It seems whenever you give any resources to one of your teammates, they get taxed at the receiving player's fleet upkeep rate. For example, if you have researched 2 steps of max fleet size, you have an upkeep of 19%, and whenever your teammate gives you 100 crystals you only receive 81, and 19 disappear into the cold void.
Is this an intended feature? Is IC opposed to teamwork? Old players helping out the new ones?
I can see that some kind of a tax on the RU Fairy makes sense, but since fleet upkeep can be in excess of 50%, this seems rather steep! Is here something they are trying to balance against?
Yes it is intentional that resource goes towards your fleet upkeep
Nevertheless a system like in Haegemonia where if you don't upkeep your ships will take constant damage would make sense
I wish the upkeep was based upon the number of ships you currently have, and not on how many you're able to have.
But here they go towards the upkeep twice, or even more times. The player who originally harvested the resources already paid his fleet upkeep for them.
Really like the idea of ships taking damage slowly if you can't pay the upkeep....
What i'd really like to see is upkeep that is not dependent upon your economy, but only the max ship #. What I mean exactly is that the relationship between your ship capacity and the upkeep cost should be exclusive, although not necessarily linear. If fleet A requires 150 supply, and fleet B requires 450, it might make sense that fleet B should cost more than 3 times the upkeep (extra COMM's personell that wouldn't normally be necessary to coordinate a lesser force). Basing it on a percentage of your income is one interesting way to simulate this, but I think it misses the mark a bit.
You tell me, does it really make sense that each ship costs you more to maintain because your economy is stronger?
excellent point varis
The system is great because it counters cheese. Without it you could have an offensive player with 49% upkeep, and an economic ally with 0% upkeep, who just harvests the resources and sends them over to the offensive player. They get more total money, and they also get to skip whole techtrees...
Which could be 0%, if you never researched the next level of fleet upkeep, and are just feeding resources to your teammates.
It is sort of a balancing point for those RARE situations, but when you're getting 75% attrition munched down another 75%... then the tribute system is pretty much destroyed by the double tax. I noticed this double tax to my dismay in a multiplayer game, where I donated 10000 excess metal to my ally. He thought I was jipping him, as he only got a third of it!
If the original fleet upkeep system had not reduced income, but instead increased prices to the exact same effect(I.E. instead of 1/4 income, have 4x costs across the board), then upkeep would not cause a problem with tributes. Both players would have the same base resources, but the player with the bigger fleet would be paying more for every ship, making the tribute scheme not worth it. With this type of setup, bigger players would have an incentive to tribute to their neighbors, as the reduced upkeep costs will net the neighbor (and thus the combined fleet) more bang for the buck.
The only tangible difference between such upkeep systems is that the SoaSE's upkeep curve makes stored resources more valuable (as they become harder to get), while a system of increasing prices would instead make stored resources less valuable (as prices become inflated with upkeep).
SoaSE's resource system is tricky to balance because the income changes, yet the resource demands stay the same. Players will always look for ways to tweak the system so that they can ensure a maximum income for the best effect. If the resource income stayed the same but the costs changed, it would be far easier to balance things such as variable fleet upkeep and tribute.
The funny thing is the system does not really counter this case, just makes it behave sensibly. If we have an econ player A with 0% upkeep, there is no double tax on his harvesting. If those resources are donated to player B with the 49% upkeep, he still gets to build his fleet with just a single tax, which he would have to pay anyway. The difference is that player A will harvest much more efficiently, and player B can skip whole tech trees, so no. The system mostly hurts the case where both players have real fleets. One quick solution would be to deduct the receiver's tax percentage by that of the donor's.
To a degree econ players are balanced by the fact that with 0 fleet you are pretty vulnerable - the team also loses the player's fleet management capability, because then there is no one to take care of defense/offensives in 1 more location. If the enemy notices (any player worth their salt should!) that one of the enemy players has no fleets, but instead lots of tradeports, refineries, civ labs etc etc, it shouldn't be too challenging to figure out 1) what is going on 2) who is the easiest target for the next attack. And when this player goes down, the whole team will be screwed, because there was just 1 income source not 3. This helps to balance the extreme cases quite a bit.
To me, having a dedicated econ player is a valid tactic, and it just should be balanced. If the total benefit of having a dedicated econ player is reasonable, and there is some kind of a disadvantage as well, then the net effect is that the strategy gives knowledgeable players just a slight edge, and everything is as it should be. However if the player is forced to not build any fleet, that weakens the gameplay and the balance is not where it should be.
For regular players passing RU between each other, that is just regular teamwork, and makes for a good team dynamic when players cover their buddy's (momentary) weaknesses. Of course there is the aspect that this helps the team recover from attacks and other threats, so it will make the games a bit longer when teams can stay on a good footing longer. But as it is, this is totally nerfed to hell and back currently, especially in the late game. With a 49% penalty, donating RU would be reasonable only in rather special and dire circumstances, and could not become a regular catalyst of team spirit. I like the fleet upkeep penalty in general, because it nerfs huge fleets and balances the action (although that again makes the games longer), but in this case it seems too steep a progression considering what would be fun gameplay.
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