undoing fleet research

That's the price of escalating a war my friend... Once you jump off that precipice, you're in it until you hit bottom and the war is done (Victory Screen).

For real life reference, see "Operation: -------------"-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------....
..............j/k.


(Nevermind, it was in bad taste... I'm sure you can fill in the blanks though if you're in the mood for some cynical humor.)

I Agree with Zwanglos Wholeheartedly.

Sins was made for massive maps and massive battles. It was literally designed for that kind of stuff. So when your fleet dies, should you not have back the upkeep because you would no longer have any supply chains.

I think that instead, a fleet, when built, should remove citizens from the local planet because where are you getting your pilots and crews from?

The current fleet research/upkeep system makes it impossible to rebuild and bounce back from losing a massive fleet and several planets.

I would rather see a system where you would pay upkeep for used supply points only. The research steps would still have their own one time price.

This would also eliminate the need to undo fleet research.

tbh, I like the current system. being locked makes the decision whether to move to the next level all the more important, something you have to consider carefully.

besides: you shouldnt really allow the major part of fleet get wiped out anyway, in that case retreat is more of an option, even if it means losing a planet.

i use crew training in cival resh., that helps also every ship that dies u get ppl.try upgrading a planet b 4 going fleet resh.

It should be possible to rebuild and 'start over' if your income is wiped out.

The whole point is not to lose your fleet.

if you lose your dan fleet, and planets, and whine you cant go back on your fleet cap.

you, in my books, deserve everything that you get, for sucking and losing your fleet.

Othervice whats the point?

"oh i lost my flet, no worries, lets go to 0 fleet and ECO whore a little"

Very insightful - but it still isn't the pinnacle of game design that Sins doesn't allow you to rebuild an economy after researching fleet supply and losing planets. Even if you only had one planet and a colonizer cap left you should have a chance to make a comeback.

It can happen that two players wipe out eachother's fleets and enough planets to get negative income which will result in a lame stalemate.

I have to admit... I have never, ever, ever, EVER seen a game go into negative income on any side, let alone two or more. And I've had some ridiculous games where I have been like one research away from the max fleet supply cap, and used every bloody point of what I had.

If you lose enough planets to go negative... it's game over for you, you lost. I personally cannot see how TWO players could get to that point in the same game. I mean, wow, you'd have to basically build no planetary defenses on some systems, and have them be wiped out by a little siege fleet while the real fleets are busy or something. And frankly, if that happens, you both deserve what you get.

The only other possible situation that I could think of is if you somehow both failed to destroy eachother's Novalith cannons and just sat back and artillery raped eachother. Well, guess what... if that's the case you also fail! There's a thing like that, that can occur in real life too - it's called a nuclear war. Both sides bomb eachother to hell and you're both screwed no matter who "wins".

And no, no it shouldn't be possible to rebuild and start over if your source of income is wiped out! Think about it! Your planets are not stand alone bastions of credit income. Do you think you grow crops worth a damn on a volcanic world? It's called Imports and Exports. Your planets form a network, if enough of that network is lost, the network as a whole is crippled, it has to be shut down. And unforunately my good sir or madam, when people run out of resources with which to operate - they die!

When I first replied to this thread, I was only half serious... but now? Dear God, man, this has degenerated into a whine fest. Take a look at what you are typing before you hit the 'post reply' button!

on the contrary: if you really are down to a single planet and coloniser, the game is and should by all means be over unless its the much debated mutual destruction. as a matter of fact, I think a good portion of posters here have expressed interest in different victory conditions and options to automatically end games when the result is clear. if there ever were such an option, I for one would not chose to play the current conditions.

and for the record: strategy is above all to know when to fight, when a fight is even worth it and when to pull out. if you lost your fleet because you wouldnt break off a hopeless attack that is your problem. and if the enemy is so strong that the bluk of your fleet got wiped out in defending a core world, it also appears to me that the problem is something other than the rebuild thingy. pick your fights carefully and weigh whether you can afford further military production or whether you can make due with what you have and improve it through research.

Those are some good debates but it would make much, much more sense for upkeep not to go with the research, but with what size your fleet really is. I'm fine with the research part but it would be a much better design for the upkeep of your fleet to go down as you lose ships.

This would bring into play a possibly very interesting bounceback feature that this game desperately needs to maintain even a fraction of realism. Space Military tactics wont base their victory or loss on just one massive battle.

The cost of having a fleet should only go up as the fleet does, not the fleet research - simply makes sense.

Where is the logic behind this? Now two relatively evenly matched players concerning planetary control and fleet size should have a chance to rebuild if they lose a good number of their ships, but a completely beaten player should be able to rise up and win?

If you've been sent running back to your homeworld and that's all you have left, you deserve to lose at that point. This isn't elitism as frankly I'm not very good at the game, but otherwise, what's the point to playing if you can go on indefinitely fielding massive fleets with little cost?

As for fleet upgrades, you're paying for the infrastructure to support a large fleet. Not to maintain the current large fleet you have. It should not be changed to allow you to dismantle that infrastructure unless you're willing to pay a large amount of resources to do so. And the balancing behind that would be a nightmare I'd imagine. I think it's great the way it is.



