True, perhaps each planet should add +5 or +10 to the fleet cap. Or perhaps raise the tactical slots available to 35 for asteroids and 50 for planets or something similar.

I still haven't had a problem so far though, with a quarter of a hundred planet galaxy conquered at the 38% upkeep level vs. 7 AI players. I'm sure it gets much harder though depending on positioning and against humans.

20 planets? That's less than 1/4 of the size of the map I'm playing on now. I'm advancing, but slooooowly. Everyone else is smaller than me but can field a maxed fleet too.

I can't grow any larger as it just becomes a resource drain trying to play whackamole with frontier systems.

My fleets are set up well enough and my tech advanced enough that I've destroyed 2 enemy fleets of the same size without losing anything but a frigate. (one of them has finally caught on to the military tree and grew some balls, but way too late).

I have no need to replace ships at a high rate. The few I lose can be replaced quickly. Every cap ship is at level 6 or higher, several at 10. I think I've lost one capital in the game.

I can utterly obliterate pretty much anyone. But I can't advance far because the AI simply groups together the ones I'm not attacking and goes hairy apes*** in my core worlds the instant my fleet moves. They can hold out for a while, as every one of them is maxed on defenses, but I still have to return the fleet to avoid losing my major planets.

Once you hit the fleet cap on a large enough map, the game automatically approaches a kind of equilibrium, where the effort required to advance your empire past a certain point simply isn't as effective because there's no point- you lose money and resources doing it to no gain. It becomes a sisyphean undertaking to try and nail those last few.

Make no mistake, it *is* possible to advance, it's just brutally slow. I'm only doing this now because I want to see it through- I'm stubborn that way. But I don't see me playing another map this size unless something changes with the fleet cap mechanics; it's just not as much fun, and that's why I play games like this.

This is a great discussion!

First, regarding the possibility of negative income, I would like to draw attention to Gaien Crescent, for those that doubt the possibility of true negative income - in fact, the beginning of the game you have negative income. The map requires decisions of whether to make your initial planet your Cap home world (thru the upgrade), create an economy on your planet, or build a missionary or military excursion. This example can be experienced by everyone who owns the game in less than five minutes. This crushes the issue, because it IS real. In fact, if you make the wrong decisions on this map, you will literally be at 0 credits, with nothing to show for it, until someone comes along and kills you!

On the subject of huge maps and economies of scale... I've played Areolian all the way through, Huge Random several times, and I see end game as a graceful game of chess on huge maps. If you want to make several extremely powerful fleets, then so be it. That may be end up a smart decision, or you may regret it later on. There is nothing cut in stone about how a fight will turn out "by the looks of things." Micro management, economical manangement, and fleet capacity all weave together to form situations that each player will face with different tactics and perspectives. You can predict a lot of events unfolding in Sins, but you cannot determine the outcome by a simple number crunch.

If you aren't making money, then you obviously need to evaluate your economy, and adjust your strategy accordingly.

When end game draws near, I rely upon one of my main rules of thumb of RTS - it will not be a flawless victory. There are split second decisions that you will make as leader of your empire that will ultimately make positive and negative impacts on everything you control. Nothing will be perfect. Sometimes, you need to take that enemy planet on the front line. You know he's going to counter with a smaller force on one of your flanks. This is war. People are dying. Keep reminding yourself that not every shiny new defense laser pew pew beam is going to maintain a flawless record against your enemies. It may get owned. Your planets may take a lot of heat, and your armies may need to be constantly remade and retooled as the game plays out.

The game, as highlighted by the fleet cap, has several physical limitations and ceilings in place not only because of necessity of concrete game dynamics, but also because of PC specs. It's a game people, it's not the actual complexity of running a true real life empire. Analogies are great and everything, number crunching has its merits, but the fact remains that the developers are always striving for the most balanced game that gives all players of different styles and capabilities a chance. Giving a player a chance does not mean they deserve to win. It means they deserve a level playing field with many different strategies that can be used, all towards the ultimate goal of winning. Some games you can win without even losing a single ship. Some games, you will be teetering on the edge of existance, and an unorthodox decision in a critical moment may ultimately swing the tide in your favor, maybe even giving you momentum for the rest of the game. Smaller empires do deserve a chance, but not because they are n00bs. Because it's legitimate, it is for real, it is the reason we play these games - upsets happen. It's the quintessential Rudy, the Rocky inside all of us that we want to see come out, digging deep, and finding what it takes to fight off the big guy.

