I have a related question: do Phase Stabilizer links between your capital planet and the other end count as a single jump for allegiance, trade and culture? If so, it would be good for allegiance and culture, but bad for trade (since it would shorten the trade routes and thus devalue them).

Thank you Durikkan thats exactly how I feel. Lower health for partial payment would be a great idea.

Unfortunately most of these issues seem to have been addressed in the beta. The decisions were made and I don't see them fundamentally changing the way unit caps are handled with a patch. Please surprise me Ironclad

Anyone from the beta know what the logic behind charging us for ships we are going to build (upkeep), instead of paying upkeep on ships that we are currently fielding?

Did they have it the way everyone is used to and change it at some point? If yes, what were they trying to address?

The logic being you have to manage your economy, instead of upgrading just because you can.

To go a little more into detail, it's to deal with the "huge stockpile of resources" problem. In earlier betas, resource asteroids were finite and once they were depleted you had to pretty much rely exclusively on refineries to feed you, which slowed the economy to an absolute crawl.

So, resource rocks were changed to being infinite, which then gave people way too much resources. You could build up a huge fleet, and by the time you ended up losing it you had so much money stocked up that you could replace it without blinking. So, we had a big discussion on how to find the middle ground between economy being too slow, and too fast. In addition, there was the issue of a larger empire by default having a big advantage, making it very hard for a smaller to have a chance.

So this upkeep implementation addresses both of those:

1) The current economy at 75% upkeep is leaps faster than it used to be when refineries were the only way to get metal/crystal. At the same time, it's slow enough so that losing a large fleet is not meaningless and (usually) can't be replaced with the blink of an eye.

2) Because the empire is forced to pay upkeep constantly regardless of the current number of ships, it gives smaller empires a bit better chance to compete. The economy of a larger will *always* be better than one of the smaller (economy doesn't just refer to net profit ), but now if the large empire loses its fleet, it can't get it back up as fast. If upkeep was based on the current number of ships, all the player would have to do is sit on his hands for 5 minutes, then build everything at once so he doesn't have to worry about upkeep kicking in.

The other stuff about the larger empire having more planets to defend is completely moot and irrelevant to the upkeep/economy issue.

A smaller empire *should* have a very hard time competing with a very large empire. The very large empire should have a big advantage. This 'give the small guy a chance' design is seriously flawed. The smaller guy had his chance to develop just like the larger guy did in the beginning of the game. They both started with the same resources.

It also still doesnt address the fact that two smaller empires can easily defeat a larger empire since they can have twice as many ships as the larger even though the larger has twice as many planets as them.

A 40 planet empire should be able to compete against two 20 planet empires, but in the current model the larger empire has no chance.

I think the fleet costs things are daft, but from a different perspective. I think the idea of a percentage cost to cover your ships is stupid, but I can live with it - but it needs two things. It needs a ceiling and a floor: ie if you have an income of zero and 500 supply points of ships, it shouldn't be FREE because 19% of zero is zero. This would also help the nomad-fleet issue. Similarly, 500 supply points shouldn't eventually cost an order of magnitude more because your empire got bigger. I'm down with the balancing idea, but it needs to have a max/min that the real cost in dollars/second can move between.

I also think it should be at least somewhat based on the number of supply points currently being used. Again, I appreciate that it's meant to represent empire-wide supply chains and factories and infrastructure, and that's fine. But when the fleet is low, the costs in real dollars should drop at least somewhat, to represent that all that stuff you're paying for isn't doing anything. Again, I don't think it should EVER be free, but it should be more flexible.

However I figure they kept it so simple due to the style of the game.

I dont like it, try to control many planet should be downfall easy, if you reach 10 planet, no futher, all you do is destory planet (but dont take over the planet) and A.I at same time try to allies a.i who are enemies with a.i who you are attacking them. I mean destory all way to thier homeworld and destory them for good without take over planet. I think it's reason, in history a many empire fall because it's too large to conrol, while little empire stay long time, it's like a family, having huge family like 20 kid, they are not love you much because you never have time to spend as you have 2 or 3 kid, having 2 and 3 kid, it's easy and much love them as they love you because you give yourseft to 2 and 3 kid a time while 20 are not, just little or none. Same as huge empire, do not take over planet more then your empire need, it's too greed, seft-fish, leaven those planet for new goverment who willing to be your friend in future ater you destormy enemie all the way homeworld, Huge empire not always has a huge army in history due to very costly supply, and disloyal command officer, when huge empire like roman or other empire, they are rather paid money to mercyer as need to be rather then try to raise a army. there is nothing wrong with game, besie try to get ship per planet cause unbalance, smaller empier will lose, this is all about rush who took many planet will wins, it's dont seem right by number planet meaning more ship, huge empire is not alwasy has most large amry in fact, it's much harder to control army as large empire due to disloyal, or wont carry order due to thier personaly and other problem, money.... It's like people when take over 20 planet, and then tell them to join amry, they changed mind and attack who has just took over the planet (reason, people let play along unless you force them, this angery them!)

