Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

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187 days, 10 hours, 46 minutes ago

Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I'd like to start a discussion about removing the ship limit. What good things could we expect out of it, what are the bad things we could expect. I would greatly appreciate no "I don't want to change the game at all" posts. This is not intended to be a petition, just a discussion about what kind of changes we could expect to see in the game.

Personally, I'm neutral toward removing the ship limit. It seems to me that the ship limit is one of the few things in this game that make it human playable. I feel that removing the ship limit would create additional pressure to get a build out of each starbase every turn that the game just wouldn't be any fun. You just can't balance expansion, warfare, and building w/o restricting one of them, and maintain the playability of the game.

In the current game, the 500 ship limit provides the capability to concentrate on ship building and expansion, while warfare takes a back seat. After the ship limit warfare takes a primary role. As the players concentrate on the dwindling resources and try to maximize the utility of each ship slot.

I think I'd need to see more changes to the game before the ship limit is removed, maybe a fleet combat addon that reduces the importance of each ship slot as many small ships can work together to fight against a single large ship. Whereas right now that would be impossible.

What do others think? What do you think the larger impact to the game would be if you removed the ship limit. Obviously some basic mechanics, tactics, and strategies may change. But do you think those changes might make the game more fun and engaging?

187 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I believe that the shiplimit is what gives the so-called "weaker races" a chance in the game. Without a ship limit, each borg base would push out a cube, while each fascists or bird base would push out a battlecruiser. The fact that the battlecruisers are cheaper to build, does not matter as much as one might think - ammunition costs the same for everyone (except those damned free fighter races ;)).

Regards

187 days, 9 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

That was one of my big concerns too with removing the ship limit. The Borgs logisitcal advantage would be nearly game breaking as long as the player is able to keep up with the expanding resource needs of their empire. I still think there's a limit to how much a player can mico-manage in this game in order to keep it fun... but some people find that kind of micro management fun, I personally do not.

Plus you'd have to factor in the costs of each base. For 10k mc in sunk costs a borg player can get a base capable of pushing out a Biocode with twarps and crap beams. Whereas for a Bird/Fascist player you also have the additional 2.8k mc for torp tech. So based on the borgs inherent advantages in making money + their logisitcal abilities, from a production standpoint it seems that removing the ship limit would only benefit the slower races.

Of course Jobo, are you basing your appraisal on the current combat mechanics, or do you think that adding in fleet combat might help balance this out?

187 days, 9 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Thanks Veldan, that was much better put than my post (which was a bit hurried). I've never tried fleet combat, so I'm basing everything on the current combat mechanisms.

If we redo how combat works, it makes sense to look over everything else, including the shiplimit.

I'm one of those micromanagers, with updated excel sheets, riding the queue, with a huge network of fireclouds supplying my bases with everything they need (and not a single ton of duranium more) to build cubes.

Removing the shiplimit would simply mean that I could do with fewer bases, but keep pumping out cubes at a rate I think any non-borg race would be hard pressed to match.

Regards

187 days, 7 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I'm not sure I buy into your argument about logistics 100%, Jobo. One of the things I tend to do (if possible in a standard game, and in a no ship limit I would almost certainly do it), is I build an Alchemy ship pair (merlin + refinery) in each major cluster regardless of presence of Bovi's. Over time, these ships help keep a cluster productive with priority builds and regular queue builds, long after they've been stripped out. (Plus they provide fuel to allow built ships to actually move away!

Removing the ship limit would allow this to be more prevalent for each cluster, and could potentially reduce the long term logistical advantage of the Borg.

This tends to eliminate the problems I encounter with logistics. I think this might make the borg logistical advantages different from the regular races, but not really game breaking. Sure, the Borg can push out Biocides every turn, but you have the other carrier races pushing out Gorbies, Golems, Virgos, and Rushes.

Of course these ships allow bases to remain productive during the post-ship limit phase of the game, but might get compromised if you remove the ship limit restrictions... of course if you just remove ship limit.. it means ships can be cloned all game long. Which means that more and more fireclouds will find their way into non-borg hands as the game evolves, as well as Cobols.

187 days, 6 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Ship limit makes the game playable.

Now we got 30 turns to make our fleets and economies grow by building starbases in strategic locations.

After that it's warfare and survival of the fittest for the ~5 strongest races that survived the initial build up on top.

At least for my capabilities 500 planets and ships is near the limit, so I'm happy as it is.

187 days, 3 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

As Fed I wait for the shiplimit to refit my empty hulls and lets fight them against your weak early game ships ;-) But the limit could be 1.000 ...

186 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Late in the game, moving 150+ ships a turn becomes a huge nuisance. Fun for a few battlegroups that are actively engaged, but for the rest, a chore. I am usually happy when the ship limit hits which means that i won't have to frantically supply my bases to keep pumping out a ship a turn, and can instead grow my fleet slowly as the enemy ships are destroyed. Remember, there is no real fleet management or grouping function build into the game. Having no ship limit would make the late game unmanageable, especially for finesse races such as the privateers, birds, and fascists. Now, if you could group ships into fleets and move them as a unit, set multiple way-points and add a few other shortcuts like having a freighter assigned to a run and then having it do that run on autopilot, then by all means lets remove the ship limit. however, while we still have to click on each ship each turn and make a decision, its not a good idea.

186 days, 22 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

No ship limit would as others have suggested make the game unplayable unless mining rates and alchemy rates were radically reduced.

On the other hand there are few things more frustrating then watching your empire wither while a dozen heavy hitters sit in the building que. I believe the way ship limit, building que and [to a lesser extent] the combat engine are flawed. I believe a system that limits the number of fleet tons allowable based on empire population (both colonist and native) would be much fairer. Races like the Birds and Fascist could build a half a dozen or more ships for every cube ship or super carrier.

