That makes no sense. The fleet cap upgrades take a percentage of your income, but every additional planet provides a profit. For easy numbers, say you have 10 planets making 10 credits/second each, and you're at the max of 75% upkeep, so you make 25 credits/s overall. Now you colonize 10 more planets at 10/second, still with the 75% upkeep, and now you're making 50 credits/s.

How exactly can't you make any income by having more planets?

Im currently owning about 45+ planets and have researched to the fleet cap limit and i have a upkeep of 125% ... more planets adds to this number... My economy is slowly rising tho because of "alligance modifier"

Like I said, this is only a problem on large/huge maps.Its not a problem in small games like you are talking about having 10 planets, I'm talking about huge maps with 5-6 stars and 100+ planets.

Once you get more than 20 or so planets, the further a planet is a away from your home system the more corruption it incurs. Even with capped civilian upgrades, trade ports and media hubs etc etc a planet thats far from your home planet will practically bring in zero income.

It reaches a point where its more beneficial for you to not colonize planets, since colonizing them and building them up is more of a cost burden since your income becomes less and less as you gain more planets and have a capped fleet.

Not to mention, with the fleet cap, its almost impossible to defend all you planets once you get above 20 planets. Since planetary defenses are almost useless, in large/huge games enemies just rush thru and target your planets infrastructure, knocking it back down to zero and putting these planets back into the red.

Now, throw TEC in rebel attacks which also do the same thing, continuously at different planets.

Then factor in you have a huge battle and lose a large number of ships. Even though you dont have a capped fleet anymore, you are still paying the fleet upkeep for a capped fleet.

So in essence, you can have 50 planets with the most tech in the galaxy, but the banana republic empire with 10 planets can field a fleet just as large as yours and also has more income than you since he doesnt have the tax burden of the larger empire, so he can outbuild you after a major battle even though you have 30 more planets then him.

To your first comment you can move your capital so its more in the middle of your empire this will help to incure less of a loyalty problem (and therefore more income) as has already been mentioned with trade ports and max pop even very low loyalty planets can generate money

That's exactly what I was going to point out. If you relocate your capital to a more central location it always boosts your local income. Also, if you use your planetary defenses efficiently you shouldn't have to worry too much about raids. I usually build a ton of missile platforms when I'm playing vasari on planets I am using for choke points. If you build them close to the planet they usually all overlap and you can provide a pretty tough defense against siege craft.

Also, try splitting your fleet up a little. Instead of having one massive offensive fleet. Have a few defensive fleets and a one larger offensive fleet. You really shouldn't have to have your defensive fleets spread throughout your entire galaxy instead you should have them near choke points where they can rush to a planets defense easily. A shield generator and a couple defense platforms with a small defensive fleet can hold a planet against anything but the largest strike force, and even then can hold off the attack long enough for your other defensive fleets to arrive.

Remember when using defensive fleets not to set the fleet for simultaneous jump. They should be jumping whenever available for the quickest response times. A few frigates getting to the fight early can mean the difference between a destroyed planet and a surviving one.

I suspect there are also technical reasons - having a cap ensures that the game will be more playable on lower-specced PCs.

are you using broadcast centers to increase the loyalty and thrfor increase income

It can be beneficial to not max out your cap to keep your economy in better shape. In this way you can rebuild fleets that are lost much quicker. Especially as you get near the higher levels, going from 66% to 75% isn't reducing your income by 9%, it's reducing your current income by 25%... (34% remaining to 25% remaining) so be careful...

It's kind of similiar to how empires have fallen historically, they expand beyond their ability to protect...Rome, British Empire, etc.

I only increase my fleet cap when I have to, cause there's no going back. It would be practically impossible to make a negative income empire, the only feasible way of doing it would be to not upgrade population on any of your planets and stay away from all positive income stuff. Everything except not upgradeing population capacity is a percentage rather than fixed economic drain.

This definitely makes no sense. The mechanic should be changed so that while increasing your cap gives you the option to field a larger fleet, the % of your expenses that goes toward maintaining your fleet is based on the actual number of ships you have, not your maximum limit.

If Space Congress signs a space law to increase the fleet by 25% next year, then for whatever reason doesn't get around to building those ships, they shouldn't have to allocate money to pay upkeep on the ships they didn't build.

The issue as I see it is that the cap isn't any larger for larger maps or more systems.

Consider the analogy of a piece of toast and some butter. What if you have 4 pieces of toast- you'd want more butter to cover them all with just the right amount of saturated fatty goodness.

But you now have four pieces of toast and only one pat of butter. You can try to divide it, but then you just have sucky toast with not enough butter. You could put it on one piece and enjoy that but then you've got 3 pieces of dry toast and who wants that (aside from Jake and Elwood, of course).

