Maintenance Question
 

The maintenance model is something I admit I've never fully understood. It defaults at 25%, unless you change the settings.txt line. Then you can change it with racial points or those crystal building things. So, supposing I set my race to +5 on the maint. scale, does that make maintenace 20%? Or something more complex? Same with the buildings?

Ok, next, there's the ability you can add that reduces/increases maintenance. Bases for example typically have a -50%. Now what?

My main concern is, is it possible to get a reverse maintenance cost? I want to add a null-entropy component to my mod, but I'm not sure exactly how to completely remove maintenance for a particular ship. I thought I would give the component a -100% maintenance cost, would that work? Or would it create the magical infinite resource source? Would it work the same for any race? Thanx.

Re: Maintenance Question
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I never have fully understood it either. But from what I gather set your race to a +5 then yes the maint. goes down to 20%. And so on up the scale. Up to I believe the max is +20 which will make you pay 5% maint.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I would recommend checking out the Monters from the DevnullMod. That is how they make their resources. They actually make money on maint. instead of losing money. This is done because they do not colonize planets and so they need a way to support themselves.

Re: Maintenance Question
 

IIRC, the game is hardcoded to allow a minimum maintenance of 5%. Suicide Junkie's Pirates and Nomads mod has a component that greatly reduces maintenance, but it is never totally zero -- probably to avoid someone totally ruling on multiplayer.

Re: Maintenance Question
 

The game is hard-coded to have a minimum maintenance from racial traits of 5%. Component and vehicle abilities can lower it below 5%.

Facilities do not have maintenance costs.

Settings.txt determines the base maintenance cost of your ships. The racial characteristic and the cultural modifiers modify the base maintenance cost. From this, you get the base cost of your ships per turn. Maint Redux abilities from Components, Facilities, and Vehicle Sizes lower the maintenance paid by X%.

For an example, take 2 races, one standard, the other with 110 maintenance aptitude trait. They each design and build a ship and a base, both of which cost 1000 resources.

The standard race pays 25% base maintenance. The base maintenance cost of their ship and base are each 250 resources. They pay this each turn for the ship. The base gets a built-in 50% maint redux, so he pays 250 * 0.50 = 125 resources each turn to maintain the base.

Now take race 2. Their 110 maintenance aptitude makes them have a base maintenance cost of 15%. The base maintenance for their ship and base are 150. They pay 150 resources per turn for the ship, and 150 * 0.50 = 75 resources per turn for the base.

Now, if the base had been modded to have 60% built in maintenance redux instead of 50%, race 1 would pay 250 * (1.00-0.60) = 250 * 0.40 = 100 resources per turn. Race 2 pays 150 * (1.00-0.60) = 150 * 0.40 = 60 resources per turn.

Re: Maintenance Question
 

Thanks, Fyron, I think I'm clear now.