Martin... if you have nanofacturing, as you mention in passing, the a ship could upgrade itself in the field. If it has sufficent implemented nanotechnology and the data plans. It might need to go "offline" for a little while as it updates its components, but with sufficent informant and nanotech, they'd be able to upgrade in place. You just wouldn't want to be around that section while the nanites do their thing. They might decide you make a convenient source of raw material.

Just pointing it out. Of course, there could be reasons that HQ wouldn't want to give the actual technical details/nanite program instructions of how to convert an old style Star Explorer to a cutting edge super high tech Star Ranger. Like, someone on the crew taking the specs, deserting, and selling the instructions to space pirates (so they can buy old Star Explorers and/or their clones and making cheap Star Ranges for themselves). Or your enemy civs... which could find the details of how your implemented systems on the Star Ranger to be very interesting. Doesn't take much to make the government paranoids worry, after all.

Now, your fleets yearly cost is just MV*cost/MV.

I just want to point out, Esnoble, that your formula simplifies to just cost as the MV / MV = 1.

Secondly, I think everyone is confusing the scale of nano machines. Nano machines are by no means sub atomic, or even sub molecular. They have to be molecular in nature since they are made from strings of molecules. Now considering that, there is no way such a machine could be made to alter an atom, as it requires manipulating things millions of times smaller than it, namely the protons and nuetrons. (mostly the protons though) This isn't to say that such manipulations are impossible, just not by nanomachines. Nuclear reactions are how you change an atom from one kind into another, not nanomachines, and would be neccessary if you are doing as you say and transforming general stellar matter into heavier elements. Nano tech then is not the end all technology that Star Pilot envisioned when we really look at realism.

Remember, Total Realism does not always equal fun, but Total Unrealism can ruin a game when noone understands how or why anything works since it makes no sense as we see it. You have to strike a balance, and use some Selective Realism to base the gameplay on, so that people can both understand why what happened happened, and still have the fun they desired.

Zippo342, where on Earth do you get your information on nanotechnology from?

I do agree with you that nanomachines will not be able to alter atoms, but they will be able to alter molecules. You and I alter molecules every day, mostly in our intestines, blod and cells, sometimes we do it with our hands or tools, like a hammer, caserol, oven, or paintbrush, just to list a few.

One of the most promising aspects of nanomachines is making designer molecules. They themselves will most likely consist of designer molecules. Today we have no way of producing a lot of complicated molecules that theory says are possible and desirable, since we relly mostly on chemestry to produce those molecules.

I have seen three different nanomachine concepts.
One concept of nanoproduction of parts for larger machines is that you have a bunch of nanomachines crawling or swimming around in or on some raw material building whatever they are programed to. When they all work together you end up with the desired product. Another is a printer like system, where a grid of programable nanomachines have the raw material on one side, and atom by atom builds the product on the other side of the grid. Finally there is a concept where teh nanite builds copies of itself from som raw material, and then all those nanites are programed to turn themselves into the finished product.

Time will tell witch of these will be the most convinient, I think it will be a combination.

You can read more about nanorobots at wikipedia.org

Isn't this whole nano-bot discussion a bit off topic? No offense, but I'd like to keep the discussion focused on ship numbers in GC2

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.

I have two reactions to this:

1). Some refits can be done at sea, simpler ones to be sure. It is only a matter of getting the materials to the ship.

2). Space forces a different "reality"; that of time and distance. In space you need a crew that can handle upgrades and inovations where they are. When returning to a space dock could take months or years and the lives of your crew are at stake, you have to be able to do more massive upgrades than todays ships need. This also means, in many cases, they would have to fabricate the materials where they are. (This is one of many problems that may have to be solved by our real world scientists before interstellar travel can be achieved.)

3). Some sort of technology (something early in the game) could be required to permit deep space upgrading of ships, perhaps "transmuters"?

