Ship New Limitations

EDIT: also a Omni-Resupply Capital ship. This will bascially be a bigger omni-resupply ship with more space to hold it and also more powerful to defend itself. that is all.

Honestly, I don't think the player needs many more things to micro manage in Sins. Its a strategy game not an Empire simulator, and typically only tactical RTS games (AKA real time tactic games) get deeply into things like fuel and ammo because they keep the player from doing other more important things in their empire. I'll also save you the trouble and tell you it won't happen, as a change this big would have been announced already.

Though you could change the antimatter system into a fuel/ammo system with a mod, and to a certain degree I know at least one does.

Sins is already plenty complicated enough to master without all of these new limitations.

It would probably be a lot of coding changes and would effect many things.  Not likely to happen.

However, it might be possible to create an ability that when it times out makes the ship unable to move or fire--a permanent mass disorientation.  Ships or modules could be given an ability to "refuel", which when used would reset the count down.  Making it work for all the things you mentioned would cramp up available slots for more useful abilities so the one ability added to each ship would be the most you would want--not separate ones for all the variables you gave.

You could rework antimatter but that would effect almost every weapon and ability in the game and would require a new balance.

A  lot of micromanaging would be required to watch all your ships.

This all does a major thud with me. Realism is dubious. Ships are very unrealistic anyway fighting what amounts to ocean naval battles in outer space. Real space battles would have the ships engaging thousands of miles apart or even light minutes apart. So throwing in fuel, ammo, food, crew endurance and such does not add to realism at all. it is just more micromanagement for player and AI. Terrible burden on the AI programmer.

Of course I hated fuel ships in Swsord of the Stars. I hated having to buy arrows and ammo in WoW. I like GW because there is always infinite ammo, arrows, whatever.

I would like to see veteran level ups for ordinary ships; but even that might unbalance things.

Sins of a Solar Empire is 4x fast food. Let's leave it that way.

A friend did tell me of a Star Trek game where ships under fire would sometimes randomly have certain "systems" disabled...sometimes engines, sometimes weapons, sometimes I don' know, whatever else star trek ships have...

Of course, those game elements were okay because a "fleet" was maybe 10 ships, and a big focus of the game was micromanaging battles....

To implement things like ammo and fuel and crew conditions would turn sins into something entirely different....maybe that's exactly what you want, I don't know, but it certainly would not be the same game....it seems to me that you'd want a game with a lot less ships but more focus on tactics and ability usage...frigates/cruisers would have to be like half the fleet supply of capital ships, and probably need multiple abilities to be interesting enough for super micromanagement....

If you are serious about trying to implement these things to any sort of degree (like in a personal mod), you'd have to get really really creative with abilities, I mean really creative...one problem is that there is a limit on how many abilities ships can have, so you may have to put abilities on planets or structures to get the desired affects...

OK, agreed, i do like the idea of having these limitations to attempt realism, but micromanagement would be kept to a minimum because the abilities needed would be added to new ships. or, better yet, the colony frigate could be an Omni-Resupply ship as well and the resupply ability will be one thing, not 4 different abilities. i do know this would mean there would still be micromanagement to keep fleets supplied, but the overall effect is to add realism. If you have played any of the games made by "Total War" (great game makers) they add Fatigue, Ammo, and in a more recent game they made Shogun 2, they added Food Supply as well (i have not played some of there other games so idk how new their "food" is). The only thing im doing is adding this same kind of realism to Sins. Given that Total War games are turn-based, i can see it may not work out well. but thats what the on/off switch for realism settings is for right? the only other realism settings i continued to add are fuel and air. BOTH of wich (altho sci-fi to an extent) are required for a spaceship to keep running.

Any type of ship that you have to keep in your fleet is a new level of micro management. Total War is not really a good comparison as you have unlimited time to make such strategic decisions and the battles are on the tactical level, while Sins has both going on at the same time on a grand scale.

Honestly I would probably hate Sins if any of these things got implemented. Sins actually started out being a fairly realistic game, with orbiting planets and lots of other things that thrilled Sci-fi nerds. Problem was it wasn't very fun, and all of that complexity really did nothing to make the game more entertaining. I think that is exactly what your suggestions are like, and why they won't be implemented.

Problem is that such settings become a pain to balance...

Shogun Total War (the first one) had the option to have infinite ammo for missile units...when it was on, missile units were ridiculously OP...but with the option off, missile units were pretty pitiful...

Most nearly any feature you make optional is going to have the same problem unless it doesn't add or affect anything meaningful....

That is my opinion...I could be wrong, and such things could be implemented well...I'm just wary about optional elements...

The simplest idea that could probably be done with a mod is to have a ship with gigantic Anti-matter pool and the transfer anti-matter ability like the disciple (but not the steal anti-matter ability).  You could use an existing ship  or make a new one depending on how good a modder you are.  Between the Advent's AM rechargers and TEC's culture benefit, you could use that to set up a "supply line" (not sure what the Vasari have to complement this).  I think something like that has been suggested before. 

However, I'm not sure if the AI would be able to use that intelligently without underlying code changes.  I just pretend culture and trade represent more than just culture and trade.

