Limiting Number of Civilian Ships

[Steve Walmsley]

I think it would make sense for civilian ships to start coalesce into groups after a while. Each company should try to maintain a max number of groups at any one time. Fuel Harvesters should obviously not be part of that feature as they don't move around anyway.

This would make the civilians stay at much lower amount of units roaming around the galaxy and keep performance sane even during a mature game and long into the future.

I probably should report it in the "bug" section instead but...
The player is able to merge civilian fleets by dragging & dropping the ships in another civ fleet. Quite difficult to achieve as it requires the two fleets to be on the same spot, and it can break the whole fleet : Merging two fleets with different cargo, or puting a full ship in a fleet with an empty hold will lead to failure, as civilians are not designed to cope with such situation.
Furthermore, large freighter fleets may have issues finding decent trade opportunities.

That comes under 'cheating at solitaire', so I am not spending time to add code to prevent it.

[Steve Walmsley]

A small sugestion related to civilian shipping.  In Shipping Line tab there is a list of past jobs of all the ships.  In my case there are jobs that go back for over 40 year and it takes quite some time to load the list, when I click on the shipping line.  Would it be possible to limit this a bit so there is less data here (maybe last 10 years)?

Past jobs for shipping lines would get pruned in VB6 after they reached a certain number.  This sounds like a bug.

Yes, they need pruning. I will only keep the last 12 months when saving the game.

[Person012345]

Just to say I wouldn't want to see a hard cap on civilian fleets because people have different hardware and it will slow down at different rates, I wouldn't want my civilian fleet gimped because someone playing on a midrange PC had some slowdown. My civilians currently operate 297 ships and my day increments are still under a second each. As a long time aurora player this is basically instantaneous. Obviously people need to be able to play, but this is simply one of those things where you will never get just the right setting that pleases a majority of people because everyone is running something different.

[Froggiest1982]

A small sugestion related to civilian shipping.  In Shipping Line tab there is a list of past jobs of all the ships.  In my case there are jobs that go back for over 40 year and it takes quite some time to load the list, when I click on the shipping line.  Would it be possible to limit this a bit so there is less data here (maybe last 10 years)?

Past jobs for shipping lines would get pruned in VB6 after they reached a certain number.  This sounds like a bug.

Yes, they need pruning. I will only keep the last 12 months when saving the game.

Can this go on 1.9?

[UberWaffe]

If there are plans in the future to revisit the civilian shipping, my suggestion would be to go the route of 'established trade lanes'.

I.e.  A civilian shipping company will only build up to X number of 'free roaming' traders which simply look to whatever supply and demand are available.

The rest of the shipping company's ships instead take on established routes and then just repeatedly run that route.

Refer to the image for more details, or the text from the help button mockup below.


Text in help button popup:
This lists all established trade routes.
The assigned fleet (if any) continually moves between source and destination. The fleet will always attempt to fill its cargo.  If possible, it will also attempt to move goods from destination to source during a return trip, if supply and demand permits.
You can subsidise trade routes (even ones that do not yet exist).
When subsidized, the assigned company will assign additional ships (and always at least 1) to the route.  The company will take 1 wealth per 10 000t of goods moved per 30 days, and also 10 wealth per 10 000t of empty cargo space (if supply or demand does not allow a full haul).
This subsidy cost only applies to trips from source to destination, return trips are not costed.
Note that the subsidy is paid on loading the fleet at the source, failure to pay the subsidy in full will result in a ship being unassigned from the trade fleet.  If this was the last ship on that trade route, it will not do the run, and the last portion of the subsidy is lost.

If a subsidy runs out, normal considerations of the viability of the trade route apply.  Unviable trade routes will be removed.

A trade route is viable if enough demand and enough supply exists to fully fill at least 1 ship, and a round trip does not take too long to complete.
Whenever a fleet on a trade route fails to find enough goods / colonists to fully load all ships, the fleet will immediatly unassign one ship from the fleet (it becomes a free roam trader) and attempt again.  Repeating if needed.
If a fleet is emptied completely (i. e.  cannot sustain even one ship) in this fashion, the route is deleted entirely (unless a subsidy is in place, in which case at least 1 ship will remain assigned as long as sufficient subsidy remains).
Every 30 days, if a viable trade route is being under served, then additional ships will be assigned to the fleet.