Rome fell. Then again, it's still around...

On the concept of ganks, it's ironic that most of the rebuttals have hinged on a situation arising in which several smaller empires gang up on the largest empire. There is diplomacy in this game. Even if it is some form of co-op, or a single player game, you have the chance to deal with other empires in ways that don't involve fighting. Just throwing that out there.

Considering the earlier allusion to chess I made, take it at face value. My perspective on end game, with particular emphasis on larger maps, the fact remains that there are different strategies that one can use in order to "finish off" the game. It's not over until it's over. I'd be willing to bet on the bigger empire, regardless of the fleet cap. I wouldn't put all my eggs in one basket, however. The reason we even play the game is the unknown outcome, if it was decided by simple numbers and exploitive strategies, the games would become more scripted.

PS - Yes, I'm saying the fleet cap is (pretty much) fine. I don't think Sins was designed specifically for people to only play huge modded maps w/ triple digit planets, who want to raise the fleet cap so they can get the exact same battles with twice as many ships (and CPU load). I understand the difficulties of expansion due to the fleet cap on huge levels; I believe it is a strategical hedge, intended to induce exactly these types of situations a commander faces, in regards to logistics and mobility. Also, I haven't seen much talk regarding the amount of skill a player has with regards to micro management finesse, in a game [theoretically] dealing with 10000 fleet cap - I don't want to see Sins turn into some sort of uber-Starcraft. I respect that playstyle, I find it fun as well, but I don't think Sins is aiming for JUST that. It's already epic scale...

I dont think there is any Diplomacy when you play against AI (not talking about Multiplayer). The Diplomacy in SOSE is simply a passive waiting on missions which will give you their favour when you do it in time. And than you can bargain for some treaties.
For me this is no Diplomacy. Diplomacy is when you can active try to get/persuade the other players and get an alley. e.g Credit for assistance, credits for happiness etc.




Depends how you play it. When you play as the game stated 4 vs 4 5 vs 5, than the game is much more playable and enjoyable. Because the miss of fleet is balanced by having alleys. When you play it All vs All. The situation changes completely.
I dont say its not playable, but i do think it is less enjoyable. Because the game turns in a forward and backward running game of your fleets.
In the beginning i played 7 stars and 8 stars maps, I liked to play All vs All. But than the game just gets less enjoyable because of the fleet supply. And this is not because i have to think more, or make tougher decision etc (which i like doing by the way), its because the game creates a situation where the gameplay from strategy and tactic changes to a boring moving of your fleet from back and for.
So right now when i go big, i mostly play with locked teams, to prevent to fleet insuficency and lacking diplomacy.









Depends on the point of view. When you have 10.000 fleet cap in a 30 one star system this might be. But when i have 80+ planets on a multiple star system, than its complete different.And also when the fleet cap would be in relation to the overall map-planet size, than it could be easily prevented to turn into a starcraft style.

For map creation there could be the choice of using the "old fleet cap", e.g when your system cant handle it, or the "new" fleet cap which could be to increase the fleet cap in relation to the overall amount of planets/stars. In this way older systems can still run the game, high end systems can go nuts.

In my opinion the fleet cap should be combined in a relation of planets total in the map, stars and the distance, heck maybe even upon your culture. It might make culture more usefull (only logic for me that if more people like your culture that they try to enlist in your military thus giving you more recruits for your ships.) I am not saying however that it should work as a large multiplier just as a kind of influence on it.
The problem I see is that if you play large maps FFA it becomes nearly impossible to overcome the stalements once you wiped out 2 or so AI's and you have to defend what you have at that point. I can understand that it might be there for a "realistic" point of view (i.e. the larger the size the harder to controll) but at the moment it becomes pretty much impossible to move on once stuck with a larger number of planets to protect.


