Just because you "role-play" does not mean you can't "optimize" ship construction. It just means that under a certain set of new rules those "optimization" might look different. There are no "right" way to play the game and by definition there are no "right" way of optimizing ships in any particular way.
I did not mean "role play", in my post, as a normal game in which I play normally but care about my characters and give myself reasonable house rules. I did not explain myself though, so my bad. What i mean by role play is: giving myself some rules I want to role play no matter how unrealistic they are, and that can be really bad because obviously the ai does not follow them. For example, sometimes I play a "Beam only" game. Yes I know, the AI has missiles. No I don't use them. Yes, it's REAL bad :p
Another game I played a Romulan themed game. All of my ships HAD to be cloaked. All of them. ALL of them, no matter what. In fact I manually erased all shipping lines because the civs obviously did not have cloaked ships. THAT was real bad as well.
So this is what I meant by the fact that in these kind of games, optimization is not really important in the sense that you actually do not have the luxury of coming up with effective ships....
I have experienced all these problems so many times in my multi-national games and most powers that build the cheapest and yet flexible fleet will usually get out on top. They generally rely on what technologies they have and how they implemented their doctrines to take full advantage of them. Many times just retooling of shipyards too much could hamper an empire to the brink of catastrophe when they can't get their new ships out in time for a conflict, this is especially detrimental with ship design that uses research intensive technology. The motto is that its better to have a few mediocre ships now than several perfect one when its all over.
Games where you play with a unified Earth where enemies usually are far in between and a long way from Earth is a very different beast and will impact your doctrines and ability to "optimize" using different criteria, this has nothing to do with role-play. Constraints and optimization will differ based on circumstances and setting of any campaign, and no one is more "right".
In my current campaign it would not be feasible to build large high powered engines on the basis that they simply are too costly to research and fuel, unless you opt to research a very small engine and then use numerous on a larger hull, thus decreasing the fuel efficiency even further. When a single large warship can drain 5% of the total fuel production in a year in just 30-60 days of flight you think twice about what kind of engine you put on those ships.
Once an empire spans over a greater distance and both population, industry and technology are more developed increasing the power on engines for larger ships will be more reasonable from an economical and military standpoint.
As I have only played "unified Earth" games, and in fact conventional start only games, I am not well versed in the different problems that arise in a multi-national games. I agree that it makes sense that it's better to have crappy ships than no ship at all. And that cheap ships also look attractive, and that retooling can be an extreme problem in a close war.
Still I do not think this impact my point too much regarding the fact that military ships need to be "fast", where fast means "fast enough to at least defend my assets from the enemy fleets" regardless of the real speed number. Let's say a multi-nation game on sol, and you have 4 colonies. Unless you have a lot of impregnable defense stations everywhere, your fleet is a crucial asset to defend your planets. If the enemy fleets travel twice your speed, by the time you arrive your colonies will be no more. Yes, fuel consumption is a problem, I understand that. But losing your colonies is more so.
And back to the main point of the thread, in such a game where you cannot even retool for fear of losing the war, you would not do what the opening post suggests to illustrate letsdance opinion. No offense, but you would not use 2 25% 50HS engines instead of one 35% 50HS engine, cause that would require you to use a much bigger shipyard and you cannot afford that most likely. You'd go with an acceptable compromise in fuel efficiency/speed, not just choose the engine with the best possible fuel efficiency.
So to conclude, I understand what you mean here, and I agree, but still speed is a critical issue in a mobile fleet and most often it simply cannot be compromised with, at least for a movable fleet. In other cases, it's simply more efficient to build "space bases". If you can afford them of course.
When it comes to Tugs if you "abuse" the game mechanics you should never ever build engines on your ships at all but rather use tugs for everything, even using efficient tugs to drag around more inefficient tugs because commercial ships are "free" once you built them. Which in and of itself is abusing game mechanic in my view. In order to balance things I never allow tugs to use more than half its maximum speed as a means of rationalize that they can't be used on military ships. They can still be used to move military ships long distances for a fraction of the fuel cost though, but I would only allow that for moving ships from one maintenance facility to another using a skeleton crew on the warship.
I would certainly agree that putting engines on fuel harvesters, mining stations and gate builders is unnecessary and unreasonable from an economical standpoint in most circumstances. I think people in general do it so they don't have to go through the manual labour of shuttling the tugs around to tow stuff. It's not because people don't understand they are more economical to use.
To clarify, I most assuredly do not abuse tugs. I use them where they make sense. I do not tug my fleets in battle and then move the tugs away when the enemy come close, or anything like that. My tugs can and will move the following:
- Damaged ships
- Shipyards
- Terraformers, sorium harvesters, mining stations, gate buiders
- Defensive space bases (AKA immobile weapon platforms)
For defensive bases, they can ONLY be stationed either at jump points or at planets, but I do not allow them to be moved to enemy systems, unless the system is contested (I have a colony there). I also do not allow them to be towed without an escort fleet, because I maintain that a space station that is being towed is considered mothballed. That is, if I were to be attacked while moving a defensive base, it would NOT shoot back.
So, I do not think I abuse tugs. I can understand not wanting to bother with them, and so putting engines on everything. But it's not efficient and once again, in a truly close game (like a multi-empire starting system), you probably want to use every tool at your disposal, not just put engines on everything because it's not efficient.
P.S: I have this pet peeve of mine, that we can't build real space bases because from time to time they have to be overhauled. I think this is poorly implemented in aurora. I'm not saying it should be cost-free, but I'd really like to be able to build real, permanent starbases. For example, I would be fine with it if it was something like: You have to have, I don't know, 20% of the base spent in a special "deep space maintenance module", and that module uses maintenance supplies which you have to restock from time to time. I'd be fine with that, but no, from time to time you simply have too tow the bases back for overhaul... >_>
It really ruins the immersion. "Today, we christen the Evora starbase, a great testament to the advancements of our great nation. For ages to come, this mighty fortress will protect our borders against the incursion of the Arulean empire" ".... uhm no boss, actually we're due for maintenance back to earth in 8 years". Wait, what?