And air and food are provided by genetically engineered super-algae.  Yum.

Absolutely agree with you Seleuceia, it is a pain to balance the on/off switch (i have the first shogun) and agreed with it off and if its something useful it messes up the use of the unit it edits. i guess this wuld have to be an extremley thuro and extremley complex mod for it to ever come to life.

also, stein220, i was thinking about wat u said, and if this was to be a mod, that could be an 8 reaserch station tech for automated air production and automated food production on a ship. but really, "genetically engineered super-algae"? not so yum for me. "genetically engineered super-PIZZA", i could live with, yummmmm 

to the OP.  No.

SOASE doesn't deal with crew in any way, shape or form.  SOASE isn't Stargate Universe so the ship systems actually work.  Fuel -they got antimatter and it regenerates.  Food... With how we use them, they don't live long enough to really eat much except that last meal of shrapnel. Fatigue... nope; crews are hopped up on meth and never fatigue.  jk.

I'd like crew as done in Star Trek Armada, but in that game you just warped ship back to dock and got resupplied with new red-shirts.  Doesn't work well for SOASE where you'd have to return a fleet multiple jumps to a module.  I'd just be tacky to have your fleet followed around by a stasis ship full of fresh recruits -not to mention just a sick thought to yank their catheter out as an ejection control to fire their lifepods at the ship in need. 

Dawn of Victory has worked 'Fuel' out, but their mod is a far and above the most comprehensive reworking and stretching of SOASE out there.  It doesn't even resemble the SOASE you've play ad nauseam and we look forward to its final release.

How does Dawn of Victory implement "fuel"?

All of this stuff is very interesting from a lore point of view, but becomes pointless micromanagement when brought into gameplay.

I'd love to know the various crew sizes from each ship or what the operational range is, but that's only because I'd use such stats in fanfics or for comparison when worldbuilding for another story.

Sure, I love data as much as the next nerd, but why should an hour long match of Sins become dependent on making sure you have enough MREs in each of your minor frigates? I typically have hundreds of smaller vessals at any given time and do not need to be forced to make sure each one is properly supplied.

Now if we ever had a Sins game where all you did was captain a single ship, I'd support your idea to its fullest capacity. However, this game just has too many ships for your idea to be even relevant.

Pretty much.

Fuel would be great if it were there to serve a gameplay purpose like limiting how far your enemy can invade without regrouping for supplies so you have a chance to come back however that is not really needed with Sins. In Sins, defenses, star bases, and choke points fill that role. I imagine that is why the antimatter recharge rates are forgiving.

I have seen it implemented well in other games where is wasn't a chore like Conquest Frontiers War but that was a much faster paced game and the maps in general weren't as large so supply really was the only thing that would give you a fighting chance against being steamrolled. 

I will say one thing I wish was changed is the almost endless supply of fighters and pilots carriers seem to have stored away however I completely understand why it is that way. It does kill some of the immersion or at least make me not really care at all about the survival of  fighters or bombers.I suppose that is to be expected since there really is no attachment to anything smaller than a capital ship and this is more of a fleet engagement game. 

This.

They require antimatter to manufacture. In competitive games, this limitation matters a ton.

Yeah, I need to think of them as mobile drone factories and not as traditional carriers.

now a mobile drone factory is actually a good way to look at them. especially in the advents case where the Anima are controlling them using psychokinesis. so yeh if you think of them as drones your pretty square on the mark

To OP:

Point of Fact: SINS does actually care about these ship limitations in the most basic of ways. Its called Fleet Supply. Fleet Supply literally is where you are dedicating a portion of your economy to meet all of the logistical and infrastructure needs of a Fleet. And the amount of resources used per ship simulates the portion of those resources in constant use by said ship. This is why bigger ships use more Fleet Supply. Because the eat more, breathe more, use more fuel & ammo and have more wear and tear on the spacecraft than a smaller ship. When you upgrade fleet supply, you are dedicating resources to fill those needs in perpetuity. It's just that instead of calling it Fuel, Ammo, Air & Food, its called "Supply" which in any normal understanding of the word could be construed to mean any and all of the aforementioned items.

ok. when you put it that way, you make extremely well made sense, i absolutely agree. That is why i (earlier) conceded and said that if these limitations were to be added, it must be a mod. if i make it a mod i will bear in mind what you said. thank you "gamerlamb"

You are very welcome sir

no problem

1. It is quite possible for a ship to not need fuel. Our submarines don't, they use nuclear power. The ships could simply use a nuclear reactor, whic would explain why they explode so brilliantly.

2. That far in the future, they could probebly use the power from the reactor and turn it into food!

3. Again, that far in the future they probebly have Very efficiant (and cheap) recycling systems for what they breath, they could theoreticly survive forever. If they could make simulated plants (and that far in the future, they would) then they Could survive theoreticly forever!

4. Ammo, the plasma and lasers would not need any ammo, again they would use energy from the nuclear reactor, the bullets (if those Are bullets) would. However, those ships Are Very large (look at the size of the windows!) they could probebly carry enough for hours. Other, more crazy solutions, are portals to a world, teleporters to a world, or some sort of mass compresser that makes each material much denser, and when time to shoot, expands them and puts them together.