Rush building costs 15 credits a manu point, which makes it a horrible investment. I'd reduce it to 10 and see if it is still too high.
Upgrading is also insanely expensive - something like 240 to upgrade a tiny scout (I had 4) to use 3rd level sensors, life support, and engines, and 760 to upgrade the small explorer from 2 to 3. I'd reduce the cost of upgrading Sensors, Engines, and Life Support by half compared to the cost of upgrading weapons and defenses, and even then probably drop the costs of upgrading by a third, proportional to my suggested reductions in rushing.
Having to run your whole empire at 100% wealth generation for several turns to upgrade your survey fleet is silly. Doing so during a war to upgrade your combat fleet, sure, but not your scouts during peace.
If it were up to me I'd require a ship be in 'dock' at a starbase or planet before being eligible for upgrade.
I respectfully disagree.
Emergency upgrades should be just that, very expensive. Not a general plan to upgrade a fleet. This in turn creates an additional, and to my mind very interesting problem for the player. When to build, when to build new, and when to decommission to save BC. The later you build, the more dangerous but the sooner you build the more expensive. Careful tradeoffs here. Towards the middle-late game one will have a mix of ships, some nearly outdated, some top of the line. How to use them efffectively is a good strategic problem.
I disagree. Setting your whole empire to 100% manufacturing and 100% shipyard(military) is going to pump out modern ships far faster than going to 100% economy and paying to upgrade your current fleet. Not sure where the break even point will be, but it is not at 15:1.
Choosing whether to upgrade existing or build new ships should be a balanced decision. It isn't.
Yea i agree with "Director", ships should dock and stay sometime inside in order to upgrade, costing only manufacture. Then, to give a reason to have gold, i would say that emergency upgrades should happen anywhere in the map at a high gold cost.
But "Ex Mudder" has a point... And the real factor is: Planet Government is broken. The triangle and the slider are overpowered and that forces you to deal with an annoying micro, especially at late game, at the same time it does not adds depth and decrease the game balancing.
The idea that players should be forced to go to port to upgrade ships comes up from time to time. The overwhelming consensus from players, outside of a few die hards on the issue, is: ABSOULTELY NOT . For many reasons, including micromanagment, balance, and that good ol' fashioned concept of "fun". Micromanagment and balance concerns arise because this would inevitably encourage even more starbase spamming, this time just so people could upgrade ships hundreds of tiles and dozens of turns away from home. The lack of fun comes in because, quite frankly, it sucks to waste 20 turns just so one can put a new set of blasters on a ship, just to turn around and waste another 20 turns to get you ship back where it came from.
Now the devs did consider this idea early in development. But they ultimately concluded, rightly IMO, that there would be a revolt on their hands if they tried to change a long standing mechanic like this. Personally, I shudder at the thought of this being implemented on an Insane map.
Now from an immersion standpoint, don't forget that the whole concept of range is part and parcel of this. It's not just life support, but also resupplying ships after battle, giving them more fuel to travel, and generally everything else tied to the idea that ships can only go so far away from friendly territory.
No, requiring ships to go back to a base to upgrade would require a radical redesign of how ships, range, and distance are currently handled. And considering that there are already disadvantages to upgrading far from home (longer time to do it, more expensive [I think], ship is a sitting duck while being upgraded), I see little reason to force players to waste turns to send ships back home and manymany reasons not to do it.
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As for the separate issue of cost, I do agree that it is far too much right now. At least compared to GC II. I'd have to back and check to see what the ratio was before, but right now it is completely out of whack. From what I understand, the debs want players to choose the X-per-turn option when it comes to upgrading. But that sucks as well, IMNSHO. . I am quite certain there is a happy medium where it still costs a chunk of change to upgrade many ships at once without completely bankrupting the player. Just have to find it.
You are right, just way too radical changes for such a little thing. Even tho, i think that moving ships around the universe is exactly the point of a game like this. (not to the point of having to re-suply or refuel, that's done by pesky little ships paid with maintenance gold ) But you have to keep in mind how many ships is actually possible to build and sustain or the micro really becomes a problem.
Anyway, IMO Devs should not mind about anything but making the game cool; have the courage to put the game on the path of what they think is a intelligent concept. May online game sites review a given decision to "take a feature off" as bad? Yes, and they also shall review it as a bold decision to keep things fun... May some fans cry about something that was always there, yea sure, but at the other hand they may come to have a better experience after all. It's all about vision. In the end if it's a good one it will stand strong.
The economy is completely out of whack.
Credits only purpose is to cover maintenance cost, so that your treasury stays just above zero. Other than that, you should be somewhere between 100% Manufacturing or Science at all times. And probably at 100% on one or the other of those.
Under almost no circumstances would you pay for upgrades. If you even have those kind of credits on hand, you're operating at terrible efficiency.
15:1 is an absolute joke...I hope...
