SE 4 Gold

[c_of_red]

You are seeing that 2.5% as only applying to ships. Think of it as a production efficency that can be transferred to any part of the system. You can transfer it to research, non-ship production, what ever you feel will give you the greatest advantage. I'm not far enough into this particular game to check that yet, but if you cannot switch resources between needs, then this will be the first 4X game I have ever seen that didn't allow that. It is such a fundamental point that the whole game would be bogus if it wasn't allowed. It seems as if the number a ships that can be built is limited within a time slice by the number of shipyards. So if that 2.5 percent was used to build more shipyards then you would end up being able to build more ships over a given period of time. Compounding interest was an anology and an example NOT an event. I used it in an attempt to illustrate how a small advantage can be leveraged into a huge advantage over time.
The whole thing is a SYSTEM; imput->processing->output.
I also think my 25% was a LOT closer to correct then 2.5%. the Saving in Hull metal alone would be on the order of 3.141 times the radius squared, over a given length. Note, I have switched back to the real world. So on bigger ships the savings would be several hundreds of times. So for any given ship size you could produce several dozen (prehaps humdreda) open ships to each hulled ship using the same amount of metal. The cost savings wouldn't be as much for all the other bits, but they wouldn't cost more either, or at least not much more for those parts that required atmosphere.

[Suicide Junkie]

You, sir, are going to be schooled if you ever play against humans on PBW.

Theory is one thing, but as we are trying to tell you, empirical evidence is overwhelmingly against you.
As in real life, superior forces can and do get overcome by better generals with smaller armies.

[Fyron]

You can certainly scrap and replace facilities to your heart's content.

=0=

I'm not sure what you mean by an "open" ship. Having no hull whatsoever? Just a bunch of components loosely cabled together, like a modern day space probe or satellite? Why would anyone build warships like that, rather than having an armored, protective hull? To me, it sounds like a bad idea to make such a spindly ship and have no protective armoring at all, taking only one hit to blow the whole thing up (or at least, in half, making useless wrecks)... Why do you assume that the presence of an armored hull is wasting material? It is making your ship capable of sustaining damage, thus making the ship worthwhile to build. I'd rather have 50 ships that can take more than half a hit from weapons fire without blowing up than 200 ships that fall apart at the first hint of weapons fire.

[Suicide Junkie]

As for your system, you're forgetting about maintenance.
Having a 2.5% advantage means that you can maintain only 2.5% more ships. You can replace losses slightly faster too, but those values are insignificant compared to tactics and strategies and terrain.

If you spend resources building BSYs, then you'll have less available to build and maintain ships. Bases cost maintenance too.
In some mods, BSYs are important. But you still have to balance your Yard investments with expansion and defense.

You will learn these lessons if you play against the experts.

***c_of_red said:
One battle does not a war make.***
In that particular case, I'd say one battle doth a war break.
With half our respective navies now crippled, neither of us could scrape together enough ships to breach the other's warppoint fortifications. At least not for a year or two, and without leaving other areas of the empire dangerously unprotected. Once we've had time to regroup, things may heat up again.




PS:
It sounds like you might want to write yourself up a super-gritty-tech mod, in which armor and shields are absurdly expensive, and naked ships are the norm.

However, such a mod would make strategy and tactics even MORE important, since the first shot wins.