No, nothing currently. I honestly can’t tell you the last time I had 5000 ships at a star.
But here’s the thing that I’m just thinking - 100 x NR is the limit. That means you can only have 100 ships at a 1 NR star. The rate of production is the same whether the star is 1 NR or 50 NR because it’s based off of Industry/Manu. So I feel like I’d be punished for having a lot of smaller NR stars later in the game, especially in galaxies where NR are sparse. I’d have to have frequent carrier loops from those stars just so my production is not inefficient, otherwise I’d “lose” ship production.
I understand the point and the goal of this. We don’t want ship buildups at borders without action. But there are times where I have to wait to reach the next weapons level. Or attacking someone isn’t prudent at that point in the game. I don’t want to play a game that turns into “attack everyone else on sight”. I hate playing the hyper-aggressiveness and prefer to play a strategy, long term game.
I like it, let me get it straight though: So I can still HAVE the million-ship border build-up being reinforced by all my other production, but that specific star I’m reinforcing won’t produce more ships? That’s cool.
I can’t think of a time this would have greatly impacted my gameplay except one- It feels to me it’s designed to stop production on, and eventually, crack open the “last stand” star when a person is consolidating all their forces in one place?
I DO like where you’re going with this, encouraging more action!
But I can understand other players who do not want production to hard stop.
So I offer this suggestion for a feature request.
What if instead of a hard cut-off suspension, there is a degradation of manufacturing efficiency ?
When there are too many ships visiting a star, there is inefficiency of manufacturing, and resource support.
Manufacturing of ships continue, but at reducing rates.
ships at star , manufacturing multiplier
< 100x NR , 1/1 = 1 / ( 1 + 0 )
< 200x NR , 1/2 = 1 / ( 1 + 1 )
< 300x NR , 1/3 = 1 / ( 1 + 2 )
< 400x NR , 1/4 = 1 / ( 1 + 3 )
< 500x NR , 1/5 = 1 / ( 1 + 4 )
and so on . . .
It is an easy INT function.
I hope this does not break the server ?
EDIT
or use Terraformed Resources instead of NR, as whichever Jay decides to use.
It would be good if this were an option that could be enabled or disabled when setting up a game.
Also what is to stop you from just looping a carrier between nearby two stars with Garrison (NR x 100) set? You will only stop production for 1hr when the fleet is actually on the star in that case?
Interesting idea but wouldn’t it be better to take the Terraformed Resources into account. This would fix the poorly resourced stars limit in the later game.
I’ve hit the limit on a lot of stars in Neptune's Pride but this is a rather strange game that has included a probable winner going AFK by accident. I was too weak to attack him and he was busy elsewhere so built up a lot of ships which I’m now using productively. I’ll read the other game mod info at From 3 to 6 Missed Turns in TBG as that looks as if it would also have affected this game.
Thanks Jay for continuing to think of ways of improving this already great game.
I believe this will dramatically increase standoffs. No one will be able to get ahead of another player once they have several large developed planets near each other. Resource management and infrastructure purchases won’t be able to break the standoffs. There’s enough standoffs now.
@JayKyburz as to the question of being in games where the 5000 limit is hit? 5000 is a a pretty small fleet in the later stages of a lot of games. 40K was the last fleet on my last planet in a recent game. The leader had millions of ships at that point.
I agree with cptcrackers that this may have unintended consequences of causing MORE standoffs.
For example, say I have three resource 1 stars surrounding an enemy resource 50 core. There’s decent TF (common in large galaxies) in the game, so I can build good Industry … but once I have a 100 ships, I don’t get any more. Whereas the dude with the resource 50 star can “turtle” until he hit 5,000.
Note that it does make high resource stars even more valuable … which is good IMHO.
This also adds complexity to the game … are you Jay planning to modify the code so a message is displayed saying something like “This star builds 3.75 ships every hour but since you have 4990, it won’t do any more after 3 hours”
The more I think about it, the more I think this one rule change pretty much changes the entire game in every aspect. I just keep thinking of more ways this changes everything. Researching MFG and terraforming will become pointless after a certain point
Does the rule prevent you from LANDING more than 5000 on a star? Do carriers have a limit as well? If there’s no limit on carriers and there’s no limit on how many ships can be landed on a star, then you can keep up production on the star by having a carrier on a loop simply pick up the ships constantly and move back and forth between a couple of stars.
Because it’s POSSIBLE to do that, it will be NECESSARY to do that in order to keep up. That is going to be VERY tedious.
Also, this may increase AFK’s and quits. The random map has the potential to screw some one far more than it did before. If you get a bunch of weak planets to a side with a strong player, it’s going to strongly restrict the number of ways that you can defend those stars.
This will cause players who start to lose ground to lose ground more quickly. They won’t be able to crank up production on their last remaining stars in order to go into a defensive posture as easily. I’ve seen people get pushed back, but manage to createa production center that stalls their opponent. Sometimes this is so help can arrive, sometimes it’s so that they can come bursting out later at a good moment. That will probably not happen anymore. The rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer much more quickly now.
