Toning down the resources requirements.

[Gavin]

Thanks for the ideas, guys! I was on the wrong track I guess, looking for a 'maintenance cost' for various things, and it's actually 25% of the completed ship's total cost (which is rude, we never went above 10% in our old pen and paper galactic strategy games)

[Suicide Junkie]

I reccommend using the bases' maintenance reduction ability.

Copy that to the ships, and set it to whatever you feel like.
-60% to maintenance will give you your "10% of build cost"

This way, you don't have to reduce the build cost, or affect the racial characteristics limits (reducing the starting %cost will affect racial traits such as "maintenance reduction")

[Repo Man]

While we are on the subject of maintenance, is there any way to give mothballed ships a small maintenance cost?

Without it, it seems like its a very easy way to store minerals; just build em, mothball and scrap at a later date.

Repo Man

[Suicide Junkie]

Mothballed ships are hardcoded for no maintenance.

Sure, you store minerals, but at a hefty price: scrapping is not typically efficient, and even with the scrapper facilities, you're losing a big chuck of the investment.

[Taqwus]

Or choose 'Engineer' culture (the only culture with a maintenance bonus, IIRC) and for a further bonus, spend race points on maintenance.

Of course, you can't make a mainentance-free monster race anymore... but you can still lower it.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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Of course, you can't make a mainentance-free monster race anymore... but you can still lower it.

---

You can, but only by adding a racial trait, with new hulls or components.

[Dragonlord]

Actually the Merchant trait (the best I think) has a 5% maintenance reduction, making them very strong...I always buy up maintenance to 110%, but every 1% after that costs 200 racial points, so the merchant trait becomes real valuable!