Regarding the tax rates... I got no problem with my income. Though I admit that by playing advent and using the Deliverance machine on my own planets sometimes eases the stress alot and saves a long bunch of time that the com center would require, I think it it isn't too much of a prob.

If the game was made so that small empires have absolutely no chance against huge empires then it would mean that the entire game would be decided during the beginning colonization portion of the game and that playing afterwards is a waste of time. Now that's all well and good if you're into that sort of thing, but if SOASE is truly wanting to be this huge, epic game, then every part of the game should matter, not just the beginning. I have played many games where your fate is decided in the first 10 minutes and the following 50 minutes (or however long, depending on the game) is just watching the consequences. I have rarely wanted to play out to the end of the game; either I was going to win and it would be boring or I would lose and it would be frustrating. That's not my definition of epic.

As I said earlier, there is a difference between having a good economy and having the most planets. A person with 5 planets can easily make more than a person with 10 planets. So no that does NOT mean that the game is simply a planet grab because it may be better to spend your time developing your existing planets then going to colonize more. Also, I never said that the small empire should have "absolutely no chance" against the large one. I merely stated they SHOULD be a disadvantage because they are in fact the smaller empire and put themself in that position by not playing as well as the larger empire. What is the point of playing good if game mechanics simply 'make it fair' again for the other empire who isn't playing as well?

BTW I see now where you can get confused with what I'm saying. By 'Larger Empire' I mean more powerful as in economy, technology, and yes sometimes size. Sorry for the confusion. Again let me restate: The amount of ships an empire can field should NOT depend on how many planets said empire owns, but on the resources that empire generates. A ship is a ship and should cost the same to upkeep regardless of that empires income.

I'm in favor of a pro-rated fleet cap based on the size of the map. What players in this thread appear to be asking for is to be able to grow their empire by leaving a defense fleet in their system. Otherwise the game does become a "wack-a-mole" which will not be a good thing for the game's replay value. These players are not attempting to amass a great smack down fleet, but a fleet equal to what they will be facing in the new system, while leaving a defensive fleet in their existing systems.
Then you could have entertaining battles in more than one system, offensive and defensive struggles. That would be much more entertaining than moving back and forth between systems and would create strategy, not discourage it.
I am guessing that the fleet cap being permanent once achieved and tied to % of total income/resources is that it is easier to program as opposed to the amount of fleet points actually used. It would be beneficial, especially to the ai if it was tied to actual fleet points used as this would allow the ai more resources to recover quicker from a beating, which would support the smaller/losing empire.

Perhaps an option could be built into the next patch to allow the players to scale the fleet cap via a slider? That should make everyone happy and accomodate those with older computers.

I too would prefer a fixed upkeep/supply point instead of one that depends on the Empire economy.

Not only doesn't it make any sense (the US/Jamaica exemple summed it up well), but I think it creates more balance issues than it solves:

Concerning small vs big empires, in a FFA game with 3 players or more, most of the time, the smaller ones (let's call them B and C) will end up ganging up against the leading one (let's call him A): Suppose A is doing so well that he has as much income as both of them combined:
It costs him 50% of his ressources to upkeep his fleet, while B and C each can pay 50% of theirs to match his fleet.
Thus, B+C and A have the same upkeep (as 50% of A income=50% of B income+ 50% of C income), but a fleet twice as large.
This is a major balance issye IMO (even though B+C have a slight disadvantage in tech because each of them must develop each tech).

The second issue is when two evenly matched(A and player fight. They both start with a 75% upkeep.
A ends up getting the upper hand, and B fleet takesheavy damage.
If the upkeep was ship based instead of income based, it would allow B to rebuild (because his upkeep would have decreased a lot).
However, under the current system, B still pays 75% of his income for a fleet he doesn't have anymore, and gets basically zero chance of coming back.
A can take many of his planets while he builds up some fleet, and A becomes bigger and B smaller than they would have without the fixed percentage upkeep system. Thus, B needs more help because he has become smaller.

