Maintenance Formula
 

Does anyone know the formula for calculating ship maintenance cost?

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

There's a setting in the Settings.txt file that lets you set the ship maintenance cost percentage. Unfortunately, it may not be working...

The default is 25% of the ship's original cost, per turn. I tried to adjust this to 10%, but the game still seemed to be working off the 25% figure. (Last week sometime I posted a message about this is some detail; you can still find the post if you look back a ways.).

The other factor in the maintenance cost is that you can use racial points to raise/lower your maintenance. It appears that if you pick a 10% maintenance reduction, the total maintenance percentage is reduced by 10% of the base percentage. So instead of 25% maintenance, you would have 22.5% maintenance cost.

As a side note - isn't that maintenace cost horrible? The 25% a turn means that maintenance costs for a ship add up to 250% of its build cost per year. If you won't need a ship for more than 4 turns, it's cheaper to scrap it and build a new one when you need it!

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Lintman:

I believe the Upkeep amount is so high as a play balance mechanism. Personally, I think its about right. Operating a fleet is a VERY expensive operation TODAY. Who knows what the future will bring. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

That said, do you have problems in your games with resources? I always seem to have resources falling out my ears. I have custom data set in which I reduced the amount of resources that facilities produce AND I've upped the cost on many ship components and hulls. Even at that, I find that I am usually hovering around the 50k mark in all three resources.

I just rarely need to maintain a large fleet. The AI tends to be extremely passive and treaty happy. By the time it starts getting uppity, my Tech levels are so far ahead that I usually need very few ships to overpower them.

If the AI was more aggressive, it might force me to keep a larger fleet in being and thus slow my exponential growth. I am currently fiddling with the AI to accomplish just that.

Talenn

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Lint,

2 suggestions, 1) mothball ships when not in use to reduce maintaince. 2) in the begining of the game you should build storage facilities. SInce you hardly use all the production in the first turns build up your reserve.



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Seawolf on the prowl

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Heh. I must have a more violent, impatient playing style -- involving both rapid expansion and peace through superior firepower. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif If, say, you try to colonize one planet per turn (on average), and meanwhile try to build them all up, and then add ships for patrolling your borders, finding systems to colonize, and removing threats in the form of neighbors... it gets expensive. I've been spending just about every Last mineral on building facilities. I do need to scrap some of the older mining ships, 'tho.

In my present game (the one in which by sheer luck I got all three colony techs very VERY quickly) my construction expenses are pretty obscene, exacerbated by the fact that I put points into construction rate, and that I've got multiple conquered planets to population (had been fighting for most of the game, including turn 1. Conquered something like 2 neutrals, plus the Terrans, the Hive, the Xiloti (sp?), and the Pindons (sp?) so far, at least, of which the Terrans and the Xiloti both surrendered only very recently. These races were also quite fond of mines, meaning that a decent number of minesweepers was needed to make sure that my warships weren't obliterated on going through warp points.

In the meantime, I've also been pushing hard on research (working towards *good* phased shields, dreadnoughts, quantum engines and what-not), and trying to ramp up intelligence (because it'd be a shame if an AI managed to capture one of my prize CAs -- I've had the BC and BB techs for quite some time but haven't seen fit to build one yet; am waiting to get better tech to put in 'em). I could probably put together a nasty carrier, but I'm waiting for heavy carriers and better cargo tech. Why settle for only ~120 Large Rocket-Pod III Fighters? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

(Hey. It's in character -- given that my portrait is of Vader, and the Empire wasn't known for tiny fleets of small ships. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif )

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

I agree it's a play balance issue, but given my love for large fleet clashes, it makes that a bit tough. I also think it hurts the AI sometimes (see below).

I also agree that real-life fleet costs are expensive, but it couldn't be 250% a year! The would imply that a $20 million jet would cost $50 million a year to maintain, or a $500 million aricraft carrier would cost $1.25 billion/year!

