New Concept For Troops and Fighters

[shinigami]

Ah..., now I see what you're saying, PVK, and you are quite right.

But, if we shift our thinking a little bit, the initial cost of a unit could also be considered laying out the unit's support network, personnel, supplies, replacement parts, and actual replacements. Maintenance costs (which would be scaled up too) maintain that network.

Sure it is unrealistic to think that an army that has been almost completely wiped out would bring enough stuff with it to replace all losses but if the repairs per turn numbers are low enough it would encourage a player to scrap the unit and build a new one, especially if he needs the cargo space for an effective combat unit.

[Atrocities]

Even worse would be if you do this for fighters, which I assume in general would tend to be destroyed in combat. Some squadrons could be almost wiped out in combat, and then restored fully for free, even though the losses should represent nearly all of the fighters being blown to shreds.

This is how they do it Star Wars Empires At War and in Rise Of Nations.

[Spectarofdeath]

I think for troops it would work, and be a great idea, I hate building one unit at a time, it just seems so unrealistic (And today congress authorized 50 more soliders to be trained and 10 tanks built!! wooohoo universal domination here we come) but I'm still not sold on the fighters yet. I can see the repair of the troops working the way Shinigami says but for fighters I don't know how you could do that. I suppose you can give them a extremly high repair time to simulate the time it would take to get new fighters and pilots into the squadron, but the fact that these fighters and pilots aren't costing any resources to train/build seems a little unrealistic on this front. Even boosting maint. and const. costs.

[President_Elect_Shang]

You could boost the maintenance cost on fighters but repair time for units is generic. If it takes 2 turns to replace (repair) 10 tanks it will take 2 turns to replace (repair) 10 fighters. And as I said below, I don't like the thought of a brigade or corps or whatever taking 80% losses, repairing/replacing those losses and coming out with a higher experience rating than before the fight. That is flat out impossible!

[shinigami]

I have a silly question, since when do anything other than ships and fleets get experience? Have I missed a memo?

[President_Elect_Shang]

Units don't get experience? I guess I better stop moding and start playing. Oh wait; can't do that the darn thing is so broken it can't be played! Seriously if units don't get experience than why the heck not? That is just nuts! Is it really that impossible (from a coding perspective) to keep track of experience for units if you can already keep track of experience for every other vehicle? I think it's time for yet another email.

[Suicide Junkie]

Some things to consider:

A) Set repair to zero. If you're low on space, scrap the ruined units and rebuild, or send them off to die. This avoids any whining about repair costing less

B) Have low repair. Give units zero maintenance. Give each component a negative resource generation ability. (Now maintenance is proportional to the number of operational units, not the number of designed units)
To extend on this, you could make units free to build (or maybe 1 organics). How many troops you can support is another matter entirely.

[Kana]

President_Elect_Shang said:
Units don't get experience? I guess I better stop moding and start playing. Oh wait; can't do that the darn thing is so broken it can't be played! Seriously if units don't get experience than why the heck not? That is just nuts! Is it really that impossible (from a coding perspective) to keep track of experience for units if you can already keep track of experience for every other vehicle? I think it's time for yet another email.

Units are attrition resources/assets. While they may survive combat, how many will survive more than 2 or 3? Its like expending ammo that you may or may not use, or gain back...

[PvK]

Atrocities said:

This is how they do it Star Wars Empires At War and in Rise Of Nations.

Those are lite mass-market games which I am not interested in playing because they don't make enough sense to hold my attention, exactly because of game design decisions like that (and worse).

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah, Atrocities... are you arguing for or against this?