I have to agree with the posters comments I have also been playing a lot of games on larger or Hugh maps and after taking over 15 or more planets and having a Hugh fleet of ships the income really gets out of balance. It’s really ridicules’ how bad it gets the more planets you take over. in reality the more plants you own and high pop caps on those planet all producing with trade ports and mining stations and factories you should be a mega corp. pumping out mass money and units but in this game the ratio per planet per fleet gets wacked and puts a heavy burden on your populations income. So I agree this really needs to get fixed in a bad way. Having larger fleets and owing many planets should not accrue debt. And this is after having the entire infrastructure fully upgraded. I have to wonder how much beta testing really went into this part of the game to balance it out better then it is currently.

Erm, no, the first paragraph is not my particular playstyle. The game offers the possibility of hundreds of solar systems with up to 100 planets each, but there is no way you can support that with the current game mechanics, and even relatively small empires become a chore to manage. Nothing to do with playstyle and everything to do with good game design. It's like playing a Civilization game on an archipelago map and the game telling you "oops, sorry, you can't actually play this map because ships are not supported."

Well, I don't have the experience in this game that a lot of you seem to have, since I haven't the time to play as much. I mainly play on huge maps, but I haven't had an empire as large as the ones your referring to. I do question how much beta testing went into this aspect of the game, since most players, in my experience on other stratagy games such as Civilizations, prefer to play quicker, smaller games. How many of the beta testers actually tried to test marathon games that last for several days or even weeks with 100+ worlds to deal with?

Anyhow, here's an idea to run by you all. How well would it work if the current fleet upkeep system remained intact, but create a fleet cap that is scaled by the empire's economy. You would still pay a flat upkeep for the fleet whether you've built it or not, just like now, but you have the potential of building a much larger fleet if your economy is large enough. It would work like this:

Each ship has an upkeep of 1 credit/second, and for the purpose of this example, I'll ignore metal and crystal. First, calculate an empire's gross credit income. Then, deduct the empire's tax burden (income lost to corruption in the outer worlds) from that gross. Then, deduct the fleet upkeep cost from that net income (NOT THE GROSS). That is then your fleet cap.

Using the simple empires already being tossed around this thread, a small empire has 10 planets, each generating 10 credits/sec gross. They are fairly close knit, leaving a corruption loss of 10%. As such, before fleet upkeep, their net income is 90 credits/sec. Now, deduct fleet upkeep of 75%, which comes to 67.5 credits/sec. Since each ship has an upkeep of 1 credit/sec, that means this empire could field a fleet of 67 ships.

Now, the 40 planet empire has a total gross income of 400 credits/sec. However, due to their size, corruption is greater, loosing 30% of their gross income. That means the fleet upkeep cost is taken not from 400 credits, but from 280 (400 - 30% = 280) Now, 75% of 280 is 210. That is how many ships this empire can support.

The larger empire is 4 times the size of the smaller one, but can only support a fleet of about 3 times the size. Of course, this gets worse with larger empires still.

A very large empire with 100 planets at the same 10 credit income generates a gross of 1000 credits/sec. However, due to their very large size, 50% is lost to corruption (this is very possible when the vast majority of your colonies are below 50% alegience). As a result, they can only support a fleet of 75% of 500 credits, which is 425.

So, this very large empire is 10 times larger than the small one in the first example, but it can only support a fleet of a little more than 6 times the size of the smaller fleet. Also, the larger empire will be busy dealing with pirates, rebels, and other enemies attacking, meaning they cannot devote 100% of the fleet at the small empire. This drastically evens up the odds while still maintaining a larger empire's ability to effectively defend itself.

Now, in the event that you have 2 empires on the map, one with 10 planets, and the other with 100, then yes, the little guy is going to be at a disadvantage. Then again, shouldn't he be? He's fighting an empire that's 10 times his size - alone! The idea here is that 4 or 5 smaller empires could eventually beat the big one, but not easily. Also, remember this is based on economic power, not planets. If you have 10 highly profitable planets (like terran worlds), and your opponent has 20 lower profit planets (like desert worlds), then you'll likely be able to field at least as large a fleet, if not larger. Also, building lots of trade posts and such will ultimately increase your fleet potential, allowing a smaller empire the ability to somewhat keep up with the bigger juggernauts.

By leaving the actual expense deduction alone, you prevent the problem of a huge amount of resources building up to replace a fleet quickly. However, now you are actually paying the same for your ships, no matter how large or small your economy.

Of course, this needs some balancing. I don't know if the corruption rates listed here are at all accurate. I just chose some fairly arbitrary numbers based on what I've seen and read so far. Cost of each ship might need increased or decreased, and I would probably make certain ships more expensive than others (similar to how it is currently with the fleet resources).

What do you all think? I don't see anything like this being done officially, since the beta testers and developers obviously came to the conclusion that the current system is good. They obviously don't see the problem here. However, maybe something like this could be implemented in a mod in the future.

Well if you're significantly smaller than the other empire and it's 1v1, you've already done something wrong. You should need to do something pretty spectacular to even out the odds, like rout the enemy fleet with some impressive tactical display, in order to be able to get back into the game. I don't agree with you being brought roughly on the same level as your much bigger opponent simply due to him getting taxed up the ***.

I dont think its good to relate the fleet to anything. Planets/Stars/Economy. Because it will always create more disadvantages between smaller and bigger empires.

When you are just able to buy more by your own choice, but have to pay an upkeep rate according to your oversupply, you can always choose if you want to go for it or not. And also smaller empires can therefore overproduce, when they have the economy behind it.