Selling super-sized ship signatures so somebody sees soup

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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guiguibaah
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Selling super-sized ship signatures so somebody sees soup

#1 Post by guiguibaah »

Reading through wikipedia today on the fleets of various nations, how some fleets are comprised of older refitted vessels of a bigger nation's fleet (IE: Great Britain sells ships to Australia and Canada).

I thought - if it could be done, perhaps in diplomacy you can be given the option to 'sell' some of your ships - perhaps they can no longer be refitted, or they don't serve a purpose to you anymore - at a bargain price to another race.
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

Tyreth
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#2 Post by Tyreth »

Imperium Galactica 2 had something like a global market where you could buy and sell ships/fleets. More expensive, but it meant an instant army.

Dreamer
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#3 Post by Dreamer »

In galciv the diplomtic screen allows you to put ships in a bargain, for money if you want (or anything else).

Impaler
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#4 Post by Impaler »

I certanly like this idea and I hope we include stuff along these lines, it will be usefull to encorage long-term aliances and dependence between weaker and stronger empires (outside of the usualy extortion or snack mentalities most large empires have for smaller ones). This goes back to Imperialism which dose a great job at ecouraging (almost forcing) you to be nice to the little guys.

Well back to the point, if their were some means by whitch you could actualy collect money from other empires to "service and maintaine" all that high tec equipment. This is why superpowers can practicaly give that stuff away to their alies, they make back ALL the money on maintance fees and spare parts and the like. I think we could set up some kind of automatic payment plan based on the Tec level differnece between the ships being sold and the Purchasing Empire, the greater the differnce the greater the Maintance contract is. It would take the form of a payment scedual X money over Y turns much like in SMAC. Thats the simplest thing to do ofcorse but if we wanted something more detailed we could another step and say the the actual "Pre-Fabricated Ship Components" are a tradable comodity like Food and Minerals and these can get sold on the Galactic Market. Again this is like Imperialism which alows one to sell generic "Armaments" between countries. Their wasn't mutch point in doing this though as all armaments were generic so a tec advantage didn't translate into any kind of advantage. The obvois solution is to have levels say I, II, III, and so on for these things to link these to the Refinment levels of your ships actual Components in some way. Thus a high tec ship would require high level Pre-Fabricated Components to be built. And by Purchasing these Components from outside Empires one can make ships beyond your normal tecnologic capacity.

One last though involves the "Mysterious Galactic Traders" found in Stars! it might be an interesting idea to have them sell ships as well, the upkeep would be mighty expensive though so it might lead to a "Buy the Giant Battle ship and Concour your way out of Dept before its Repossesed" strategy. If that were to be a problem we might institute a "Line of Credit" aka the Traders wont sell you a bunch of stuff on payment plans unless you have established yourself as being reliable.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Dreamer
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#5 Post by Dreamer »

Too complicated. I would let empires to trade ships or maybe borrow a specific fleet for X turns. As part of diplomatic relations. "Hey, we the X empire are in big troubble, we need to borrow your Y fleet for Z turns". In particular I think the galciv interface where you can put anything against anything is great.

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utilae
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#6 Post by utilae »

Yeah, all we need to do is:
-trade ship for ship
-trade ship for money/resources
-loan ship for x money/resources per turn

That's about it.

Dreamer
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#7 Post by Dreamer »

Agree. Simple = good. I would sell/rent fleets rather than individual ships. In galciv is made with ships and i'm not particularly fond of it.

discord
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#8 Post by discord »

actualy the stuff impaler talks about is not half as complicated as it seems, just adds alot of more 'options' to the dealings.

for instance, you forgot about the whole 'lease' thing, wich is a rather common thing today, and trading should not be limited to just ships, all kinds of commodities should be available....but on the other hand, if i was in charge, the details would swamp down everything....for instance, MANY types of materials, actual material/named spare parts upkeep on ships/stations/buildings/colonies, luxury item import, to increase moral, one thing i liked from another game was drug addicting the entire populace of a planet...just so...plausible.

it's all in the details, but to much details swamps the big picture...so there is a case of tightrope walking....

Rapunzel
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#9 Post by Rapunzel »

leasing ships coudl stop other empires from taking them appart to gain that technology (if this is implemented) or being carfull with them. If they are destroyed they would have to pay a greater ammount to accually by them (like with cars today) :wink:
Dieser Text basiert ausschließlich auf frei erfundener Interpunktion und Orthographie. Jegliche Uebereinstimmungen mit geltenden Regelungen sind rein zufaellig und wurden nicht beabsichtigt.