186 days, 14 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Lindy, I've read a lot of your posts over the past year where you mention your thoughts on how 3.5 should evolve in nu. And overall I think I agree with your stance. A weight based ship limit would be much fairer, some races, pack a lot more punch per kt than other races. I think the heavy carrier races would end up losing a lot if the ship limit were changed to weight based. Personally, I think the the Feds and Fascists probably pack more of a punch per kt of ship mass than the other races. Plus a lot of the game mechanics go off of mass anyway. For each 100kt destroyed you get 1PBP, for each 50kt you build you spend 1 PBP.

185 days, 18 hours, 35 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

without wanting to write a thesis about this, i believe that a lost ship limit will put the lizard and the cyborg in advantage and the fed and crystalline will loose their core strengths which clearly depend on the ship limit. while the lizard wants a late shiplimit whatsoever to produce as many hissers and warships after the (for me, golden) 20 turns mark and is limited only by the 500 ships, the fed needs the limit to go on growing in the midgame, while all others have to stall. the same for the crystalline who also has his golden time shortly after the ship limit. the borg will have a big fuel and a mediocre mineral advantage, if he builds enough merlins.

in my little opinion also a game without ship limit will become a monstergame, where especially the races with smaller and mineralwise cheaper ships will have to move very big fleets.

183 days, 20 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Hmmm. I am generally in favour of things that add more variety to the game, and the ship limit does tend to mandate against hulls which are not primary combatants, so getting rid of it would allow for more esoteric ship types to play a greater part in the game, and that's a good thing,

If we removed the ship limit:

We might consider looking at exhausting Bovinoid supply production just as minerals get exhausted, or perhaps reducing alchemy efficiency as noted earlier.

We probably should look at ways to ease the administrative burden of issuing orders when navies grow large -

allowing ships to be grouped (even if combat resolution doesn't change) for movement
filterable/sortable grid UI for ships (to identify as-yet unordered ships )
player-definable waypoints (for multiple ships to move to)

We could look at

applying some kind of maintenance cost to ships
inflicting damage with elapsed time or distance traveled to require maintenance
applying a cost surcharge to new construction based on the size of your existing fleet

although those (along with hull or tonnage limits which are dependent on population) are death-spiral mechanics that help bigger empires get even bigger, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Maybe we could look at crew production as an additional area of constraint?

183 days, 17 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I think it would be interesting to have a game where each player has a maximum ship limit = to the number of planets he owns.

1. PBP's would allow builds above this limit.

2. This maximum could be increased in a game. Example: 10 + # of planets.

3. Or, only count warships. But, to do this you might need a bit of tinkering. Example: Only ships with beams can do non-Explore missions. (chunnel, build fighters, rob, make webs, tow capture, cloak, etc). (Exception = Super Refit)

183 days, 15 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I spent years playing with host999 - maybe we were more warlike than other groups, but we found that with our collective rate of attrition that the 999 limit was never hit - a few big empires ended up around 200 ships total (we usually ended the game around turns 80-100 though - never waited for someone to take over 60% of the galaxy or whatever).

I've posted it on suggestions - but I think 999 is a good idea for people looking for a game with more breathing room in the queue - but still a hard limit.

183 days, 13 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

dtolman, it was actually your suggestion which made me want to start this topic. And by saying remove the ship limit I was speaking from the standpoint of doing host 999 since that would require the fewest coding changes I'd think. But I didn't want to throw that out there entirely because I didn't want to stifle the creativity of players.

I like the idea of a limit based upon production capacity. Whether if that be # of planets, which would make the early game more combat oriented as players actively seek to expand their territory of influence, and minimize their opponents influence.

I'm also finding myself drawn to a limit based upon tonnage. With possibly several tiers, such as a Single player has a minimum limit of 20,000 kt. But there's also a universal upper limit of 300,000 kt, and each PBP earned actually increases your minimum player limit by 50kt. Of course, there would need to be problems that get worked out, like what to do about giving ships away, and having your ships captured.

I'd like to see some kind of restricted production after some kind of limit.. whether if it be # of ships or planets, but with the capability to expand your total tonnage over time through positive player action.

I would like to avoid the death spiral where a large empire suddenly finds themselves at a huge advantage compared to everyone else. Maybe it's hard to expand your production to 20,000 kt, easy to go from 20,000 to 35,000, and then it gets more difficult to go from 35,000 to 50,000. As opposed to number of planets I would actually like to see a # of starbase option, maybe 1 SB allows you to build 20 hulls, 2 allows a bonus of +15 hulls, 3 allows +10, 4 allows +5, 5 allows +2, and each one after that allows only +1 ship. So by turn 30 when everyone should be at around 6 bases, each player is able to build 53 ships, and they don't get too many more builds for each base beyond that. PBP's would allow you exceed these minimums, cloning would never expire, and you can clone and build at the same time based upon existing rules.. probably need to be slightly modded.

183 days, 13 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Ah - but the big empire has its own problem - a lot of vulnerable territory to defend per ship. Adding in wrap-around to the game (an add-on we always played with), means their are no "safe" borders for them to leave undefended.

Also, the game has its own basic economic limiter - the finite resources in the game. I found that by turn 80 in host 999 games, usually resources are completely tapped out on most planet. Production usually slows as a result, and it takes multiple simultaneous extended LDSF freighter runs to to feed a single starbase enough materials to keep pumping out full equipped tech 10 ships - bovonoid worlds excepted.

The extended logistical infrastructure to required to maintain starbases in the late game meant that we often had to divert ships to protect interior spaces as well - a single missing freighter could cripple production at a starbase.

I'd be interested in hearing the experiences of other people with host999 - I only played with the same extended group of 15-18 people, so our experiences may be atypical.

183 days, 11 hours, 3 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I would not want to play without a ship limit. I wouldn't have the time to control all these ships. And I'm always happy that after hitting the ship limit I can concentrate less on maximizing my ship count and more on combat.

The idea of a dynamic ship limit for each player based on #planets / #production / #total fleet mass sounds very interesting.

183 days, 10 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

As a Privateer player, I strongly oppose having to manage 250+ ships, with orders for robbing, mine sweeping, moving, etc. I would even propose a lower limit for ships, which could favor the weaker races like Birds, Fascists, etc.

