Toning down the resources requirements.
 

I don't like the minerals requirements for the game, it's too excessive, difficult to get any kind of a decent sized fleet going unless you colonize and mine huge numbers of colonies. Is there a way to tone down the maint. cost values? I had a search the other night and couldn't find anything. I know how to turn down the initial minerals cost on things, but not the maintenance cost.
(and how is that calculated?)

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

Look for this line in the settings.txt file:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Empire Starting Percent Maint Cost := 25<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Drop that number. Make sure if this is a multiplayer game that everybody has the same settings though.

Geoschmo

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gavin:
I don't like the minerals requirements for the game, it's too excessive, difficult to get any kind of a decent sized fleet going unless you colonize and mine huge numbers of colonies. Is there a way to tone down the maint. cost values? I had a search the other night and couldn't find anything. I know how to turn down the initial minerals cost on things, but not the maintenance cost.
(and how is that calculated?)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Besides changing the single setting in settings.txt for maintenance costs, you can also increase the mining ability of mineral extraction facilities or edit components.txt to decrease the minerals costs of various components. There is lots and lots of room for customization of the game.

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

Thanks for the ideas, guys! I was on the wrong track I guess, looking for a 'maintenance cost' for various things, and it's actually 25% of the completed ship's total cost (which is rude, we never went above 10% in our old pen and paper galactic strategy games)

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

I reccommend using the bases' maintenance reduction ability.

Copy that to the ships, and set it to whatever you feel like.
-60% to maintenance will give you your "10% of build cost"

This way, you don't have to reduce the build cost, or affect the racial characteristics limits (reducing the starting %cost will affect racial traits such as "maintenance reduction")

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

While we are on the subject of maintenance, is there any way to give mothballed ships a small maintenance cost?

Without it, it seems like its a very easy way to store minerals; just build em, mothball and scrap at a later date.

Repo Man

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

Mothballed ships are hardcoded for no maintenance.

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.

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

Or choose 'Engineer' culture (the only culture with a maintenance bonus, IIRC) and for a further bonus, spend race points on maintenance.

Of course, you can't make a mainentance-free monster race anymore... but you can still lower it.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Of course, you can't make a mainentance-free monster race anymore... but you can still lower it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>You can, but only by adding a racial trait, with new hulls or components.

Re: Toning down the resources requirements.
 

Actually the Merchant trait (the best I think) has a 5% maintenance reduction, making them very strong...I always buy up maintenance to 110%, but every 1% after that costs 200 racial points, so the merchant trait becomes real valuable!

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.
 

&gt;&gt;Mothballed ships are hardcoded for no maintenance.

Figured as much. Oh well.

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