I'm not really hurting for resources, and am able normally able to keep 50K+ of reserves, while doing heavy colony expansion/development. But I'm in a peaceful mode with almost no fleet to speak of. But once I start putting together a few decent fleets (not unreasonable for an empire with 30-40 planets in 20+ systems (I'm playing a huge 255 system map)), my production and expansion capacity will go to nil.

That's really not that bad a thing for me; I almost expect it, but I think it hurts the AI a lot. I think in a game like mine where there is a long period of buildup before contact and war, the AI drains a lot of its resources building and supporting ships that goes mostly unused and become obsolete before they're needed. If the maintenance was less, it could have used those resources to expand and research and maybe it wouldn't have gotten so far behind.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

LintMan:

Hehe...yes, well, Carriers are probably close to that in terms of operation costs. Also remember that the maintenance costs also include the whole support infrastructure (planetside) that having a fleet would entail. I just view these costs as abstracted into the cost of the individual ships.

I also agree with your AI issues. But I dont see how they can be altered easily. I think the best tweak would be to FORCE the player to spend resources on fleets by having more hostile AIs which would actually use their fleets to harass and annoy the players.

Overall, I'd like to see something like the AI in 'Imperialism II' where you did NOT want to be perceived as the weakest player (militarily). Everyone and their mother declared war on the weaker powers. The AI in SE4 is too rooted on the SCORE. A high score will generally keep the AI at bay (until Mega-Evil level), but a high score is NOT necessarily an indication of military power. I've played games where I was in 1st or 2nd place the whole game with barely a Scout or two for defense for the first 100+ turns.

To me, showing a strong econ and weak military should be a red flag for the AI to attack, attack, attack! These are empires that are RIPE for conquest. Forcing an expanding player to constantly be on guard would go a LONG way to making the game far more challenging IMO.

So, I guess my suggestion would be to more heavily weight the score based on ships and units rather than on raw CPs and RPs. That and even presence on the borders should be accounted for IMO. A strong empire with a weak border should be viewed as a potential target as well IMO.

Talenn

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

What I would like is have the prototype cost 3 times as much for first ship built. Make shipyards MUCH more expensive and have ships take a minimum of a year to build. Allow 6 month build time with double cost. Make ship yards have a build tonnage limit per turn, like a shipyard can build up to 500k tons but still only make 10% any ship construction on any turn. This would allow several smaller ships to be under construction at one time a one larger ship or a combination. example,
3 ships at 100k tons and 1 ship at 200k would have 10k tons built on each small ship and 20k tons built on the larger ship each turn.
If you only had one 100k ton ship in the ship yard then you waste 400k worth of build space , and the ship still takes a year to build.

Make the players move resources from systems without shipyards to systems with them by frieghter. The spaceport would just collect all the stuff on one planet in the system so you wouldnt have to visit each planet.
This would open up the ability to do raids on shipping to destroy or capture.

[This message has been edited by sapperland (edited 21 November 2000).]

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Talenn, I think that's a good idea about the AI using military strength rather than score as a decision whether to attack. (One thing though about a strong econ/weak military as being a prime target for attack... I think that was a key factor in Japan's decision to attack the US in WWII - perhaps not the best idea in the long run!)

But does the AI know what the military strength of its neighbors is? Intelligence is quite expensive to get and it risks pissing off your neighbors.

Also, a more agressive AI doesn't help in the situation I'm in. In my jumbo galaxy, there are 8 AI players plus myself, giving huge amounts of time for expansion before even encountering one other race. I'm not an expert player, but by the time I met another race, I already had a very substantial lead over them in tech, economy, population, and planets. I didn't have a single ship with weapons on it built yet, nor any minefields, platforms or setellites. I'm confident though that if the AI went on the offsensive immediately upon discovering me, the fat cat
with no military, I would be able to quickly ramp up my war machine in defense without losing more than a few outlying colonies.

Military aggressiveness would only work if it hit me early on to have slowed me down, or if it was coming from an empire as strong as mine research and economy wise.

Of course, the solution in future games will be to fill it with more players so I will be slowed down, but that doesn't fix the fact that the AI doesn't do peacetime buildup very well.

