but they cant - because once that 75% cap comes in you have to be SOOOOO much bigger than anyone else to be able to field a force that is proportionately bigger than theirs - that can also cover your proportionately bigger empire - in reality it actually then reduces the power of your empire and punishes you for being the biggest.

and again i dont get the problem with having the empire who is biggest and most powerful ( economically and planet size ) having an advantage over smaller empires - duh this is reality if im bigger, have bigger economy, i can support more ships and you little empires shouldnt be able to produce the same thing! its not like that empire started off that way - its because of how they played the game!

the idea is that with double the resources he should be able to counter two players, or at the very least, slow their counters. something obviously impossible when you're outnumbered 2/1


*puts his hands to his temples*

ahm.... ahm....

who predicted this? I have visions of... of... of...
me!

Reading this thread it's clear most people don't get the original point.

Consider this scenario: you have 2 sides fighting (blue vs red to keep things simple) in a system with 20 planets.

Blue team owns half the map (10 planets) and it's fleet capacity is maxed out. Blue team has 2 players in it.

Red team owns the other half of the map (10 planets) and it's fleet capacity is also maxed out, except red team consists of 3 players (as opposed to 2 like blue team).

Suppose both team's economy are identical (all maxed out or not, doesn't matter as long as they are equal), they both own the same number of planets, they both play the same race, and they are both equal in skill.

In theory this should be an equal battle however, because of game mechanics, red team will be able to have more ships under it's control (50% more which is huge).

I say it should be changed so that you pay a cost for each of your ships as support each second and make it where the higher the level you have researched the more the percent of your income you can have directed at supporting your fleet. This allows small empires with powerful economies to support a fleet comparable to a large empires with underdeveloped economies. This is to me, the most realistic solution.

When the tendency was for even a slight advantage in planets to end up an overwhelming advantage in the game... yeah, it was a problem (But, as has been pointed out... not much of one).

amoungst equal skill human players, it is simply impossable to create a game which can allow a single human to defeat them. the requirements to make such a game are such that no one would play.

as frustrating as it is, such is the fate of those who get ganged up on. the best you can do is to make it such a high price, or so long a campagin that some other party either distracts or takes out the people trying to gang you.

Look at it this way, did the spartans have a shot in hell? nope. but everyones still talking about the fight they put up thousands of years after the matter was settled.

a moment from babalon 5 comes to mind, somthing about a line...

So, base the fleet cap on all of the mentioned factors, whichever is greater.

If you all are interested, here is the pre-release concern schod and several of us had.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?aid=174422#1440024

First, it's not just 12 capital ships. It was 12 capital ships and around 100 frigates and cruisers.

Second, they were attacking all at once, AI or not it doesn't change the fact that those 8 capital ships never even got their shield down against overwhelming number(or half down for that matter).


Point is, at high level there is nothing to match a capital ship save for another capital ship of equal caliber, so saying they're not very good is fail. Even against a woman player, the attrition between capship and frigates are too obviously different.

Ahh the old days of Axis and Allies...I remember such gang rapes "fondly"...ahem...

(NEVER playing the Germans again!)

Schod, and the OP are right.

Put it in real life perspective.

you think the US navy has a fleet cap? its limited by its indrusty, and economy. not buy some rules that some 1 put on there head. (NATO??)

now, look at it from the devs point of view.

"some people are going to just SPAM scouts, and lag people!!!!"

well, make the game auto scale detail, it cant be that hard, you built a video game, with resonably intelegent AI, build an auto configurer, that will adjust settings on the fly.

the HARD CAP dosnt need to disapear, it needs to revert to a soft cap, with some of the old, and some of the new. make it so that you have reasearch to up your cap, and have your planets give boosts. this solves both issues.

Schod, and the OP are concerned with size, and the inability to EFFCTALLY defend an empire that is to large for the cap, and they are right if you cant see this, then your blind, or have altierier motives for being "wrong", multi, and the other people that argue FOR a hard cap are concerned with system performance, and 20000 ships causeing said issues. these are also valid concerns, but, they are not going to be as big of an issue as you are makeing them out to be, Schod and the OP, i am SURE dont wanna jsut spam 20k ships and zerg, they only wanna be ably to propotianally defend the empire they carved out, if that means you have controle of 67 planets, and you need a fleet cap of 6k, then so be it, if you machine cant handle it, GAME OVER, you handled your empire very well, till the end of time, the end.

the fact that some people CAN'T understand Shods point, is very frustraiting to me, and apperentally a few others, how can you honestally argue that a person that turtles with 4 planets, in a corner, till he maxs his reasearch should have the same fleet cap that some1 that holds 50 stars worth of planets, 100' or more? machine capability be damned.

you wanna hold that 2000 cap limit, then you should have a required number of planets to have max ship cap. lets say, for examples sake 2 planets, REAL PLANETS, not dead astroids, or evin liveing 1's, cause you need people to man ships. so, for 2000 ship cap, you would need 16 planets. bu, thats not a soft cap...

every planet should give you a few ships, and every time you reasearch, it should boost that number by a PROPOTIONAL amount, and give you an overall boost. Now for every planet you get, you get a small bost, based on the reasearch that you have in fleet logistics, AND on population increase reasearch. if reasearch all the Terrin population increaces, then you would get a bit more then some1 that never touched them right? more people in the empire, means more people joining the navy.

i dont quite know how to say this.

but i think you guys should give me a job, you see the system i just designed, damn i am good at this.

J.

P.S.

I dont care if my spelling sucks, its a forum, and its 4:49 in the morning.

