Ships: Supply

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Geoff the Medio
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#91 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Tortanick wrote:[If you] disallow ships from sharing fuel, [then] if you have different groups of ships that you order to meet up and form a fleet, then they'll all have different amounts of jumps left. Depending on the UI either a player will start having to manually deselect the empty ships, or order an attack and realise too late that only half the army is attacking a fortress.
You've got a particular scenario in mind here that you're not describing clearly enough to discuss. In particular, why one would deselect empty ships isn't clear.

But regardless, even if there isn't fuel, there will need to be ways to deal with ships that have different max speeds travelling together. Currently, a fleet travels at the max speed of its slowest ship. If we had fuel, then a fleet would stick together, and would take as long to get to its destination as it takes the slowest ship. If we had some ships completely incapable of getting to a destination, but others able, both in a single fleet, then we'd probably make it impossible to order the fleet to that destination.

If you're talking about ships at different locations all being ordered to converge at a location, there's no expectation there that they'd all arrive at the same time, is there?
Geoff the Medio wrote:If someone captures a single system near your empire but away from their base of power, you probably have a variety of military and nonmilitary means of taking it back or limiting its function in the short and long term. Also, resupply shouldn't be instant: it should take several turns to replenish, during which counterattacks could occur. Also, having a source of supply does not mean that there is a repair base available; the latter could require more significant infrastructure investment that wouldn't likely be done easily or quickly at any captured border world.
What I meant that if you say that you are supposed to supply you're invasion from captured colonies then it must be reasonably quick for captured colonies to start producing supplies. I think that invading players should need to send fresh supplies from home because using a captured colony would make the supply lines to short to be easily cut.
I'm confused... do you want captured colonies to give supply quickly, or not at all?

If a battle was close enough to sources of supply, you could supply a fleet from "home". But if you wanted to persue an ongoing war far away from your supply lines, you'd probably want to establish a closer source of supply by planting or capturing a colony.

If you planted a new colony, it would probably take a relatively long time to develop enough to start providing significant amounts of supply. But, if you managed to capture an already-developed system or world from an enemy empire, you'd probably be able to use some already-present infrastructure and start supplying useful amounts of supply quicker. Of course, you have to actually capture a well-developed foreign planet to do this, and protect it from counterattack, and hope it doesn't get disabled by nonmilitary means by the attacked empire.

Alternatitvely, you could yourself capture an already-developed planet from another empire using nonmilitary means, and then use that as a base for an invasion.

Also: English tip:
* "your" indicates things that belong to you, eg: "your house"
* "you're" is a contraction that means "you are". eg. "You are homeless."
eleazar wrote:...i still don't like the idea of an arbitrary threshold in whichever meter that makes the difference between providing no ship-supplies, and supplying a whole fleet.
It is a bit clunky, so if we can avoid it, I'd like to, but there are potential problems...
I can accept that complete repair may take several turns for a large and/or heavily damaged ship. But it would seem rather annoying under ideal supply conditions for it to take multiple turns to refuel a ship or restock the missile rack. If it takes several turn to refuel at home then the diminished amount of supply available further afield would be crippling.
This assumes that supply rate drops with distance, which hasn't been established (and might not be necessary)...

But what if, instead of amount of supply colonies can produce depending on their level of development, we have various levels of rate of supply, with colonies still producing infinite supplies each turn? A large colony could fully restock a ship in one turn. A smaller newer colony could only partially restock a ship. If a ship is in range to be supplied by multiple colonies, then the highest-rate colony does the supply, with no stacking (so fifty slow colonies supplying a ship are just as fast a one slow colony, which is slower than one fast colony).
Geoff the Medio wrote:If we limit how many supplies a single colony can produce (other than none or infinite) then we could have situations where separate colonies are able to both supply some ships, and individually supply some other ships [and complications trying] to figure out the optimal supply distribution pattern.
This complication seems to be based on different starting assumptions than i am using:

