I don't think I was ever really attached to this ships... I was more attached to the class. I really enjoyed the ship designing of moo games... seeing how my designs fared etc... could just be me though.

t faster attack, priority attack, etc. etc.
4. Kind on unrelated, but what about "fighter bays" as a buildable add on for ships that increase their firepower?

ts into one ship piece eg 20 starfighters merge with dreadnought to form carrier - with this acting as one unit....maybe.......??

In general I am in favour of larger amount of ships, however not if the current way of running things remains. If there are "proper" fleets, more in line with say Stars! or even Space Empires and Reach for the Stars, then I would LOVE to be able to build hundrends of ships in a game. As things are in GC1, apart that there is no reason to try (for me anyway), you just build a few powerful ships and just kill everything, it is also very bad micromanagement. At times it feels like a combination of Ascendancy and Starships Unlimited. Without feeling as good I have to say. This of course is a personal view.

I would prefer to see a change in design (shift?) to make it easy, logical and more importantly interesting, to have large (12s...100s) fleets than what it is now.

heroic crew, ship caputure, boarding parties, tractor beams; are these things we want to play with?

emember it.

Star Pilot, that single last ship of the Drengin home fleet could only retreat once per two turns. OR, it could be forced to move away from the battlefield +1 movement so that it cannot come back immediately and have the problem you mentioned. Or, If it tries for a second time to retreat, have the % chances reduced a lot, and perhaps making a 3rd time impossible.

enemy ship might be able to capture the damaged vessel. You can capture ships even though you have reached your limit and only larger ships can be captured (not corvettes or defenders etc)

rate fortress and of course contriibute nothing to it's old empire's economy.
12. Escort. Effectively anti-piracy.

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I like the idea of a smaller number of ships. Large fleets always seem to be a drag for me to deal with, for all the reasons discussed above. If I were to suggest a compromise to the big/little problem, I would have each planet you own give a certain number of ship points. The number of points would be related to planet quality, population, random bonuses, etc. Each ship would take up a number of ship points until it is destroyed or decommisioned. Thus for larger maps, you have more planets, and thus more ship points, and thus more ships. DIfferent classes of ships would require more points, so things like colony ships, transports, and cargo ships don't instantly consume you military capacity, and so bigger ships are more of an investment then smaller ones.

To make me more attached to a certain ships, I'd have an experience system that provided interesting bonuses depending on what the ship had done as well as how long it had been around.

Right now, ships still COST money. Including colony ships. So money is the limiting factor for what you can maintain. More profitable empires can have more ships. The more a ship has in it (high tech weapons, lots of engines, etc), the more it costs per turn.

Balanced, that would negate the need for logistics or ship points. Small empire, small fleet. Giant map, tons of settled worlds, and you can support huge fleets... unless your empire isn't profitable.

I think it'll depend on my position.

My preference would be for fewer, more powerful and more personalized ships. However, depending on the size of my empire and how many sides of it I can get to touch the map edge, I may have quite a lot of territory that I need to have ships stationed along in case my neighbors come knocking. So, I will probably be forced to scale down the quality of my ships until I have enough quantity that I can have enough ships at enough places at once.

So money is the limiting factor for what you can maintain. More profitable empires can have more ships. The more a ship has in it (high tech weapons, lots of engines, etc), the more it costs per turn. Balanced, that would negate the need for logistics or ship points. Small empire, small fleet. Giant map, tons of settled worlds, and you can support huge fleets... unless your empire isn't profitable.

This would make sense. Logistics is then just about how many ships it is possible to orchistrate at once. A high logistics means that large fleets could act well together, well a low logistics would mean that too many ships together would just end up getting in each others way, so rendering large fleets useless (or uncreatable, as your generals realise this and so 'advise' you against it).

I guess my position boils down to this: I hope that the cost for maintaining a cubic ton of starship greatly increases in GC2, so that we end up with far fewer ships. If we can add in perks, such as the ships' battle histories, that would be gravy.