Well, what would fix this? Well, the AI needs some tweaking to recognize the likely long term peacetime situtation, and go balls-out expansion. And it needs to be smarter about exporting population to the colonized worlds, and building up research. It should build more base space yards so it has the production capacity to quickly produce some defense if needed.

But also, I think if fleet maintenance was less, it would help things a bit even without the above tweaks. It would be nice if the AI (or a player for that matter) could build some ships for defense without needing to pay the high costs.

Some thoughts:

- What if the maintenance cost was lower for the first number of ships, and then grew as the number of ships exceded a certain amount (say, more ships than you have colonies or space yards).

- Maybe maintenance could be reduced for ships that are "local" to you (ie: ships in a system with a colony owned by you and having a spaceport), so ships that are on defense in your systems would cost less to operate than those in a distant campaign.

- Or maybe a variant of something like in Alpha Centauri, where the further ships were from a "headquarters" the more ineffiency there would be and thus the more they would cost to operate. The headquarters would be an expensive facilty that could be built nearer to the action to cut down those costs.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Lintman:

Yes, the Japan/US war in the Pacific didnt end too well for Japan, but the capacity for large scale annihilation of the enemy's industry didnt exist yet. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

I'm not sure if the AI knows your military or not (they say it doesnt cheat, so I'm inclined to say 'no'). However many of it's decision making algorithms are based on a 'score comparison' between the empires, so it at least knows that much.

Maybe two different 'scores' should be kept with a one beign heavily weighted on military. Then the AI could use 1 or the other or both scores in determining its policies? I'm just thinking out loud here...

I've made some tweaks to the AI and when playing on 'Hard' with 'Low Bonus' I've seen it do some really nice buildups. The problems arise in that they fail to inhibit the player build-ups as well. Still, I'm fairly pleased with my current AI in terms of expansion. I just wish I could figure out how to make it more hostile.

Talenn

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Just a note on maintenance cost vs procurement cost. These figures come from "How to Make War" by James F. Dunnigan. The info on naval forces is presented in a way that I can't readily relate the two costs, but here are the figures for a US mechanized infantry division:

Cost to raise: $4519 million
Cost per DAY in combat: $75 million

This means translates to 50% maintenence per turn, in SE4 terms.

Of course that is in combat, with full consumption of fuel, ammo, and incidental loss of equipment, plus combat loses. Still, it means the SE4 maintenance percentage is not unreasonable.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Against a "fat cat" empire without much military (which might be guesstimated based on, say, the number of shipyards observed, the number of ships/stations, total systems... note that if the AI manages to get a human player to agree to a Partnership, a LOT of information flows both ways), aggressive use of intelligence ops might be extremely nasty.

I'm thinking, in particular, of economic disruption, crew insurrection (of the few ships that *are* there), and puppet political parties; even a smaller (population-wise) empire can have an advantage on intelligence points, and that advantage can be used as a weapon anywhere in the target's empire. For instance, it's possible to target homeworlds first with puppet political parties as long as you have line-of-sight to them, which you will if there's a partnership (think backstabbing). The fewer but higher-tech warships you have, the greater the impact of a captured ship, because you have fewer *other* ships with which to stop its rampage. And it's hard to put down a riot without a fleet, and hard to build a fleet when your colonies are are rioting.)

Likewise, if you send a high-tech ship to put 'em down, and they capture and analyze it, they've just gotten free tech upgrades... Ouch.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Ships cost 25%/turn
Bases cost 12.5%/turn

So what do mines, weapon Platforms and satellites cost per turn?

Do frieghters cost the same as war ships per turn?

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

So what do mines, weapon Platforms and satellites cost per turn? They have no maintenance costs. But they also cannot be upgraded. They are one time purchases.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Given how potent Mines and Fighters are in the game at the moment, I am VERY inclined to want to give them at least some residual maintenance cost...maybe only 5-10% or so.