* The total supplies produced by a PSR network of colonies is added together and can be distributed by any or all of the member colonies or hubs. A well ordered empire will have all his colonies as part of a single (or maybe a few) PSR networks.
"A well ordered empire" isn't always going to be the case though. Unless we specifically design resource sharing to avoid it, there could be situations where two colonies that can't share resources are both able to supply a single fleet.
* Complications (non-optimal distributions) only occur when the PSR network is fractured, and if they do, that's a logical consequence in allowing your supply infrastructure to be shattered.
This would be fine if the non-optimal nature of the supply was predictable and logical to the player, but without specifically designing things to be that way, we might end up with it being essentially random to the player how much supply a particular fleet gets and whether and how much potential supply from various sources ends up being wasted due to non-optimal distribution. This screams bad design to me.
Sandlapper wrote:
If we want to slow down ships, we'd just make them move more slowly.
I'm referring to limiting the advance of a ship/fleet by relative supply need, not by engine performance.
I (think I) know what you're saying, but I don't think that fuel as we're planning it is well-suited to limiting both speed. We have ship speed for that, and fuel can limit range.
I'm trying to acheive, by supply need\use, a concept of larger ship equals slow and short range by your suggestion here...
It's not just making large ships slow and short range; I want to be able to have "fast-long", "fast-short", "slow-long" and "slow-short" as separate speed-range combos. To do that, the things that limit speed and range probably need to be separate.

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Tortanick
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#92 Post by Tortanick »

Geoff the Medio wrote: You've got a particular scenario in mind here that you're not describing clearly enough to discuss. In particular, why one would deselect empty ships isn't clear.
The situation I had in mind is that there is a fleet, diffrent ships in that fleet have enough fuel for a different amount of jumps. At some point the player gives an order and the game gives an error stating that some ships can't travel that far. They player labourously deselects the ships that are low on fuel then orders the rest to go to the original destination.

The other situation was identical, but the UI was designed diffrently, so rather than not giving an order, the game orders the ships that can reach, and leaves the others behind. A player could be unaware this happened and discover too late that only half his fleet arrived and they're hopelessly outnumbered. And even if the game has a good UI for this situtuation I think it will still be annoying to players when the fleet has enough fuel for every ship to reach the destination, but there is too much in in some ships and not enough in others and he has no way of redistributing.

Geoff the Medio wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:If someone captures a single system near your empire but away from their base of power, you probably have a variety of military and nonmilitary means of taking it back or limiting its function in the short and long term. Also, resupply shouldn't be instant: it should take several turns to replenish, during which counterattacks could occur. Also, having a source of supply does not mean that there is a repair base available; the latter could require more significant infrastructure investment that wouldn't likely be done easily or quickly at any captured border world.
What I meant that if you say that you are supposed to supply you're invasion from captured colonies then it must be reasonably quick for captured colonies to start producing supplies. I think that invading players should need to send fresh supplies from home because using a captured colony would make the supply lines to short to be easily cut.
I'm confused... do you want captured colonies to give supply quickly, or not at all?
I want captured colonies to give supply in a "long time", a "long time" is defined as "most probably too late to help the invading fleet". If the supply system is designed so invading players are dependant on captured colonies to supply their fleets then captured colonies must start producing supply for their new masters quickly.

If captured colonies produce supplies quickly then the only way to cut an invading fleet off from their sources of supply would be to retake all captured colonies, there would be no feasible way of cutting them off from supply.

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#93 Post by utilae »

Tortanick wrote: The situation I had in mind is that there is a fleet, diffrent ships in that fleet have enough fuel for a different amount of jumps. At some point the player gives an order and the game gives an error stating that some ships can't travel that far. They player labourously deselects the ships that are low on fuel then orders the rest to go to the original destination.

The other situation was identical, but the UI was designed diffrently, so rather than not giving an order, the game orders the ships that can reach, and leaves the others behind. A player could be unaware this happened and discover too late that only half his fleet arrived and they're hopelessly outnumbered. And even if the game has a good UI for this situtuation I think it will still be annoying to players when the fleet has enough fuel for every ship to reach the destination, but there is too much in in some ships and not enough in others and he has no way of redistributing.
Another alternative is that the game auto distributes all fuel from all ships evenly between all ships, ie shares it. Empty fuel ships now have fuel. Only issue, is range would drop and this may cut the players trip short of the target.