You are right VagabondNomad, nanotech in it self has nothing to do with the number of ships, might influence the maintanence of those ships though, so if we .......
Just let me have all the ships my economy and population can handle, and don't pose some artificial restrictions on them. If we have to have limits on the total number of ships, let it be a case of dimishing reurn, so that at some point adding one new ship to the fleet will cost to much to be worth it.

Zippo, you are unfamiliar with the common elements of space? Hydrogen, Helium, Carbon, Iron, and Oxygen? So you disagree that nano-machines, cannot operate on atoms and molecules? That's what they are already operating on.

Reasonable nanotechnologists expect to be able to custom build atoms.... note that, atoms, not molecules! If you can make any atom you want, then starting material because meaningless, other then total mass, and how long it will take to get what you want out of the other end of the process. And, I think it should be noted that GC1 includes matter transmuter techs. So again, even if reality won't permit it (and it wouldn't be the first time "experts" were wrong about what is and will be possible), it isn't applicable as a hard stop for the game framework we are discussing. The game itself provides the fantasy-science to ignore inconveniences of reality.

I'm all for letting the ship number limitation to be tied directly to your economy. If the cost to maintain is generated well (some price based on total cost to build), it should scale well over map size as well as game time. The longer you play, the more you advance your economy, the more ships you can have. The more you cram into a ship, the more it costs, and the less total number of that ship design you can afford to keep. That's seems reasonable and shouldn't ruin any fun.

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.

This sounds like a reasonable compromise to me, it doesn't create alot of extra micromanagement but is certainly more interesting (dare I say realistic) than the magical mystery upgrades of GC1. Depending on how large fleets will become in GC2, sending ships manually to a spacedock could be a chore, but a simple "upgrade this one right here" option cuts out most of the tedious work.

My only question there is, will a ship be instantly upgraded (once the upgrade is commissioned), or will it be 'out of commission' for a few turns while refitting? Instant upgrade would be easier to manage, but it would involve the ship's Magician working another magic trick.

When returning to a space dock could take months or years and the lives of your crew are at stake, you have to be able to do more massive upgrades than todays ships need. This also means, in many cases, they would have to fabricate the materials where they are.

1. What difference does it make whether you send your single ship-to-be-refitted back to the shipyard, or you send all the stuff from the shipyard to the ship-to-be-refitted? It seems sending the single shipt to the shipyard would be astronomically more efficient.

2. Regarding the possibility of procuring the materials in deep space, this seems highly improbable, unless an entire task force of industrial ships are present in your fleet. You'd need huge capital ships capable of mining and refining, as well as factory ships capable of producing the necessary components. Not to mention a mobile shipyard capable of framing up the ship as the refit takes place. At this point, you essentially have a self-sufficient, mobile colony, which would have to be highly expensive to build out - not impossible mind you - but very expensive. Once built, it should be able to produce enough materials to maintain a fleet of a certain size, depending on the ratio of industrial capacity to ships being maintained in the fleet. In any battle, such industrial ships would be prime targets, as they should be weakly armed and armored since their primary role is industrial output. This idea is plausible, but a civilization should have the economic wherewithall and industrial capacity to buildout and deploy only a small handful of these industrial task forces.

Bringing this all back to ship numbers in GC2, again, I would prefer that the maintenance cost for ships in GC2 be fairly high so that the game doesn't end up with civilizations wielding thousands of ships. Not only would having huge numbers of ships diminish the cool factor you feel when you deploy a new ship, but it would also seem to be leading down the dark path of micromanagement hell. A smaller number of ships should be economically feasible, while also allowing the full array strategic options. Personally, I feel this number is in the ballpark of the low hundreds - I prefer around 100. Again, not a hard limit, but that number could be the number of ships that your civilization could support without going into debt, after your highest level of economic/industrial output has been researched. Obviously you could run deficity in the short term if you needed a larger fleet, provided you had the available funds.

Running a deficity to temporarily to support a larger fleet than you could normally afford brings up the question of mothballing ships for later use. They would still cost a little bit of money to keep them maintained, but it would be far more economical than paying for active ships.

