some questions

That probably wont be changed for the sake of a friendly UI. Besides, why make 2 ships simultaneously when, in the end, they'll both be available at the same time. And, doing one at a time produces a usable ship half way through the process, there working on 2 at a time leaves you 'ship-less' for a longer period.

Prestige is the same as influence, and should (and will) be changed for the sake of continuity.

Starship Quality makes the ships produced by that colony stronger.

Manufacturing Bonues apply to both Social and Military production.

If you have multiple starbases (not on resources) in the same quadrant, do their bonuses add together to get an even higher bonus?

yes...starbase bonues are cumulative.

ex.
Starbase 1 culture bonus = 30%
Starbse 2 culture bonus = 15%
Total Sector Culture Bonus = 45%

Scott,

Cari said that some upgrades are NOT cumulative with multiple star bases, such as the manufacturing upgrades. What gives? Are some cumulative and others not? Or has this all changed again?

The game should throw a warning message to player if player tries to build 2 non-cumulative modules in same sector

Lets say I have a star base on military resource. I make a ship, it recieves the bonus from that resource. Then the enemy kills my star base. Will my ship get effected by this?

I figure that all ship related bonuses should apply only during ship construction. Once a ship is produced, it can't be changed! maybe upgraded, but never downgraded

Lame, instead of a warning, how about when you upgrade a starbase, the actual multi-base bonus is displayed in the upgrade window? A 0% for non-cumulative modules and the actual cumulative improvement bonus based on the number of bases in the sector.

some newbies may interpret that as a bug. I stand by my original idea.

how about not even offering non cumulative modules if another starbse in the same sector allready has them

rich

Well that's just crap Any sector-bonus modules are supposed to be cumulative...I'll look into this soon (cause it is a bug).

MasterL: Resources effect abilities, which are universal. If you gain an ability (through a resource or not) all of your ships are affected. Same if you lose an ability...your ships will no longer receive that bonus.

BoogieBac, abilities are NOT universal. For example, if I build a Shipyard, then only the ships made from that colony get the bonus, right?

The proper way of handling ship bonuses would be to use bonus value upon construction of the ship. Once the ship is made, it makes no sense to modify it (espcially by making it weaker). That's the realistic way of doing things.

As for cumulative star base modules. It would be interesting to see what happens when 50 or so fully equiped star bases are in the same sector. Think of all the attack bonuses possible. You could have scout ships with +100 attack points. heh And production with +1000% bonus, and same for influence.
I think it would be safer to avoid cumulative star base modules.

'BoogieBac, abilities are NOT universal. For example, if I build a Shipyard, then only the ships made from that colony get the bonus, right?'

The shipyard does not improve an ability. Abilities are the bonuses shown in the Domestic Policy-Stats screen. Only techs, wonders, trade goods, anomalies, and resources (and certain rare events) improve abilities.

'Once the ship is made, it makes no sense to modify it (espcially by making it weaker). That's the realistic way of doing things.'

The stat changes do not always reflect the ship's physical condition. The capabilities of the crew (experience) and external support (starbase modules and party-based ability increases/decreases) are also a factor, and a ship's physical capabilities can change (tech/anomaly based ability increases, equipment stripping during trading).

In the case of resource based inprovements, what good is a weapon if you can't get ammunition/power for it anymore? Shielding isn't going to do anything if you can't turn it on.

'As for cumulative star base modules. It would be interesting to see what happens when 50 or so fully equiped star bases are in the same sector.'

By the time you get three fully equipped starbases in a sector, either you're seriously neglecting most of the universe, or the game is basically already over and you're just wasting time.

Arturus,
building a sector with multiple starbases as a deathtrap for the AI ships makes sense (only with cumulative bonus). You just entice the AI to attack a ship and it'll send it's entire fleet to death.
I have always campaigned against cumulative bonus' as they could become too overpowering. Multiple manufacturing starbases in a single sector could unbalance a game. Too easy for the human player to misuse.

Paul.

"By the time you get three fully equipped starbases in a sector, either you're seriously neglecting most of the universe, or the game is basically already over and you're just wasting time."

Late in a game, on big map, one can produce about 30 constructors every 3 turns. Considering how wasteful AI is with their ships, it really won't hurt the player to make 50 fully equipped star bases in 1 sector.

I agree with Solitair

Lame and Solitair are right. 50 bases in every sector is dumb.

I would be happy with 2 starbases in selected sectors, maxed on defense and production, trade or influence. Just imagine your manufacturing planet with 3 starbases maxed on production improvement. Mine has 90/724/143 production with 1 maxed base (A 100 shield indicator is really needed as the 724 overlays the research shields and looks awful).

