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.

Or to add strategy which works well on small - large maps. So there is a price of having bigger fleets too fast.

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).

Without limits, it adds nothing. All it does is slow down your resourcing, and by lategame it won't matter, most particularly in larger maps. It's supposed to have 4X elements, right? In a 4X game, a mismanaged economy or an over-large fleet results in negative income and slow death. Thus, minimum costs per fleet tier would discourage people from teching up the fleet supply before their economy is larger, and prevent small empires working under the same fleet limits as far, far larger empires.

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.

Except there's more than one little guy and each has a fleet the same size as yours..

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

What's your definition of huge? They can't be that big seeing as theres a 2000 point ship limit.

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.

Maybe what they need to do is just add some more levels to the ship cap, 2800 at 80%, 3500 at 84%, etc, since it seems like the cap is far more of a problem than money on the huge levels.

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

However, how do you press their worlds into submission when you 2000 ship points to work with, and they also have 2000 points, as do their allies? Suddenly, your fighting forces that are 2 or 3 times your size, often over a wide area, while each of them consolidates their forces in a few narrow areas.

And the problem with simply upping the fleet cap is that you have to up it quite a long way before it means much. As someone said earlier, with these huge maps, the "small" empires can easily have 20+ planets, meaning they can easily have a powerful enough economy to reach the 2000 point limit. Upping the limit simply give them more ships, and does not balance things out. The only way for that to work is to either up the limit to a point where their economy cannot reach the max points, at which point you have an ungodly number of ships floating around, or make the ships cost more and take longer to build, so their economy tops out at a lower level.

This is the reason I say we need a fleet cap that scales with the empire size or economy. Of course, I still support the idea of eliminating the cap altogether and limiting the fleets solely using the economy and cost of the ships, but I don't see that ever "officially" happening.

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.

Damn, but this discussion is long.

What are you guys arguing about now?

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 .

Wow, Thug you are amazingly incompetent.

Move your capital to a planet NEXT to a star. A jump from star to star only counts as ONE movement space.

I had an empire spanning 7 stars and 64 planets - and not one with a max allegiance less than 60. Just because you don't know or test the scaling doesn't mean its not there - and if your a galaxy spanning empire you should be BUILDING some defenses. Rebels are a laughable threat.

SEcond off, increase fleet cap? What? You want to make your defenses even more laughable? You can have a larger defense fleet, but they can have a larger attacking fleet - and you don't get any more static defenses. Idiocy.

I just won a game against 9 hard computers on a random huge map - AS TEC. You can't bitch about these things. Just because your not doing them right doesn't mean it can't be done. If you research more supply cap than you need, YOU ARE SCREWED. Only research more fleet cap when you need it. You need that income. You can't just tech up and ignore the expand/exploit aspects of the game. Take one system, hold it, fortify it, move to the next system. Now the only place you have to defend is your STAR.... Repeat.

I had three fleets. Two for expanding, one for defense. Station them by your star and you can get anywhere fast enough to hold out (especially as TEC with your shield and defense tech.). Anyone jumps into your home system, your right there to greet them. With adv. PSidar anyone jumping to any of your other stars (two jumps remember guys, between stars only counts as one) you know BEFORE anyone jumpts to one of your other systems, you can start your fleet moving before he even arrives.

I couldn't EXPAND when I had four computers hit me at the same time but I COULD hold. They can't attack you forever, their credits will wear out, hit them when they retreat and keep hitting them, then when they hit you again, hold and repeat.



Care to explain how I was making 214 credits a second AFTER the 75% off the top for supply cap then? Play well. Like REAL LIFE a huge empire is dependent on commerce JUST as much as taxes to stay above water financially. As the TEC finance is cake. Especially after the endgame researches.

And thats playing as the TEC or Advent, as the Vasari with the phase gates it should be cake to move your fleets around.

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.

OH, I guess I did a noob thing and didn't read the latest post in the thread. Sorry If I just rehashed what had already been discussed.

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.

Hey man its always good to have others backing you up when theres so much theory-mongering being done by a lot of the people in the thread rather than any kind of fact... or them actually playing and being mad cause they can't just spam ships or some other insta-win strat. You gotta think people.

'grats on your win btw, you did well (And no critiques of your strategy or advice either :P)

Props to Gyzar

Props to Dairuka too, that strategy works really well except against a good Vasari player (damn phase gates, so you really have to crush their fleet as well as razing the planet each time).

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.

Yeah, HUMAN Vasari players, sorry. Thought it was implied. I can play 9 hard agressive comps and I still know its a foregone conclusion, its a conclusion that might TAKE a while, but its forgone anyway. (My last game was 2vs2vs2vs2vs1, me being the one and the others teams of hard comps cause this is my buddies test week so they're not around )= )

...Stopping to build that new colony worked for me Might have been a slow advance but it was an unstoppable one. He couldn't take back planets and I had more money to spend on rebuilding my fleets than he did. About 10x more money

>>

A screenshot at the end of that huge game I was talking about earlier.

Huge fleet, huge amount of money/resources... and 75% tax not bothering me a bit with all my trade. Had every planet fully built up except those last three... I was getting a little impatient at that point and really just playing with my opponent.

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.

Hooray for martyr3810, Hooray for gyzar, Hooray for Dairuka!
Finally some Posts from gamers who understand the game!
The only thing this game needs is some additional work in the
Diplomacy area.

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.