Indeed, I imagine the intent with the rising costs was to limit it to larger empires at the high end, but it simply doesn't work on the huger maps where even small players have many planets.

Fleet maintenance as a percentage of income does add to strategy. It creates a trade off between military and economy which matters no matter how large your income is (unlike some games where once you are big enough you don't care how much your troops cost because it is still a drop in the bucket).

I do agree that the fleet caps should be adjustable for huge maps. However you may still have the same problem unless the fleet caps go high enough that smaller empires can no longer afford to build fleets that large (eg because the cost of replacement gets too large so once you smash them once they require age to rebuild).

Incidentally I find it amusing that on one side some people complaining a smaller empire can have a bigger income than a larger one (presumably by having a lower fleet cap and earning a bigger % of income because that is the only way it can happen with competent play on both sides) BUT at the same time people complaining about the smaller empires being able to field the same size fleet as them.

Which is it people? Both can't be true at once. You do NOT go negative in income from extra planets unless you don't upgrade their pop (which I suspect is the problem the original poster was having).

If you think about it, so what if the little guy has the equal share of the fighting strength, from what it sounds like, you guys are thinking that this 'little' guy has a free hyperspace jump into any of your planets while your -entire- fleet will be off in some other solar system.

I'd just squish the guy if he's causing me so much trouble, it's not like he's going to have a way to get out or can give up land in favor of catching up with defenders because that's /all/ he has. If you control the star/wormholes, then you're all set to go wherever you want.

i neve go into red i always have huge fleets, all my planets are fully upgraded and i have liek 200,000 credits 100,000 metal and about 50,000 crystal, i think you need to build more trade centers and refineries

I think whoever is arguing against changes to the fleet cap, really should read the posts already posted instead of extending this thread even more with the same arguments. It's clear that the supply cap doesn't work in large games with multiple solar systems. Even before it is reached, two much smaller players can topple one much larger player due to the mechanics of the supply cap. After the supply cap, everyone has 2000 ships to play with, and the larger empire has to fight an incredibly frustrating battle against the others. Seriously guys this isn't rocket science, start coming up with more, better suggestions, instead of justifying the mechanic that's clearly not working at the upper limits.

Little guys never stand long enough when their worlds are being pressed into submission.

Ehhh. Even a Huge random has only 10 planets per player... and some of those will be uncolonizable. But...let's look at that fleet cap again.

For simplicity's sake, let's assume your making all Kodiaks. To fill out your fleet cap you need 200. At 500 credits each, that's 100,000 credits. At 25 credits a second, that's 4000 seconds - over an hour. Although a TEC player might have pervasive economy, which would help quite a bit.

Granted - it's easier with Dark Armada. It takes 23 phase gates about 17 minutes to fill up a full fleet cap. If you're faicng off against 2 smaller Vasari, that might be your issue.

I guess that's right. I forgot, I usually play against the AI with only 4 opponents. I like games that are not overcrowded with players .

I just finished 1 versus 3 normal agressors game on a mod map which depicted local stars surrounding the earth system (Tau Ceti, Alpha Centari, Benard's Star, etc.) which had 18+ stars and 100+ planets.

I found that my best strategy was to first, defend Sol with a large fleet and, once I reached that portion of the tech tree, a combo of planet defensive shields and a large number of hangar bays (6-7+)for my most productive planets.

When I had all of the planets in the Sol system conquered I built up large fleets and phase jumped to the next closest star and did a rinse/repeat on my Sol system strategy. I did run into problems with money at first, but eventually overcame it by building up trade on almost every planet where it was practical to do so.

I always left a fleet of at least heavy cruisers and light carriers at each star as a first line of defense, sometimes supplemented with a cap ship as needed.

After I reached 30+ planets, I ended up getting to the capital ship cap and began to have problems with the fleet cap also. I dealt with this by going through my fleets and scuttling older class ships (light frigates first, then siege frigates and flak frigates) and substituting more powerful ships. I found that large numbers of light carriers with missile frigates were a really good force multiplier against anything up to heavy cruisers.

I finally ended up winning the game with my last opponent with a overall fleet of 2 dreadnoughts, 2 battleships, 6 battle cruisers of various types, and 6 heavy carriers for cap ships; and around 30 heavy cruisers, 25 light carriers, 25 missile frigates, and various other types as needed for certain situations.

My money problems basically went away after I was able to invest massively in trade, both in-system and between star systems and defended each star system with a resident fleet stationed at the star, and heavy defenses at key planets. My overall end-game totals were 68 planets, 300,000+ money income, and 200,000+ in both metal and crystal; even after paying 75% out for my fleet maintenance.

I guess I have two points to make: 1. Take advantage the way the game multiplies your income with trade, and defend your stars, then your best planets, to take advantage of your economy; and 2. The big capital ship battles are cool, but the game only gives you 16 cap ships max. Try using the strategy the U.S. Navy used in the Pacific in WW2. A few cap ships, supplemented by lots of air power.

Most of my big battles with opponents were won because I could hit his big capital ships with a combo of massive numbers of fighters and bombers combined with my limited number of cap ships and heavy cruisers. I ended up with most of my cap ships intact and leveled-up after each battle. My enemies ended up floating junk between stars.

On larger maps, I adopt the scorched earth school of tactics.

I use stars as my defense points, where I leave my "response fleet" stationed.

On the star-system that I'm attacking, I colonize only planets that're easy to defend within a single choke-point, which will be heavily defended, and filled to the brim with Frigate Factories to make my reinforcements.

The rest of the planets get trashed; thus forcing my opponents to waste their funds rebuilding. After destroying enough planets, the AI runs out of juice, and removing the last few planets is a cinch.

I then colonize the entire star-system, and once more, leave a defense fleet sitting by the star waiting for work.

Lather-Rinse-Repeat until you win.

Against a Human Vasari player?

True, but it's still super-effective if you've managed to push back his defensive fleet, AND his main fleet. Theres no way he can rebuild in time after losing a few planets. Stopping to build up a new colony just wastes precious time, that the enemy could be using to churn out reinforcements.

i like it the way it is.


The only thing id be okay with would be (large) orbital structures that lower the supply costs of your ships by a percentage.

After playing a 5 system and 10 player FFA random hard AI game, I can honestly say the fleet cap was totaly fine. Even when dealing with a huge amount at once, several simultaneous battles and trying to hold down a complete system - it just wasn't so bad.

Expand, rebuild, move on while always making sure that vulnerable systems have a fleet within a jump of it. Combine knowing fleet movements up to two systems away I almost always found it possible to keep my systems covered.

This does sometimes mean taking on fleets larger in size than your own though. Battle tactics and fleet composition have to be tailored to each enemy otherwise you could easily become unstuck.