Shipyards

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

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utilae
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#61 Post by utilae »

User Interface. Just have some kind of slider to allocate cash to spaceships.

discord
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#62 Post by discord »

gnarf, a shipyard has a maximal work rate, cant go higher, how much money you put into it says how close to that peak performance you can come.

//discord

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skdiw
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#63 Post by skdiw »

If we are going to spend time approving upgrades by fiddling with a ship upgrade slider, I rather do it the other way: keeping shipyards techs few and the player have to micro for the upgrades.
:mrgreen:

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Krikkitone
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#64 Post by Krikkitone »

This is why maximum shipyard capacity should be unlimited (you can spend as much as you want on building up the shipyard), and there be no 'money costing' upgrades or techs. (only free ones that allow you to build a certain type of ship)

The shipyards should be a simple number indicating how much PPs/AUs you can push through it to make ships with the only limit being its maintenance and the build cost. Which would both be directly proportional to the 'Ship Production Capacity'.

Ablaze
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#65 Post by Ablaze »

I think this is a great place for the steadily decreasing capacity model. IOW your shipyard capacity decreases by some fixed % of what it is currently at every turn. As you put money into it the capacity will increase until it reaches the rate of decline. If you drop funding the capacity will level out at a new lower rate.

I'm not sure if I like this idea or my earlier proposal better. They are both simple enough to be feasible and fun.
Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

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Krikkitone
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#66 Post by Krikkitone »

That's basically just maintenance cost (although possibly a simpler way of dealing with it.)
[it assumes a 100% recovery of build cost from 'scrapping for maintenance' though]

discord
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#67 Post by discord »

krikkit: then why not have super yards at every planet? they dont cost me nothing.

on the same note, why should the army cost upkeep? they should not! cause that costs me money....and that keeps me from power exloiting even more! get a grip.

ablaze: well no, thee is no upper limit, since you can toss in new modules(in my idea) to build faster, and actualy now that i think about it, still a upper limit, but who cares, what i was saying was, no insta build button.

//discord

EntropyAvatar
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#68 Post by EntropyAvatar »

Krikkitone wrote:This is why maximum shipyard capacity should be unlimited (you can spend as much as you want on building up the shipyard), and there be no 'money costing' upgrades or techs. (only free ones that allow you to build a certain type of ship)
I agree that there shouldn't be any tech required to increase capacity. But of course constructing the additional capacity should have a significant cost, and increase maintenance.

I don't like the idea of controlling shipyard size via something like a slider. I think it would promote thinking along the lines of: 'Do I need 500 more capacity or just 450?'.

Unless of course the slider was of something that tended to scale properly throughout the game, such as 'Ratio of Shipyard Construction/Maintenance to Planet Wealth'.

Still, I think there's something to be said for upgrading capacity in discrete chunks.

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Krikkitone
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#69 Post by Krikkitone »

EntropyAvatar wrote: Unless of course the slider was of something that tended to scale properly throughout the game, such as 'Ratio of Shipyard Construction/Maintenance to Planet Wealth'.

Still, I think there's something to be said for upgrading capacity in discrete chunks.
I sort of agree with that, I can see it being done in a couple of ways

1. as you mentioned... % of planetary Wealth spent on shipyard

2. differently.... % of Imperial shipyard budget allocated to here (still built with local taxed production)


Discord
krikkit: then why not have super yards at every planet? they dont cost me nothing.
Huh?.. under either a direct maintenance or a % decline, if you put 0 AU or PP into shipyards, then you will lose them (with a % decline you woud be basically auto scrapping shipyards to pay for maintining the ones you didn't scrap)

After all maintenance for armies would be unnecessary if a certain % of your armies just spontaneously Died each turn (I'd prefer maintenance since that way you don't have armies having to be replaced before they get to the field..but whatever works)

Assuming you can rebuild something immediately where it happens to be AND assuming that you get 100% build value out of scrapping* then a automatic % decline is the same as maintenance.

*This is why I favor maintenance directly over % decline.. you shouldn't get 100% build value out of scrapping.

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skdiw
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#70 Post by skdiw »

I thought shipyard maint was porportional to its capacity size? So you can build shiyards on every planet very affordably. I think that was what Discord meant.

If we want to have shipyard be a limited set under industry planets, then use a Ax+B maint cost, or just B maint cost (x=planet's pp). We can make B a function of number of existing shipyards so the more shipyards you have already, the more it cost to maint.

The simplest way is just have a single kind of shipyard that enables you to build ships. Its capacity is porportional to planet's pp, so if you overdrive planet's pp, you get more ships. In terms of gameplay, a shipyard just allow you to build ships and make you pay a small cost for maint. There is no scalable investment to build up shipyard capacity because the mechanics for it may be a bit dirty; only a one-time cost, which can be a problem since you get a lot of pp in the mid-game and you are only kept in check by the maint cost.
:mrgreen:

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utilae
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#71 Post by utilae »

Maybe we should have a value representing the size of the shipyard. It could be a number that can be set by the player from the minimum shipyard size to the maximum shipyard size.
Eg
Shipyard size might be 1 to 10, where 1 is the smallest shipyard size.