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Geoff the Medio
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#94 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Tortanick wrote:The situation I had in mind is that there is a fleet, diffrent ships in that fleet have enough fuel for a different amount of jumps. At some point the player gives an order and the game gives an error stating that some ships can't travel that far. They player labourously deselects the ships that are low on fuel then orders the rest to go to the original destination.
The player wouldn't need to labourously deselect fleets. If there was an error popup, it could have options to automatically split the fleet and only give the move order to the subfleet that can make it, or give the order to the original fleet, which would then move as far as possible without splitting the fleet, or to cancel. Or, we'd have an option to sort the ships in a fleet by available fuel, making splitting the fleet manually relatively easy.

The player would also learn to take fuel into account when planning and assembling fleets, just as they would damage or tech level of the ships, either of which could cause a seemingly large fleet to be destroyed, if ignored.
[or] the game orders the ships that can reach, and leaves the others behind. A player could be unaware this happened and discover too late that only half his fleet arrived and they're hopelessly outnumbered.
We wouldn't make the UI split fleets like this without player input.
And even if the game has a good UI for this situtuation I think it will still be annoying to players when the fleet has enough fuel for every ship to reach the destination, but there is too much in in some ships and not enough in others and he has no way of redistributing.
This would only be annoying if there's the expectation that fuel can be shared between ships of a fleet. If this is never expected to be possible, then it's not annoying that it can't be done; it's just normal.

Analagously, one doesn't generally mind that a fast ship and a slow ship (both are fully fueled) can't average their speeds when travelling together, because this isn't something you'd expect to be able to do.
utilae wrote:...distributes all fuel from all ships evenly between all ships...
No; as noted above, this would effectively let any ship be a fuel ferry, mandating micromanagement and ruining the balance of the abstracted supply system.

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eleazar
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#95 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
utilae wrote:...distributes all fuel from all ships evenly between all ships...
No; as noted above, this would effectively let any ship be a fuel ferry, mandating micromanagement and ruining the balance of the abstracted supply system.
I strongly agree with Geoff's point here.



:arrow: These lines of reasoning are getting rather tangled. Would someone care to attempt to summarize any concepts of supply which are generally accepted? We can disagree more clearly if we all know which points are agreed upon.

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#96 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:Would someone care to attempt to summarize any concepts of supply which are generally accepted?
It's not much of a summary, and may not all be generally agreed on, but I've put a bunch of relevant stuff into the 0.4 Design Pad.

Issues remaining include
* Whether and how to limit amount of supply produced by a single colony by development level...
* ...or whether a single colony could produce infinite supply, but be limited in how much it can give to a single ship?
* Details of getting supply from recently captured colonies far from your other sources of supply?
* Whether ships moving around within an empire should have different rules so that fuel won't limit movement within empires?
* How fast should resupply happen (eg. how many turns to get one jumps' worth of fuel per turn), both at a source of supply, and away from the source, but still in range to be supplied?
* Does and how does resupply rate vary with distance or obstructions to between source and sink?
* Are there types or levels of blocking of supply, or just blocked/clear?

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#97 Post by utilae »

Ah, it is good to have something to focus on.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Whether and how to limit amount of supply produced by a single colony by development level...
Yes. A colony should not produce supply until it has developed to the right stage.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* ...or whether a single colony could produce infinite supply, but be limited in how much it can give to a single ship?
Ships should be resupplied to full supply, instantly and with no limits.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Whether ships moving around within an empire should have different
rules so that fuel won't limit movement within empires?
Yes, if a ship is within the empire and thus, in supply, its fuel should not deplete, at least if it does deplete, then the fuel replenishes instantly upon arrival to a colony within your empire/supply.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* How fast should resupply happen (eg. how many turns to get one jumps' worth of fuel per turn), both at a source of supply, and away from the source, but still in range to be supplied?
Instantly. Keeping track of how long until the ship is resupplied or how much more supply the ship needs is too much micormanagement. If we use the simple rule of "as long as the ship is in supply, its fuel/ammo/etc is replenished each turn if it is in supply".
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Does and how does resupply rate vary with distance or obstructions to between source and sink?
Maybe supply could be weakened over distance. But if supply is instant and full replenishment, this avoids micromanagement. So the other thing we can do is increase the costs of maintaining supply lines over long distances. This in itself should be more effective and enjoyable to the player.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Are there types or levels of blocking of supply, or just blocked/clear?
I think, just blocked and clear. That way, it is also easily identifiable from a visual point of view. You could see a break in the lines, etc.

