Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

I like changing the requirements for some components to include more organics and radioactives to make them worthwhile and keeping a cap on those darn mineral expenses!

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"Reality is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

>>Mothballed ships are hardcoded for no maintenance.

Figured as much. Oh well.

>>Sure, you store minerals, but at a hefty >>price: scrapping is not typically >>efficient, and even with the scrapper >>facilities, you're losing a big chuck of >>the investment.

True, but if you have maxed out on mineral storage anyway, all the minerals would be lost. Even 20% is better than nothing.

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

I've toyed with changing mineral requirements now and then.

Regarding the 25% maint. cost, I find thats a little high, since the cost is per turn, and each turn is 1/10 of a year. That translates to 250% of original cost per year. We are not simply talking currency, but new minerals.

I haven't playtested this at all, but since I like the concept of finite minerals, I've increased dramaticly the amount of minerals per planet. A high end of 80,000,000 tons works for non homeworlds. Homeworlds over 40 million tons coupled seem to cause the game to crash.

I don't know what good numbers are, but I guess it depends on the kind of game you are looking for, knowing that your raw materials will eventually will run out kind of works for me.

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>True, but if you have maxed out on mineral storage anyway, all the minerals would be lost. Even 20% is better than nothing.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I say, If you're losing resources to storage overflow, you're not building enough http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.
Keep building more ships, and once your budget is down to only slight resource overflows, send all your next newly built ships into mothballs.
Don't scrap the ships, but keep them reasonably up-to-date, and unmothball them for wartime.
It saves you time and money when you've got to replace war losses. When you unmothball, ships, you spend 25% of the normal build cost (125% in total, but 25% when you need the ship), plus you can "rush build" as many new ships as you want in one turn.