Posted by: Bremen
« on: December 08, 2019, 05:13:43 PM »As someone who loves playing with mines and buoys I just want to say that I love the new launch ready ordnance task. It'll make setting up minefields and sensor buoy rings so much easier.
I agree with the faster (but not cheaper) approach, with an option to turn it on or off similar to Fleet Maintenance.
We do already get a cheaper average ship with repeated runs once you factor in the retooling costs as every ship off the line then spreads that retooling cost. Personally I think that is enough benefit already.
I agree with the faster (but not cheaper) approach, with an option to turn it on or off similar to Fleet Maintenance.
It can only affect shipyards because individual factories are not tracked and I'm assuming Steve doesn't want to put in that level of fidelity. If you don't track individual factories, you leave the system open for the sort of abuse I described above.
What's the deviation between classes so that they still qualify for faster construction? Same as for construction in general, ie 20% BP difference? Or was it 10%, can't remember now. Should it be something else? Will this lead into container/bulk type ships, ie you design a template ship that never gets built that has generic engines and sensors etc and then you build the 3-5 different varieties of it that are only different from the template by the allowed 10-20% BP. Which can lead to a situation where not only (most) of your shipyards can build (most) of your ships, but they do it (possibly much) faster.
I'm sure other people can think of more pitfalls in such a system. I don't mean that a feature needs to be balanced to boredom, but that we as a community think things through as much as possible, to make things easier for Steve.
QuoteIf we take factories then you could have a gearing bonus based on some technology and time you spent building something. You just store the gearing bonus of each item line with an amount of factories applied to it. When you add factories you degrade the gearing bonus accordingly and if you remove factories it stays the same. So now you need to be careful when and if you want to really increase the number of factories for that line.
--- This is what Hearts of Iron IV did, it works quite well actually. Never played Hearts of Iron III, so I can't say anything about that. In Hearts of Iron IV, however, I have sunk a considerable amount of time into that game and can say this:
- Production is based on per factory assigned.
- Time spent on the item being produced increased Production Efficiency.
- Switching items would remove efficiency, not sure if switching to similar equipment (like Infantry Equipment 1 to Infantry Equipment 2 for example) diminished the penalty or not.
- There were several techs supporting this, with a few modifiers of note.
- Cost did NOT decrease with efficiency gain, but rather the number of units produced per line. (Speed)
--- The modifiers were Production Efficiency, Efficiency Gain Speed (basically how fast you could "tool up" a line), Efficiency Cap, and Efficiency Loss (How much you lost when switching to a different item.)
If we take factories then you could have a gearing bonus based on some technology and time you spent building something. You just store the gearing bonus of each item line with an amount of factories applied to it. When you add factories you degrade the gearing bonus accordingly and if you remove factories it stays the same. So now you need to be careful when and if you want to really increase the number of factories for that line.
Okay, I'll queue 5000 Research Labs with 1 Construction Factory. Of course I don't have the minerals to build 5000 RL but that's okay, 1 CF won't get them build anytime this millennium so that's not a problem. It WILL get maximum efficiency bonus at which point I can throw as many CF at it as I want to exploit that bonus. And if I need them for something else, I'll just leave that 1 CF there to maintain the serial production bonus.
This sort of system was used in Hearts of Iron 3 (and slightly modified in 4 I believe) and it was nothing but exploit city for multiplayer and yet another way human player was overpowered compared to the AI.
Serial production bonus CAN work with shipyards because you can't move slipways to another shipyard. But with construction/fighter/ordnance factories as well as research, fields where you can move factories and labs freely around, it wouldn't work.
It's not an end of the world issue, because naturally a player can disregard it and not abuse it - like some players do with scientists and the 0 RL project exploit - but I'm little wary of adding clear and obvious exploits to the game when the feature itself isn't really necessary.