[AMF]

One thing that was mentioned a while back but which I would like to elaborate on is a new maintenance scheme for SE-V.

Currently, maintenance and ongoing support costs of vessels is fixed *and* the deletrious effects of poor or inadeqaute supply are handled as random events. (ex: ship accidents, which are rare). And, even more important, attrition is non-existent.

This is a bit unrealistic IMHO, and can be easily rectified.

Set Maintenance on a slider so you can pay lower or higher as you wish, with the baseline being what it is currently or whatever you mod it to.

Then, have ship accidents, troop attrition rates and so forth increase or decrease as you decrease or increase your chosen maintenance cost. Modeling them as "random events" is *not* realistic, as they are not random but closely tied to the level of support/maintenance they receive.

A sliding maintenance scale should also be used to affect combat, since it also encompasses ongoing training, wargames, and exercises to keep the crews and troops proficient.

Think of what it takes to deploy a US Carrier battle group or a USMC Expeditionary Unit. They take a LOT of regular training and maintenance, and that is simply to do peacetime duty. When that money is not spent, there is often a precipitious drop in readiness and training, ships go down, engines conk out, parts break, people lose skills, etc...

All of this sounds complicated, but can be easily modeled behind the scenes and relegated to a simply slider that the player controls while the game engine does the nasty calculations.

Also, it would make space exploration more realistic - I can't help but think that there should be a lot more space accidents than I ever see in a game...

Just my two cents.

Thanks,

Alarik