New way to calculate ship limit
I think a good number of players think the old system of a flat 500 ships is a bit outdated. I am one of those. I don't necessarily have a problem with it but, I also think it a change to how limit is calculated could make the game deeper and fleet variation viable. As it is now there are pre determined make ups to face the threats thrown at you not a lot of variation. I propose that the limit be based on fleet weight. With bonuses for Empire growth.
So, as a starting point I think this is good.
10000kt minimum limit.
+1000kt per starbase
+500kt per planet with over 500 clans on it
with a maximum fleet tonnage of 20000kt
I think this would keep the empires getting beat from having their tonnage so lowered they can't fight back. And, also allows bigger empires to field a large enough fleet to be able to fight the multi fronts more effectively without allowing them to grow so large they can just fight everyone off. This also keeps fleets around the same size as with the 500 ship limit but allows for adaptation to arising situations without requiring PBPs to retool the fleet. It will also add more tactical depth to the way you handle your fleet, by requiring closer management of larger ships since they could easily fill up your fleet allowance.
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esneskrad commented
One thing that annoys me about the limit is it is difficult to build better ships to upgrade your fleet. The Feds can do a refit, so they're sitting pretty. Everyone else has to wait (and wait).
In the early game you build low tech ships because that's all you can afford. In the mid-late game I am reluctant to recycle these ships as it opens a ship slot that can be taken by an opponent.
i.e. 1 recycled ship opens 1 ship slot but only gives you 1 PBP. IMHO a recycled ship should give you 1 PBP per every 20kt (or say 50kt) of hull that you recycle. Currently you only get 1 PBP if you colonize/scrap a ship, no matter how massive the ship is, and this encourages people to "collect" SDSFs to gain ships slots.
If the PBPs were more generous, then I could recycle a couple of mid-size ships to give me enough PBPs to build 1 large ship, knowing that the 2 ship slots I open will at least allow me to use one of the slots for my large ship (and then let someone else build a ship also).
It encourages the entire fleet to get bigger and better without increasing the total number of ships and hence there is no time penalty in having to manage a very large fleet.
Of course the Feds now lose some of their super-refit advantage (but only a bit).* Keeps the ship limit, so players don't have to manage large fleets
* Encourages the fleet to evolve, getting rid of small crappy ships.
* Fewer crappy ships, means more good ships and likely more battles, opening more ship slots - and on we go... -
Attercob commented
I've been thinking along these lines for awhile now. It's hard to say how much you should change a game with out just making a whole new game altogether. But some of the game play features were implemented as restrictions due to the limited processing ability of computers 20 years ago. Today there is no real need for a 500 ship or planet limitation except if it served some kind of game mechanic, and I'm not sure this one does.
I'll put one vote toward evolving a game, through community discussion!
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Kasper Holmberg Laursen commented
I think that any kind of artificial ship limit will feel equally weird and bring some, more or all of the same problems that the current one does.
Imo the only limit should come from the amount of resources in the game. If removing the cap results in too many ships to handle, lower the amount of resources available(or increase the cost of ships, etc. accordingly).
Resources being minerals, supplies, money + natives.
This is also the only "system" that truly makes sense :)
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Kokunai commented
I suppose that is true...It was more of an attempt to make late game economy matter more since after the 500 ship limit you just end up with loads of minerals laying around on a few important planets. I hadn't thought about the privs and crystal...but perhaps a modifier for stolen ships but cloned ships would still count toward the total so you couldn't freely clone the stolen ships. Like, I said the idea is incomplete but I think that the 500 ship limit is limits the races that got a bad cluster in the beginning. Whereas a limit based on economic factors allows a catch up of those players. And there is still an upward limit to ships. Take the empire for example their ships are massive whereas the fed ships are small so you would still have less ships as the empire than the feds. You would just have the opportunity to catch up a bit from a bad start instead of swarms of fed ships taking up your own ship count.
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donaldworrell commented
500 ship limit is a nice limit.
thats 45 ships per player.
or if you can get multiple starbases built early you can up that to 100 ?
Trying to get ships built before the 500 limit is a race.
But leave that aside.
If I am playing the privateer how can you limit me to 200 ships ? You mean I can't rob any more enemy ships and steal them after I get to 200 ?
same with the crystal web mines.
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AdminJoshua (Developer, Planets Nu) commented
I thought a lot about alternative forms of ship limits. The problem with any sort of ship limit which is per race. Such as a simple 200 ships per player or something, is that one player can give ships to another or one race can capture ships from another. How would your system accommodate that?
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Kokunai commented
the math could be tweaked I was just throwing that our as a starting point. It protects from the death spiral, keep large empires from being completely unchecked, while still rewarding large empires.