There is no point in trying to give small empires a better chance when this mechanism itself is turning a moderate defeat into a crushing one.

It seems to be that Sins has taken on the concept of "perpetual comeback" rather than the more often seen "slippery slope" design.

the inherint problem with this is that the "perpetual comback" theory works much better in fast paced lightning round style action games. In Sins it results in the larger empire not having a significant advantage over its opponents, in fact the larger empire is actually more vunerable than his opponents, bar opportune choke points or bad planet randomization.

the way fleet supply and distance penalties work results in a single empire always being weaker than any two other empires. the two empires will have the same, or greater fleet cap than the single large empire due to fleet mechanics, and together they will have equal or greater income than the single empire due to distance mechanics.

this results in no single player being able to become the dominate force, even more so on large maps. While this may seem fair at first, with the largest empire not being able to steamroll their opponents by economic might, the eventual result is a stalemate where neither side becomes the inevitable victor, and the other player is unable to make up any losses.


basically the game reaches a point where it is imposible to expand at the expense of your opponent.

as i didnt read all the way thorugh, this is the one area that i didnt address in my above post. perpetual comeback has only ever been implemented a hand full of times where it actually functions.

honestly, i have never seen a system that punishes the better player while simultaniously crushes the chances of the weaker one.

the person with the better ecomnomy, more planets, and more tech should have the advantage. after all, isnt that the entire point?

The problem with eliminating the flat upkeep rate in this kind of situation was mentioned earlier in this thread by one of the beta testers. It's a problem that many other RTS games in the past have had, and one that springs to my mind was Homeworld. Homeworld's actual problem was a complete lack of fleet maintenance, IIRC. It's been quite a while since I played it.

Anyhow, if you have a per ship based support system, then when one large empire (economically large) looses a significant portion of their fleet, they suddenly get a huge influx of resources to use to rebuild that fleet. While this sounds good on the surface, it ends up being an annoying factor because when one side wins a major victory, it means very little because the looser will replenish their fleet almost immediately and the battle with happen all over again. What it comes down to is it eliminates some strategy because the cost of each ship means very little. "So what if I loose 40 frigates to capture this planet. I can have them rebuilt in a couple of minutes." With the current system, it becomes much harder to rebound from a loss like that, and it forces you to consider the unthinkable option of retreating to conserve your forces. Even if it means abandoning a colony. It might be worth it to call your forces back, regroup and repair, then try to hit them again to liberate the fallen colony. Under a system like you are proposing, the defender would simply pile as many ships as he can into the system and hope they can overpower the attackers, who are doing the same thing on their end.

I've been playing a FFA game on a huge map and I've encountered the whackamole effect even before maxing out the fleet...so raising/changing the fleet cap isn't necessarily the answer.

I think the problem has more to do with the AI ganging up against the player.

IMO the best solution would be to revamp diplomacy in the game, so the player has more influence over the other civilizations.

Some possible ways to achieve this:

- Allow one player to bribe player A into attacking player B. (In other words, provide a method to break apart AI alliances.)

- Make it easier to buy favor with AI players.

- Provide a mechanism (for example learn a spy tech, or pay for spy missions) to discover how much AI players like/dislike each other.

- Give human and AI players an opportunity/incentive to remain neutral.

- Revamp the "missions" concept. Make it so you need to respond to the proposals ("accept" specific missions). You would only lose favor with an AI if you failed a mission that you accepted. Or at least make it so you lose less favor if you didn't accept/acknowledge their mission.

Basically, make it easier to make and keep allies in the game. The AI seems to do this to great effect vs. the human player on Huge maps.

c/p
The upkeep system makes little sense, it should be based on the actual cost of your ships, while keeping the curret percentage tax(it's just going to be over 5-10 minutes and not every second, of course), because realistically bigger armies are not linearly harder to sustain, but closer to exponential progression, which doesn't really depend on your income.