I just had a thought. When you have more models of ships in use, you need to allocate more resources to build parts for maintainance and repairs. Think about it. You live in the age of interchangable parts, and many ships use the same kinds of parts, but if you have a model with an outdated engine, few other ships will have that engine, so engines for this ship are special order. This costs more than if it has the same engine as everyone else as you have to dedicate a set of factories to produce replacement parts for it's engine. In game terms, why not increase the logistics cost of all ships for each model still in production. So if you have 4 kinds of ships, recon, fighter, defender, and starbase it will cost you less per ship than if you have 10 kinds of ships to confront multiple threats. The cost should increase exponentially, so that players have to find a balance between having the right ships for the right jobs, and maintaining what ships they have. Now on the other hand, if you "obsolete" a model, this means you have stopped production on parts for that model. The cost for the your per ship in the fleet is calculated as 1 less. However the costs for any obsolete ships should gradually rise, as fewer parts are shared with other models, parts not shared are going out of stock, and more and more repairs are needed as the ships become jury-rigged when neccessary parts are unavailable. ("She cannot take much more Captain or she's gonna blow!")Altogether, this could give people a little more to consider when building and upgrading a fleet. Do you want to create a new model to face a new threat? If you do, is it cost effective to upgrade another model and obsolete it? Maybe you could just build the new model, and obsolete one that serves little purpose anymore. Later on, when an old ship just costs more than it's worth, do you want to simply scrap it, or do you want to refit it so that it uses parts still in service?

Just adding my two cents. I think this might be a good comprimise between having a lot of ships vs, having a few ships that do their jobs well. In my example of the 4 kinds vs 10 kinds, the former player would be able to pump out tons of generic ships to overwhelm, while the latter would counter with a few ships specially outfitted to handle the threat.

That's a very interesting idea, Zippo342. I think I like it

I am not in favor on limiting the number of ships, but the maintanance cost should be relative to some factor, logistics, number of planets, galaxy size etc. and yes add a maintaniance sost level option to the game-setup this will allow for different playing styles.

Personally I dont like loosing ships, but I don't have or want anny attachment to individual ships, why be attached to a ship crewed by a few hundred or at the most some thousand people, when my empire comprise of planets inhabited by billions of people. I just don't se the point, after all I'll send 5 billion troops to invade the Drengi homeworld a few weeks from now.

Let's have fleet assignment and automated refit of ships. When I discover a new better or cheaper fusion cannon, I want to be able to say, "from now use version X in stead of version Y", and all new ships will be outfitted with this version, and any ship comming in for a refit will get them as well. And my ships will be refitted at some rate, set by my abilities and choises.

One thing I disliked in MoO2 and SpaceEmpires III was that I had to maually designate ships for upgrade. It's nice to have as an option, but not as a requirement.

I disagree with you on the automated refitting of ships, Martin the Dane. If you don't want to take the effort to refit a ship, then it shouldn't get refitted. I believe you should be forced to send a ship that you want refitted to a shipyard, and take it out of commission during the refit. Otherwise, you get to have your cake and eat it too, which is silly - you get to keep the use of your ship out in the field, and you get the better stats. That makes no sense.

When a U.S. Navy ship is refitted, let's say when the battleships of the late 80's and 90's were refitted with missiles, that wasn't done at sea. They sent them to a shipyard, and made the upgrades. That's how refitting works.

Now, battlefield repairs I totally agree with. But not just automagically upgrading ship systems in the field without any facilities or penalty whatsover. That's just lazy and cheesy, in my opinion

For simplified game play, Brad has stated that we will be about to upgrade all of our ships within our influence. No need for shipyards. However, if you can upgrade all units at one time (via an upgrade feature), that will probably allow for the "bug" of upgrading front line ships that are out of your influence. Otherwise, you won't be able to upgrade all your ships at once, will you? That implementation will be interesting.

Realistically, the more ships that use the same components, the cheaper it is to maintain that component, by item. Economy of scale. So, if you have 1000 ships, all using Scanner Mark 1, that spare parts for Scanner Mark 1 would be very cheap, Maintenence wise. If you only have 10 ships with Scanner Mark 9, that will be some costly parts. Until you get nano-manufacturing and the ship can just take it's biowaste, toss it into a NanoVat, and have the nanites make the part for you.

Of course, realistically, the futher a ship is away from a supply point, the more costly it would be to maintain. So, 20 tiles out (using a 3 Range component ship) would cost you more to maintain... until, once again, you get Nano-facturing and then can make anything that they have the info (blueprint/patterns) for. Then maintenence costs drops to the same, wherever a ship is. And whatever its parts may be. So long as the ship can replicate it's own. Realistically speaking.

Is it worth it to have a game that goes so flat for maintenence and supply costs? Consider that you get nano-facturing in mid game in GC1 (and I don't see them dropping the tech out of GC2)... At worst, you'd need to upgrade your old ships to have a "NanoVat" to get the x1 cost (rather then what it was before).

