MatGB wrote:I was actually surprised the discussions were old enough to have started before 0.4.4, ouch.
Time flies, doesn't it?
I think the basic idea that happier planets repair faster is a good stopgap (we haven't agreed on exactly what happiness can/should be used for but this is a nice simple different use that feels right, instinctviely)
I'm a bit wary about stopgaps that lead in a direction we might not want to go in the end. And using happiness like this feels a bit like if we'd use it similarily for troop strength, or resource production etc. (after all, it makes as much sense to say that happier planets are more productive, will fight invaders more valiantly, etc.). For obvious reasons we don't do that. I see no reason to make an exception for drydock repair rate.
but the 25 multiplier based on current happiness stats is too high.
Definitely.
Reduce it to about 15
If you really want to try that, ok (however, 15 really should be the absolute max here).
I have a problem with a massive granularity of micromangement however I don't object to some fleet management, in which repairs are part.
Well, having to send the more heavily damaged ships back to a drydock already quite efficiently introduces that aspect. To a degree where, once you have reached a certain scale in your war efforts, the micromanagement already
is a pain, even with the current (overpowered) drydock mechanics. Don't get me wrong, I totally see the issues you try to fix here, and I want to fix them too, I just expect more serious issues introduced (potentially) than solved by an approach that primarily relies on limiting drydock repair rate.
A strategy game should involve some management of combat resources including "so dead they're out of play for a bit" levels, else it's not really a strategy game in the form I recognise ... I want there to be a few turns for a heavily damaged ship but lightly damaged ships to turnaround almost immediately, that is and should be what happens with this patch if we get the numbers right
Let me put it this way:
if we can come up with a formula/mix of numbers that will ensure only the really heavily/almost dead
bigger ships require more turns to repair (small ships should be repaired in the same time as big, only lightly damaged ship), so that you usually don't have to do too much fleet splitting/reorganizing all the time, we can give it a try. As I said, it's not that I don't like the concept as such (actually quite the contrary
).
Vezzra's played more space 4x games than me
I'm not so sure about that. I've played mostly the Space Empires series (III-V), and a few other, minor, less known ones. I always had a preference for strategy games though, and have been playing some in the pre-4X era (anyone remembers "Empire - wargame of the century"?
)
So: we're agreed on the happiness threshold, and mostly accepting the one turn delay
Yep. The former I favor anyway, the latter I can live with (and if we could get repair sitreps for entire fleets instead of single ships, that would remove much of my remaining issues with the latter).
we're not 100% agreed on the idea that it's not full repair but we've discussed this heavily in the past, we're not at all sure the current numbers of repair rates are right but agreed that, if we keep the not instant repair aspect that the current numbers are tool low. Yes?
Yes. Tweak the numbers so only the most heavily damaged ships take a few turns longer to repair, and I'm game to give it a try.
In which case if we adjust the macros so that the happiness multiplier is dropped from 25 to 10 (or even 5) then repair would be fast and in most but not all cases instant, then tweak in the future. That work for everyone?
Good enough for me so far.
(bear in mind that we still want repair crew parts, a core 'mobile drydock' part and to tone down and rework the damage control techs all of which will need to be balanced against each other)
All ideas I'm very much in favor of, but will naturally lead to drydocks becoming much more important (which is the purpose of toning down the amount of repair you can do in the field after all). Which means you'll have to send far more ships back to the docks for repairs once these changes are in, which in turn makes me so cautious wrt to potential micromanagement issues. Currently the micromanagement introduced by sending ships to drydocks for repairs is alleviated by those overpowered damage control/field repair techs, because by the time you have large scale wars going, you usually have at least enough of those techs that you don't have to bother with drydocks at all anymore. I'm curious how this all is going to work out once those techs are nerfed and drydocks become really important.