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A credit economy should be viable with enough investment. In a lot of game the credit/income based economy has a weaker early game, but a strong late game.
I want it to be a strategic decision I have to make, perhaps taking all my faction wide planetary characteristics into account....
Right now it's just...Credits suck, Manufacturing it is; But there's still strategic decisions right? Um nope, just put it at 100% Manufacturing, it's optimal in 99% of cases. Only having more spill-over than next queued building cost forces any management at all.
I've made a mod that fixs this by reducing the ratio to 8:1. Here: https://forums.galciv3.com/463407/page/1/#3536992
Couldn't agree more, good sir, or take alot more time to upgrade then now if not + costing more credits (for the unconvinient location and lack of nearby usefull infrastructure).
In GC2 the ratio is 8bcs for 1 production point, although it could sink lower to even 3bcs etc when the total amount of bought production is small (ie. like 10 production). There are still one or more bugs prevalent in the calculations that are responsible for this, as well as downgrading stuff could also rise costs in a chaotic manner.
That said, I think the reason of why producing stuff should/has to be stronger than buying things is simple: it usually requires more time, because you don't have unlimited production available. There is no cap on how much you can spend (available) credits. Now if an economy strategy would surpass the productive-strategy in total production, then there would absolutely be no reason left to produce anything.
I'd rather see shipbuying/upgrading/rushbuying as some sort of complimentary strategy that adds to the general tech/production gameplay.
Yeah, a prod economy has to be alot stronger and the preferable choice, to avoid just saving up credits to become a usefull strategy (and by that saving yourself upkeep costss until units are needed + being able to instantly buying the kind of fleet composition you need). Also building up build capacity (using tiles for industry and doing industrial tech, starbases) need to mean something.
To avoid cheese and boredom (games are more fun when you have to think long term, or when long term factors are an issue when doing decissions) and stupid non-brainers; that's why upgrading (and buying of) ships needs to be VERY expensive and not instant. More like an act of desperation when you really need to fast produce something to tip the balance (but then PAY FOR IT!!!).
I think upgrading is good the way it is, though I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of needing to be at a starbase, planet, or shipyard for some realism and strategy. Rushing ships is just a bit too expensive. Ex Mudder puts it perfectly, it should be expensive to rush things, but 15:1 is just too much. I'd be interested to see 13:1 and 10:1.
I do like the idea of ships in a planet / starbase / shipyard being cheaper / quicker to upgrade (and repair) than an in field retrofit It would reflect the idea upgrading a stockpiled reserve fleet, a reason to pull ships back for refit, and the advantage of building an advance starbase close to the front for quick refits. I would not require it though. I hated upgrading my fleets in Distant Worlds.
I modded that a while ago, 5:1 and I feel happy with it.
"No, requiring ships to go back to a base to upgrade would require a radical redesign of how ships, range, and distance are currently handled. And considering that there are already disadvantages to upgrading far from home (longer time to do it, more expensive [I think], ship is a sitting duck while being upgraded), I see little reason to force players to waste turns to send ships back home and manymany reasons not to do it."
No, it would require the player to build a starbase as a forward-operational support base - s0mething navies have been doing since navies have been around.
One of the interesting points I remember is that a ship is totally helpless while upgrading. I propose we increase the upgrade time a little and keep the helpless condition. It helps dissuade people from abusing the remote upgrade in the middle of a combat zone. I do think it needs to be more expensive remotely than at a planet or starbase.
Historically speaking, upgrades were extremely limited in scope, and done only with slightly more advanced technology.
The most radical upgrades I can think of in naval history would have been the retrofitting of 1st generation SAMs onto late-WW2-era cruisers. Which was hideously expensive, as is. So much so, that most of the proposed conversions were abandoned in favor of building new, from-scratch ships.
For example: the USN's Alaska-class "large cruiser/battlecruiser" design would appear to be suitable for conversion to a well-armed missile ship. The studies to do it showed it wasn't the case, and the US Navy ended up retiring those ships after less than 10 years use, simply because the cost to convert exceeded the cost to build a new CG with even better capability.
Honestly, the only conversions that should realistically be economical are ones that are within 10-15% of the original design's production cost. Retrofitting anything significant has always been a least-best option. Build-and-retire is (and always has been) the best strategy unless you're sooooo desperate as to need every single ship available.
Now, if there was some way to upgrade a ship being constructed in a shipyard (before it was complete), that would be interesting.
Why wasn't the taxation and spending system designed like that in GCII? The player economy should have had a certain size (based on population, factories, and market buildings) of which a certain %age of value added could be taxed. This taxation in turn would be used to purchase research and production at a rate of 1 BC per unit, as modified by cost reduction. There should simply have been three sliders for tax take, production, and research, and an additional military-social slider; this setup should have been replicated for each planet. Taxes would additionally pay for fixed maintenance costs. This system would encourage proper economic management rather than maximization of production and research at all times.
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