Since a single starbase can now improve production 125%, does that mean a 2 gets a combined 250%?

Lame is 100% right: It's hard enough building 1 base in each sector, maxing defense and what ever else is needed. By the time you build 2, either the game is over or you are wasting time. If the game isn't over then you still need to build battleships else you leave yourself open to attack.

For some reason, Starbases dont seem to count toward military strength, nor does the AI seem to take your production abilities when declaring war.

This arguement seems to be going from the rediculous to the sublime. I suspect ML just loves such arguements, but I don't see any value here for GC/Win or for SD.

and I think you shouldn't post if you have no argument to make. Attacking the person instead of the argument is a common ad hominem logical fallacy.

I think ML just likes using big words to mask his insecurity.

Here's another idea: How about if the AI just used it's Constructors properly?

The AI, at least on the two low levels, are incredibly stupid with their ships. They don't use fleets enough or properly (this is probably because it's a new ability and hasn't been through AI tweaking yet), and they have a tendency to just have constructors and freighters just stacking up at home, or building starbases for no apparent reason and not upgrading them with modules.

If both the human and the AI understands the value of multiple starbases in a single sector, then it's not such a problem.


It might be desirable to change - though I like it - only if the added production just makes the game less managable by adding so many ships.

But I think with Fleets now, that shouldn't be such a problem.

How about if we limit players on multiple levels.

1.) Production Limit: Besides looking bad when you get over 500 units being produced a month, the game begins snowballing with ships being cranked out at 1 per month and everything gets overwhelming. Place a 250 units per turn (or some #) so even if

2.) Limit # of starbases (per civ) allowed in a sector. This will force the player to start looking for techs that expand their sb's capacity, opposed to making 30 low level starbases with 1-2 bonus modules on it.

3.) Originally in the plans was to include a 'weight' with each module. Starbases would have enough space for 150 units worth of modules. Once you reach that limit, you either scrap old modules or research "miniturization" technologies to allow more space on each base. Don't know if we have time for this one for 1.0, but it could be added in eventually.

What it comes down to is the fact that populating a sector with starbases is cheesy. Each starbase should be special, and I think the sector limit would allow for this. Players would have to put some thought into their actions instead of slapping another SB down. I dont like the thought of non-cumulative modules cause there's really no good explanation, and it'd be non-intuitive for the user. We'd have to unhide a pop-up for every non-cumulative module type, and that 'd jsut get obnoxious.

Plutarck: I know Brad wants to put some time into AI being smarter about such things, but on the low intelligence levels youll always find the AI being slightly dumb about stuff

Hopefully my thoughts came out right We'll chat about this around the office and see what Brad feels on the whole matter. One things for sure, we have to fix the production display past 500...thats just craziness

how about combining 100 production units in some kind of animation. And make it so the animation is dependent on the position. So if you have 500 units, you see an animation that spans 5 squares. That would be cool to see. Even better, make the type of animation different for good and evil players. hehe

I don't think artificial limits on star bases are good.

I'd rather just make sure that the first SB modules are fairly wimpy.

Alternatively you could make star baess have a setup cost of say $500.

Regarding planet growth. I agree, we should probably top it off so that production gets capped.

But I'd prefer to do it so that there's a certain overhead to production. I.e. as production potential grows, it gets capped off on its own due to other factors. I could work on that.

How about a sort of "bureaucracy" penalty? One that gets less offensive depending on government (might be another bonus to going to the more democratic gov'ts).

For example, lets set it up so that for medium production (say < 50) you lose 0 production, but as you go beyond that you'd start to lose some. So at like 50-100 you'd lose 2%, 100-150 you'd lose 5%, 150-200 you'd lose 10%, 200-250 you'd lose 20%, 250-300 you'd lose 30%, etc. By the time you get massive production of like 500, you're losing a bunch to inefficiency and bureaucracy. Each progressively "less restrictive" government drops that penalty by half each level.

Although, instead of discrete steps some sort of continuous formula (probably an exponential with a cap) would be better.

I'm sure Brad can come up with something that makes sense and is fair.

I hope that makes sense.

that's an interesting idea, jpub. Then colonies could make buildings that increase efficiency, thus reducing the production penalties

My whole point about this arguement is that if someone wants to waste time building all of the constructors needed to carry out such a strategy (s)he should get burned ROYALLY by the AI. This is not what I would see as a winning strategy, so why even bother with limitations on it. Just build the AI so it will guarentee the user of it gets creamed.

Lucky Jack, don't you get it? If someone does take the time to build so many bases, then that sector would have super colonies? and ships in that sector would be super powerful? the amount of influence produced would be enough to overwhelm the stupid AI.