Silly analogy, but it does show the point. It's not so much about your opponent's ability to do the same thing, which, while true is not very useful in more wide-open maps. Larger caps on the larger maps would make sense and allow for more tactical decisions- defense in depth or alpha strike as one example. Right now, you can field a maxed fleet and just plain not have the juice to be able to push far.

I've been playing a Random Huge FFA with 10 AI, eliminated 2 and now I'm in a freewheeling back and forth with 3 or 4. It's taken two days of play sessions to push my way into 3 planets, because I simply can't defend all the places they attack. I've taken to capturing "honeypot" planets, defending them with hangars and shields and letting the AI waste time on them while pushing into other areas and eating away at their base. By the time they've nuked the one planet, I've blown away two. Lather, rinse, repeat- Two steps forward, one back.

While an effective strategy, it's really kind of boring, takes for EVER, and isn't much fun. I'd prefer on a really big map to have a higher fleet cap so I could coordinate my defense better while still having a viable offense.

No, I do understand how the game works, you dont have to patronize me with simple mathematics. Once you reach the critical mass point, the guy with 10 planets is making 25 credits/sec true. But the person with 40 planets isnt making 100 credits per sec due to corruption and distance. His close planets are making 10 credits per sec, his outer rim planets are making like 0.1 credits per second. So when you add up the numbers the person with more planets is making less than the person with fewer planets.

What you are missing is the fact that as you get more planets you get less income. All you are counting is the fleet upkeep costs, you arent counting the allegiance corruption costs. The more planets you have the less and less income you earn. The further away planets are from you home system (I'm talking about *far* away not one jump I'm talking about a game with multiple stars)it can get to a point where these planets are bringing in no income.

Again, I'm talking about *huge* maps where you can have planets in another star system. The income on these planets even with a fully developed infrastructure is usually like 0.1. Thats how the guy that posted above is saying he has 125% upkeep costs because it *can* go into the negative with corruption once you have a very large number of planets and a few get attacked causing you to lose infrastructure.

I've never seen it at 125% myself, but in my huge maps games I did get to a critical mass point where I was paying more than I was producing, even with full upgrades on my outer rim planets due to rebel attacks and pirate attacks always happening. With the fleet cap, unless you are vasari, theres no way for your fleet to often reach far away planets under attack before they are destroyed. Trying to do the diplomatic missions is also a moot point as often the distance is so great you cant even reach the planet before the timer runs out, or you would have to expend so much of your fleet to actually collect the bounty it would hurt you in the long run.

Also, if you start losing planets/ships you cant undo your supply costs.

Again, this is only an issue on HUGE maps. The game doesnt scale properly in these games. They need to scale the supply so its capped for each star system or something. Maybe make unit cap scale in relation to population and have the upkeep costs as a percentage of how much of the cap you use. Otherwise whats the point in having a map with 100+ planets when you cant afford to upkeep or defend more than one system due to fleet cap and loss of income due to corruption?

Try playing a huge map to completion and you will understand what I am saying since it doesnt seem like you have.

I dont understand how you cant see how this is a design problem. In huge maps the player with more planets is pretty much made so they cant win due to fleet cap since they cant defend their huge empire, while smaller enemies, rebels and pirates can constantly attack you at your weak points.Two 10 planet empires with capped fleets can easily defeat a large empire with 40 planets since they can field twice as many ships as him even though he has twice as many planets a them.

As the larger empire, you should have much more economic leverage on your smaller opponents, but this is not the case.

Raising the fleet cap would only make this problem worse. Let's say the fleet cap raises by 50%, so then you have 50% more defenders at all your planets. But.. the Enemy force is also 50% bigger, so your odds of winning are exactly the same (less actually, because your defenses count for less with more units)

Doesn't work that way in the real world. I don't keep defenders at every planet. There's no point; instead it's better to have a mobile fleet or two that can respond to incursions as necessary with the force required to repel an attack.

This only works if you have your planets defended with static defenses well. Lots of hangars, shields if you're TEC, etc. My planets have withstood attacks from 3 multiple capship fleets at once long enough for me to bring in the cavalry.

However, that only scales to a certain point. Consider that as an empire grows larger and has more borders, the number of points of incursion become greater, but the amount of force required to repel remains the same. Couple that with the fact that it takes longer to respond because of jump distances, and you eventually reach a point where you simply cannot expand further and reasonably defend your territory; you're simply too attenutated.

You can dedicate more fleet resources to defense, but then you lose effectiveness with your attacking force, because time and firepower are both critical. Or you can supplement your attack force but you will invariably be caught with a big f***-off fleet busy in enemy territory when the AI gets 3 and 4 other players to attack you 6 jumps from your nearest defensive fleet.

Or you could break your defensive fleets up, making them smaller. That just means that they become delaying forces, not actual repulsion forces.

I guess in my mind it's sort of like a twisted application of the inverse square law.