I want the rule to encourage you to pick and an enemy and attack.
I didn’t think it through to that level, but hey, that works towards the game goal as well.
My intention is to end long slow drawn out cold wars. I want games to come to conclusion a little faster.
A more heavy handed tactic I could employ would be to say that no game last longer than 6 weeks (in ticks) and that the player with the most stars at the end is the winner.
A lot of us actually enjoy long drawn-out games with plenty of scope for tactics and strategy. I had understood, Jay, that you wouldn’t drasticaly change the basic game but would only bring in alterations as alternative choices when setting up games. I would certainly prefer that approach.
Yes, but I think perhaps we may not see eye to eye on what the basic game is.
In my view, games that reach these kinds of ship counts have stagnated and need to be drawn to an end.
I don’t believe this is a major change, but please play it for a while and let me know what the impacts are. If we find that it has significant negative impacts on the game we can try something else to bring the game to an end.
I think the new rule would be much more palatable if it was 100X the TERRAFORMED resources of the star rather than the NATURAL resources.
The former is much more scalable as “inflation” naturally increases the number of ships … with a corresponding increase in Terra. Plus I’ve actually played a couple of games where it was setup starting with TF10 - adds an interesting dimension to the game … but you could hit that production limit pretty soon.
BTW, even if you put a message up on the “star screen”, players may not notice that production has stalled since the ship counts are kinda high.
@cptcrackers makes some good points in that this may balance the scales even more in favor of the player with more stars - if anything, you want to give the weaker players some way to fight back.
I can’t say I’ve been in many games stalemated as Jay describes. If you’ve got multiple belligerents with that kind of fleet size I say more power to them. I certainly wouldn’t want to see the games time limited, except by custom setting.
However, perhaps some sort of decay rate for fleets might be interesting. For small fleets the decay would round to zero, but the larger the fleet the larger the percent decay per tick. Use it or lose it.
I want the rule to encourage you to pick and an enemy and attack…
My intention is to end long slow drawn out cold wars. I want games to come to conclusion a little faster.
A more heavy handed tactic I could employ would be to say that no game last longer than 6 weeks (in ticks) and that the player with the most stars at the end is the win
Jay, you’ve created an awesome game. Let me start with that. This change, and the reasons you’re giving for it don’t Improve the game for everyone. What they do is attempt to impose a seemingly personal preference about strategies and play styles that people should use.
In my view, games that reach these kinds of ship counts have stagnated and need to be drawn to an end.
I couldn’t disagree more. and I don’t think I’m alone… this is when the REAL wheeling and dealing and backroom moves take place.
I think the 6 week timer is a better idea than ship counts. HOWEVER, I don’t think it should be imposed on custom games except as an option.
I also think that Hulk is right if you HAVE to have limits, then them to terraformed resources.
My initial reaction to the rule change is to recoil and “not like it”…but I think I’ll give it a little while to form a complete opinion. Even if I were to endorse it (as if you guys cared ;)) – I’m not sure 100x natural resources is large enough…but we’ll see.
Whatever is decided, perhaps one way to encourage this as the play style would be to make it an option, but have it turned on by default. That feels more like “encouraging” and will naturally lead games in the direction Jay wants them to go.
I really enjoy toying around with the rule settings and I’ve created games (including the TF 10 games Hulk mentions) that I think have been rather fun and very different, but that would totally break this rule. For instance, I made an experimental TBG with 24 hr jumps, 16 hr productions, small 16 star home clusters and lots of money , science and manufacturing. The catch was the map was custom and the clusters were far apart (2-3 days). We did start with hyper 10 or so, but needed hyper 15-20 to reach each other (we had lots of science and experimentation tho so didn’t take long). It made mega fleets where we had 120k ships across our little 16 star clusters…certainly not the way the game is intended to be played “out of the box”, but I thought it was a cool and refreshing twist and I really enjoyed being able to so drastically change the game style and mechanics.
For the record though, I abhor the idea of a 6 week limit.
I was initially toying around with using decay rates using Euler’s number and the golden ratio, but I think the formula that I presented above is easier for players to learn.
Attrition warfare is a valid form of warfare, which buys time, if you need more time to negotiate for an new ally to join your effort. NP2 Triton can be an arena for new players to learn about this strategy of war.
More time might offer an opportunity for your enemy to make a mistake, or when a new ally joins you, can change your defense into an advantageous offense towards victory.
HOWEVER, World War 1 has demonstrated that trench warfare is not the best way to fight a war.
Philosopher Sun Tzu, German field marshal Erwin Rommel, general George S. Patton, general Norman Schwarzkopf will all agree that attrition warfare should be avoided.
Economy of force is a more efficient way to fight a war, using less force or resources to accomplish more effect towards winning the war. NP2 Triton is also an arena to learn about this strategy. Can you figure out how to outsmart your enemy ?
Building a million ships is usually not an example of using economy of force.