[edited by Geoff the Medio to remove off-topic discussion]

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#98 Post by Geoff the Medio »

utilae wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote: * Whether and how to limit amount of supply produced by a single colony by development level...
Yes. A colony should not produce supply until it has developed to the right stage.
That's not the question. The question is: If a colony is producing supplies (ie. more than none), should it produce a limited amount (ie. less than as much as is needed to resupply as many ships as possible given any other limits on how much supply can be used).
utilae, before I removed it wrote:Colonies should produce limited supply to other colonies.
This thread is about supply to ships, not intra-empire resource trading.

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#99 Post by Tortanick »

Thanks Geoff, my awnsers:
Geoff the Medio wrote: * Whether and how to limit amount of supply produced by a single colony by development level...
No, if its advanced enough to produce supplies it produces infinite.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* ...or whether a single colony could produce infinite supply, but be limited in how much it can give to a single ship?
No limit, or you have to pay attention to every ship to see how much supply or how long it has left till it reaches enough supply for what you want it t odo.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Details of getting supply from recently captured colonies far from your other sources of supply?
Once a newly captured colony meets the same criteria as any other colony it produces infinite supply and distributes it in a manner identical to any other colony. A newly captured colony should not meet the criteria immediately because the population hates their "evil oppressors" and refuses to work.

I would rather that newly captured colonies are unlikely to stop rebelling in time to help with the invasion that captured them, perhaps this could be rigged with a "rebellion" bonus for the proximity to the nearest enemy colony or fleet (we still believe our brothers will rally and free us). Only if you defeat every nearby enemy will people start to give up (face facts, we lost) or if you declare peace (our empire has abandoned us)
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Whether ships moving around within an empire should have different rules so that fuel won't limit movement within empires?

Fuel should never limit travel within an empire. This could be done with a separate rule, or you could have one rule and balance it so that it ensures ships don't have fuel problems at home.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* How fast should resupply happen (eg. how many turns to get one jumps' worth of fuel per turn), both at a source of supply, and away from the source, but still in range to be supplied?
If they are at the supply of the source: 1 turn to 100%
If they are not at the supply of the source but in range to be supplied: 1 turn to 100%

If they are out of the supply range and not close enough to be supplied, they should generate fuel (but not ammo should they be separate) at a slow rate, the exact speed should be decided with balance testing.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Does and how does resupply rate vary with distance or obstructions to between source and sink?
It dose not vary, its all or nothing.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Are there types or levels of blocking of supply, or just blocked/clear?
Just blocked/clear

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#100 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:Would someone care to attempt to summarize any concepts of supply which are generally accepted?
It's not much of a summary, and may not all be generally agreed on, but I've put a bunch of relevant stuff into the 0.4 Design Pad.
In large i agree with it, but i have some quibbles..
* If resupply costs anything, that cost should not vary rapidly from turn-to-turn, or due to immediate state of an empire's fleets. This could cause large, unpredictable variations in the amount of PP consumed by the supply system, which would make planning and allotment of available PP to queued production projects difficult.
The highlighted portion is IMHO a weak argument. Our PP and RP queues deal with fluctuations quite painlessly.
* Rate of supply is displayed as a rate, not as a % of some maximum possible rate.
I don't understand what exactly this statement allows, or why it's a good idea.
* Blocked systems that prevent the route from being connected are highlighted appropriately, so it's clear which blocked systems are preventing supply from reaching further away
*** Any supply-blockage in what would otherwise be a supplyable system is visible and clear to the player - perhaps not why there is blockage, but the fact that there is blockage
*** The player can easily see where there are blockages near his/her territory. This means the player can send a defensize / cleanup fleet to that location to resolve the supply disruption - it's not necessary to fill your own space with defensive fleets in every system.
It's good to make things obvious, but this description goes into too much detail, and if followed could hamstring a good solution. Consider a fleet while has been cut off on all sides by enemy fleets. If the Supply line length is 6 jumps, there may be dozens of systems which would be part of a supply line if not for the presence of enemy fleets/colonies. Highlighting them all is not very useful.
Furthermore, highlighting blockages is the same as saying "there's are ship(s) of a colony here." The decision about providing that kind of information should occur when visibility/fog-of-war is under review, especially since it doesn't directly effect the rest of the supply system.
===Crew===
* Crew is similar to ammo, except that a ship needs crew to function at all, not just to fire certain weapons.
* Crew are shared similarly to ammo amongst ships in a fleet.
* Ships with too few crew have performance penalties applied to them of some sort, in battle and not in battle.
* Ships with too few crew may be more easy for boarding parties to capture (if such exist).
There's been no real discussion of the need for "crew" in the game.
Off the cuff, it seems they serve no purpose except to provide a penalty when there aren't enough, or for boarding ships (if that's included). I like capturing ships, but there may be ways to simulate that without crew.