In a balanced game you will have one-two enemies eliminated in the first 25-30 turns, which would leave ~50 ships for everyone, by turn 40. Ok, Privs would get more, Birds would probably get more, but generally people will have around 50 ships. It's a decent number and it gives you space to have 2-3 merlins, 8 LDSF, 10 support ships(probes, cobols, terraformers, glory, loki, etc), and the rest attack ships, about 25-30. 25-30 ships mean 3-4 fleets of 5-10 ships fight ships. Why do you need more?

183 days, 9 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

The problem with the ship limit is it hurts weaker races who need to build 5 ships to kill that one cube. You only have 45 ships by the time the limit is hit you can't go up against 1 cube, you can't risk loosing 5 ships to get 1 cube. Guess who gets more priority points from that scenario?

Maybe set it per race and give modifications for other factors. Maybe 1 extra ship per happy native race you have. That would limit the cyborg somewhat.
Or maybe your star bases set your ship limit. Let's say 1 star base can support 10 ships.
Just some ideas.

183 days, 9 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I don't see how its possible to get 250 ships though - where are the minerals coming from for building these ships? Where is the fuel coming from to allow them to move? We never got close with host999 - we'd settle in around 100 ships with the major empires, and attrition & the lack of minerals would keep that number fairly steady.

183 days, 9 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Dup.

183 days, 9 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

@dtolman: I said Privateer. If you check my finished games, you'll see I'm pretty close to this number. MBRs cost close to nothing and you have to count ships others build for me.

183 days, 8 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Because fleets mean nothing in this game.

183 days, 8 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

A support based fleet limiter would need to take some things into consideration.

#1: Ship Mass
An sdsf should not be as economically demanding as a Biocide.

#2: Ship Weapon Array
Since weapon arrays along with ship mass (within limits) determine warship effectiveness,
The weapon # and type should be considered.
It's a lot cheaper to maintain the 1 beam PL21 than it is the 10 beams & 10 bays on a Gorbie.

#3: Planet Count
The bigger the empire, the more likely the empire can afford supporting fleets.

#4: Economic power of empire (colonial & native combined to balance borg & non-borg)
The bigger the true economy of an empire, the better able to support fleets.
An empire of barren rocks should be less capable than a thriving growing empire of
heavily populated (both colonist & native) worlds .

I would discourage using bases as a means of limiting fleets.
This would just encourage useless base building for the purpose of hoarding slots.

Might be interesting to use supplies and not cash as a support mechanism.
It would favor the borg though but that's easily fixed by handicapping borg.

To the OP:
More than 500 just makes the game more tedious IMO.

183 days, 2 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

PROS: You can build as many ships as you want!! WOOT!!

CONS: The game will be 100% ruined or at least no longer VGAP as we've known it.

As some have already mentioned, removing the ship limit will have a devastating effect on some races in this game.

Taking out the ship limit would require a complete re-write for all the races and their special abilities, it is basically a new game that you are creating at this point for the most part.

183 days, 2 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

@dtolman

http://planets.nu/games/12522

I had about 200 ships in this game when it ended, I also gave about 10-15 to my ally. If this game went any longer the 250 ship mark would've been achieved very easily.

Managing a fleet bigger than this for some races like Privateers, Fascists, Borg would turn into a nightmare. Privy's already require about 2 - 3 hour turns when things get really evolved and sometimes even longer! I don't want to spend an entire day on a turn :)

183 days, 0 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Regarding building a bunch of ships.. like 250 or so. In two games already on Nu I've been able to build around 125 ships for non-ship stealing races (Robots and Colonies). Both of these games ended around turn 65. If I would have had to, I could have easily gotten both games to 200 or 250 ships easily through the use of Alchemy ships, Population, and Supplies. I'm in a game currently where by turn 24 my three man team was able to get together 171 ships. Now around turn 60 we've broken the 200 ship barrier, plus we're pushing out several hundred torps and about a hundred fighters a turn. Through growing our Bovi planets we're building enough supplies, and through strategic placement of alchemy ships we're keeping our fleets of ships moving.

My biggest fear about an addon like host 999 is that players will do whatever they can to fill up the ship slots, but host 999 will only delay ship limit by 10 to 15 turns. Because by the time ship limit hits around turn 30 (in a 500 ship game) you've got about 50 bases already (in a real competitive game) so it's only about 10 more turns of production to put out another 500 ships, just on existing bases. Very easy to do. Even if all that fills up the queue are smallies. And basically I find the 10 turns prior to ship limit to be "hell turns". I would hate having to extend that over a 20 turn period.

The more this discussion goes on the more I'd like to see a weight based ship limit. It would do several things.

1. Ensure that small useless ships aren't over valued.

2. Remove the current situation of most bang/ship to most bang/kt.

3. Heavy carriers are good, but other ship types will need to be rolled into a players arsenal as well.

4. The ability to slowly scale up the amount of tonnage based on .. some kind of game event..

It might be safe to sum up a lot of the comments in this thread that the game absolutely NEEDS "some kind of ship limit".

Most players would like the ability after this "limit" to slowly expand a fleet by having it based on some kind of real measurable number outside of "ship ID#". Some prefer some kind of production cap based on the size of their empire and economic development. Others like a simpler stance of just saying that the most ship tonnage in the universe is x, and that the number can only be exceeded by... some kind of event.. probably combat. How far off am I?

183 days, 0 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

To Veldan Thank you for the kind words.

All; this thread is an interesting read with many valid points on both sides. The three biggest negatives to changing the ship limits mechanics seem to be; player work load, over all game balance and the "death spiral".

Player work load is mainly a user interface issue. This could be dealt with by adding some ship grouping, and command que (giving a ship several turns with of orders at once). How best to do this is a topic for for another thread.

The current building priority point system does have some balance and "death spiral" issues as others have noted. Most notably when playing a race that requires 2 or 3 ships to bring down a big carrier. In general it is harder to get the 2 or 3 ships out of the que then it is the one big one. If the big carrier races has more starbases with ships in the que it is very hard for a non carrier race to gain ground in the ship out.