And of course, having mothballed fleets could lead to diplomatic negotiations about arms control, etc, which could be kind of fun. For example, Civ A, who you've had strained relations with, says, "Look, let's east tensions between our two civilizations. If you scrap 20 of your class-D destroyers, we'll scrap 12 of our class-C cruisers". Think of the START arms control agreements.

Just some ideas.

Guys, my point was not regarding the inability of nanomachines to alter molecules, but the ability of them being able to produce heavier atoms needed in higher technology. For example, star ship fuel would likely need some very heavy atoms, like radioactives, in order to operate (or anti-matter.) Neither is in much abundance in general human waste, or anywhere in the universe. Such things need to be made synthetically in a lab using nuclear reactions or found in naturally occurring phonomena that don't occur just anywhere. Also, elements like iron,while they are found in human waste, would be found in very small quantities. Certainly not enough to rebuild a block of armor for a ship, and would likely be needed for recycling into more food for the crew as the human body needs such elements returned to it.

...You will hit choose "Upgrade ship" for an individual ship (in your influence)...

Whether the ship is located inside space under your influence or not is beside the point. The point being that unless the ship physically travels to a facility capable of performing the refit, then the only other logical explanation is that all of the refit components are carried via "refit fleet" out to the ship, which is totally nonsensical.

And I don't buy the whole, "I can just build everything I need right here" explanation. If that's how the game's going to work, then why bother with building ships at shipyards either? Heck, why bother with planets? We could just all have nomadic civilizations like flotsam floating amonst the stars.

Zippo342,

You can find literally tons of iron in just a few asteriods. If current science is correct, there is plenty of these to find everywhere, including between stars. So you can locate a handy bit of tossed out material, containing whatever you need (if basic elements or composites of such), pull up to it, harvest it, and process it. It's not something we will be doing soon, but it is something on NASA's actual projections and planning out at the 50 to 75 years down the road... when we are first leaving this solar system.

I hesitate to go as far as you. Under the science-fantasy that is the GC universe and its framework, I do not see a reason that if they start off making their fuel in huge refineries (or labs) planet side, that they cannot refine and minaturize that over their advancing technology so that it is ultimately small enough to put onto a military ship as standard equipment. Perhaps early in the game, perhaps late. Whatever amuses Brad.

Also, higher tech doesn't necessarily need to utilize dense/heavy exotics. Indeed, most of our current material and power tech breakthroughs is coming out of simple and stable isotypes of carbon and silicon. If you have a few layers of twisted carbon nanotubes under your ship's skin, not only do you have an good insulator, but it could act as gigantic batteries. There are some simple blends of material that make excellent photocells. By using such a simple blend of material, you could be trapping some amount of the EM radiation that streams past your ship into those batteries. If you are just letting your ship idle, you could deploy huge sails of that blend of material to charge up your ship's batteries. So plenty of free power... if you aren't going anywhere or you are not changing direction for a long period of time. And since its made of trivially common material, if your power sails get torn, you just locate some free floating material (such as ejected asteriods, comets, planets), harvest what you need, and make more.

For high power demans (spike times), then perhaps the ship runs a deutrium fusion reactor. Fun thing with those basic isotypes is that even they are relatively common in our astronomical surveys. So there are sources for such, easy for FTL ships to reach. Note that. Not easy for us as we are stuck in the mud or toilet bowl racing, but for a race that can traverse the vast distances between stars in a few mere weeks, easy in reach for them.

That's the danger of using too much reality in coloring the GC framework. It isn't any more science based then Tolkien's LotR. It's just got a few labels that we see as belonging to a particular narrow bit of science. We can not truly conceive what tech near the transendance threshold would be like. Or what science has waiting for us behind actual transmutation of matter. That's the advantage a fantasy-history game like Civ has over a SF game... we have some knowledge of how we got to this point. But we don't know the path to take to get to what we want long term, technologically speaking. Which is why I keep saying: it's the fun of the game that matters. Although talking about what could be, according to the tech/framework of GC can sometimes be almost as fun as playing the game.