I'm generally uncomfortable with the complexity of the supply solutions offered (even mine). While there have been good reasons for many of the complications, if any particular rule or concept isn't absolutely needed, it should be excised. "Crew" seem the likeliest candidate.

The concept of crew is also somewhat problematic with various alien concepts that include large deviations from human norms, in size, reproduction rate, robots, etc.

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#101 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:
which would make planning and allotment of available PP to queued production projects difficult.
...weak argument. Our PP and RP queues deal with fluctuations quite painlessly.
I think the issue is mostly the planning, not the allotment. The latter would adjust automatically. It might be a bit confusing where the PP used to fund supply are going, though...
* Rate of supply is displayed as a rate, not as a % of some maximum possible rate.
I don't understand what exactly this statement allows, or why it's a good idea.
The point is we'd say "ship X is getting Y fuel / turn", and not "ship X is being resupplied at 72% of its maximum rate". The latter is more restrictive to the design of how supply is limited, and less clear, IMO.
If the Supply line length is 6 jumps, there may be dozens of systems which would be part of a supply line if not for the presence of enemy fleets/colonies. Highlighting them all is not very useful.
If unblocking any of those systems would allow supplies to get further, then it would be useful to mark them. Even if a friendly fleet isn't presently at a location whose supply access is obstructed, you might want to move a fleet there, and thus want to know ahead of time if there is a blockage preventing supply from getting there (especially if you're moving there specifically to get into supplyable range).
Furthermore, highlighting blockages is the same as saying "there's are ship(s) of a colony here."
Not necessarily, as there could be other things blocking the supply...
The decision about providing that kind of information should occur when visibility/fog-of-war is under review, especially since it doesn't directly effect the rest of the supply system.
... but that's a reasonable point.
[We don't need crew]
OK

Any comment regarding the listed unanswered questions?

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#102 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Issues remaining include
* Whether and how to limit amount of supply produced by a single colony by development level...
* ...or whether a single colony could produce infinite supply, but be limited in how much it can give to a single ship?
It seem clear that some connection between colony development and amount of available resupply is necessary for the whole system to work, otherwise quick, junk colonies will allow players to mostly ignore the system. I'm not sure exactly how that should work, however.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Details of getting supply from recently captured colonies far from your other sources of supply?
I believe the first limiting factor should be the attitude of the colony. I realize this is out of the scope of this discussion, but it's worth while to point out that other factors will apply. For instance, with about any system for measuring loyalties, a newly captured colony which is friendly to you (perhaps originally yours) will get quickly back to work, and thus produce supplies, while a colony that hates you will be unproductive, riot and so forth until order can be established.
But i would apply this to fleet supplies as a reduction in available resupply, until order is restored.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Whether ships moving around within an empire should have different rules so that fuel won't limit movement within empires?
Fuel capacity shouldn't limit a ship's ability to travel between it's own colonies (assuming all intermediate points are also colonies) weather that is an additional rule, depends on how exactly the other is spelled out.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* How fast should resupply happen (eg. how many turns to get one jumps' worth of fuel per turn), both at a source of supply, and away from the source, but still in range to be supplied?
At home (assuming enough supplies are available) a ship should be completely resupplied/refueled at the beginning of every turn. I'm not sure if repair should be the same or happen slower. With increasing distance from colonies the speed of resupply/refuling decreases.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Does and how does resupply rate vary with distance or obstructions to between source and sink?
I prefer a rate that varies by distance to provide a graceful transition between easy resupply at home and no resupply far away. Considering the obstructions would seem to be too involved, since obstructions would likely have different weights.
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Are there types or levels of blocking of supply, or just blocked/clear?
It would be best to stick to a binary blocked/unblocked, unless someone comes up with a compelling need to do otherwise. I don't think anyone has listed a reason for semi-blockades so far.