I have been thinking about how to address this through a max tonnage as a function of an empires population. It is clear to me that a linear relationship between population and max tonnage will not work (ie x # of clans = y # of tons). My thoughts are more a long the lines of;

max.tonnage = min.tonnage + ( tonnage.race.modifier / 100 ) * SUM( ( planet.colonist.clans / C ) ^ K + native.bounce)

Where;

min.tonnage = config setting between 1,000 and 10,000

tonnage.race.modifier = config setting between 50 and 200 (100 for most races, the Borg would less then 100 Birds and fascist would be higher)

C = yet to be determined constant, most likely somewhere between 1 and 10

K = constant between 1.0 and 0.1. Based on the numbers I have run 0.66 (ie 2/3) seem about right

native.bounce will be lesser of;

planet.colonist.clans

or

native.gov.tax.mod * ( native.tonnage.mod / 100 ) * ( planet.native.clans / C ) ^ K

native.tonnage.mod would be as follows;
Humanoid = 200
Bovaniod = 50
Amorphous = 0
Insectiod = 50
All others = 100

Mathematically, I believe this is a good starting point. The exponential K value of 2/3rd is designed to take the edge off the "Death Spiral". Large centralized empires would be less efficient at generating max tonnage points then a smaller more defused empire, and two smaller empires could have a combined tonnage equal to or greater then one larger empire

182 days, 23 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

@veldan: you're not far off. One thing to consider would be decreasing the max number of ships. I think this should also be taken into consideration. Will it blend? :)

@lindybomber:(cool name btw) native.bounce would be 0 for amorphous is that intended? I find empires that manage to keep amorphous planets to deserve more brownie points than ones that keep humanoid or other more useful types. Humanoid is also too much. Avian, Bov, Insect should be lower than 100, the starbase boosting natives should be higher than Bov, but lower than 100 and amorph should be much higher than 100. Isn't this formula too complicated in the end? I mean, ok you can compute it, but what is the philosophy behind it? What does it reward, what does it punish? (I mean specially the second part)

182 days, 14 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Vesuvius,

I think dropping max # of ship would be interesting. It would limit the amount of heavies pushed into the game, leaving those to post ship limit builds. That would be a very interesting game as well, but it might be slow moving since you can't get a huge assemblage of ships together. I think it would easily mesh with Lindy Bombers equation. I also believe that Joshua is working on allowing players to modify the hconfig settings, and maybe he could add in a line to just manually edit the max # of ships/planets. Maybe he could allow between 1 and 999 for planets, ships, bases, and so forth.

Lindy, I want to play with your equation a bit before I comment on it, I think there's a few things you might be leaving out that I would think should be taken into consideration. I think that whatever change if any... it should try to remain within the spirit of 3.5. And a single "simplish" equation to explain a game mechanic definitely fits within the 3.5 spirit.

182 days, 13 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

LindyBomber, how does that function apply to the Borg? Wouldn't they have excessive tonnage compared to everyone else?

182 days, 12 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Coldsteel,

That is what "tonnage.race.modifier" is for. for most races their modifier would 100, the Borg would most likely need a modifier somewhere in the 50 to 75 range. Also, natives do give tonnage points as well to help offset the borg population advantage.

Vesuvius,

Yes the amorphs give 0 (zero) tonnage. They are intended to be pest, and not helpful in any way. I welcome your input on my math. I don't expect this to work the first time around, there is going to have to be some trial and error to get the constants dialed in correctly.

Lindy

182 days, 11 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

@lindybomber: What i'm saying is that amorphous are already "pest" and hard to manage in keeping a colony on a Amorph planet, while humanoid, bovinoid and the others are quite useful and they shouldn't give an extra bonus. So if someone is able to manage keeping amorph colonies, he should get a bonus, while someone who only has 50 degrees, insectoid/bovinoid planets shouldn't. What do you think about this?

182 days, 11 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

If removing the ship limit doesn't impact the performance of HOST, or the game itself from a memory/processing standpoint, then it may be worth considering as a GAME OPTION:

SHIP LIMIT (500) = YES/NO

My impression was that the ship limit was mainly instituted as a measure to keep the processing down to a manageable level.

182 days, 10 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

isn't the planet count supposed to follow the military power usually? why turn it around?

(250 ships are achieveable, and they are on the edge of playability)

182 days, 9 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I'd prefer to see the ship limit as a value that's adjustable during game creation. Persoanlly, I think the ship limit should be 'per race'. something like 100 ships for each race. This would allow each empire to tailor thier ships to their gameplay style. I can see a valid argument that it should be set up as 'tonnage per race' so races like Borg or Evil Empire dont just crank out 100 of the biggest ships and stomp everyone.

Adjustable ship limits would make this a much better game.

182 days, 7 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

@thin lizzy
Basically, it's a game design preference - if combat power is not divorced from economy to some extent, then that death spiral really encourages :

Players to drop if they start to lose, so separating the two encourages smaller nations to keep fighting.
A monoculture of play styles - everything is about maximizing the economy, because that's a greater enabler for victory than grand strategy or clever tactics which cannot be realized without the economic success first.

I think as a first step I'd like to be able to try a straight tonnage cap - instead of 500 ships have either 100,000 ktons across all races (which would be fun) or perhaps better 10,000 ktons/race before all later builds have to be paid for with PBP.

182 days, 6 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

"My impression was that the ship limit was mainly instituted as a measure to keep the processing down to a manageable level."

That was the exact reason.
Back in the 90s when host was run on 386's and 486's single big game host runs could take hours.

182 days, 5 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Even on my Dad's 386 SX a host run on a mature game would take about 10 to 20 minutes without addons. Cplayer on the other hand cold take 30 minutes per race being played by the computer.

182 days, 4 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Regardless of the original reason for a ship limit, there seems to be a consensus that removing the ship limit entirely will result in too many ships that will take too much time to manage.