I think that the hard fleet cap is a good idea, because spams just aren't fun.
However, I am very suprised that the cap doesn't vary according to map size. It is completely ridiculous that a 10 planet map should allow the same number of ships as a 60 planet game.
No, I don't think that the number should increase depending on how many planets you own. I think that the reaserch should give you more or less cap depending on the total number of planets in the map. This way, everyone gets the same potential for fleet size, with the only limit being their economy. This would solve the problem that people are having with defending large empires, because the cap will adapt to the scale of the game being played.

I don't know how the unit cap worked before, when it was based on size of empire, but I'm assuming it was a linear thing - unit cap = planets * num_ships_per_planet.

Perhaps, instead of/as well as the research, the number of planets could be taken into account but on a logarithmic scale? ie, for the first few planets, the cap increases rapidly, but gradually the rate of increase in unit cap reduces until capturing a new planet would only allow you an extra heavy cruiser or two, with the total unit cap tending toward some ultimate cap that's higher than the current one.

This would keep some realism in that the more resources you have access to, the greater the fleet you can deploy, but it would also prevent fleets getting any larger than a maximum limit, perhaps simulating the increased administration and logistical issues of fielding a massive space armada. It would also give further incentive to capture new planets, even in the endgame when you've maxed your fleets out.

Diminishing returns ftw! Or not...

In that case, I won't bother caring what you have to say. It's a forum, after all, and it's 2:41 in the morning.

Re: the topic at hand, I have two opinions:

1. It would make sense for number of planets, or total pop, or some other measure of empire size, to provide a bonus to max supply. An alternative would be to add more levels of supply upgrades; e.g., you can have 4k ships, but it'll cost you 95% of your income. If you've got enough planets to support production on 5% of your income, you get to have a bigger fleet.

2. Given the game works the way it does, maybe you (the OP, et al.) should try changing your strategy to account for it, rather than trying to change the game to fit your strategy. Try using choke points to concentrate your defensive efforts. Try sending small raids to damage your opponents' economies without going up against their superior numbers. Build a few novaliths to take out their homeworlds from afar. Come up with some ideas of your own. And if none of that works... well, you got double-teamed, what can you do? You were pretty skillful to hold as many planets as both your opponents combined in the first place.

Oh wait, that reminds me of another strategy to try... use diplomacy, maybe even a little finesse. Take 35-40% instead of half, build it up strong, turn your opponents against each other, then sweep in and take it all.

There are simpler games out there, where the guy with the biggest gun always wins.

The fleet cap is a great idea.
Two players should be able to defeat a single player that has the same strength as they have combined.
In "reality" it might be the opposite way, because there a single side has coordination advantages over several allies. But a game played by individuals needs a strong emphasis on those individual player's abilities and decisions or there would be no reason to play.

Games on anything but the largest maps are decided long before you reach the 2000 maximum cap most of the time anyway.

From the description of some people it sounds as a player with ten planets and one with five are military equals because they have the same maximum cap... but the one with ten planets not only can research his capacity faster, he can also fill it up faster because he can pay for the ships, he can replenish losses faster and thus can sustain more losses and last but not least he can survive the loss of colonies better.

No it's the opposite. 3 players with 1 planet can have more ships than one player with 100 planets. As soon as there is more players in an alliance, the cap becomes higher regardless of economy, skill, research or anything else. It doesn't make sense. A 2 player alliance playing against a 3 player alliance should not be disadvantaged just because of numbers. The 2 players even if they have a better economy, more planets and more skill should not be forced to have 50% less ships. It just doesn't make sense any way you look at it.

If the 2 players have superior economies they can either pummel the 3 under with faster unit replacement or they can support a higher level of fleet cap research. It's simply not the case that fleet cap is divorced from economic power.

Replacement rate matters as much as anything else. More, really.

There's also the other ways of exercising economic power. You can price metal and crystal out of their reach. Pirates, of course. Blitz for endgame techs like Insurgency or Returning Armada to distract your enemies with hordes of expendable units. Deep planetary fortification. More capships in the same support cap. More capship training.

A quote comes to mind, "its the economy stupid." I am by no means insulting anyone and there are some good arguements here, but I disagree with tying fleet cap directly to how many planets a player is in control of. This system works fine for RTS games like starcraft or CoH but Sins is not a strict RTS. You have to pay to develop the capabilities to support a larger fleet and then you have to pay upkeep in the form of a percentage of your income. This in anagolous to how the real world works. Argentina is a pretty good sized country but England, even though it is smaller, has a better economy and in turn invests more money in their military. Falklen's War?

Owning territory in a 4x game means nothing unless it is developed. In GalCiv2 I can own 20 planets and be getting the crapped kicked out of me by an ai with 5 planets if I haven't invested resources into making these planets profitable. The same thing goes for Civ4, if I have three well developed cities in the early game and another guy expands to fast and has six cities with only his capitol developed then my economy is going to be stronger and I am going to be able to out produce and better support an army than he is.

Three players with one planet each against one guy with say ten planets all of which are fully developed. The single guy is going to have a high cap through research because he can afford it and the others can't, he is going to be able to out produce the three man alliance, and he will easily be able to replenish his losses. The main advantage of the three man alliance is that they can out micro the single player so they may be able to win a few battles but a smart player with ten planets will split his forces to deal with his enemies fleets and at the same time be making raids on their planets.

I think the whole thing boils down to perspective. It is hard for people to accept change and Sins is a not just a new game but a new type of game. The 4x guys are wanting some things changed so it more resembles what they are familiar with and the RTS guys want things changed so it is more like what they are used to. In the end I hope that Ironclad does neither and keeps striking that balance that they have achieved. That is what makes Sins a great game.