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Posted: Tue Oct 28, 2003 6:59 pm
by SgtCycle
You're right. Most of the ideas are probably mentionned in prior posts in the thread, except for the one where the shipyard is a facility, totally independent of the planet it is orbitting, and industry from different planets collaborate on the same shipyard.

Of course, I could be wrong ;)

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 12:08 am
by skdiw
EntropyAvatar wrote:
SgtCycle wrote:On a different note on shipyards:
Hmm. A lot of those ideas sound pretty familiar somehow....
That's because we already discussed them. He is basically talking about rush jobs, protable pp, and diminshing effects.
Of course, I could be wrong
Right again! They have been discussed. Other planets help by dumping their excess pp in imperial treasury and then the player can rush the job on the shipyard.

Orbital shipyard have been talked about. I don't really care either way except orbital shipyard would be better because of its gameplay tatical value.

I think system level shipyard is very good. ship building pp gets frieght in a system for free. Even on a huge map, the player only have to handle some 20 stars for ship building, which is way better than like 80 planets, not to mention all those windows. The only problem I see is where would the shipyard be located? Do we even need shipyard? How will the enemy target yards if they can exist anywhere in the star system. Do the player have to micro to associate a yard with a planet?

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 1:03 am
by SgtCycle
Could someone resume to me what was decided for shipyard.

I read the thread, and it goes in many different direction with many good ideas, but I didn't get the sense that a consensus was reached

Thanks, I'm trying to catch up on the design

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 1:22 am
by skdiw
We haven't decided anything for shipyard. You are exactly right; we can't seem to agree on anything. Then again, this is under brainstorming thread. I thought there was a shipyard design in the design thread. I say we get a poll going. And if that doesn't work, everybody propose one element that they want the most and we'll try to mesh them together.

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 3:30 am
by EntropyAvatar
skdiw wrote:everybody propose one element that they want the most and we'll try to mesh them together.
That sounds like a recipe for Frankenstein's monster :)

For this thread, all I hope for is a list of several distinct, well-described and reasonably coherent alternatives (and then for everyone to agree that I was right all along).

Posted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 7:01 pm
by utilae
Krikkitone wrote: 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)
We could say that if you don't build a shipyard on an industry planet then production is half. Maybe they drain most of the resources from a non industry planet. This way the number of shipyards you have depends on the number of industry planets.

It may still be possible to have heaps of shipyards, so we should have an empire wide build queue. You just choose what ships to build there and they get built at the most appropriate shipyard. Maybe you could choose a section of your empire, ie the back, the front, to decided where to build the ship more specifically.

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 9:05 am
by skdiw
All right, here is my Franky. Since everyone likes to complicate everything so much, I'll propose a simple shipyard approach to counter-balance a bit. My plan should be simple yet complicated enough for some flexibility.

My plan follows the pp -> ship-building (sp) mechanism. All planetary excess pp goes to sp. If there are no ships in queue, the sp behave just like excess pp (converts back to pp). If there are ships in the queue, the sp will be alloted to construction of ship/s.

Tech upgrades improves the pp conversion to sp, but you have to micro which shipyard you want to upgrade and pay an upgrade cost. Tech upgrade are few so the player won't be constantly overwhelmed.

You normally begin the game with a shipyard. Each additional shipyard have an additional cost on top of a base cost. Maintenence is proportional to shipyard cost.

You can overdrive by overdriving pp.

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 12:45 pm
by Sidewalker
May be allowing orbital shipyards build ships only up to Cruiser Class, and interplanetary (or whatever) shipyards build bigger ships have a sense?

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 1:28 pm
by skdiw
Sidewalker wrote:May be allowing orbital shipyards build ships only up to Cruiser Class, and interplanetary (or whatever) shipyards build bigger ships have a sense?
A couple problems:
1. Shipyard level that allow to build up certain size have some tech tree requisite problems and have more micro/complexities than necessary for upgrades. That's why we favored the pp coversion system.
2. As much as I like system shipyards, they have a problems with critical size, inter-racial systems, and shipyard bombardment questions.

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 1:59 pm
by Sidewalker
Orbital shipyard, I meant , is more virtual thing a la MOO. I rephrase that: PLANET can build spaceships up to Cruiser Class. In reality terms, we can count Cruiser as biggest thing, that could orbit the planet.

System shipyard is NON-PLANET constructing facility, placed somewhere out of planet ORBIT :))
I'd propose to place shipyards om empty/asteroids orbits in system, but i'm afraid i'll be teared apart by those who discuss this topic long time... :lol:

Posted: Tue Nov 04, 2003 2:19 pm
by skdiw
me wrote: 2. As much as I like system shipyards, they have a problems with critical size, inter-racial systems, and shipyard bombardment questions.
Perhaps you didn't understand the terms.
citical size: the minimum number of planets/system to be even a viable competitive empire in the game. Since there are 4 passed resources, you are probably going to need 4 planets to keep up with the bare minimum of keeping an empire. Since pp industry planet are going to be your muscle for pp, you are probably going to build there. So that means you are going to need 5 planets all together because you need 2 industries, one for imperial wealth and another for ship building. If you have system yards, that minimum number jumped from 4 planets + 1 yard planet to 4 planets + a system. We lose a bit of strategic value of shipyards if we do orbital system yards at the gain of a lot less micro. But there are other problems.

inter-racial systems: what happens if a neutral or a hostile race parked into your system with your system yard? How does the blockade work? Do I block individual planets, system, parts of? What about funding and maintenence?

ship bombardments: how do you target orbital system yards? How will they appear on the battle screen? Do you treat them just like a planet when under attack?

