Should Fleet Upkeep be proportional instead of a definite value?

This has been discussed before.  The reason is simple.  The devs wanted it to be a judgement call on your part.  Do you really need the extra supply, or could you live without it.  It's like this on purpose.  You shouldn't upgrade unless you intend to fill those slots.

in my mod i upped it to 90% by endgame and decreased the amount of supply, so you have to budget better. no spamming

Over time I've come to think a compromise would be best.  While there should still be a judgement call, a player who only has 1/3 the fleet of another player should gain some economic advantage from it. So perhaps something like this:

level 0 upkeep has 100 supply and 0%-0% upkeep

level 1 upkeep has 250 supply and 10-20% upkeep

level 2 upkeep has 500 supply and 15-25% upkeep

The percentage of supply you are using determines where in the upkeep 'band' you fall.

I think this would probably be a superior system from a gameplay standpoint but it's not exactly intuitive and might not be easy to display on the interface. So.. *shrug*

There was a dev post (that escapes me at the moment) that talks about doing it that way, where you paid upkeep for the units you have. They decided to ax it because it wasn't fun.

People keep bringing it up, too.

I don't get the "wasn't fun" part.  To me it just makes plain sense for fleet upkeep to scale.

As for the "judgement call" aspect, I agree it raises some decision making, but again, it doesn't make sense to pay for ships that simply aren't there.

Anyway, since this topic keeps being brought up, I guess there isn't anything else to say about it really.  My apologies for beating a dead issue.

I think the reason it doesnt scale is for 2 reasons.

A. Devs wanted it to be judgement call and also to make it more and more harder to build back massive fleets.

B.Lore wise just cuz your not using all your fleet point at that exact moment does not mean you dont have to pay, feed, train the crew that on standby anyless than you do ones being used.

Thats my understanding of why it doesnt scale.

jeesh, guys.

think of it this way. you aren't just payign for the "ships" you are paying for the infrastructure, the ability to have more ships when you need them. yes, even though you have to pay for those ships, think about it. do you need to have trained people to make things? just because you don't have the actual ships, doesn't mean there aren't a crap ton of union workers standing around with nothing to do until you tell them to build some more, which at that point you need to pay for materials, hence your actual ship cost. what makes sense, is not throwing away an entire fleet because you can justify it by saying, "well, at least I will go back to 100% resources..."

that is my 2 cents

Also Darvin3 made a good point that all resources are infinite in Sins. They do not run dry so it only makes sense to raise the upkeep and leave it there. EvilroN is right too. You need the infrastructure to even begin to make the ships and that costs resources too. 

dumb. That is asking for turtling and movable SB spam.

That can be easly reversed and rebutled.

im not sure about most of the ideas here, to be honest the numbers are hurting my brain at 4:31 in the morning

i just have 1 thing id like to put forward

id like a way to drop your fleet supply level. for instance, if you have 600 fleet supply in a fleet (arbitrary number) and you are getting steamrolled and dont have the time or the ability to re-use those slots, (i.e. the enemy is destroying your ships faster than you can build them/faster than resources are coming in) you have fleet supply you CANT use, nd in the meantime its chewing up a large percentage of your resource income that you really need elsewhere to save your ass.

so, to that end, id like a way to fire all those union workers, to use one of the analogys in this thread. not sure how yet, maybe a button somewhere, maybe make it only pressable once you are in the above mentioned position?

sanic, not giving reasons and telling people they are dumb or idiots doesn't help your cause.

instead of firing all the union workers, DON'T HIRE THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE! it really is that simple. if you didn't spend the resources, you wouldn't complain. i have never had an instance where this has bothered me, ever. and i have even VASTLY increased the cost and upkeep of these research items while at the same time lowering the amount of revenue per second in my mod. meh.

or, just think of it this way... that is the way it is, deal with it.

Amazingly insightful!  Thanks!

/sarc

I think the fleet supply system we have, makes the game more interesting, since investing in a larger fleet is not to be taken lightly. Still though, I feel there should be an option to reduce your fleet cap and upkeep. If you loose income, the game becomes a slippery slope you cannot fight against because your stuck with a high upkeep that you cannot get rid of. It should be possible to revert to a smaller fleet (maybe it'd even have to cost you money to do so) to lower your upkeep. If you want a big fleet again, you'll have to redo the research and pay for it again.

Being able to scuttle fleet supply seems like a sound compromise to me.  Even if it costs money to reduce your fleet supply, if saving money from the upkeep is worth it to you, then you should be able to do it.

I think this is the best idea put forward so far, but I think it should increas in cost every time you decreas and then increase your fleet supply.  If you have done this 3 - 4 times, I think it should cost at least double, or even triple, the original cost.  This would keep the decision to change fleet supply levels an important one, but allow for more flexibility.

are you saying it should cost to decrease fleet supply? its a fair suggestion, since it should make the decision carry more weight, but im just thinking, in the context of the situation i supplied above, you dont have all that many resources to begin with... so raising the funds to decrease you fleet supply may be problematic, depending on how much it costs...

also, again, making it more expensive to upgrade is fair and understandable, but in reality it would be cheaper to upgrade again as all the logistics support is already in place and built and just needs people to man it...

i dont know how to get around this, maybe decreasing your supply shouldnt cost money, but slows production for a while because workers are protesting being fired etc? as or increasing, making it more expensive is definitly the most logical way, but idn, realistically it seems wrong to me?

The cost to downgrade fleet supply should be minimal, like one-tenth of the cost to have upgraded that level.  But Sawakaki offers a good point.  To return to the fleet supply level that you downgraded from, the cost should increase by 25% or something like that.

Rez's point also makes sense, that logically re-upgrading should be cheaper.  But if the developers wanted fleet supply to be a choice of impact in the game, I feel the decisions to downgrade and re-upgrade fleet supply need to cost the player more than normal.

I think in part it helps mp games go faster. If you beat a large fleet he cant just start spamming and hold out forever becuse his income went back up while yours stays the same.

Also a guy whose income goes way up from losing his fleet could start dumping massive amounts into defense on all his planets delaying his defeat even longer.

The main problem here are mines. If the other guy puts up a huge amount of turrets, it's still not much of a problem to take them down if you have won against his fleet. But if he also puts his gravity wells full of mines, it becomes problematic to punch through. Starbases aren't a huge problem either, except in Vasari vs. Vasari mirrors. I still think the Vasari need a more valid option to deal with other Vasari starbases.

Anyway, i don't think the turtling up would be so bad. If you beat the other guy good, you can easilly start eating away at his income by bombing his planets and destroying his buildings. He shouldn't have an economic advantage for long.

If a guy upgrades all the health on all his planets and puts 25 turrets on all his worlds it would dramaticly increase the time in the game. Trust me people will do it just to waste your time. Games are already long enuf.

I think mines cost should be cut in half cause they are to expensive to be used in mp. I havent really seen anyone use them. Just so you know I really dont like the fleet system either. I like the idea about a base % that scales in part by the amount of ships you own.

I have to second this thought, fleet supply sucks.  Costs of fleets should reflect what you actually own and maintain.  I could have two frigates but be spending 75% of my income on upkeep for 2000 fs, how does that make sense?

I would really like to see the economy be restructured so that ships require maintenance, and that if your maintanance exceeds your income you get negative income.  This would be a much more dynamic system, and would add to the empire building, i.e. more planets owned, more income, bigger fleet.  Yes it would require more micro, but it's so much more satisfying then a static fleet supply controlled by research.

i honestly don't understand why people have so much trouble expanding. rarely do i ever even use the latest stages of the fleet supply or max caps.