first fleet loses the game' how?

The current method encourages snowballing. You lose a little, which hurts your ability to win more, which makes your loss easier and easier. If you lose a few ships, or even a whole fleet, it will be far harder to replace that fleet. Which is shitty, stupid design, tbh. Anything that encourages such a cascade is broken.

I've also been thinking about this lately...

I think it is more realistic for supply to be tied directly into the number of ships one has e.g. in real life, why would you ever have to build 100 supply ships when your fleet only needs 50 at present to reach full supply levels? (random example) In other games like MOO etc, each ship has a supply value (maintenance) attached to it - if you lose the most expensive ship, you notice an increase in your income because of the loss of the ship's hefty maintenance cost. I think thats the way it would be in reality. You could not build greater numbers of ships than your max supply capacity without incurring very heavy debts in these games. I think that style of supply makes sense...

Keep well.

I've also been thinking about this lately...

I think it is more realistic for supply to be tied directly into the number of ships one has e.g. in real life, why would you ever have to build 100 supply ships when your fleet only needs 50 at present to reach full supply levels? (random example) In other games like MOO etc, each ship has a supply value (maintenance) attached to it - if you lose the most expensive ship, you notice an increase in your income because of the loss of the ship's hefty maintenance cost. I think thats the way it would be in reality. You could not build greater numbers of ships than your max supply capacity without incurring very heavy debts in these games. I think that style of supply makes sense...

I understand the arguments of ships being 'throw away units' but if you have a massive economy which you worked hard to build - why not use ships in such a way if you worked to build up that power? Is that not a potential strategy that has been curtailed by the current system? It is also only likely to happen late game anyway when other possible powerful counters exist e.g. try to destroy his economy and cost him enormously because of a huge upkeep that is now unsustainable. Also - Gabal's point about the enemy rebuilding his fleet is interesting, but it makes sense to me that an attacker would have longer supply lines than a defender and thus the defender should have a 'home field' advantage. If the attacker wishes to invade agressively, he'll have to be clever about it in order to avoid being wittled away by continuous attacks from the defender with shorter supply lines. Just some ideas to think about

Keep well.

Apologies for double post...the second was intended to be an edit - sorry

No offense, but I wish people would stop using this as an argument.

Pretty much describes how I feel about it.

Two players battling against each other late-game could set up frigate-spamming construction. All other things being equal, if one player loses half of his fleet to a major defensive operation, he can build the first replacement ships TWICE AS CHEAP as the other player. This allows him to convert his strategy between capitals and frigates, and respond more nimbly to attacking player strategies. If the attacker is, for example, spamming fighters, the smart defender can scuttle to free up some production and supply and then start churning out flaks and hangars. Meanwhile, the attacker doesn't have the same empowerment to spend as much and switch gears to a different fleet balance to attack.

It's also much harder on David in a David vs. Goliath economy - if your more effective but smaller empire succeeds in opening the door to invading a larger neighbour, this option means the neighbour can react faster than you can because they suddenly start generating uberincome.

I think the idea of *downgrading* your research status (and paying the equivalent of a small infrastructure decommissioning fee) makes a bit more sense than just autogiving this for free. This option allows the player who just got their fleet annihilated to choose if they want to reduce their supply level altogether to gain the income bonus, but - this is the key bit - they lose the free ability to build their fleet back up to their original level again. They have to upgrade that level of supply again, which buys the successful attacker a bit more time to take advantage of their already-achieved larger fleet cap.

One other option is to cap the reduction. If you're at research level 8, the lowest you can possibly ever pay is the supply penalty for research level 6, even if you only have one ship left.

Sins games are already long enough.

-- Retro

Thanks Retro, I understand your perspective...

Despite your disliking such arguments (theRetroboy), people will never stop using reality based arguments because many games strive to emulate reality more and more over time i.e. better graphics and complex economics and AI's for example to make the game more 'believable'. Obviously this is not always the case


I can see your point, but respectfully disagree because I am a reality fan a superpower will naturally be able to mount a defense faster when attacked by a smaller empire by economics and resources alone - hence the smaller guy being a little foolish to attack a superpower - but since we want to disregard reality for the sake of shorter games and more fun  then I unltimately would have to agree that your proposal would make sense.

Lets hope it can be implemented at some stage...

Well then make the upkeep slowly 'tick down' instead of instantly plummeting to whatever it should be.

Actually I like way the current system essentially forces you into a strategic decision. Currently, upgrading your fleet capacity is an interesting gamble. More ships mean that you are more likely to win engagements, but also more penalized if you loose those engagements. The current system also increases the value of ship upgrades - a smaller, better quality fleet may be more efficient then a larger, low quality fleet. Allowing upkeep costs to scale back encourages larger fleets and discourages investment in research.

ACtually I think both side of the argument are good, also with upkeep being so high for massive fleets im guessing that gives huge maps a place i.e get more minerals afford the upkeep.

Also the way it is currently you have to weigh up the pros and cons of a big fleet. If you do get a big fleet you have to say okay I need to get X amount more ecco, I therefore cant sit with my current huge fleet and spam more and more I need to take colonies X and Y , defend them , level ecco , rinse repeat.

I do see both sides of the argument its just we have got to ask ourself is upkeep so bad just now that we cant get a big enough fleet to secure enough resources to afford a bigger fleet.

Im no guru but seems to me that the upkeep aids the way the game plays well. Feel free to correct me if you think Im wrong, I will be the first to admit I am still quite inexperianced at the game.

My fear is that sins veres towards build order/button bash combo and Im not saying this to dis-credit someone its just why I think any alterations really need well thought through and from multiple devs, in consolidation with bands of users veterans + well informed newbies , to strike a balance so theres still hope for all kinds of players should they play their tactic well.

IMO upkeep should be based on ships, but ship losses should provide a culture loss. Culture itself should be much more important as well, both economically, and planet control wise. This means a small empire that smartly uses their fleet and inflicts high losses on a larger empire will gain more culture in these areas and have higher income empire wide. The larger empire has bigger fleets, and more planets, so more income, but the little guy can still fight back, and enough of those 1 sided battles would mean planets would turn pirate, or outright join the little guy. Random planet sabotage would also be nice, if possible. Of course, this culture would also be affected by broadcast buildings and caps, so both sides can fight it.

This would allow turtling to be a semi valid strategy, and slow starters, or empires that got pirated early a chance to fight back.

For this to work though, a lot of things would need to be changed with culture, and ships would need to be less spammed, so I doubt it would ever actually happen.