Posted by: sloanjh
« on: June 08, 2009, 12:31:26 AM »Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "sloanjh"So I guess there are three core ideas here:I have to disagree with this one :-) :-) The issue that I'm trying to raise is that the current system doesn't lead me to train my units together because (I think) of the following reasons:
1) How well a ship works within a TF doesn't depend on which TF it's in (hmmmm maybe the TF training rate should have multipliers based on a log scale of how many ships are in the TF during training, e.g. 1-4 at 0.5X, 5-8 at 1X, 9-16 at 2X, etc.).
1) High cost (mostly fuel; partially maint) of training
2) High cost (both research and space) of flag bridge.
3) Big penalty to switch, which means that all that investment from #1 is lost if you send e.g. a destroyer on TDY for a few days.
My suggestion was a "gameplay over realism" idea. How about this for a different idea - keep multiple training numbers per ship in the DB, so that you don't lose 50% of your training when you switch - you lose 100%!! The difference is that, if you switch back, your training magically goes back up. This was the main thing the suggestion was intended to try to fix - the risk associated with doing a lot of training in one TF and then losing it when switching.QuoteQuote2) The base training rate of a ship is modified by whether or not there's a Flag bridge in the TF and in-system, and possibly whether there's an actual TF commander present, and possibly by the TF commander's command rating (e.g. 0.5X penalty for no flag bridge, 0.5X penalty for no explicit commander present, i.e. TF commander is senior ship commander, +TF commander's bonus as modifiers)At the moment, the TF bonuses only apply if the TF commander is in the same system and either on a planet or in a flag bridge. I don't think I want to make it any more complex than that. However, I can understand why you would want the ability to transport the TF staff on a ship without a flag bridge if one isn't handy so I will look at that.Quote3) TF training rating is always gaining due to what the ship is doing and losing due to rot.I like the concept that the TF training rate should drop over time. I also like the suggestion that it would drop less if the fleet wasn't sat in port and that it would move toward 50% during active operations (from either direction). On the downside, keeping ships trained up would use up a lot of fuel so that may be unbalancing to the status quo. My other concern is the micromanagement aspect. At the moment, you have to get new ships training up, which is a task to consider but a finite one. If you have to keep on eye on all the TF training for all warships on an ongoing basis, it might reach a point where the gameplay benefit was outweighed by the micromanagement. I'll have to give the whole thing some thought.
This (less micromanagement) is actually what I was going for. My thought was "the way to get TF training up is to put good officers in charge of large TF that are deployed". In other words, the (expensive) "working up time" is intended to get ships trained up quickly at the start of a deployment - even if a ship doesn't work up it should still have its training numbers increase as a result of working with the other ships in the group. I actually find the current training mechanism to involve a lot of micromanagement, since I'm constantly having to look at fuel levels and cycle the ships through overhaul.
John