Maintenance Formula

[Barnacle Bill]

Just a note on maintenance cost vs procurement cost. These figures come from "How to Make War" by James F. Dunnigan. The info on naval forces is presented in a way that I can't readily relate the two costs, but here are the figures for a US mechanized infantry division:

Cost to raise: $4519 million
Cost per DAY in combat: $75 million

This means translates to 50% maintenence per turn, in SE4 terms.

Of course that is in combat, with full consumption of fuel, ammo, and incidental loss of equipment, plus combat loses. Still, it means the SE4 maintenance percentage is not unreasonable.

[Taqwus]

Against a "fat cat" empire without much military (which might be guesstimated based on, say, the number of shipyards observed, the number of ships/stations, total systems... note that if the AI manages to get a human player to agree to a Partnership, a LOT of information flows both ways), aggressive use of intelligence ops might be extremely nasty.

I'm thinking, in particular, of economic disruption, crew insurrection (of the few ships that *are* there), and puppet political parties; even a smaller (population-wise) empire can have an advantage on intelligence points, and that advantage can be used as a weapon anywhere in the target's empire. For instance, it's possible to target homeworlds first with puppet political parties as long as you have line-of-sight to them, which you will if there's a partnership (think backstabbing). The fewer but higher-tech warships you have, the greater the impact of a captured ship, because you have fewer *other* ships with which to stop its rampage. And it's hard to put down a riot without a fleet, and hard to build a fleet when your colonies are are rioting.)

Likewise, if you send a high-tech ship to put 'em down, and they capture and analyze it, they've just gotten free tech upgrades... Ouch.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[sapperland]

Ships cost 25%/turn
Bases cost 12.5%/turn

So what do mines, weapon Platforms and satellites cost per turn?

Do frieghters cost the same as war ships per turn?

[thorfrog]

So what do mines, weapon Platforms and satellites cost per turn? They have no maintenance costs. But they also cannot be upgraded. They are one time purchases.

[Talenn]

Given how potent Mines and Fighters are in the game at the moment, I am VERY inclined to want to give them at least some residual maintenance cost...maybe only 5-10% or so.

I can just easily envision games where everyone goes defensive and hoards Mines and Fighters (and Sats, but I've found them less useful than the other two especially as the game goes on). Trying to attack into clouds of Fighters and Mines with Ships is NOT a cost-effective way of doing business, IMO. So, everything else equal, the game will stagnate.

Also, since Fighters can easily challenge Ships in raw power (once massed), they should at least cost SOMETHING in keep going. Otherwise they can eventually just outnumber Ships by such a huge margin that Ships wont work anymore. This is especially true now that Fighters can MOVE within a system on their own. Personally, I think this is a bad thing. Now it is very possible to defend a system soley with PILES of Fighters and pay nothing for upkeep. A player who does not research Fighters is going to be at a HUGE disadvantage. I really hate to see people forced into certain techs and styles. It destroys some of the diversity of the game and the tech tree.

Another possible alternative would be to allow Fighters to only be produced at SpaceYards (ala SE3). This would at least prevent players from hoarding Fighters on every world that has nothing better to do. As it is now, I have played games where 10+ Worlds are all cranking them out. There is NO WAY that a player using Ships can keep up with that...no way. And whats worse, the more Ships you build, the harder it becomes whereas Fighters dont share that disadvantage.

For now, I've upped the cost of the Fighter 'Hulls' a bit to 1) slow down the rate of production and 2) give players some pause about how much they want to spend on Fighters.

Given that Fighters became exponentially more powerful in 1.11, I'd like to see them share some of the costs associated with their capabilities. For the Record, in 1.11, Fighters became FAR more difficult to target (almost impossible for some weapons), they became more resiliant (bug fix, and shields GREATLY increased), and Point Defenses took a pretty healthy dive in capability. All added together, I think its overcorrecting for a unit that is so cheap to mass and keep.

Perhaps I am way off base here, but I am still constantly paranoid about things that Last forever with no ongoing cost. Usually games that have items like that eventually stagnate as players figure it out and start going hardcore in that direction. The good news is that with SE4 being so customizable, any number of things can be changed to make Fighters seem less attractive. But for me, I'd simply like to see them have a small upkeep.

Thanx,
Talenn

[Taqwus]

A few decent ships (CA -> BB) with PD V's (still fairly cheap research), Combat Sensors or Talisman, and a base +20% experience (Adv. Military Science training facilities) should be able to thrash a large number of fighters. PDC V + Sensor III + Experience => +130% to hit, versus a max of -110% def (small fighter -80%, small ECM III -30%), and the fighters have to get w/n 3 IIRC in order for any of their weapons to be in range.

FWIW, when I did my 2 HC + 2 DN + 224 HvFtrs versus 8 DNs, none of the DNs was heavily PD (no more than 4 each), and still most of the fighters were destroyed even when I controlled the fighters, waited until all had been launched, and swarmed them at the correct distance (i.e. so they hadn't been shot at until the same turn they attacked, and that was by PD). If two or three of the DNs used the remaining weapon space for PDs, that might have been enough to tilt the balance. It would have also bought, for most purposes, near-immunity to missiles.

They should still require maintenance, given that they need to be fueled, armed, trained with (they require life support and cockpit, so these aren't remote-controlled fighters. Might be an interesting component -- saves space, perhaps allows some experience to be accrued by carrier and used by fighters, but expensive), but they're not superweapons.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Talenn]

Taqwus:

No, I didnt mean to imply that they were 'super-weapons'. BUT they ARE the most COST EFFECTIVE weapons (over time) I've seen so far. Building and maintaining 8 DNs with all the trimmings you mentioned will be FAR more expensive than the Fighter Task Force in your example.

And even at that, you only managed those results when you played the battle tactically, yes? Or was it the other way around? I dont remember.

Another thing to consider is that 224 Fighters could easily be 2240 Fighters if the game goes on long enough. I doubt any realistic game would be able to field 80 DNs to compete. Obviously, the 'unit limit' will prevent 2240 fighters, but that feels extremely artificial to me as a way to keep them in check.

Overall, I think the balance between Ships and Fighters is OK for the cost. But over time, it quickly becomes obvious that using Fighters to defend is FAR more efficient than using Ships. And I for one, prefer the Ship to play the deciding role in games with Fighters being a support arm. Dont get me wrong, I LIKE Fighters in my game, but not in the obscene quantities that having no upkeep will allow.

Talenn

[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.