182 days, 4 hours, 25 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

True, with one caveat...

It will take too much time to manage with the current interface.

182 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Lindybomber,

Host 3.15 Nitro was written to address mature games taking obscenely long times to host.

Tim Wisseman also posted in the old usenet & aol forums stating the reason he didn't expand
the 500 limit(s) was because host times would skyrocket.

host999 was a late host written by Tim.

181 days, 3 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

So does that mean that with modern servers planets.nu can remove the ship limit with no adverse effects?

Have always wanted to play one game where there were no ship limits.

180 days, 9 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Regarding the run-time problem: Tim's host had one big problem: it worked from disk. PHost is a lot faster just by working from memory. However, on today's hardware and today's operating systems (with disk cache), both host a regular game in a few seconds. I don't know how NuHost works, but it reports taking about 80 seconds for a normal game. There's probably room for improvement.

The bigger problem is play time. I currently need an hour or so with the Nu interface. I was faster when I could use PCC2. Give me double the ships with this interface and I give up, sorry.

But even with VGAP classic, I usually enjoyed the relief of the ship limit. Because it now means I can concentrate on strategy instead of pumping out ships like crazy. I once tried a "growing ship limit" mode: start with a limit of, say, 300. When that is reached, add 10 slots each turn (PHost "NumShips" option + perl one-liner = fun & profit). You probably don't even reach 999 until the game is finished. I found that interesting to play, but unfortunately haven't tried it a second time. OK, it needs a fair build queue mode to be fun, PHost PAL sucks here. PHost PBP is best, TimHost/NuHost PBP probably a close second.

--Stefan

180 days, 7 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Stefan, thanks for bringing up already established phost solutions to this problem that we've been discussing. I've been chewing on Lindy Bombers equations for a few days, and now you've given me PAL to chew on.

Why do you say that PAL is unfair?

180 days, 5 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I found PAL very frustrating to play.

PBP is simple: you build in first-in-first-out order, and you can trade your ship kills for faster building. Easy. You can collect PBPs if you wish, because they normally do not decay. And if you want a break, just have it. Your PBPs will still be there, and your build orders will still move normally.

PAL means all your actions from now *and the past* affect how fast you advance the queue. Which means you must still be pumping out action as fast as you can, because otherwise all others will overtake you on the queue. Which means, even if you fight and win, you'll not build, because others overtake you just because they fight more, in completely unrelated wars. Your build orders can even move backwards in the queue!

--Stefan

175 days, 0 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I have been thinking about this more and we may be aproaching this issue from the wrong angle. This production should be limited by resourses not some abritry limit for funky math. What is we cut the mining rates down to about 1/3rd of the current rates and increase the cost of alcheme by 3x? Also income rates could be reduced to about 25% current rates, this would force the building for more lower tech hulls and equipment.

174 days, 23 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

The biggest and most annoying problem is fuel. With lower tech I would think that it would negatively affect fuel consumption due to the less efficient engines.

172 days, 12 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

"lindybomber
"This production should be limited by resourses not some abritry limit for funky math."
Agreed.

"What is we cut the mining rates down to about 1/3rd of the current rates and increase the cost of alcheme by 3x? Also income rates could be reduced to about 25% current rates, this would force the building for more lower tech hulls and equipment."

This is feasible if build in space & free fighter production is also increased.
Else, you'd have torpedoes costing 4x what they currently do versus each fighter.

Instead of a 3T+2M+5S / fighter, it might have to be along the lines of 9T+6M+15S / fighter.
The big drawback here is that fighter production would be very difficult especially for the Bots.

A Gemini would produce 13 ftrs per turn.
A QTanker would produce 4 ftrs per turn.

172 days, 4 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Bane,

This is a very good. I actually thought about that after the fact. Maybe instead of cutting tax rates the cost of all this components and hulls cold be increased.

172 days, 3 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Why would it be more expensive to build torpedoes than fighters in a mineral poor universe?

172 days, 3 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Reducing mining rates would not overly favor fighter races, but reducing income rates would greatly favor the free fighter races.

172 days, 2 hours, 42 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

"eraulli,
Why would it be more expensive to build torpedoes than fighters in a mineral poor universe?"

I was referring to lindybomber's suggestion of cutting economies by 75%.

The preferred torps are the mk4, mk7 & mk8:
That's $13, $36 & $54 per torp + 3 minerals (1T,1D,1M).
Teching up to each is T5 ($1000), T8 ($2800) & T10 ($4500)
Build in space fighters cost 5 supplies & 5 minerals (3T/2M)
There is no up front cost for fighter tech and fighters do more damage than torpedoes.
So, for effectively 20 supplies, the fighter races get a weapon more powerful than torps
that have a substantially higher cost.

If the income was cut by 75%, the cost of the torps increases by a factor of 4 relative to fighters.

Make sense?

171 days, 7 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

The ship limit was simply put in to make sure the server didn't get overwhelmed when processing the turn.

People have argued that changing the ship limit would change the game but honestly it wouldn't really change it all that much. Games usually run pretty fast and people are mixing it up when the the 500 ship limit is hit. To be honest, there are quite a few exploits people can do to use the ship cap to their advantage that would be fixed by moving away from the current system.

The cap should be changed from 500 to something like 750 or 1000 to see how it goes. The only other thing that would make sense would be to make the cap "race specific" instead of a pool.

Something like 100 to 150 per race would make the great ship building race a thing of the past.

Even is Joshua leaves it at 500 for the server generated games, it really should be set as an option on the custom games tab that way RL friends playing together can decide for themselves.

The next evolution of Planets really should be based around "options" in the custom games.

170 days, 6 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

> The ship limit was simply put in to make sure the server didn't get overwhelmed
> when processing the turn.

That's a quite liberal interpretation of history. The ship limit was put in because PDS BASIC (in which VGAP3 is written) does not allow dynamic allocation, and Tim didn't expect it to ever be reached. Quote from original doc:
-----
      ERROR: ALL 500 SHIP SLOTS ARE FULL!!!

