Ship Building as a System Level Function

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

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discord
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#31 Post by discord »

utilae: as i have said before, we are of different opinions, you want to have shipyards everywhere, i dont.

the reasons for this? does not really matter, since we have both already been through this, i dont see any point in prolonging this....beside a small question.

what difference is there in making several ships at the same time at the same place, and several ships at the same time at different locations?

//discord

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utilae
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#32 Post by utilae »

discord wrote: what difference is there in making several ships at the same time at the same place, and several ships at the same time at different locations?
Making several ships at once at the same location:
pros
-you get massive army at that location
cons
-to put ships at other locations you have to move them, either way they have to travel
-if ship yard destroyed you can't build ships and have no backups
-other planets are likely to be undefended as ships are gathering at your one build location
-can build one ship per yard, unless yard can build many ships

Making several ships at once at diferent locations:
pros
-ships spread between all planets, if you have ship yards on each planet
-many yards can build many ships at once
-small ship army at every location, so no planet is undefended
-if ship yard destroyed, you have backups
cons
-armies are smaller at each location

That will probably do, a comparison showing the difference between the two. :)

discord
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#33 Post by discord »

utilae: you forgot the 'it's more difficult to protect 100 different places, while it's pretty easy to protect a single place, and in accordance to my idea, it would be likely to have two ship yards...

either way, my reasons for suggesting 'few yards' was the fact that to build a few klicks large ships, you would need a MASSIVE construction site, and a large working crew, and all that, so it would not be economical to have several such facilities in each system(one for each planet) since the cost(in resource upkeep) for one of those things is higher then a fleet of ships, or to put it simple, are there large scale ship yards at every port on this planet? or even most? the answer is no. there are actualy pretty few 'large scale' yards, wich can produce large ships, and pretty many at the same time aswell, so i suggested this since it's how it prolly would be (irl), and as i have said before, you dont seem to like this reality thing.

//discord

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utilae
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#34 Post by utilae »

The race that can afford so many ship yards is doing well. Maybe low level ship yards (that produce small ships) could cost hardly anything in maintance and the high level ship yards (that produce big ships) could cost heaps in maintance.

Kevin
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#35 Post by Kevin »

I like the idea of having the same interface for queueing up ships no matter how many planets / systems / shipyards you are dealing with.

Presumably you have a dialog that shows you how many of each size / class of ship you can build simulteneously and how much production is available to do so.

1. It allows designers / modders to decide / change the overall feel of the game (few, expensive ships vs gonzo armadas) without having to change the mechanics and UI of ship queueing. Ideally, it would even be suitable for different shipyard schemes (modular, maximum size class, whatever).

2. It opens up opportunities to reduce micro, without forcing macro.
A. "I want my empire to produce..."
B. "I want all the systems supplying ships to this rally point to produce..."
C. "I want all the systems I just drag-selected to produce..."
D. "I want all the systems with (production, maximum shipyard size, etc) to produce..."

Or, if you want to micro,
"I want this shipyard to produce..."

- Kevin
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discord
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#36 Post by discord »

utilae: all military ships are pretty 'massive', the 'small sclae' yards you are talking about are civvie yards, they build(what can be called today) life boats, or or small yachts(just so you know, only the BIGGEST yachts in the world, get even close to the smallest military ships.) sure there are other transport ships, but once again, there are not that many shipyards capable of such large ships.

i think there are four or five 'large yards' in the old soviet, these built both civvie and military ships, US has about the same, a couple on the east coast, a couple on the west coast, although i am not entirely sure about the numbers, i am simply checking the amount of large scale docks, where there usualy is a decent yard aswell.

and on 'upkeep', we have already been over that.

the only question here is, wich is better, a few 'large scale' yards, or the classic, 'every planet produces what it can' thing, you are for the tried and true approach, i am not.

since BOTH systems work, it's a matter of how you want the game play.

//discord

Bastian-Bux
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#37 Post by Bastian-Bux »

If we count all of them together (4 US, 4 SU, 2-4 EU and 2-4 in Asia) we get to 12-16. So even in our balcanized world we have less then 20 major yards.

