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.

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

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

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)

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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.

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 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live in the age of interchangable parts, and many ships use the same kinds of parts, but if you have a model with an outdated engine, few other ships will have that engine, so engines for this ship are special order.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.

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.

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 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.

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...