Maintenance Formula

[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

[Jubala]

I agree, fighters and weapon platforms need a small upkeep. Not so sure about sats and mines though as they are strictly drop and forget. Well, the mines anyway. Maybe give them a lifespan? After x years there is y chance sat/mine won't work. I don't think troops need much of an upkeep as they tend to die like flies when invading anyway. At least in the demo they do.

Anyway, if fighters and weapon platforms get upkeep we should be able to retrofit and scrap them. I want to be able to scrap all units except mines anyway, regardless of upkeep. If we get to retrofit them the can't cost more than original design value shoould be set higher than for ships. ie the difference in cost allowed is lower. Makes sense?

[greghacke]

or... for mines, give them a low supply usage, then set values on how much supplies they carry. over time, they use up there supplies and fail, even passing a message through the interface. this way, no major coding and it can be done right in the existing files with little tweaking. also, you could build a "supply storage" for mines so that they can Last longer...