When building a shipyard, it starts at size 1. The player can set the size to anything from 1 to 10.

If the player sets the shipyard size to a value bigger than the current shipyard size, the shipyard will grow until it reaches that size. Maintanence and initial upgrade costs will increase as the size goes up.
Eg
Shipyard size is 5. Players sets new size to 7. Shipyard grows over X turns until it is size 7. The speed of growth depends on the available cash. Little or no cash = slow. Required cash = normal.

If the player sets the shipyard size to a value smaller than the current shipyard size, the shipyard will shrink until it reaches that size.
Maintanence and initial upgrade costs will decrease as the size goes down.
Eg
Shipyard size is 5. Players sets new size to 2. Shipyard shrinks over X turns until it is size 2. Shrinking the shipyard brinks in income (things sold etc).

---
I don't know how this would be done on a macro level, but I think it would be cool.

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skdiw
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#72 Post by skdiw »

Complex shipyards if fine, but do it at system level or imperial level. Say we do it at the system level, we can do a system level slider where pp going to system shipyard is at one end and imperial taxation on the other (no more planetary tax slider since all excess pp go to shipyard or to imperial treasury). At system level, there is no more opening 2 windows to instruct planets to build ships and we can add fancy stuff to shipyard without the player going berserk on micro.
:mrgreen:

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Krikkitone
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#73 Post by Krikkitone »

If we want to have shipyard be a limited set under industry planets, then use a Ax+B maint cost, or just B maint cost (x=planet's pp). We can make B a function of number of existing shipyards so the more shipyards you have already, the more it cost to maint.

The simplest way is just have a single kind of shipyard that enables you to build ships. Its capacity is porportional to planet's pp, so if you overdrive planet's pp, you get more ships. In terms of gameplay, a shipyard just allow you to build ships and make you pay a small cost for maint. There is no scalable investment to build up shipyard capacity because the mechanics for it may be a bit dirty; only a one-time cost, which can be a problem since you get a lot of pp in the mid-game and you are only kept in check by the maint cost.
Well to keep shipyards limited to Industry planets, we could simply make it a requirement. (planet must have Industry as a Minor focus at least for a shipyard...)
Actually, that might be a possibility for more efficient shipyards.. either at a better pp-> ship conversion rate, or just able to convert more pp/ shipyard cost. (planet's with Industrial Major focuses would be able to build the most efficient shipyards, Industry Minor focus, and No Industry Focus would build less efficient shipyards)

To actually limit shipyards to a small number... that is simple. It is better to produce 1 ship every turn then 20 ships every 20 turns... If ships are expensive enough that you can't produce them in a reasonable amount of time from only one planet, then you will want to concentrate your shipyards. (unless you go with a small ship strategy.. in which case fine, each planet has a small shipyard)

The only reasons you would diversify shipyards are
1. transport cost (if you can't focus production)
2. not all eggs in one basket
3. Travel time to front (assuming ships appear at the place where they are built)

SgtCycle
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#74 Post by SgtCycle »

On a different note on shipyards:

In most 4X games, shipyard are a component of your planet. It’s just another “module” that you build on the planet like research lab, scanner, farm, etc… In order to be efficient, you usually build the shipyard on a planet that has good industry.

But the shipyard is separated physically from the industry: the industry is on the planet, the shipyard might be a big orbital around the planet. Makes a lot of sense for big shipyard, and most sci-fi movie usually represents shipyard like this.

Now, why would the planet near the shipyard be the only one to contribute industry to the shipyard?

IMO, the shipyard should be a strategic asset, not a “component” associated to a planet.

Planet could assign (some or all) industry to a shipyard. You could have as many planets as you want to contribute industry to a shipyard. In order to balance things, the industry that a planet contributes is influenced by how far it is to the shipyard. The farther the planet from the shipyard, the less industry are actually used by the shipyard. Example: industry from planet less than one parsec away are used at 100%. For planet that are 2 parsec away, only 90% of the industry points spent are actually contributed to the shipyard. Etc…

The shipyard would be an orbital that is built somewhere (around a planet), derived from a “shipyard ship” (like the colony ship becomes a colony). The shipyard would have a capacity (the class of the ship it supports/build). To increase capacity, you would send more shipyard ship to be converted. There should also be a $ cost associated with the conversion, propertionnal to how big the shipyard is becoming. Maintenance cost should also be proportionnal to the capacity of the shipyard.

This creates a whole new strategic role for shipyard. The shipyard is a facility by itself. That facility has to be protected. Why? Because big shipyard should be very expensive and time consuming to build. Once you have a big shipyard, you want to protect it.

The fact that it is a facility also implies that it can be attacked/raided by the enemy.

In traditionnal 4X game, if you want to reduce the capacity of the enemy to build ships, you have to invade/destroy his planets with good industry. With this system, you can raid the shipyard and leave the planets alone for now.
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EntropyAvatar
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#75 Post by EntropyAvatar »

SgtCycle wrote:On a different note on shipyards:
Hmm. A lot of those ideas sound pretty familiar somehow....

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