What's the down side? Realistically speaking, if GC ships use some form of material for energy generation, then once they have Nanofacturing and the pattern/blueprint to that material, a ship no longer has range restrictions. It can supply itself with everything it needs, but trained crew. Unless you are using some form of manufactured crew members. Say, AI constructs in artificial/mechanical bodies (and we start off with exactly such a race! Wow! Let's steal their basic tech!). Now, you are only limited by communication (always instantaneous everywhere in GC; probably use quantum entanglement) and encryption standards. You don't want your enemies instructing your war fleets to decimate your own worlds or head out to Andromeda. However, using quantum entanglement communication devices, the enemy would never be able to send an order to your ships unless they capture your HQ's communication center. And if your enemy captures your HQ, you have bigger problems then your ships being told to head for the dephts of the universe.

Humm... so... realistically speaking, it doesn't take much in GC universe for you to get 0 cost ships with unlimited range, unlimited ammo, and unlimted crew. So, why bother with any cost? Realistically speaking, your Nano equipped ships could drop off a few "nano bombs" on convenient free mass (such as all those rogue planets, asteriods, and comets that we know are floating about, or just your enemy ships without their own nanotech), and replicate themselves. That would yield unlimited ships to attack your enemies. Whoops. That would blow out the game, wouldn't it? You'd have two strategies then... crush your opponents before they get NanoFacturing, or rush for NanoFacturing yourself, and then swarm your enemy. Doesn't sound fun, does it? No super transcendance victory. Just get Nano, and the game is done. NanoGendon! Drop nano bombs off to make fleet swarms, and run some nano "FTL" cruiser missiles at your opponents home worlds which are programmed to rebuild them, and everything on them, into your image (or an image specified by you).

I think we should leave reality out of it, and only consider what is fun. After all, FTL starships tends to blow the realism factor.

In the vein of "what is more fun", is it more fun to have the amount of ships you have linked to empire size/treasury, or based off a logistic tech number multiplied by galaxy size and world commonality? Should you need to research a higher level of logisitics tech to get more ships or shift some of your various worlds infrastructure over to money/logisitics generating structures to be able to afford more ships? Personally, either way works for me. But I think that making it purely a matter of money will allow for better scaling for all map sizes and world commonality. And it means that you are back to the old "bread or guns" decision... do you spend your money on domestic (bread) matters or on military (guns)? If you go into high tech ships with high maintenence costs, you won't have as much money available to pay for all those domestic items like entertainment networks, stadiums, etc etc etc (all those things to keep your people happy). And by going money, it means you can customize your fleet to your needs.... swarms of small, cheap craft, or a medium amount of mixed cost ships or a much smaller number of high cost big ships.

I have been thinking a lot about how to deal with custom ships in CG2 and wondering what the devs will do.

My thought is (with all respect toward the nascent logistics system) is to have a cost per military rating. Why? Well, if you have it per ship, you will have people looking to minimize costs through strange roundings up and down to maximize their fleet through odd loopholes. How? Well, why not take a freighter filled with every type of armor known to the universe and send it out with your fleet of fighters all equiped with one capital ship weapon? If that fleet costs less than a battleship with similar armor and weapons, you will use the fighters and ignore heavier vessels. Even if it does not, you might choose the fighters-and-a-freighter fleet since the fighters can be built on worlds without a starport.

Basically, the only sound way to deal with costs (that I see, at least) is to assign a military value (call it MV) to weapons and armor. Now, your fleets yearly cost is just MV*cost/MV. MV has another advantage: it is the absolute strength of the military for comparison purposes (think "Jane's All the Universe's Starships") where you can just examine one number ans see how navies stack up (though weapon and armor systems might not match up). It is just a much cleaner way of dealing with the cost/military effectiveness. This all needs to be elaborated, but if a freighter has 0 armor to start, after you add 20 of each type of armor to it to shield your light fighters (equiped with stupid amounts of weapons), each will have a sensible cost.

I am still leary of the 3 types of armor... why would anyone NOT make a shield craft for the expensive ships to hide behind? You won't lose firepower if they wipe your Brick class unarmed frieghter with shields, armor, and point defense systems to dust, so it will improve your military effectiveness in major conflicts quite a bit (since you get one extra round of shooting per MV).