The only concession I could see towards 'realism' would be that for each planet you lost, the total percentage in infrastructure taxes could be lowered considering that planet's training and ship production facilities are no longer under your control.

On the contrary. If you manage to beat down an opponent but don't finish him off properly only to find him rebuilding and striking back - you deserve to lose.

And yes, it simply makes more sense not to pay for something you don't use. If your empire shrinks and your fleet gets cut down in half so should the costs.

Exactly!





Not really. Just have the price go down as your fleet dies so you can rebuild a fleet eventually. This would be for all races, techs, etc. The balancing would already be there.



You're thinking too hard. This is a simple problem that can be solve with simple changes. Just have the cost for the fleet go down as it dies off. What's so hard about that? Why not?

Warcraft 3 Does it, Starcraft does it, and those are all games still played online in a day by more people than come through ICO in a week.

Which way do you guys prefer? a percentage of your income, or a set amount of maintenance cost per ship.

I have to go with its fine as it is. You grow and push everything into a wartime economy. The percentage grows and is called fleet maintenance.

You talk about realism?

That much of your Gross Solar Product is invested, if you lose your fleet, your population is decimated, your resourses destroyed and supply lines cut off. With the entirety of your infrastructure destroyed and your society is falling apart. Most likely you go into a depression.

Pretending that reality is all of a sudden finding yourself flush with cash, and able to just push a brandy new fleet out the door. Seems to me the fantasy.

If you can rebuild your fleet crippled like that and come back and win. Good on Ya.

I for one like the way its set up now.

Except the costs of the infrastructure to support that fleet aren't gone. You still have to pay dockworkers who did refits and repairs; you still have to run the academies that siphon off the best parts of your population to create officers, you still have all those companies busy producing parts for those ships (who are hardly going to want their lucrative contracts canceled simply because the war is going bad! )

Mainly because you're simply not understanding what infrastructure is. If we lose ships in real life, the shipyards, training facilities, parts manufacturers, etc. all still have to be paid and supplied.

Just because you lost 10 Cobalts doesn't mean the infrastructure you developed has shrunk any at all. Probably doesn't bear repeating as Ron Lugge already got to it for me, but since you addressed my comment, felt it couldn't hurt to repeat.

Economy is not a one way street. When companies hit the rough they cut their losses and downscale their operations to adjust. Why would anyone maintain the infrastructure for a huge fleet they know they can't build? Shipyards etc would be closed down of course. And even in Sins you already paid the build costs. But the upkeep needs to be more flexible.

That said, not being able to downscale is not that big an issue. You rarely take such heavy losses without losing the game. But it's still a flaw that can be improved upon.

ugh, I think we are getting a bit too much into economics here, especially wartime economics. but just to give you something to consider: when a real life army takes a huge loss in materiel, like lots of planes, ships or tanks, what will they do? scale down production because they cant afford it anymore and they dont need the infrastructure to construct thousands of these thing anymore? hardly, if materiel is lost, they try even harder to replace it. and really, since when is money an issue in the type of war that threatens your home territory and such? these wars dont stirr up inflation like hell for nothing, folks.

but getting back to game issue: I find they system working fine tbh. yes, I do lose parts of my fleet from time to time, I take hits, but I rarely find it that hard to recover, especially since I usually did some damage to my opponent as well. now, considering your losses are not too high, what is the difference? one, maybe two maintenance levels. come on, that is ~ 10% income fluctuation. it may make a difference, but at that level there are a lot more factors to determine whether you lose or not. I means its not like you are at a top tier levle at some 60% maintenance cost and suddenly you lose everything and you are down to 10% or sth. if you accomplish that without hurting your enemy at least as badly, you deserve it.

one last point: the tc may refer to a situation where such mutual destruction has affected all players concerned alike and simply does not like the pace in which reconstruction occurs. well, something like that is debateble, but I tend to like it. it just makes everyone that much more careful knowing that huge fleets take a long time to replace. besides, it also takes a great many factories to repace 2000 fp quickly, so income may not be your sole problem anyway.

Personally the best such system was the Master of Orion system... you have a set number of points which represents the ships you can have with free maintenance... any ships beyond that have to be paid for.

Example: (just throwing numbers, not likely accurate) You have 10 points, you build a battleship which costs 6 points... and a titan which costs 8 points... so now you're 4 points over your limit so you pay 40 credits per turn (10 * points you whent over) or something like that.

Certain things allowed you to increase the point limit.

The Devs have said that fleet research is not intended to scale back so as to give the player's fleet value.

Once you reach the later tiers of fleet research, yu got a huge fleet, the devs want that fleet to be important/valuable/unique/not expandable. They dont want that fleet to be just a bunch of throw-away units, like zerglings. Scaling back would make it too easy to replace losses and thus losing a fleet would not be a major hit to the player. As it is if you lose the fleet, it should be a hard hit to the player and be very hard to replace, thus forcing the player to think before commiting his fleet into battle.

In other words, the system is working as intended, the devs wont change it. So stop throwing your fleet away. If you lose your fleet, game over.

I like the current fleet supply setup. I have thought of the other way as well (pay for what your are using), but in the end, I agree that the current system is best because it makes your decisions more deliberate - and final.