I can just easily envision games where everyone goes defensive and hoards Mines and Fighters (and Sats, but I've found them less useful than the other two especially as the game goes on). Trying to attack into clouds of Fighters and Mines with Ships is NOT a cost-effective way of doing business, IMO. So, everything else equal, the game will stagnate.

Also, since Fighters can easily challenge Ships in raw power (once massed), they should at least cost SOMETHING in keep going. Otherwise they can eventually just outnumber Ships by such a huge margin that Ships wont work anymore. This is especially true now that Fighters can MOVE within a system on their own. Personally, I think this is a bad thing. Now it is very possible to defend a system soley with PILES of Fighters and pay nothing for upkeep. A player who does not research Fighters is going to be at a HUGE disadvantage. I really hate to see people forced into certain techs and styles. It destroys some of the diversity of the game and the tech tree.

Another possible alternative would be to allow Fighters to only be produced at SpaceYards (ala SE3). This would at least prevent players from hoarding Fighters on every world that has nothing better to do. As it is now, I have played games where 10+ Worlds are all cranking them out. There is NO WAY that a player using Ships can keep up with that...no way. And whats worse, the more Ships you build, the harder it becomes whereas Fighters dont share that disadvantage.

For now, I've upped the cost of the Fighter 'Hulls' a bit to 1) slow down the rate of production and 2) give players some pause about how much they want to spend on Fighters.

Given that Fighters became exponentially more powerful in 1.11, I'd like to see them share some of the costs associated with their capabilities. For the Record, in 1.11, Fighters became FAR more difficult to target (almost impossible for some weapons), they became more resiliant (bug fix, and shields GREATLY increased), and Point Defenses took a pretty healthy dive in capability. All added together, I think its overcorrecting for a unit that is so cheap to mass and keep.

Perhaps I am way off base here, but I am still constantly paranoid about things that Last forever with no ongoing cost. Usually games that have items like that eventually stagnate as players figure it out and start going hardcore in that direction. The good news is that with SE4 being so customizable, any number of things can be changed to make Fighters seem less attractive. But for me, I'd simply like to see them have a small upkeep.

Thanx,
Talenn

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

A few decent ships (CA -> BB) with PD V's (still fairly cheap research), Combat Sensors or Talisman, and a base +20% experience (Adv. Military Science training facilities) should be able to thrash a large number of fighters. PDC V + Sensor III + Experience => +130% to hit, versus a max of -110% def (small fighter -80%, small ECM III -30%), and the fighters have to get w/n 3 IIRC in order for any of their weapons to be in range.

FWIW, when I did my 2 HC + 2 DN + 224 HvFtrs versus 8 DNs, none of the DNs was heavily PD (no more than 4 each), and still most of the fighters were destroyed even when I controlled the fighters, waited until all had been launched, and swarmed them at the correct distance (i.e. so they hadn't been shot at until the same turn they attacked, and that was by PD). If two or three of the DNs used the remaining weapon space for PDs, that might have been enough to tilt the balance. It would have also bought, for most purposes, near-immunity to missiles.

They should still require maintenance, given that they need to be fueled, armed, trained with (they require life support and cockpit, so these aren't remote-controlled fighters. Might be an interesting component -- saves space, perhaps allows some experience to be accrued by carrier and used by fighters, but expensive), but they're not superweapons.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Taqwus:

No, I didnt mean to imply that they were 'super-weapons'. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif BUT they ARE the most COST EFFECTIVE weapons (over time) I've seen so far. Building and maintaining 8 DNs with all the trimmings you mentioned will be FAR more expensive than the Fighter Task Force in your example.

And even at that, you only managed those results when you played the battle tactically, yes? Or was it the other way around? I dont remember. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Another thing to consider is that 224 Fighters could easily be 2240 Fighters if the game goes on long enough. I doubt any realistic game would be able to field 80 DNs to compete. Obviously, the 'unit limit' will prevent 2240 fighters, but that feels extremely artificial to me as a way to keep them in check.

