How many people can play 40 planet, 3 star maps?

Most computers can't even handle it, the game takes 6-10 hours, and most of the people have lagged out/quit by then.

If you want a game to have any real multiplayer following, the MOST an average game can take is 1 hour.

So, before you go off commenting how many games are these epic massive games, you can't possibly believe that type of game is going to exist in a few months.

@ Hunting- do you have friends that own the game?

No, nevermind, hold on. More applicable example. I have a friend who owns Civ IV, as do I. If you've ever played Civ IV you know that any decent sized game lasts >18 hours. Obviously not a one sitting sort of thing. And yet there are hundreds playing online at any given time.

The 'mp save' feature was included so that you could play these massive, day-spanning battles with your friends. So what if you don't finish in one sitting? Play 3-4 hours a night for an entire week; keep your friend(s) on the phone or use Vent if need be.

It's not unrealistic to play huge maps. Huge maps need more cap ships. Ergo, it's not unrealistic to need >1 cap ship.

the game i described usually take about 3-4 hours before its clear who the winner will be and everyone surrenders. its easy to arrange at a LAN center or online if you know the people you're playing with. and not for nothing, some people also play against the AI from time to time when they can't be buggered to find a partner.

i don't begrudge you enjoying a faster pace game and i enjoy 1on1 small maps quite a bit as well. your strategy guides for those maps are very good, i've used them frequently (personally i think the Kortul Devastator is so incredibly overpowered for that type of map its trivial to play anything but Vasari vs. another Vasari). but you shouldn't disrespect other people who might be addressing different play styles. if you're going to keep posting with the same tone you have been you might as well start off each of your posts with an asterisk

*(everything I'm about to say is totally incorrect unless your playing a 1on1 small map).

I guess it's just a matter of preference. I usually run 2-3 fleets, each headed by a cap ship... they are all around level 5 by the time I have the money to buy cap levels, and at that point I churn out the big ships and level them up (sure, 1 Kol can get taken out by 8 or 9 Kodiaks, but 8 or 9 level 4-6 Kols beat the living crap out of those 8 or 9 Kodiaks )

ok, here's an interesting discussion point. on a larger map, do you need multiple cap ships early? i think thats a very good question.

this also goes to the issue the original post, which was "how worthwhile is scrapping the cap ship factory after the first ship?"

my opinion is that in terms of the mid-term to long-term economic development of your empire the greatest benefit comes from choosing a colonizer as your first ship. it greatly increases the rate at which you acquire early colonies and build your economy. in the mid-game it becomes by far the best method for capturing territory after your main fleet nukes an enemy colony. so, given a strategy where the first cap ship is the colonizer is it important to build a 2nd ship quickly or significantly later (say after the colonizer has achieved level 6). i have had the greatest success by building the 2nd ship quickly because you will often benefit massively from synergies. the colonizers are relatively low firepower but they all have abilities that greatly amplify the effectiveness of a high firepower ship like a battleship.

in the case of the Vasari (my favorite race) the nano-disassembler of the Evacuator does decent single target DPS on its own but the greatest benefit is the armor reduction, which can only be fully appreciated by adding a high firepower ship to accompany it. i usually choose the Kortul Devastator for this, but sometimes the Desolator works just as well. You could also choose to use LRMs to supplement your firepower early on but I actually think its more economical to go with a cap ship. You only have to research the first cap ship crews upgrade and then, if you've got enough cash can just buy it right away. The cost of that cap ship crews upgrade is definitely lower than the cost of building military labs and researching the LRM prototype. The cost of the cap ship itself can be thought of in terms of how many LRMs you can buy for the same cost or how many LRMs you get for the same 50 fleet logistics. For Vasari 50 fleet logistics worth of LRMs is 8 of them, which costs an almost identical amount of resources to 1 cap ship (its actually about 120 credits less, and the same amount of metal, and just a wee bit more crystal). Personally I think 1 cap ship is alot more powerful than 8 LRMs, particularly after a couple of levels. The cap ship also grows in power as it levels up, which LRMs never do.

i find that for all these reasons getting a 2nd cap ship early is more cost effective and more potent militarily than researching and constructing a supplemental fleet of LRMs right away. therefore, i scuttle my cap factory after the 2nd cap ship.

I like some of the suggestions Smacksim. I'll definitely ally with the AI. I thought about just having the original colony for precise timing, but the thing is, the timing of upgrades isn't going to be exact. That was sort of the point of getting the extra cash from scuttling. Having money earlier will allow me to either improve the population on my first colonies, or to build more extractors sooner so that it pays off more. If having more money allows for quicker upgrades of the 2nd and 3rd colonies it could possibly yield more resources at the 10 minute mark.

The reason for building the 2nd Capital ship was solely for the purposes of being an artificial cut off. I could also just make 2 points arbitrarily at which I tabulate the # of credits, metal, crystal from each scenario at say 10 minutes and 15 minutes.

I scuttle the cap ship fac to get 35 (or was it 30?) crystal. In the beginning of the game, when everyone makes a mad dash for crystal, it's not uncommon for it to get as expensive as 850 credits. 35 crystal means you get the pop upgrade on the asteroid sooner/assailant tech sooner/1 extra assailant

It's not a simple matter of how much crystal you have one way or another or how quickly you can get a second cap ship. The argument is about how much (in a competitive game where people are going to be at each other's throats from the get-go) extra punch you can get out of that extra frigate or by having a planet upgrade, structure, or bit of research completed 33 seconds faster than your opponent.

Whether or not you 'could' get a cap ship in 7 minutes is irrelevant. In a competitive game, are you going to have time to wait for the mountain of resources that 'one' ship requires? Is that one ship going to be worth more than 7-10 frigates of similar costs when it pops out at level 1?

Anyway, these are rhetorical questions. The point is, it's a lot harder to quantify what scuttling the thing will do for you than simply looking at total resources. It's a choice between having those extra 33 seconds worth of resources or having a logistics-burning lump that won't do a thing for you until you can feasibly scrape together the ship-cost + logistics upgrades required for a second cap ship. In a competitive game, as has been said, this may never happen and by the time it does, it's very likely that you'll want your cap facility somewhere else, anyway.