FreeOrion

I see no compeling game-play reason to force the player to micro-manage their missiles. And of course energy weapons should be unlimited. Thats one of the main reasons the US and other countries are trying to find viable energy weapons. Cheaper, and less logistics as there is no ammo to carry around.

If we do have missile stockpiles they should be filled automatically whenever a fleet is orbiting a friendly planet and no more complicated than that.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

@ Powercrazy:
Were did you read that this should be micro-managed ?? And I doubt that you can use a energy weapons and the energy-system behind them without any loss within the system (repair -> spare-parts ).

@ Impaler:
True, but to keep a closed system running you need at least spare-parts in order to repair defective parts of the system. Besides that, you can't have a system with 100% efficiency, and the area under crops to supply hundreds of crewman would need huge habitats. Besides that, it would be just one or two if-statements and a formula-based crew-reduction (supplies hit the red mark: each round 25-30%, supplies reach deep-red mark: old_crew * 0.5 ).

[edit - response to below post, since I dont want to creat a new post]
a game... well, thats true, I almost forgot it, thanks for reminding me Well, the weak point is not the weapon itself, but the energy system. Having no spare-parts to replace, eg blown fuses, doesn't allow you to run at 100% efficiency, therefore you can't fire with full-power or load-times increases...

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zaba zaba zud zud

Odi, you're new here so you might not know this; but you can't make realism arguments, since this is not a simulation. This is a game. Things will be in if they are fun for the player. Not if they are realistic.

Still, I can explain you in a realistic why you don't need to worry about beam wepons' ammo. Beam wepaons are powered by fusion reactors, as is life support. You need a negligeable mass of Hydrogen, compared to the mass of the ship. Simply E=mc^2

And if missiles must be replaced via supply sihps etc. then it will force the player to manage how many missiles he fires per round. Whether he needs to go back to base to re-arm, that means he has to click on every single ship that has missiles and figure out about how many volleys are left per ship etc. etc. Near end game that will add about 5 minutes per turn, and believe me there will be a PLETHORA of other management aspects to worry about, without the missiles. And why is this in the range thread?

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

Just have maintaince costs increase geometricly the further away from the nearest supply point (friendly races can help here)

I like the idea of not having fuel as it adds simplicity to the game. I also like the supply variant.

But I have another idea that should be viable: sensor on planet also double as lighthouse beacon for your ship in your territory. Traveling outside the fog of war result in overall travel speed reduction due to lack of guidance ie. ship not going in a straight line.

Another idea is to adopt attrition from RoN. players in their territory and in their system have set up mines, trap, and other hazards that automatically hurts intruders as they come in. It makes handling rushes easier since enemy ships are weaker.

CA's idea of increasing support costs is good. You could have a 'max' range based on engine tech and support costs for active ships increase until they reach say 4-10* normal at max range (depending on how much maintenence is to begin with)... This also works with repair costs/ missile/ fighter replacements

I am not too fond of supply ships due to KISS

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I like the idea of attrition. Mayube having supply ships with your forces would reduce it a lot (as do supply wagons in RoN).

I also like CAs maintenance cost idea. It seems that it should not be based purely on distance, but on distance / (maximum engine speed you've researched). Slight nod to realism here, but mainly this would be so range increases naturally with engine improvements. Alternatively, there could be techs that reduce ship maintenance costs, effectively increasing range.

The only downside is that now your ship maintenance costs are not constant. If this were adopted, the maintenance cost of a fleet would have to be displayed in the fleet window, and the player should be able to order fleets by maintenance cost (or by cost / nominal).

Of course, I think MOO 1's seperate speed / range worked fine, too.

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What is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil.
- Nietzsche

I'd say make the ship's maintenance cost be

1. Depend on how damaged the ship was during that turn (battle repair), as well as the total cost of the ship (regular maintenance) and how many fighters lost and missiles spent. (replacements)

2. Multiply the final cost by 10^ (current range of ship/max range)

3. Bill to the Imperial account, and allow some degree of debt in the Imperial account.

where range depends on engine speed, as well as other boosters (like fuel techs)

I think ship maintenance should be an important part of the game, but I don't want to see people have to do calculus to figure out maintenance.

Break maintenance into a repair bill and a support bill. The repair bill is proportional to whatever damage taken, missiles lost, etc, as above.

The support bill is some fraction of the fleet cost and falls into one of a few scenerios:

Mothballed : 0% of build cost
In system with friendly supply base: 4%
In friendly system: 8%
In transit/In enemy system: 20%

The numbers and conditions need to be tweaked, but the player should have a pretty good notion of what any particular action will do to the supply bill, without having to specify that scenario in the interface.

As for range, I think a fuel-cell tech as in Moo1&2 is pretty easy to understand. If people are worried about strange scenarios, you could enforce that you have to _always_ be within this range of a colony.

Alternatively, you could specify fuel cell range in turns of travel with the current engine. So you might start off having to be within 2 turns of a friendly colony, so if you only had two colonies, A and B, they could be up to 4 turns travel apart. Note that you never keep track of 'fuel onboard' as that would be a nightmare.

I like fuel cells better than weird maintenance thing. I like sensor effects better since it adds importance to often negelected sensors.

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Well MOO2 fuel Cells were sort of strange, The problem comes up with what to do when you get cut off.

If fuel cells are handled more like supply lines (essentially the fuel cell range is the length of supply lines, then you might be able to come up with a better method of handling being 'out of range')

(I guess it would be solved with a better method of pathfinding, I'm just worried about losing the outpost and suddenly having my ship on the other side of the galaxy come wandering back without using the wormhole that it used to get there)