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#103 Post by MikkoM »

eleazar wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:* Are there types or levels of blocking of supply, or just blocked/clear?
It would be best to stick to a binary blocked/unblocked, unless someone comes up with a compelling need to do otherwise. I don't think anyone has listed a reason for semi-blockades so far.
I am not currently up to date with the discussions, thanks to evil RL, and will have to read it through to see what has been suggested, but this thing caught my eye.

Now I believe that I suggested a system in my first post to this thread, which would allow some supplies to be sent to the blocked fleet. The reason why I suggested such a system is my overall concern that a simple binary system might make the supply sending into a chess game, where with some well placed blocks and perhaps by fighting some meaningless wear down battles you can destroy large enemy fleets. This would of course be a good strategy, but might perhaps give the blocker too big of an advantage and by so doing make more traditional battles less important. So it might be good to give a blocked fleet some sort of a change to either defend itself or support a block break through attempt.

However I don`t know if this is a legitimate concern, and even if it is, my solution might not be the best possible as it might add some micromanagement.

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#104 Post by Geoff the Medio »

The biggest remaining disagreement seems to be whether there should be variations in rate of resupply in various situations. In particular, distance from source to the fleet being resupplied, and development level of the colony.

Let's assume that if a ship is in the same system as a fully developed colony, it can have its supplies replenished instantly.

Let's also assume that a fresh new colony with no infrastructure developed can't produce or distribute.

utilae argues for no variation with development level or distance with one argument:
utilae wrote:Keeping track of how long until the ship is resupplied or how much more supply the ship needs is too much micormanagement.
Tortanick elaborates:
Tortanick wrote:No limit, or you have to pay attention to every ship to see how much supply or how long it has left till it reaches enough supply for what you want it t odo.
eleazar prefers variation with distance, and implicitly prefers a limited rate of supply:
eleazar wrote:With increasing distance from colonies the speed of resupply/refuling decreases [...] to provide a graceful transition between easy resupply at home and no resupply far away.
This isn't a very convincing argument for smooth variation with distance, though. Is there something more substantial to explain the need for or benefit from it? Why is a gradual transition important?

Even if we don't have supply rate vary gradually with distance, we could still have a limited rate of supply in some situations. My concern with instant resupply when far from the source is that it makes it too hard to use up a fleet's supplies over time; if at any point the fleet gains back an unbroken supply line, many turns of the supply-blockers efforts are instantly gone. This might make it too easy to simply ignore the supply system, since it's so easy to be replenished.

The objection about having to wait and watch for ships to replenish to adequate levels is valid, but if one can replenish instantly by travelling right to a source, isn't this enough? You wouldn't be able to replenish instantly when far from the source, but you wouldn't have to wait long periods of time while watching supply levels grow either, as you could just fly to a source to be instantly refilled.

...
MikkoM wrote:...with some well placed blocks and perhaps by fighting some meaningless wear down battles you can destroy large enemy fleets.
They're not really meaningless if you can use them to wear down and destroy a large enemy fleet, are they?
...give the blocker too big of an advantage...
The owner of the larger fleet is allowed to have a few smaller helper fleets that keep the supply lines open.
So it might be good to give a blocked fleet some sort of a change to either defend itself or support a block break through attempt.
I think you're making some different assumptions than I am about how difficult it would be to block all supply to a large fleet. Consider that the blocker would have to get enough separate fleets behind moving, powerful enemy fleet to block all possible supply routes to it, and keep these paths all blocked for several turns. To me, it seems that if someone is able to do this, they deserve to be able to weaken the large enemy fleet they've blocked...

The owner of the blocked fleet can also just avoid overextending fleet operations, so that the fleets don't have to spend long periods without supply, or can retreat to supplied areas to replenish between battles.

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#105 Post by Tortanick »

Geoff the Medio wrote:The objection about having to wait and watch for ships to replenish to adequate levels is valid, but if one can replenish instantly by travelling right to a source, isn't this enough? You wouldn't be able to replenish instantly when far from the source, but you wouldn't have to wait long periods of time while watching supply levels grow either, as you could just fly to a source to be instantly refilled.
That doesn't really solve the problem, you just give players a choice between the micromanagement of worrying about every ships supplies and the micromanagement of constantly ferrying ships home for more supplies. (of course the player should be able to send ships home, but he shouldn't have too).

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