Overall, I think the balance between Ships and Fighters is OK for the cost. But over time, it quickly becomes obvious that using Fighters to defend is FAR more efficient than using Ships. And I for one, prefer the Ship to play the deciding role in games with Fighters being a support arm. Dont get me wrong, I LIKE Fighters in my game, but not in the obscene quantities that having no upkeep will allow.

Talenn

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Another way to control excess fighters would be to require fighter bays to launch them, disallow storage of fighters in any other component type as planetary cargo, and make them remember the base from which they took off so that no other fighters could land there while they are gone. To base fighters on a planet, you'd have to build WP's with fighter bays. Landed fighters could still be transfered between their base and another base with sufficient unused capacity in the same sector, by means of cargo tranfer. Having to build the infrastructure to support them before you build the fighters themselves should cut down on the numbers. They could go one further and disallow fighter bays in WP's, so that you'd need to put your fixed defense fighter bays in bases (on which you must pay maintenence). All this would mean a code change in a future patch, though, beyond what we could do ourselves with the text files.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

I actually increased the size of my fighters to make them fit more with my play style (I'm big on fighters), but the bigger you are the more you cost... in effect I made them slightly bigger, but less effective to produce (& even my large fighters are still no match for a Escort)... actually I have made quite a few PD V escorts for anti-fighter purposes...

If you plan on making fighters have maintenance like ships then I would hope you'd give them XP... As it is I'd love an elite fighter squad... But fighters should only cost maintenance when 'in use' with a very minor (very very, due to few if any uses to cause wear & tear) cost to maintain when just sittign there... I agree with one of the guys below when he suggested fleets at home use less resources in maintenance... Oh another way to give fighters XP would be to consider them extensions of the carrier, though this ides has it's ups & downs...

All in all I do think fighters should have maintance when in active duty or when on a active carrier (aka not sitting at a resupply point), but that they should be figured into the general maintenance cost of the item holding them (fighters away shouldn't use maintenance until they return)... This makes logical sense as it's more realistic in the cost of keeping so many fighters going...

Oh btw my bigest fighters (45k, 4 Meson III, 1 Rocket III, 120 pts shields) in Groups of 50 still get losses of 10 units per 2 cruisers (1 PD V per ship, remaining guns Anti-Protons) in combat, so I don't think fighters are that much of a threat to mid sized or larger vehicles... As is I can build maybe 6 large fighters per turn, I could build a crusier in 2... I need at least 12 fighters to have a even chance (figure I strike first)... that seems pretty even... maybe later on when you use Master Comp 3's & Quantum reactors your Cruiser costs would be worse, but my fighters above cost almost 1000 in minerals to build which means things are pretty darn even...

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

If you put a single piece of emissive armour III on your ships, they become immune to all fighter weapons other than small antimatter torpedoes, small shard cannons, and rocket pods. That's one good way of dealing with them.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Fill a ship with point defence wipe out a lot of fighters or even find a race that uses missles a lot. After a few fights the ship become legendary from experience because they killed a lot of seekers or units. Refit them to carry your best beam weapon then you have a killer ship. I wonder if this was as intended? I think point defence since it already gets a bonus to hit probably shouldn't up the ships experience quite as much as a beam weapon would.

I got a lot of legendary ships this way just because I have been fighting a lot of fighters and seekers since the full game came out. With the experience bonus these ships really fight well. So bring on your fighters it will only make my ships tougher to beat.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Tomgs, that sounds very much like an exploit of the game engine imo. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif But still, if it works, use it. But as you say, either pdc's shouldn't up the experience so much or ships should lose some experience when retrofitted based on what the new components are compared to the old ones.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

I agree with the others who state that fighters should have a maintanence cost. If you look at current day fighter planes, they require constant maintanence and the pilots neet constant practice, both of which are considerable expenses for their militaries.

Having units free of maintenance encourges players to build as many as they can until they approach their limit. Then they have to start dismantling them to replace them with better models. As players learn how to optimize the game, this will become a big advantage for micromanagement players (those without families or other persuits in life).