                500 ships are the limit. I have never heard of this
             happening, but you never know. No new ships may be built
             until some ships in that game are destroyed or scraped.
-----
Still, VGAP isn't too bad here. All games have limits, but only few have rules what happens when they are reached. I recall sitting frustrated in front of "Dune 2": if you build a unit when the limit is reached, the unit is simply lost, all resources gone. We at least have a build queue.

Ship building must be limited somehow to keep the game manageable. Limiting it through resources alone does not seem to work, as we all see. Fixed per-race limits wouldn't work, either. If Lizards do have 250 planets and are about to win, why should they be limited to 100 ships? Limiting ships by some score ("if you have 100 planets, you are allowed to have 100 ships") isn't easy -- what do you do if someone loses score? I once played with an experimental add-on that "swaps out" ships in this case, but I wouldn't say it enhanced gameplay.

So, raising the limit seems to be about the only thing to delay the limit. Plus a decent build queue mode.

--Stefan

170 days, 4 hours, 53 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I don't like the idea of removing or changing the ship limit. Ship limit is part of the game, just another rule to follow and to take in account. It encourages the players to burst their economy at the beginning giving importance to the growing of their race and penalizing the players that start confrontations too early. It's too a way to counterbalance the races that have an exponential ratio of growth like the borgs. They would take a great advantage if the ship limit is removed. Most of their planets become like a 4m. bovinoid planet producing 400 supplies each turn with their factories . That wanna say that they would have a constant and infinite flux of mats to build new ships and since they are the only ones able to move ships instantly from any part of the galaxy they could win the battles just by numerical superiority. Sending all the ships he can build each turn until he could win the battle just because you run out of mats counter the lost of ships. I can say more, you would be almost unable to capture one starbase. the defender will just have to leave 50-100-200 small, and cheap, ships orbiting his planets just to make your capital ships waste ammunition/fighters before fighting against his war ships. You are coming with a T-rex with 190 cargo? I would put 38 sdf before you fight against my Diamond leaving you without torps, making you waste 6650 mc and 190 of each mat in torps just to the cost of 380 mc and 78 of each mat in sdf... and ensuring you will lose a fight that you would have win.

And about upgrading the ship limit to 1000... I don't know about you but in almost all my games it takes all my effort not to run out of mats some turns before we hit the 500 ships. I wouldn't be able to build each turn because I will have to search mats in too far away planets or wait till my merlyns produce the needed amount of mats to a new ship. Giving again advantage to the borgs/priv that are able to move ships faster and cheaper than other races.

So, I'm against of removing the ship limit in public games. In the private games you should be able to make anything you want.

Regards,

Nite

170 days, 4 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I agree with streu and nitemare. I haven't seen a feasible suggestion for how to change the ship limit, other than perhaps to put in an overall tonnage limit instead of a ship count limit. I thought an interesting suggestion was to have a limit depending on planet count, but it is not clear how to deal with the case that your planet count goes down -- keeping the ships seems fair, but then allies could manipulate this by trading planets to each other.

170 days, 3 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

i am totally against removing the ship limit.
the game will simply become unplayable. once you have reached >150 ships planets becomes a full time job.
if i would have to manage more ships i would need a secretary...

ulki13

168 days, 17 hours, 11 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I like the ship limit and I totally vote against removing (unless in private games of course). It splits the game into two parts.

1. Rapid expansion & fast Star Base building, focussing all ressources on building ships
2. Developing of fleets & weaker planets, more war-orientated strategic approach

The removal of the ship limit would change the basics of the game. Regardless of the massive balance-change, you need to develop completely different tactics and behaviour. Furthermore, it would put the whole Priority Buildings system useless.

If you want to do it in a private game I guess there's no one who will stop you. Put this should not be implemented in the normal game cluster.

168 days, 12 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I like the ship limit, and it is totally neessary to make the game playable. Once you have >100 ships, you need so much time for a turn, you can´t have a real life anymore. So please do not remove the ship limit! More, please make a option to turn it down for private games, so if just three players play you can set it to 100.

168 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Not to many people want it removed but many want it changed. I think setting a limit based on the number of star bases you have is a good one. Each race can support 12 ships per star base. This has the added feature in smaller universe games of limiting the ship quantity. It also means in games with 500 planets with only a few people you can amass, if you want, quite a fleet. In 11 player games if the planets are doled out evenly and you can somehow put bases on 25% of your worlds that gives you about 120 ships. That is a lot of money and resources.

The ships are balanced by fire power vs. cost and not balanced for a ship limit. So with a ship limit luck plays a big part of your survival, do you find a few good planets early enough to get some of your key ships built?

Do the math it works out pretty well.

168 days, 10 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Sorry, but no way. Look at our team game Bazal. Ulki, emork and I have together 54 Bases and we can build many more. That would be 648 Ships to move, and as Lizard I could use every ship. Now I need about three hours a turn, more or less. Mor ships ore time.
I think the ship limit is very well, you have to build up early and have a strong economy. Without it it´s a different game.
Domlos

164 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I have to agree with the current ship limit. You could maybe have it as a host option for people who want to experiment. The big problem with the ship limit is when people spam it with 20 starbases producing SDF with stardrive. Then sitting them over a planet or in deep space with no fuel so they can't be easily destroyed. This i believe is exploiting the ship limit to prevent other races having a fair opportunity in the game. It is also very difficult to prevent. The only way i can think is to alter the ship lists to remove the useless ships AND engines that have no practical use. This would go hand in hand with reducing the amount of engines needed on alchemy ships. This would at least mean spamming the ship list would cost MC's.

163 days, 15 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

@nitemare
While I have misgivings about messing with the ship limit, one thing removing it altogether does do is restore the roles for some smaller ships,

E.g. while 38 SDSFs may make an effective torp sponge for a T-Rex, they just make a bunch of tasty hors d'oeuvres for a single Reptile destroyer with blasters.

