PBW PvK Proportions Game #2

[csebal]

A possible change.. i was thinking about it for quite some time, and i think it could fit in:

the starliner ships have no maintenance reduction. This leads to the somewhat odd situation, where using medium transports as starliners is more viable economically.

i think starliners could use at least the same ammount of maint. reduction as transport ships get, or even a bit more. After all, their 'only' advantage over transports is that they are there right from the start (the small starliner i mean). Other than that, they are smaller and slower than medium transports.

What do you think?

[PvK]

Yes, improving the starliners is actually on my "to do" list. The reason they are the way they are is that the first starliners are the low-tech solution to moving population before Medium Transports are available. Similarly, Large Starliner is designed as an early but not cheap solution to moving more than 1M at a time. I agree it would good to have some better starliners. I have been meaning to keep the existing ones while adding some higher-tech ones which provide lower maintenance and/or higher speed, so there will be good reasons to use them for population transport instead of ordinary transports.

PvK

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I think higher speed would work fine. Would differentiate the two hulls, and it would make sense for a population transport to be faster.

[Ed Kolis]

Of course, then what's to stop the player from using starliners in place of transports, since the starliner modules provide IMMENSE cargo space?

[TheDeadlyShoe]

The maint bonus on regular transports!

[PvK]

Yes, the cheapness, and the role of moving less than 1000 kT of stuff around.

[AMF]

Might we put the Prop#2 game on ALPU rather than "no automatic turns"? It looks like all our turns are in, and given that the first 10-30 turns are rather straightforward, the sooner the better...whee!

Just a suggestion.

Thanks again,

Alarik

[csebal]

That brings up another point.

The smaller starliner modules, along with the larger transport ships are simply not worth it.

Why?

Because you need larger ships to fit multiple modules, which means:

more engines, more support modules -> more upkeep

More importantly, you may also need some improved starliner modules, which are quite expensive (well, at least they were in 2.5.x) compared to the first (clumsiest) Version.

So if you compare a large transport, that can carry multiple units of pop to a medium transport, that only carries one unit, you'll realize, that two medium pop. transport ships are cheaper to maintain than one 'technologycally advanced' large ship.

-- About the small starliner:
IT really should be worse than the medium transport, after all it is easily available from the start. Then again, i never build it, as by the time i get to build pop transport ships, i always have the medium transport ship class, so all in one, the starliners definitely need some fixing.

The goal is to make them viable, but underpowered compared to the medium transports.
Here is a suggestion:
- give those ships a rather high base price, so it'll take many turns to build even a single one. Say: about 5-10 turns on a homeworld.
- give them a damn high maint. reduction, say 90%, to offset their rather high price, and make them economically viable to use on the long run, compared to regular transport ships.
- Limit their speed (this is already done) compared to the regular transport ships.
- Give them some -999% defense and attack bonuses.

With this, you'll get a slow to build, extremely cheap to maintain transport ship, that is a lot slower than the regular tranports, but costs less to maintain on the long run.

[PvK]

The smaller starliner modules aren't worth it, because they themselves cost so much. They use more advanced technology (perhaps cryogenics) to maximize the population storage per kiloton. It turns out to be inefficient in most cases, which _is_ a balance issue, yes.

The larger ships can I think be a little more efficient than medium transports, if you don't use those high-tech colony modules, and especially if you do use the gravitic drives.

However, I agree there are balance issues. The Medium Transport still ends up being the best utility ship for most, if not all, purposes.

I have design issues though besides balance, which want some thought before implementing balance-only fixes, especially:

* The darn single-cargo-type dilemma. I won't be happy if starliner modules become the best choice for anyone wanting a fairly large amount of cargo. If they get much more cost-effective at higher tech, then people will start putting starliner modules on carriers, which would be silly.

This comes down to which cargo component has the best rate, and which offers the highest capacity.

Then, as you suggest, there could also be something done with the hull types. Similar to the module problem, I wouldn't want to see people using starliners for mining and space yard ships (etc), because they had such high maintenance reduction.

Perhaps what would do better would be making small transports clearly most efficient, but always incapable of reaching 1000 kT capacity (and incapable of holding shipyards). Then perhaps the higher-tech starliner modules should be more no (or not much) less efficient than the first SL module, but store 2MT, 3MT... per module.

The goal would be for small transports to be the best choice for moving units, medium transports to be the best choice for mounting shipyards and such, and starliners with SL modules to be the best choice for moving population...

hopefully, there are numbers to be found which can satisfy those goals.

I'll be back in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, does anyone know the fellow in game #3 who hasn't sent in his first turn yet, or if he is coming back? Looks like he might need to be replaced so the game can start...

PvK

[Ed Kolis]

Scale mounts for starliner modules, perhaps, so they can only be placed on starliners?