Maximum allegiance should scale with your empire size or map size(the former is more realistic). It currently drops off with 10% the first 3 jumps and 15% the next 3(capping at 35%), this could be the standart for around 20-30 planet empire, while smaller could have each jump dropping 15% off the maximum(cap of 5 jumps and 35% again) and larger empires having more jumps reducing just 10% up to(depending on empire size) an 8 jump cap(for REALLY BIG empires), with the last jump dropping just 5%(again resulting in 35% maximum allegiance at the planets furthest away from the capital).

hah, I just finished a huge 102 planet map with 2 AI allies against 7 enemies.

My faction was the Advent, controlling 66 of those planets
total game time 14:34:04 with my victory being my combined fleet nuking the last homeworld as panic drove the population to burn their own world

my credit income was hovering around 80 or so, with a fleet upkeep cost of 166. I upped trade and filled un-needed frigate construction places with trade slots. metal and Crystal were low only because the Advent have no way of improving resources without cutting down all trade;;;;;;;;;.

My 4 fleets with a healthy mix of 2-9 capitals and heavy cruisers were able to take on the AI easily as /all/ my planets had tactical slots maxed out. Though I turtled in most of the time and waited for additional supplies to cover any (and very few when I maxed out my tech trees) losses. I think my endgame credit amount was past the million mark, as well as metal and crystal past the 200 thousand mark. It's all really how you present targets to your foes and how well organized your static defenses are for keeping the planets alive. Of all that time, only one fleet (which was a rebel fleet) made it to my Homeworld (which I never moved, being that in my mind, moving the capital would actually be detrimental to population loyalty ), even then it was crushed in mere minuets due to fighter/bomber and turret defenses. Rebels were crushed with no more than a meep by 1-3 heavy cruisers posted in every planet that didn't have enough defenses just yet.

The planets with lower alligance pretty much are nill, except if the culture isn't strong enough. What's really the thing with that is how easy your planet's population will sway to being influenced by another. Besides, that doesn't go down much when you have a fleet parked in orbit

It's sounds like you pretty much have already beaten the game is just slow mopping up the rest of the AI which is one reason why I don't like playing super huge maps on any game including Civ4 and Galciv2. Bigger isn't always better. Also another problem is the game's research speed isn't designed for super large maps for like you say everyone will reach equilibrium.

Sorry but it doesn't work this way. If you can rebuild a colossal fleet in a couple of minute just because of the freed upkeep, it means the game is horribly balanced(ie, the upkeep cost is way too high compared to the building cost). That is not an issue inherent to the system, but to its implementation. Most upkeep systems (Kohan, any turn based strategy game) work that way, and they don't have the problem you describe. As long as it still takes enough time to rebuild, taking advantage of a tactical victory would still be feasible, and as the losing empire would have less planets, he would not be able to field as many ships as the other one. If the idea is to make sure someone is unable to recover from a tactical defeat, then there is no point in allowing small empires to be able to field as many ships as larger ones. Under the current system, losing a colony or ressources is no big deal, because it doesn't hurt your ability to maintain your fleet, so I don't see how it favors not piling up lots of ships.

TC, there's never a time where your income HAS to drop below 0. If you upgrade your infrastructure and build trade ports at all of the planets you conquer, your outer planets can only make money, not lose money. And you can never build your fleet so large that the upkeep surpasses your income because of the 2000 supply cap.

In every huge game I've played, I've been able to maintain my credit income at ~40 per second and my metal and crystal incomes at ~8 per second.

My views on the whole 'Small empire = small fleet' is that, sure they might only field a smaller navy, but what about the R/D part making his smaller, cheaper fleet turn into a formidable force that suddenly surpises the bigger empire as he's usually devoting all available energy to developing colonies and fielding more and more ships. Tis what I do, I turtle in and grind out the needed 16 research stations and go to town improving and fortifying my worlds. Only when I have a firm avantage in both qualtiy ships and maxed capitals into 2-6 fleets do I start pushing, and find myself riding on just how fast my ships can obliterate and destroy a colony.

The trick to Sins is to not overextend your logistics, that's why real life tank rushes extend only about 100 miles before they stop and wait for the supply lines to catch up.

