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New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

Economies of Scale Mod v1.1.0

This mod is inspired by an idea posted by Erax and Suicide Junkie on the Shrapnel forums that he suggested to improve realism in SE4 and balance out smaller vs. larger ships. The idea was this: ship strength stays fairly linear in proportion to size, but cost increases as the square of the size, representing the infrastructure necessary to construct large vessels, while maintenance increases as the square root of the size.

[ August 03, 2003, 22:46: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

*clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap*

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

What the... Narf registered five months ago and he has more Posts than me? SPAMMER! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

(So, you like it or something? Shocked at the cost of those starbases? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

was wondering how long it would be before someone made that joke. and i'm not a spammer. each and every single one of my Posts has a...nah, who am i trying to kid? i post jokes. i post a lot of jokes.

didn't look at it, just wanted to congratulate you on all your hard work. seemed like the thing to do.

ok, now i did.

the escort doesn't have a cost, the square root of 200 is 40000, so what did you mean by square of size? and the square root of 200 is 14, so what do you mean by square root of size for maintanence?
your destroyer tonnage is 4500

ok, so your subtracting about 15 resources per kiloton? that still doesn't explain the cost of the frigate.

[ August 02, 2003, 09:47: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

Good job Ed. I have to download this and try it out.

The 'building cost increases with the square of the size' idea was mine, and to tell the truth I didn't give it a lot of deep thought when I wrote it, it just came off the top of my head. SJ came up with the maintenance cost progression.

Here's the original thread. See replies 5 and 6.

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

Quote:

Narf narfed:
the escort doesn't have a cost, the square root of 200 is 40000, so what did you mean by square of size? and the square root of 200 is 14, so what do you mean by square root of size for maintanence?

The cost of a ship is PROPORTIONAL to the square of the size, and the maintenance is proportional to the square root; if you divide all the hull costs (plus the 15 minerals per kT for components) or the maintenance costs by the squares/square roots of the sizes, you get approximately the same number (1/10 in the case of the build costs, 100 in the case of the maintenance costs). If the build/maintenance costs were EQUAL to the square/square root of the hull size, then all the ships would cost a whole lot to build but only pay a tiny amount of maintance http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Quote:

your destroyer tonnage is 4500

Oops, I'll go fix that! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/blush.gif

Quote:

ok, so your subtracting about 15 resources per kiloton? that still doesn't explain the cost of the frigate.

The frigate looks all right to me... the square of the hull size is 40,000, I divide that by 10 to get 4,000 for the "average" frigate's build cost, then subtract 3,000 for the components to get 1,000 for the hull cost...

Now one thing I am worried about is people building up huge fleets of small ships because they're so cheap to build, but mothballing them as soon as they're built so they don't have to pay the exorbitant maintenance costs... of course this would mean when they do need the ships they couldn't field very many of them at a time, but they'd have a near-infinite reserve to replenish their losses... maybe I should increase the cost to unmothball to make this harder to do (sure, this would hit big ships harder, but big ships are practically impossible to unmothball anyway - who wants to pay 20,000 minerals PER dreadnought brought Online! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif ) Or maybe I should ask for an option to disable mothballing in settings.txt http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

edit: sorry Erax, I didn't realize it was your idea too! I just uploaded v1.0.1 and I don't want to go to the trouble of doing it again so next time remind me and I'll put your name in! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif BTW, I doubt this mod will work well with the standard AI's, as they tend to build the biggest ships possible no matter what, so if you want to test it out you might want to get some other players... hey, I'd be glad to give it a try! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ August 02, 2003, 19:57: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

ok, now it makes much more sense.

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

the starbase is worth HOW MUCH???????? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif
seriously, arent the bigger ships are obsolete now? because a battleship can only do so much against 25 destroyers

[ August 03, 2003, 07:05: Message edited by: Taera ]

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

Those 25 destroyers cost a lot more to maintain than one Battleship though.

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

I did think about it some more, and the squared vs. square root does seem a bit excessive, so now the build costs only follow a 1.5 power progression - in the end, that means a starbase costs about 1/4 of what it did in previous Versions of the mod. Happy now Taera? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

That sounds great Ed. I don't think you should mess with the mothballing cost. The way it works now reaches that level of 'realism' that you were going after and I don't think the mothballed Armada of LC is going to break it.

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

Quote:

Originally posted by Taera:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif sure http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif i might even play it... how smart is the AI for it?

With no testing to back it up I would guess the AI would do allright. They might get tied up building some expensive ship designs, but the lower per Kt maintenance should help them out long term. The biggest effect will be they won't be able to react to changing situations in the game, but they don't really do that anyway.

Maybe move the space yards up in the AI research que to help clear up those long wait times for the ships being built.

Geoschmo

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

Quote:

Originally posted by Taera:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif sure http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif i might even play it... how smart is the AI for it?

I didn't make any AI files because I don't care for that sort of thing; the stock AI's probably wouldn't work all that well as they tend to build only the largest ship size they've researched.

We could start a PBEM game, or a PBW game if PBW comes back Online soon...

Quote:

Originally posted by Loser:
That sounds great Ed. I don't think you should mess with the mothballing cost. The way it works now reaches that level of 'realism' that you were going after and I don't think the mothballed Armada of LC is going to break it.

So you think I should set the unmothball cost back down to 20%? I don't know, I was really thinking of a mothballed armada of ES... mothballing such a small ship really takes away the whole balance since you get the huge fleets (albeit not for long) without having to pay maintenance on them!

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

As the prime purpose of mothballing is to save maintenace costs, the relation between mothballing and maintenence costs should remain the same, unless you want to create a difference to the normal game. If you do not want to change mothballing usage and effects, you should rescale the costs according to the new maintenance costs.

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

I am intrigued by this, but I must admit a bit confused. I haven't quite grasped the implications of the 1.5x/sqr root stuff. If I understand it correctly large ships are much more expensive to build per kt, but somewhat cheaper to maintain per Kt then small ships. Does that about sum it up?

If so then I don't really think it makes small ships any better, just more available. Since you haven't changed the mounts at all a player is still much better off with a fleet of large ships totaling X Kt then a fleet of small ships totalling X Kt. Actually in this mod the large ship fleet would be even better then in the stock game since they would be cheaper to maintain.

The only place the small ships would be useful is when trying to construct a war fleet in a hurry. The exponential build costs would make this extremely problematic for large ships.

If a player has time to prepare for war by building and mothballing ships they are much more advised to build and mothball large ships then small ships. I see no difference in this point between the stock game and this mod.

So I would have to agree with Roanon that unless you wish to change the nature of mothballing, which would be a separate issue then the mod to begin with, you should not increase but in fact decrease the mothball costs. Unfortunatly there is now way to decrease the mothball costs proprtionally to the size of the ship, which is what really needs to happen for this to be acurate.

From a game balance perspective I wouldn't worry about the mothballed fleet of escorts, because they aren't going to be very effective agasint the fleet of dreadnaughts attacking them anyway. What you need is a mothballed fleet of dreadnaughts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

[ August 04, 2003, 17:38: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

Mothballing lots of small ships would not be abusive, since you can build them extremely fast anyways.

Large ships are for long term peacetime buildup, but only good if you finish them before they're needed.

Medium sized ships give you the middle ground and can be your insurance while starting on the bigger ones.

Re: New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

actually in RW it is rather expensive to bring in "reserved" military equipment sometimes - or so i hear. makes sense game-wise too, to not make things too abusive.