163 days, 5 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Once the ship limit is reached then those that are engaged in battle tend to be able to build ships at a more rapid pace than those that aren't. I've been playing since 1994 and consistently - moreso with the expansion of computing resources and Internet (as opposed to 300 baud BBS) - the complaints on the ship limit are from players who have been stuck in economic expansion with crappy ships at the 500 ship limit. They want the ability to build more powerful ships to handle the assault of races that have already been mixing it up and have already ammassed a fleet of "lets get it on" warships. Privateers and Crystals, aside, their ship strategy is different than other races.

Let's face it, when the ship limit is reached, your economy grows exponentially more than your ship building so it is soon a moot point as to being able to afford building a kick ass warship. Plenty of minerals and money - and that includes spending for tech-10 torps versus tech-6 torps (for example). Again, Privateers and Crystals aside when it comes to ship building (for them a valid strategy is ship acquiring - it is a race advantage, afterall).

Absolutely, it sucks to have a mid-tech level ship engage in a tech-ed out ship. Attrition is also a huge factor. Losing 5 or 6 ships against an opponents 2 ships is painful, regardless of the accumulated build points.

The 500 ship limit encourages a strategy that employs economics and ship building. Victory conditions may suggest a large number of planets but you need to be able to hold them and you need to be able to acquire more of them - especially at the 500 ship limit. And that simply is not as easy as it sounds when your ships are crappy compared to your opponent's ships. Eliminating the 500 ship limit allows for lazy play, boring play, and play without strategy. And I would argue, the ship limit actually enforces a game requiring strategy that begins at turn-1 same as your starting position.

Don't remove a key component of the game that begets strategy. That's what Nintendo systems are for.

107 days, 7 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I have played many games with a cap of 500 and 999 and I have enjoyed both styles. I will say that I have never seen a game where the ship count reached 900. Due to attrition and lack of mats. It does change the game style and allows new tactic. Glory ships are not limited, Guardians now lead a Rush into combat, Loki's never stop being produce and Cobol's become a key trade ship. I will say the games are a lot more involved and time consuming, no more playing 3-6 games at once.

I like both game types and have always liked more options. I would really like to see a Stellar game with host999. That would be something new...

106 days, 21 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

hors, Excellent points, well made & so true. Enjoyed reading them.

106 days, 9 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I'm of the opinion that games should END. A beginning, a mid-game and the end.
The ship limit helps speed us towards the end game, that is you make your moves, if they're bad moves and you lose battles your opponent gets a numerical advantage. That numerical advantage is key towards ending games.
We need caps on number of planets, number of minefields, number of ships.

Others may disagree but Host999 games lasted forever. Small package big punch ships like patriots and arkahms are over emphasized. The rebel rush rules the day.

102 days, 4 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Nobody is asserting that ALL the games should have a 999 ship limit. Just start a new one with this new add on. I personally would give it a go.

So if you don't like the idea just don't join. But it would be nice to have at least one game running here with a 999 or no ship limit.

101 days, 11 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

This has been going around and around for months - I certainly don't see a reason why 999 can't be offered on private games, at the very least. Its just another option.

99 days, 9 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Every single post in this thread about how a no ship limit cap would be better or worse is purely speculative.

Some people have put forth very well thought out arguments about why it would be game breaking, or why it would be game liberating, or why it would give so and so an advantage.

But seriously...No one can know for sure until we try it.

And I'm game if you are :)

Edit: I didn't realize games with no ship cap w have actually been done before.

But i'd still like to try it out, and experience a no cap game for myself.

73 days, 21 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

So when the Fu&$ are we going to get a game here with a 999 ship limit?

Don't like the idea? Cool. Don't join that game. Dont want to hear your analysis. JUST DON'T join.

But this shit has been run into the ground for awhile. Why are we (the paying members) not being offered this game to join?

Joshua?

D

72 days, 7 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I utterly, entirely, hate the ship limit.

Currently, the 500 ship limit forces one to pump out as many ships as possible. One build every starbase - every turn. Some players won't realise to do it - they will be screwed in the end game. For them, it's a game-wrecking stupidity of a rule. But some people will, and the ship slots get filled with all sorts of interesting ship choices. Eros hissers, SD1 SDSFs anyone? Empty FED hulls? With fascists, one at least gets to pump out glories.

It is possible to run early blitz warfare if the conditions are right, but after that, no sane mind engages in full scale warfare before the ship limit is full. It is more important to maximize territory with minimal combat and pump out ship after ship. The fighters and torps can be built later.

The ship limit is an artificial constraint that breaks the economic model and rewards, well, not good strategy (in fact it penalises it), but intimate knowledge of the rules and the ability to game them. It is almost pointless to build a good economy by ferrying a lot of clans to the outer limits of ones empire, as the ship limit will quickly be there to remove economics from the play. What seemed like an intuitively good idea becomes a terrible waste of resources. And while building a starbase 'ahead' of the build queue is good playing with the current rules, it is still a ridiculous thing to have to think about such meta-game moves in general when playing a strategy game.

Summary: I would love to play a game without a ship limit.

72 days, 7 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Ship limit should not prevent you from devolping your outer worlds and continuing to gather more resources.

Ship limit actually forces you to build SBs on most of your planets, regardless of quality, since the ID of the planet becomes more important. So by not developing your outter planets you are basically allowing the build cue to pass through those worlds without a build, which is not good.

If anything it adds an extra layer to the strategy of the game, however it might not be a welcomed layer by some and it certainly increases the complexity of the game, there is no arguing that.

It also forces combat, which I think is the most important benefit of it.

I can't really picture what a gmae without the ship limit would play out like but I'd assume it would last much longer than our current games. Hard to say till we try it though.

72 days, 6 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Not in the long run, no. But the big freighters will only leave for the fringe when the ship limit is reached. Sending them out earlier will result in missing a few sure builds in exchange for a vaguely potential future build.

72 days, 6 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Well one thing I've learned about this game is that you should never stop expanding your territory.

