Does the AI use mothballing?

[henk brouwer]

There should be some kind of drawback to mothballing ships. At this point it's a far too easy way to keep huge fleets on standby without paying maintenance.

Maybe mothballed ships should receive some random damage to components depending on the time they have been mothballed. After all they don't pay maintenance so it seems pretty reasonable. This would also mean that mothballed fleets need some time to be repaired before they can be properly used again. These changes will make the game more realistic, and improve gameplay as well....

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by henk brouwer:
There should be some kind of drawback to mothballing ships. At this point it's a far too easy way to keep huge fleets on standby without paying maintenance.

Maybe mothballed ships should receive some random damage to components depending on the time they have been mothballed. After all they don't pay maintenance so it seems pretty reasonable. This would also mean that mothballed fleets need some time to be repaired before they can be properly used again. These changes will make the game more realistic, and improve gameplay as well....

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Or simply limit the time you can have ship mothballed to a number of years (could add a flag in settings.txt for that one), after which the ship will be automatically unmotballed with all the necessary resources used or simply lost if you don't want/have resources to spend.

[Tampa_Gamer]

Henk - I like your idea, please forward it to MM since the patch won't be out until later this month, perhaps he can still implement it. It seems pretty easy to program - could be as easy as automatically damaging 50% of the components randomly upon mothballing to force us to take the time and "unmothball" it (i.e. reapir) and get it ready for deployment.

[Baron Munchausen]

There are already some disadvantages that you haven't thought of for mothballing. A mothballed ships DOES exist on the map. If the place where it sits is attacked it will sit there and do NOTHING to defend or protect itself. And once you mothball ships, you often end up paying "maintenance" in the form of upgrades to keep them comparable to your active ships. So, there is a cost of sorts. I think that this "penalty" could be added but it ought to be a very gradual sort of thing. Maybe one component per year of game time that it was mothballed could be damaged and require repair when it is unmothballed. Alternatively, just disallow retrofits for mothballed ships. Your "investment" would quickly decline in value during any game that was not "max tech levels" from the beginning.



[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 February 2001).]

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Alternatively, just disallow retrofits for mothballed ships. Your "investment" would quickly decline in value during any game that was not "max tech levels" from the beginning.

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Now you are talking .

[Zanthis]

On the AI not using mothballing: If at no other time, the AI should mothball colony ships when it doesn't have any planets to colonize. This should be a simple and easy coding fix.