New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

[Ed Kolis]

I did think about it some more, and the squared vs. square root does seem a bit excessive, so now the build costs only follow a 1.5 power progression - in the end, that means a starbase costs about 1/4 of what it did in previous Versions of the mod. Happy now Taera?

[Taera]

sure i might even play it... how smart is the AI for it?

[Loser]

That sounds great Ed. I don't think you should mess with the mothballing cost. The way it works now reaches that level of 'realism' that you were going after and I don't think the mothballed Armada of LC is going to break it.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Taera:
sure i might even play it... how smart is the AI for it?

With no testing to back it up I would guess the AI would do allright. They might get tied up building some expensive ship designs, but the lower per Kt maintenance should help them out long term. The biggest effect will be they won't be able to react to changing situations in the game, but they don't really do that anyway.

Maybe move the space yards up in the AI research que to help clear up those long wait times for the ships being built.

Geoschmo

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Taera:
sure i might even play it... how smart is the AI for it?

I didn't make any AI files because I don't care for that sort of thing; the stock AI's probably wouldn't work all that well as they tend to build only the largest ship size they've researched.

We could start a PBEM game, or a PBW game if PBW comes back Online soon...

Originally posted by Loser:
That sounds great Ed. I don't think you should mess with the mothballing cost. The way it works now reaches that level of 'realism' that you were going after and I don't think the mothballed Armada of LC is going to break it.

So you think I should set the unmothball cost back down to 20%? I don't know, I was really thinking of a mothballed armada of ES... mothballing such a small ship really takes away the whole balance since you get the huge fleets (albeit not for long) without having to pay maintenance on them!

[Roanon]

As the prime purpose of mothballing is to save maintenace costs, the relation between mothballing and maintenence costs should remain the same, unless you want to create a difference to the normal game. If you do not want to change mothballing usage and effects, you should rescale the costs according to the new maintenance costs.

[geoschmo]

I am intrigued by this, but I must admit a bit confused. I haven't quite grasped the implications of the 1.5x/sqr root stuff. If I understand it correctly large ships are much more expensive to build per kt, but somewhat cheaper to maintain per Kt then small ships. Does that about sum it up?

If so then I don't really think it makes small ships any better, just more available. Since you haven't changed the mounts at all a player is still much better off with a fleet of large ships totaling X Kt then a fleet of small ships totalling X Kt. Actually in this mod the large ship fleet would be even better then in the stock game since they would be cheaper to maintain.

The only place the small ships would be useful is when trying to construct a war fleet in a hurry. The exponential build costs would make this extremely problematic for large ships.

If a player has time to prepare for war by building and mothballing ships they are much more advised to build and mothball large ships then small ships. I see no difference in this point between the stock game and this mod.

So I would have to agree with Roanon that unless you wish to change the nature of mothballing, which would be a separate issue then the mod to begin with, you should not increase but in fact decrease the mothball costs. Unfortunatly there is now way to decrease the mothball costs proprtionally to the size of the ship, which is what really needs to happen for this to be acurate.

From a game balance perspective I wouldn't worry about the mothballed fleet of escorts, because they aren't going to be very effective agasint the fleet of dreadnaughts attacking them anyway. What you need is a mothballed fleet of dreadnaughts.

Geoschmo

[ August 04, 2003, 17:38: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Mothballing lots of small ships would not be abusive, since you can build them extremely fast anyways.

Large ships are for long term peacetime buildup, but only good if you finish them before they're needed.

Medium sized ships give you the middle ground and can be your insurance while starting on the bigger ones.

[Taera]

actually in RW it is rather expensive to bring in "reserved" military equipment sometimes - or so i hear. makes sense game-wise too, to not make things too abusive.