Posted: Sat Feb 07, 2004 3:53 pm
by Journier
In many science fiction books I have read that have the human race as being on the defensive, we have always hid our shipyards in astroid belts or behind suns. Its just one of those things that we would be doing to make it harder to destroy.

With planetary shipyards you are making everything just 1 big target, if you lose the planet you lose it all. sorta bad thing to do.

With a system based shipyard you will have the ability to have every planet in the system feeding the shipyard making for quicker building of ships possible.

As long as you possibly treat the shipyard maybe as a planet in the game?
It could work out.

For the whole interracial systems problem someone talked about, Whoever has the majority of the system should be able to have a shipyard there, a good foothold. Maybe you can build a system shipyard there if you have 75% or more of the planets in the system.

This is still remembering the idea of planets being able to produce ships up to a small size (cruiser?? i heard someone say, just a smaller size)

So interracial systems will still be able to produce ships but just smaller ones, which isnt really a death notice.

This would also work out that, some systems you have may be able to not build a shipyard at your own request, I wouldnt think you want a system shipyard right in the system right next to your worst enemy who wants tto kill you off. It would be a waste of money and time if he lost it because you were busy somewhere else.

You dont build extremely important buildings next to your enemy :)
Especially in space warfare, where everything moves so fast that its hard to keep up with even the idea of war.
You would build the shipyard back near the core worlds, or a few systems behind the main lines.


Near the enemy you would just leave the planets to fend for themselves with there smaller ships while you divert the enemy's attention with your large fleets in attacks to his flank and such. that is how you get away with the whole system shipyards, no real need for a orbiting shipyard around every world..

If the worlds can produce small ships without the orbiting shipyard then why not just do away with the orbitting shipyard and go with system wide...

dont know what else to say :/ I think i listed some of the main points i was trying to get through.

Posted: Sun Feb 08, 2004 7:10 pm
by luckless666
what are the four passed resources called?

Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 5:48 pm
by El Savior
Really a brainstorm thread. :lol:

I read about half of it and I have no idea what people think shipyard should be. First I think we have to know real modern shipyards and think what future space shipyard should be.

1. What does shipyard needs?
Workers, materials, machines and drydock. Everyone should agree that all these are only available in core/industrial worlds (today near cities and resources). Shipyards are strategically important and should be heavily defended and located in secure area.

2. Size does matter
Size is two thing. First number of drydocs and second size of drydocs. One ship can be constructed at a time in drydock, so number will limit ships constructed. Size of drydock will limit maximum hull size to be build. It is not wise to waste big drydock for constructing small ship. This is a waste of resources. Also it is not even wise to build large drydock if it is not needed.

3. Usage
Shipyards are not just for constructing ships, but also for repair and upgrading ships. Usually most designers are also in shipyards and most designing is done there.

Okay, that's the basic.

What I would love to see is this:

1. Ships really needs refueling or refitting in naval bases (not necessary shipyard).
2. Upgrading ships. Building a hull is the most time consuming and it might take 50-70% of all constructing time. Upgrading weapons, electronical systems saves money and time.
3. Repairing ships. Some battle damage could be repaired after battle, but major damage can be repaired only in shipyard.

Planetary shipyard? Yeah, but only for small ships which are able to land and take off there (fighters and corvettes with special engines). But it makes sense to build shipyard near asteroids or moons, so hauling materials is easy.

Posted: Sun Apr 04, 2004 10:17 pm
by haravikk
My thoughts....

Shipyards
I doubt very much that every planet would have a shipyard except for simple commercial ships like shuttles and freighters (i.e. negligible).

Instead it is more likely that only a few systems, indeed only a few planets in an empire would really have large shipyards, and when they do they would most likely be devoted to it. But this is not to say that other worlds are uninvolved, far from it.

Components
All ships need components, from weapons down to nuts and bolts, and a shipyard planet is unlikely to build all of these itself. So, excess industry points, or an extra area of planetary spending could go into constructing these components which are then shipped off to a shipyard. What this does quite simply is that excess industry from worlds near to a shipyard are added to the industry points used to build ships at the shipyard, causing one massively productive world.

Multi-tasking
It would be silly to think that a planet devoted to ship building would build only one ship at a time. I would picture such a world as covered with factories and surrounded by orbiting dock facilities, construction arms and defence platforms.
As such a planet like this should be able to build several 'facilities', each of which can be upgraded to build bigger and better ships to that point that a really large planet could be building a whole task force at the same time, while refitting an older one to boot!