Daveybaby
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#10 Post by Daveybaby »

The whole leasing thing seems like it could get a bit messy. I mean, if youre gonna lease some ships from sombody and go to war, youre not going to be very careful with them. A suicide attack on an enemy supply depot? Hmmmm.... shall i use my own permanent fleet or simply rent a huge fleet from my neighbour and use them? Its a cheap option too as i will only need to rent them for a couple of turns since they wont exist for very long after i get my hands on them.

Oh. And now it seems the neighbour who rented half his fleet to me is suddenly kinda vulnerable to me... think i might invade, since i havent lost any of my own ships. :P

How would we stop these sorts of abuses? And who in their right mind would ever rent a fleet again once theyve been stitched up once.



A better idea might be a bounty system. You are at war with race X. You offer race Y a contract which promises to pay them a bounty on every ship of race X that they can destroy. This contract could also (optionally) involve a nonagression pact to run for the duration of the contract, and would also (again, optionally) give race Y free access to your territory and supply depots, to enable them to reach and engage the enemy more successfully. Race Y still maintains control of all of their own ships at all times.
The COW Project : You have a spy in your midst.

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Krikkitone
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#11 Post by Krikkitone »

Well I think you would only be renting out a small fraction of your fleet (exception strong allies: ie Lend-Lease Act) it would basically be a way for a small power to get a decent fleet cheaply. You should never actually Rent/Sell a sizable fraction of your fleet, although 'Mercenary Contracts' sounds like a good idea. (but that seems more like a temporary paid alliance)

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utilae
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#12 Post by utilae »

Another abuse of leasing ships:
Player1 rents ships from player2. Player1 attacks player2 with rented ships.

To prevent abuses, we can make it so that the player lending their ship, still has their crew on board, so if the lease agreement is broken, the ship will no longer be under you control, but the player who lent it.
eg
Player2 lends ships to player1.
-lended ship gets damaged, lease ends, retreat.
-lended ship gets attacked, lease ends, either retreat or attack player 1.
-one of many lended ships gets destroyed, lease ends, all ships leave.
etc

Rapunzel
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#13 Post by Rapunzel »

I thought we were talking about leesing/lending/selling ships you do not need anymore, since they are outdatet.
  • - selling ships on a global market sound good (no abuse here)
    - leasing ships will make you pay some money for a couple of turn (if you loose the ship you still have to pay)
    - if you loose a ship you leased you defenetly would have to pay compensation
although selling/bying ships could be a simple and effective enough way to trade ships. (either on the global market, or in the trading screen)
Dieser Text basiert ausschließlich auf frei erfundener Interpunktion und Orthographie. Jegliche Uebereinstimmungen mit geltenden Regelungen sind rein zufaellig und wurden nicht beabsichtigt.

Impaler
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#14 Post by Impaler »

I realy like DaveBabbys idea, its "Privatering" in a way.

I realy want to see a Playable Space Pirate faction (see my write up on Story Board)

Their would also be AI pirate Cells that can be negotiated with as a kind of Minor-power. These would be the perfect Privaters as their completly undetectable (they attack you for no reason all the time so who is to know that this particular attack is provoked by your enemies).

The Privater gets a payment of some sort either upfront or on delivery, either a one time reward or a Per-Ship contract. The Privater keeps all of the spoils (wreckage and booty).

Now for Ship sales.

Their 2 different things here. Selling Equipment and ships vs Leasing. If you Sell something its the buyers forever regardless of payment (it cant be reposessed automaticaly), the only failure for non-payment should be diplomatic. The only possible exception might be if you actualy INSTALL a "Failsaif" mechanism in the central computer to do the StarTrek II Wrath of Khan thing (At your orders all the ships will shutdown and be easily recaptured). These safety devices are designed to be irimovable but with sophiciently andvancment they can be countered.

The other option is Leasing is realy more of a "Joint Comand" inwhich your crews contin to man the ships and are instructed to follow orders from the leasee. At any time though you can "break joint-comand" and regain full control of the ships. This option is great for Backstabing. Think of this as the senario used by Palpatine on the Clone soldiars to betray the Jedi.
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

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