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C# Mechanics / Re: Potential Changes to Shipping Lines
« Last post by vorpal+5 on Today at 04:11:45 AM »Please charge per distance!
So I am considering changing how shipping lines work, so they don't become so overwhelming, while trying to retain the flavour.emphasis mine.
Another option is replacing dividends with a percentage maintenance payment, which is modified by an admin overhead that increases as the number of ships increases - effectively limiting the rate at which a shipping line can increase in size.I think this is probably the best starting point - as the saying goes, the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy, so too goes the shipping company.
Consider that civilians just use 50% power reduced engines and keep the higher speeds of those ships.Agree as this makes the minimum engine power tech more attractive and will contribute to limiting CSL growth rates due to higher costs per ship.
--- Perhaps give them a sort of fluff base? Like CMCs, they'll spring up on eligible worlds, but would serve as mock "supply bases".This would probably be too much work, but I would highly approve of CSLs having to build/expand their own shipyards for example. Being able to pop a 200,000-ton freighter into miraculous existence with no orbital infrastructure is a little silly.
At the very least can we get the oft requested reserve/target min/max settings for population, similar to whats already in place for minerals and installations, so that our source colonies aren't perpetually evacuated if left unattended.It is oft-requested, but I would like to add my support here. In games with multiple player races, trying to keep track of all source/destination populations across multiple races is tedious at best and impossible at worst, for a single player race maybe it is "more immersive" not to have this automation option but for multiple player race games I think it is essential. As it is, I turn off civilian shipping in multiple player race games to avoid these problems. Implementation could be simple: have a trigger population value set for a source or destination colony, and when it is reached set that colony as stable - no or minimal changes to the civilian AI are needed.
It's basic, but I admit I don't know if there is a solution. Is it possible to move several ships at once from one fleet to another? Ctrl-click does not work for multi-selection, but I can't imagine that after all these years Steve is still moving 36 fighters, one click at a time, from one fleet to another (fighters, FACs, or whatever; you get the idea!).
It seems strange, but searching for a similar request yielded no results: would it be possible to implement an "autorefresh" function for open/background windows? I think it would benefit the QOL.
-J-
I would like to see some deviation from the 1:1 freighter:colonist transport. I like civilians moving around doing stuff but what normally happens is I start marking colonies as "stable" to keep the growing fleets from draining the population sources and then the colonist fleet sits largely idle somewhere while the freighters keep moving trade goods, but the shipping company keeps manufacturing colonist ships (just in case?). That just makes the problem worse later when I open up a destination and suddenly millions and millions of colonist capacity gets directed to a single location.
I would personally be content with just a different set ratio, such as 2:1 or 3:1, but there are probably better solutions that would make everybody happy. Maybe the company occasionally checks for idle vessels and scraps one, and then at the same time launches a vessel of the other type. Or when it's time to construct a new vessel the company checks how much money it made in the last year on colonist vs freight transport and builds whichever type made more money (with some chance to build the other type anyway, lest the system run away fully to one type or another).
Also I think colonist transport shouldn't generate tax money for the player. It doesn't make sense that I accidentally tell 50 million people to move to Mars, getting paid the whole time, and then when I realize my mistake and have them move back to Ganymede to work in the mines I get paid again.
The number of huge colony ships means that the civs will build up a new colony very quickly and also eat into source populations fairly quickly too.
A more dramatic change would be altering transport for all ships, not just civilians, so less can be transported. That means fewer cargo points and less colonist capacity per ton.This would only delay the problem but as the game continues and the shipping lines continue to grow they will inevitably reach a point were they are too good at their jobs again.