How about facilities? They are absolotely free of maintainace. You can build a research lab and never have to pay another resource to keep it going. If they were to add maintainace for these, they would have to adjust the numbers a bit to keep expensive facilities like Monoliths cost effective.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Yes, the Point Defenses earning experience definately seems like a gaff to me. I have PD ships at +15% in the first few turns of a war simply by attacking planets armed missile WPs. I think its somewhat silly and I think its probably more of an oversight than a planned thing.

I'd hesitate to call it a 'bug', but I wouldnt be surprised if it went away at some point. Personally, I'd like to see it go, but its not a major issue.

On the issue of Emissive Armor...well, I already dropped it from my tech set in the standard form. I found it quite silly that such a low level and attainable tech can completely nullify Fighters which require far more in terms of research to get rolling. Also, the who concept of adding 1 point of EmArmor and your whole ship is protected didnt sit right.

Was there any other use to EmArmor that I may have missed OTHER than to negate Fighters? I havent seen many Ship weapons that do less than even the 30 level. The Armor does not appear to be culmulative with itself. Anyone?

For my set, I simply made the upper level armors give a better size/damage resistance ratio at an increasing cost in resources. I'm fairly pleased with it and players are about evenly split between the 'armor route' and the 'shield route' in our games. I see reasons and benefits to both schools and thats what I prefer...tradeoffs and decisions.

Anyways, back to Fighters...Commander G echoed my concerns...once people figure out the mechanics, they will realize that until the very high techs, Ships are NOT cost effective when dealing with the maintenance free defenses. IMO, nearly EVERYTHING needs a residual upkeep cost. That way, you need to build to expand and expand to build. FWIW, I feel that maybe 5% for Fighters, 2-3% for Satellites and Mines and MAYBE a 1-2% for Troops, although they are so limited on their own and take up space so its prolly not a necessity. I also kind of like the idea of Research Labs costing some residual amount to runn as well. Maybe a small (preset) upkeep on them as well would give pause to people dropping 20 of them on a huge world while ignoring economic expansion.

Talenn

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

I agree, fighters and weapon platforms need a small upkeep. Not so sure about sats and mines though as they are strictly drop and forget. Well, the mines anyway. Maybe give them a lifespan? After x years there is y chance sat/mine won't work. I don't think troops need much of an upkeep as they tend to die like flies when invading anyway. At least in the demo they do.

Anyway, if fighters and weapon platforms get upkeep we should be able to retrofit and scrap them. I want to be able to scrap all units except mines anyway, regardless of upkeep. If we get to retrofit them the can't cost more than original design value shoould be set higher than for ships. ie the difference in cost allowed is lower. Makes sense?

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

or... for mines, give them a low supply usage, then set values on how much supplies they carry. over time, they use up there supplies and fail, even passing a message through the interface. this way, no major coding and it can be done right in the existing files with little tweaking. also, you could build a "supply storage" for mines so that they can Last longer...

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

I'm not sure about the need for upkeep. For all their various capabilities, mines, sats, and fighters are ultimately defensive weapons unless deployed by a fleet. You can deploy thousands of mines, but they won't bring the enemy empires to their knees.

The need for big, balanced fleets brings up the second problem with maintenance and resource use: minerals are king. How many of the rest of you research "resource manipulaiton" so you can turn radioactives and organics into minerals? 8)

Seems to me that ship maintenance ought to be tweaked so that the bulk of the maintenance costs come in organics and radioactives, and not minerals. Then you'd need minerals to build stuff, and organics/radioactives to maintain them. Perhaps the formula could work by taking the net cost of the ship (all three resources combined), and splitting up a given fraction of this as a per-turn cost, with the cost divided out as 10% minerals, 45% organics, 45% radioactives?

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

James Sterett :
"I'm not sure about the need for upkeep. For all their various capabilities, mines, sats, and fighters are ultimately defensive weapons unless deployed by a fleet. You can deploy thousands of mines, but they won't bring the enemy empires to their knees."