Impaler
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#38 Post by Impaler »

As long as Ship producing Capacity is not a default ability of every planet (aka you need to make a Yard first), then we will have the desired effect. Fine tuning will come later as we adjust the cost and maintance of each size of Yard. I think that at the most we could make small fighters (like X-Wings and stuff) be producable on the planetary surface with no special facilities, Anything larger would require a facility on the surface of in space, with the larger sizes being space based. (It depends on what options we want to have for ships landing on planets)
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

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utilae
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#39 Post by utilae »

discord wrote:the 'small sclae' yards you are talking about are civvie yards, they build(what can be called today) life boats, or or small yachts(just so you know, only the BIGGEST yachts in the world, get even close to the smallest military ships.) sure there are other transport ships, but once again, there are not that many shipyards capable of such large ships.
Just because a ship is small doesn't mean it should be built by civilians or a ship should be built by millitary, because it's big. I think there are two basic types of ship: offence (cause damage to enemies) and support (repair, refuel, colony, transport).

Also, I say that 'if your race can afford many ship yards they should be able to have many ship yards'. How can you limit how many ship yards are built, raising their cost or making it so that you can build 1 per system (maybe basing that on size, ie one level 6 ship yard or two level 3 ship yards per system).

Odi
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#40 Post by Odi »

Just a quick question about ship-building:

Ships that get build get placed... where ?
Will there be a reserve-system (which I would like, but with some adjustments [every system has his own reserve, when creating a tf you can specify the max-distance from the creation-place (which determines how many pools are used in order to create the tf)]) ? Otherwise how about setting a staging area (with way-points) for shipyards / tf-buildorders ( so that ship that get build will immidiately start his way to his buildorder-assigned system )

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discord
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#41 Post by discord »

utilae: true, true. but i did not want to put it as a 'fact' more like it tends to be that way 'irl' and in 'military' here i included super corp things here aswell, since they have the capital to actualy buy such things.

and on 'many' shipyards, the only 'hindering factor' i suggested from #1 would be the economic/practical efficiency stopping people from having a super-mega-spaceyard in orbit over every planet...since you need the production of several hundred inhabited solar systems to use even one of those optimaly.....

//discord

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utilae
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#42 Post by utilae »

You could have a cap on ship yards in a solar system.

Lets say that a ship yard has a level, ie Ship Yard level 3, which is the max size ships the yard produces.

We could hve a cap, where you are only aloud shipyards totalling to level 6, ie you could have one level 6 ship yard in a system or you could have 2 level 3 ship yards i na system or even three level two ship yards in a system. This cap could be increased by technology allowing more ship yards and bigger ship yards.

We could also say that ship yards can be upgrade through tech, so you might research level 7 ship yards. Ship yards would then automatically upgrade to become bigger (like any business would), but would not grow more than the max level researched, ie would not grow bigger then level 7.

discord
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#43 Post by discord »

utilae: wich once again defeats the purpose of the 'shipyard' system, where much of the empires total resources are being funneled into building new ships.

you just suggested how to have alot of shipyards, but another way of handling many ship yards(using a illogical, artificial limit.)

//discord

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summing up..

#44 Post by miu »

Trying to sum up things, if I got them right at all:

these seem clear:
-As many shipyards per system that you want and you can afford. But realistically, you can only afford small shipyards and very rarely a big one because of huge building/upkeep costs.
-Shipyards are able to produce multiple ships per turn if their resources allow it.
-Same interface to each level of shipbuilding allowing user as little and much micro-macro as the player wants. Selections apply (how to make UI for this is a matter to be discussed later).
-Queying, tf building and infinite loops
-Ships should be located where they are buildt -> move to rally-points.

Uncertain:
Systems can contribute their shipbuilding capacity to other systems. = produce parts that are transferred to other system where the ships are actually manufactured, thus allowing faster building of bigger ships.
-The freighter capacity limits the effeciency of this.

questions:
When you can design the rally-points? as part of the building-interface sounds most reasonable to me, to have a button "set rally-point" after which you click on desired system, but if not pressed, each ship would stay on the system they were buildt.

Miu.
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Odi
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Re: summing up..

#45 Post by Odi »

miu wrote: Uncertain:
Systems can contribute their shipbuilding capacity to other systems. = produce parts that are transferred to other system where the ships are actually manufactured, thus allowing faster building of bigger ships.
-The freighter capacity limits the effeciency of this.
Would be nice, but freigthers are still in an unclear state. Also, this feature would mean to have just one or tow shipyard-systems and the whole empire is just producing parts for them... a bit too much macro and to easy to create fleets if you ask me.
miu wrote: questions:
When you can design the rally-points? as part of the building-interface sounds most reasonable to me, to have a button "set rally-point" after which you click on desired system, but if not pressed, each ship would stay on the system they were buildt.
How about that:
When you give a buildorder you can assign waypoints/rally-points for the given object via a scrollable (and zoomable ?) minimap. Setting general rally-points for systems could be handled as if you marked a fleet and gives it move-orders...
zaba zaba zud zud

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