Maintenance Formula

[Barnacle Bill]

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.

[Shadow99]

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...

[Graeme Dice]

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.

[Tomgs]

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.

[Jubala]

Tomgs, that sounds very much like an exploit of the game engine imo. 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.

[Commander G]

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.

[Talenn]

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