Actually, I've been experimenting with using sats as weapons pods. Against the AI they have proven incredibly effective. In mid game I was using a Med Transport, 15 Cargo II and 5 Sat bay III's. It was capable of holding 30 Large Sats (A mix of seeker pods/Gun Pods. Those 30 Sats between them had 3300KT of storage available (after the bridge) for weapons and gear. This ship took down a small fleet consisting of a Cruiser, BC and BB. No damage, no lost pods. With the exception of Warp point assaults, I never encountered a situation where I couldn't get most (if not all) of the pods deployed before engagement. Against fixed installations they are even more effective: Duck inside missile range, drop a set of 5 seeker pods, and duck away again. The enemy missles can't target your pods, and they just pound the defenses into scrap.
Another advantage of this technique is that it allows you to divide up the building of a ship across multiple build queues. You only need one shipyard to produce the ship, while even domed colonies can produce the pods.
Keep in mind that a similar amount of firepower in conventional ships (say in battleships) requires the maintenance on 4 to 5 800KT ships and their components. The weapons pods in this tactic though are maintenance free. So you are only paying maintenance on the ship, with 15x200min to build the cargo bays, and 5x100min for the Sat bays.
I'd never consider this trick against humans, but the AI sure doesn't like it http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Seems to me one of the simpler cures here would be to let seekers target sats. 8) This would prevent the "drop it off in bombardment range" problem.

However, from a wider perspective, should we change game mechanics to knock out tactics that work well against the AI but not against a human? I'd think that's a situation where the underlying answer is to improve the AI.

If sats/mines/fighters become cost-ineffective, then they never get built, and the system is less rich. As it stands, they *are* cost-effective, but they also have some serious limitations. A number of people have commented on the ease of killing satellites and fighters if you have point defence (which, bein useless against ships, put the designer into a tradeoff decision at some level - a Good Thing). All these weapons need help to get into a system other than the one they were built in, which severely limits their flexibility. Yes, you can get away with your sat carrier against the AI - but it's a fragile system. As a fleet support ship it would fare much better, and seem far less anomalous.

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by James Sterrett:
[b]Seems to me one of the simpler cures here would be to let seekers target sats. 8) This would prevent the "drop it off in bombardment range" problem.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, I see no problem with the introduction of "AFHAWK" systems (seeking point defense systems). These would help balance the weapons pod concept (which I agree, should not be so overpowering against the AI). On the other hand, now you're looking at using these systems as "one shot" systems. I.E. they will get off their missile salvo, prior to getting pounded by incoming light seekers. If you were then to introduce single shot seeker components, you get very close to both the Missile pod idea from the Honor Harrington novels, as well as the External Ordnance racks from the Starfire novels by Weber and White.
The question becomes one of balance -
Given a seeker weapon that can target anything - How much should they mass, what dam, what reload rate will keep them in balance (I.E. not destroy the effectiveness of fighter Groups). Apply that to single shot pods as well - Keeping damage/range the same as the equivalent level CSM, while upping reload to 30, how big should they be.

The trade off with single shots is - how much longterm fire power am I willing to give up for a larger initial punch.

A regular CSM I does 60 dam every 3 turns. By making the reload time 30 on SS CSM I, you've reduced longterm firepower per launcher by 10. If you were to make them mass 15kt, you've now given them a longterm dam/kt of 30% of a CSM, for the advantage of 3.333 times the initial firepower. Does this sound fairly balanced? Which way would you adjust the mass of the launcher?

SDK

Re: Maintenance Formula
 

Not sure of the entire answer to your questions. 8)

I'd be happy to let seekers go after sat in part because I assume sats do not maneuver much, if at all. (Or at any rate that's a Handwavium means of explaining why the seekers can take on sats but not fighters).

Fighters use weapons of a smaller class than the sats do; allowing the sats to be immune to weapons that they can themselves fire creates an assymetry that you described how to exploit. IMO it would be better if that particular assymetry wasn't there.

I don't find the battle pods concept a bad one for the game in principle, given its limitations (lack of strategic and tactical flexibility, compared to a ship - but cheaper! Humans can make you pay for using this tactic, and if the AI paid more attention to warp point defences, it might too. 8)