? Why not just raise the fleet point cost of capital ships by a lot.

Hmmm, here is a 3 part idea that might give players full freedom of choice but limit capital ships to some extent.

Part 1: Return to the Beta income/upkeep system but without that 75% upkeep cap (or any upkeep cap). Players should be able to go into the red. This will make economy a more strategic factor for players to deal with. I never really liked the forced feel of the point system anyway.

Part 2: Raise the cost/upkeep of capital ships a bit. This will further encourage unit type diversification with capital ships playing a command/control function in fleets.

Part 3: Keep the present income/loyalty system for planets located far from your capital world. This will minimize 'lucky steamrolling giant' syndrome.

Just a thought.

agreed with ron lugge.

true enough that cap ships and frigs allow emergent strategies on their own, but it does take away from some element of strategy when you aren't allowed to build more than a certain limit, thats a minor setback, but when there is a hard cap on ONE type of unit, then fleet composition also becomes restricted.

if the concerns are in the cap ship player becomming too powerful etc. there should be certain soft limits on that issue, but it shouldnt be set in stone as it is now. (for instance you could increase the ship cost of cap ships that continue into higher levels, etc.)

i dont think the capital ships bit is a problem. I like it, and it does let you choose your first capital ship effectively. Lets face it: you'd have to be screwing around in a gigantic universe for a 16 capships to be your limiting factor, and you would have long since gone beyond your ability to control such an empire without pausing constantly. anyway, you can probably just mod the research if you want to screw around like that.

i think the cruisers problem has more to do with the difficulty of research. It was already prohibitively expensive before. I approve of the mil/civ lab divide but it has just added another dimension of cost. I can't see myself going over the 8-lab-level, ever.

I am so glad that the AI has Un-Sucked. The game is actually fun! I actually lost militarily! HOORAY!

This sounds more like the issue. It's about the cruisers and how late they enter the game.
With a split in Military and Civic research stations, the cruisers enters the game at a later date then previously.
I can see some of the concern echoed above in flee compositions, early game, but not entirely. I think some posters are jumping the gun a bit too early on these changes.

Because the capital ship changes are welcomed, and changes the omega fleet of doom consisting of capital ships only, to be a more mixed fleet and that's good.

Well, the current system doesn't really avoid the steam-roll-the-ai-with-capitals problem, but that's not really the issue here, I think.

You can easily get the first 6 capitals with only a modest increase in cost (some thousands credits in total) since you'll build the necessary military research buildings in the early game anyway.

So, in the few games I've played with the new patch against 3 allied hard AIs my first 6 ships were still capital ships, so not really a change there for me.

It gets hard to reach higher amounts of them since you just need so many research buildings, which is very expensive, this forces you to fill your fleets a bit with frigates, which isn't that bad.

The problem imho is, that in large games you could easily build more then 16 capital ships, resource wise, but it would be impossible because of some arbitrary limit.



So, I think this Idea would be a good way to still make it possible to have a lot of capital ships in the late game, but limit it a bit in the early game. The current system isn't that bad, it's just to restrictive in the long end.

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As for the cruiser, for me they are now quite useless. I need too much research buildings for them to get them, so I just never get to use them since the benefits from them are marginal and I'm able to kill the AIs with frigates and capitals just as nice.

Last but not least the AI. It got a bit better, builds now lots of capital ships, which is nice. But it still tries to flee sometimes when there is a jump inhibitor present, making it sitting ducks for bombers.

It attacks strong defenses with small fleets which then get wiped out without any damage to the defense (3 caps, 15 frigates vs. 6 gauss cannons, 2 repair stations, 4 hangars; since the AI attacks the cannons in front which will get repaired very fast it takes high losses without inflicting casualties itself).

It never tries to attack weak targets, it always attacks the same planets, which of course have good defenses from earlier attacks.

The AI leaves its fleet at the edge of the gravity well, so when I attack and jump in, I'm jumping in the mid of its fleet and am able to destroy all it's weak targets (carriers, LRMs, flaks) in seconds since I'm next to them, which weakens it immensely.

The AI seems to be slower in building defenses which makes it easier to overrun and it also doesn't always build repair stations next to it's gauss cannons (a must have for every defense) which still make it weaker.

Btw. nice change to the culture system, I like it how it works now.

I like that idea,

or making cap ships cost more for each additional one you add to your fleet
(to represent an increase in technology for each ship you build)

Makes sense to me.

The best ships for controlling Stars are carriers and, to a slightly lesser extent, the Kodiak (upgraded with speed boost of course).

Hello all!

I've been lurking for a little while and this has brought me out into posting.

In all the games I have played I always prefer an arbitrary unit cap, but one which which scales to the size of your economy/territory. Along those lines, this would be my idea.

Individual planets (though not necessarily asteroids) add a small amount to the ship support limit, which is conceivable for planetary defense. In this case, perhaps enough to support 3-10 frigates or 1-5 cruisers depending on the size of the planet, plus a significant bonus for your home planet. These ships are, of course free to leave the system, but they can be justified as a 'planetary defense' fleet.

Capital Ships should then act as the command vessels for your interplanetary defense fleets. These ships would be very costly to build, as well as a maintenance fee. They would not, however, take up any ship support slots. The primary limit to the number of capital ships you can have should be economic. Support should be enough that they would (theoretically) be commissioned and funded by a small group of low income planets pooling resources, or by individual extremely wealthy planets. Your home planet could provide free support for 2 or so, and every subsequent system's home planet could provide free support for one capital ship as the flagship of that system's defense fleet.

On the other hand, as the command ships of your fleets, capital ships should provide a significant bonus to your ship limit. This would hopefully encourage people to have diversified fleets led by capital ships and supported by frigates and cruisers.

Also, in order to compensate for their overkill factor compared to most other ships, I think repairs to capital ships should cost a small amount of cash and resources, go much slower when away from a friendly system with a shipyard, while at the same time, smaller ships in a fleet with certain capital ships (though not necessarily all of your capital ships) should have an increased repair rate, since they have the extra supplies and crew from their flagship.

Should you run out of resources to support your fleet, you would then have to choose which ships to scuttle or otherwise send to their deaths. This could make for a more effective way of economic warfare, where controlling or cutting off trade routes can cripple your enemies military capacity. Without the needed money and metals to repair critically damaged warships, they can become incapable of fighting a war.


The goal of these ideas would be to make capital ships costly to produce but fairly vulnerable in hostile territory (due to the far slower regeneration). Players would get a small number for free from their home systems, but to support a massive fleet of capital ships you would have to have a VERY productive economy, adding another level of difficulty to the game as you try to balance economy with research and the shipyards to repair and maintain your capital vessels.

With capital ships being so costly there would probably not be any cost-effective way to field a fleet of 100 capital ships, but a 10 capital ships supported by 25 cruisers and 100 frigates would become a possibility for an established empire amassing its forces for a major offensive into the heart of a rival empire, sending raiding parties in to destroy the enemies economy to prevent him from being able to support his own capital ships.



That is my take on the capital ship thing and unit limits.

Capital ships don't regenerate health, fighters/bombers don't get rebuilt, you can't build new stuff until you either scrap a portion of your fleet or until the slightly more ruthless you sends a portion of your fleet to their deaths in battle to free up those resources.

That will let you fall back with your fleet if you lose a few planets, but the economic strain will prevent you from utilizing it fully once you run out of stockpiled resources.