And who knows, the fringe planets might be closer to the cue than your internal planets, it all has to be managed perfectly or else you get behind.

Its much easier to build on a fringe planet if the cue is coming if that planet has been established earlier on, as opposed to just rushing resources there to try to get it in time.

72 days, 6 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

i see it that way: before the ship limit it's the opening phase. after that the game starts.
if you don't have to earn your builds with either investing 20grand or fight hard, the lizards
will run away from anyone - with eros classes and transwarp merlins.

(not that they do it anyway)

72 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Lets also keep in mind that removing the ship limit hurts the Fascists a lot!

71 days, 18 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I don't know. Having 50-100 glory devices could be very interesting for the Fascists. Launching 4 glory devices at an invading fleet does nasty things.

71 days, 14 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Removing the ship limit would heavily favor the fed/lizard/etc over the empire/fascist/etc.

71 days, 14 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

If we had rebalancing, and tools for group movement/automated movement... I think that an uncapped game would be great.

It wouldn't be (classic) vgaplanets3 though.

Which might be OK.

71 days, 8 hours, 6 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I have had this conversation plenty of times in the past.

I don't know that any of my points are necessary after the lengthy discussion. But if Planets. NU had not started when it did, I might already be headlong involved in creating an updated VGAP. The game is broadly worked out. We were going to use an upkeep system to replace the ship limit. That is, each ship has an associated upkeep of cash. Under current VGAP restrictions, upkeep would be impossible to do without majorly complicating the game. (Where does the cash come from?). But it has some implications.

1. Imposes a soft limit on ship production. You CAN build more ships, but can you afford to keep them in service?

2. It limits how far ahead of noobs the experienced players can get in the early game

3. Encourages players to continue expanding.

4. Gets rid of lots of silly behaviors. (SDSF stockpiles, for one)

5. Super refit is not as good

6. Lady Royales are very good

7. Requires a central bank account for each team.

71 days, 7 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Re: upkeep

Inflict damage on each ship, per turn, and/or per light year travelled, say. Might be nice to track damage at fractions of a percent if possible, so 1% / 100 LY traveled would be meaningful.

We could change the repair costs to be 1 supply per 100 mass to fix 1% damage, so that big ships cost more to maintain or repair.

Might want to add a new friendly code of "repair other ships" so that small-cargo ships like the Deth Specula and small carriers can be maintained by an escorting supply ship. Or it could be a mission - maybe for freighter hulls.

71 days, 6 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Once again I must question, why does the ship limit discourage people from expanding?

If you stop expanding in this game you die, regardless of ship limit , period.

70 days, 18 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

It doesn't discourage expanding. It discourages the economic build-up of the fringes before the ship limit hits.

What I mean is that sending an LDSF to the fringes of an empire with 1200 colonists in it, consumes a lot of fuel and removes the LDSF from the near territory economy build-up for 7-8 turns. In a competitive game, that freighter is unlikely to build up a starbase good enough for decent builds before the ship limit hits. Meanwhile, missing that LDSF prevents 2-3 full mineral loads with MCs to nearby starbases busy churning out strong ships.

Only after the ship limit is (almost) reached, will it make sense to send freighters to the fringes, to build up more starbases to play the build queue.

70 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Modifying the ship limit or getting rid of it will really change the game. But, if people want to play in such a game, I don't see why not. Make it host configurable. In fact, that could be a perk of captains: start a game once every three months. In fact, I would like to see such games as (each in a different game):

1. No ship limit

2. No ion storms

3. Towing restrictions (cars can no longer tow tanks).

Such host configurable games would be announced a month ahead of time.

70 days, 14 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

When I was thinking about military score, I realized that tow strength should depend on number of engines as well as warp speed.

So an advantage of the 8 and 10 engine giants is that they could tow everything else. As it is right now, engine number (above 2) basically just serves to increase cost.

This is a big change, like the engines boosting shields. One that could maybe be investigated.

JM

70 days, 13 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I would like to point out that the original VGA3 is a quite carefully balanced game, not perfect, but quite carefully balanced and its longevity is a testament to this. Some of the ideas that are floating around here are not balanced.
The majority of the people who come to the site are people who enjoy the original, quite carefully balanced game. I'm all for room for private games where people can test and enjoy modifying the numbers and the code and maybe you could suggest such an experimental space.

70 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I think it is clear that classic matches should always be offered.

70 days, 9 hours, 40 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

> Modifying the ship limit or getting rid of it will really change the game. But, if people want to play in
> such a game, I don't see why not. Make it host configurable.

Tim-Host supports 999 ships, PHost supports 999 ships. Has anyone of the players who want to play in such a game already tried that and still want it?

I did, and it was a lot of work. Good if you have nothing to do other than commanding your ships. Bad if you have a day job.

Thus, the question is whether it's worthwhile to implement and risk that everyone who tries it only tries it once. Possibly, because Nu doesn't care much for backward compatibility, upping a constant 500 to 999 would actually be not too much work, but going for an infinite limit would be.

--Stefan

70 days, 9 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Before I played at Rc-world, my local group only used 999. We liked it.

70 days, 8 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

Yes. We standardized on Host 999 with Wraparound and loved it.

70 days, 8 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

I've only tried a host999 game once, but I do recall that I hated it. I think I ended up with some 300+ ships that I had to move around each turn - the time spend doing that was staggering.

I have a suspicion that the largest proponents of unlimited or 999 limits on ships, are the players that tend not to build all that many ships under the current limit - otherwise they would not be so eager to play unlimited ship games.

The current shiplimit works quite well, it moves the game into the last X in 4X (eXtermination) around turn 25-30, turning the game really interesting.

Regards

70 days, 4 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Pro's and Con's of Removing ship limit

The more I think of it, the more I like it. It will attract all the children on here that just want to shoot stuff. They join a game and then quit when their big guns get killed. You can tell them from their profiles - they have played 500 turns, but the games they are in or finished only make up 200 turns. This will siphon them from regular games, making the regular games better. We can call them PlayToy999 games.