The only issue I still have with this system is that you get a "Navy In A Box" (c) since you get a LOT more military production than you have any right realistically producing. You can imagine all these farmers on random Outer Rim worlds building these PT Boats designed to harry the capital ships of the invading navy... maybe it isn't such a bad idea after all. I just don't want to have to pilot the space fighter that Bubba produced in the barn.

...I think we should leave reality out of it, and only consider what is fun...

Agreed, but we just seem to have a different definition of "fun". I don't find it fun to have my ships automagically upgrade out in the middle of nowhere. Rather, that's taking fun away, and replacing it with cheese. It's just utter and complete cheese to have a fleet full of these lower technology component, and then you research something better, and then wham - your entire fleet is magically upgraded to a better technology. You may find that fun, but I find it ridiculously stupid. Sure, maybe it's easier, maybe it automates something that you don't want to do, but the key point is that it's not something that you HAVE to do. It's something you can CHOOSE to do. But it's not something that should be given to you free, without any cost whatsoever.

I disagree with you on the automated refitting of ships, Martin the Dane. If you don't want to take the effort to refit a ship, then it shouldn't get refitted......When a U.S. Navy ship is refitted, let's say when the battleships of the late 80's and 90's were refitted with missiles, that wasn't done at sea. They sent them to a shipyard, and made the upgrades. That's how refitting works.

Yes and the president calls up the captain of each ship in turn, and orders them to return to such and such shipyard for refitting Not likely, he will aprove of the new system and the refitt plan but that's it.

But I think you misunderstood me VagabondNomad, I do not suggest that ships should be refitted in deep space, (unless it just happend to be at a deep-space shipyard) what I'm sugesting is that once the player has aproved of a certain upgrade, he will not have to order each ship to go to a space-yard his admirals should be able to handle that. I want to make strategic desiccions I don't want to decide where to upgrade witch ships. I would actually like the ships to have some form of fuel, so that they could only stay away from a resupply base or supply ship for X turns based on the ships supply capacity. So after X turns the ship checks in at a base and if it's sceduled for upgrade, will stay untill the upgrade is completed.

But I can live with friendly space counting as a base or imposing less ware on the ships, and if you equip you ship with some advanced form of reactor, becoming available after a lot of research into resuply, energy, nanotech etc. they should be able to stay out indefinately, but not upgrade themselves, unless they have a spaceyard on board.

If a ship runs out of fuel they should be able to limp home, witch might take a looooooong time, and be quite riscky as you would never know witch gun or protective messure was worn out.

Agreed, but we just seem to have a different definition of "fun". I don't find it fun to have my ships automagically upgrade out in the middle of nowhere. Rather, that's taking fun away, and replacing it with cheese. Sure, maybe it's easier, maybe it automates something that you don't want to do, It's something you can CHOOSE to do. But it's not something that should be given to you free, without any cost whatsoever.

According to Brad... it won't be free or automatic. You will hit choose "Upgrade ship" for an individual ship (in your influence), or you will give an order at your Ship Designer screen to "Upgrade this model". There will be a *cost* to it. We don't know the exact formula that will be used, but we do know that there is a BC cost associated with it.

As I had said, most systems I've seen that do a global update, don't care if the unit is "currently available" for updating. That cheese, I presume, happens because of the designer's code. I'm presuming they are setting all units of type X were globally set to be type Y. Simple and easy. But what is needed is an implementation where having a multi-stage design where all valid updatable units of type X are upgraded, but the design still exists (just not visible to players) and the older units will auto-upgrade when they get into a valid position to do so. Once all those units have upgraded, then, and only then, the game can discard that "universally upgraded" design of unit X to the bit bucket.

If you only plan on your game being "active" for a year, I can see a project lead deciding to implement a simple global replace rather then something more complicated. A simple replace would take a few minutes to code. A multi-stage, non-cheesy system would take considerably longer. And it's not the sort of feature that is going to get you significant nods or high ratings, so there isn't a reason to bother wasting the extra time, when you are on a deadline.

That was my point I was alluding to about "universal" updates. But, this being Star Dock, they aren't tied to some publisher's deadline or schedule for GC2, are they? As long as you and a few other people gripe about cheesy upgrading during the beta, I think we have a chance at getting a non-cheesy implementation.

I can live with cheesy Universal Replacement if I have to, but I'd prefer something not so cheesy. If a ship isn't illegable for upgrading where it is, then a Universal Update/Replacement shouldn't work on it easier. Just one of those little details...