I think an excellent system to minorly add on is a logistical factor that limits how far you can safely expand and still be able to have your ships repair themselves. Right now I could take a wormhole and start smashing only planets but not gain anymore, but my fleet would have no where and no one to supply them, so hulls wouldn't be restored and armor quality would drop until I pulled them back to a world that had a Captial/frigate yard that would restore them depending on the extent of the fleet's going out from the safe supply lines of the empire. I know this game tries to remove micromanagement, but yet I'd love to see this game implement an upkeep factor that varied with what state of war you were in, as well as your personal supply lines.

Perhaps to simulate the extent of your supply lines, maybe have a group of NPC, background ships like you find on densely populated planets moving further out from the homeworld, so you could see how stretched your resources are and when to pull back and strengthen the lines. Would give this excellent game another very engrossing factor for you to have to keep up with.

I would agree that in Sins, there is still a bit of a short comming here, because production times on many of the units is so short that even with the upkeep, so long as the enemy didn't build anything for a while, they can very rapidly rebuild a lost fleet. I was simply stating the reason why the current upkeep system was installed, and I don't personally see it affecting the game all that much. As long as you maintain a proper planetary development schedule, upgrading your planets' infrastructure befor expanding more, you will always have a decent income, so aside from a "realism" point of view, why change the upkeep system? What needs changed is the fleet caps, which is what I suggested in my earlier post about a scaled fleet cap/upkeep system.

Tying upkeep to ships instead of having them depend on the economy would adress the issue of fleet size not depending on map. My main problem with the current system is that other point I highlighted with my first post: The current upkeep system makes it too easy for 2 people to counter 1, especially in large games where it is easier to fill the cap, even without controlling too much of the map. It can be an obvious problem in FFA (but maybe it is no big deal in team games, as it is usually a bad idea to lose your teammate in 2v2 anyway). I see it as a balance issue and not just a realism one. However, you are right about the face that it probavly cannot be addressed in a patch because as you pointed out, production times are usually too short (and production costs too low) for that to work correctly. But I think that would be a welcome change in an Xpack.

The simple change I suggested some time ago would also resolve this ridiculous 'anyone game have max fleet supply because it's a rate' thing, which makes it ridiculously easy for small guys to defeat big guys - and actually makes it difficult to defend a large empire, which makes the endgame incredibly tedious while you're mopping up for reasons described by others.

I suggested that each level of fleet supply be place in 'limits', ie there is a minimum and maximum dollar-value it will cost. In this way, teching up to maximum fleet points with one planet won't result in $7 5000 fleet points, but (say) a charge of $50, and a crippled economy. On the other hand, a 50 planet empire won't be charged $400: cap it at some multiple of the minimum, like $250. Thus it can move about and respond to the ups and downs of your empire, but not in an absurd way. That your military support costs can never put you into the red strikes me as absurd, especially for once-great empires that have lost much territory: they should be forced to 'disable' their higher fleet techs to get military spending under control and balance the budget.

'Balancing' the game so that tiny empires can field the same fleets as a very much larger empire is both absurd and makes the endgame extremely boring and long-winded. As a player, when the game is over, I want it over. I either want to win or lose, not spend hours trying to defend the 12 approaches to my empire with half a fleet while fighting a tiny player who outnumbers the other half of my fleet. When losing, I want to lose so I can begin another game, not spend hours holding off the hamstrung winning player with sheer force-density.

My 2c

Each galaxy file has fleet cap built in,
Each team gets an equal share of that,
Each team member gets an equal share of that,
If someone gets killed, the numbers are re-adjusted to give other team mates more cap
If a team gets killed, the numbers are re-adjusted to give other teams more cap

Fleet supply should just cost money. The problem with the current system is that it's a rate (ie, 79%) so anyone, no matter how small, can field a max-size fleet. That's what needs to be changed. I don't like 'hard rules' like 'need 10 planets to get lvl5 fleet research', which is why I propose a minimum per-second cost for each level of fleet supply, to basically price it out of the reach of smaller players until they expand.

Thats rediculous, this detracts from strategy. Power(ships) come to those who earn it. This system only serves to handicap those ambitious expansionists so that weaker players arent destroyed as easily as they should be.