For free roaming traders to be assigned to a trade fleet, they must at least be within the same system as the trade route.
If a large demand and supply potential is unmet on a trade route, a ship might be specifically built to be immediately assigned to that route.
If a subsidy exists on the route, and the subsidy is large enough to cover the costs of a new ship, a new ship will be immediately built for that route, but funded directly from the subsidy.

Verbose button changes the table / column layout to full sentences.

Code: [Select]

A trade route is automatically established (without any need for subsidy) under the following conditions:
[list]
[li]A destination with demand exists.[/li]
[li]A source with supply exists.[/li]
[li]If the travel time (distance / speed of relevant 'newest' design) between source and destination is TT. And round trips per month is (30 / [2 * TT]) = TPM. TPM must be greater than 0.5 (At least 1 trip in two months)[/li]
[li]For trade goods, the demand must be greater than 1 * TPM * 'Newest design cargo space' / 'Size of trade good'. I.e. the ship must be able to make at least 1 full cargo haul per two months.[/li]
[li]For colonists, the demand must be greater than 20 * TPM * 'Newest design colonist space'. I.e. the ship must have enough foreseeable work for at least 10 months.[/li]
[li]For installations, the demand must be greater than 20 * TPM * 'Newest design cargo space' / 'Size of installation'. I.e. the ship must have enough foreseeable work for at least 10 months.[/li]
[li]The source must be able to meet this demand.[/li]
[/list]


[Gabethebaldandbold]

just start shipping stuff yourselves guys,they only expand if you give them contracts, by shipping stuff yourselves, you not only save money, but the civilians are limited to the things they can trade... just stop expanding your colonies once the run out of obs and they wont grow uncontrolled

[Gabethebaldandbold]

that said, they should have some sort of wealth upkeep on their ships. and maybe so should we. 600 ships sound like a lot of expenses, and if your colonies and games are anything like mine, most of it is iddle time, waiting for the government to tell them what to do

[Ri0Rdian]

that said, they should have some sort of wealth upkeep on their ships. and maybe so should we. 600 ships sound like a lot of expenses, and if your colonies and games are anything like mine, most of it is iddle time, waiting for the government to tell them what to do

We do pay some maintenance though, in the for of MSP. That is even more complicated than simple wealth because you need whole supply chain including mining the minerals to create them.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

that said, they should have some sort of wealth upkeep on their ships. and maybe so should we. 600 ships sound like a lot of expenses, and if your colonies and games are anything like mine, most of it is iddle time, waiting for the government to tell them what to do

We do pay some maintenance though, in the for of MSP. That is even more complicated than simple wealth because you need whole supply chain including mining the minerals to create them.

do we pay that maintenence for comertial ships though?

[Jorgen_CAB]

that said, they should have some sort of wealth upkeep on their ships. and maybe so should we. 600 ships sound like a lot of expenses, and if your colonies and games are anything like mine, most of it is iddle time, waiting for the government to tell them what to do

Civilian shipping lines usually earn more money than it need to invest in fuel and wealth for maintaining their ship... but I don't think the model are very in depth and this is just assumed from the income they make to purchase new or upgrade old ships.

I do agree that Civilian Shipping Lines should pay both maintenance and actually use fuel that have to come from somewhere and not just magically appear in the civilian market. Even if the moving the fuel around is abstracted I still think they should need to extract the fuel or buy it from the government supplies if they don't extract enough fuel themselves.

Civilian ships also should cost wealth to maintain and then they would have to pay for upgrading them too eventually... there could be a potential problem if the civilian ship lines swell too fast, especially of they have noting to do. If ships are standing idle they should be disbanded after some time, at least from abstraction point of view. As long as they have work to do I thin they are just fine though.

I also think that civilian shipping lines could clump ship together in smaller groups eventually to easy the stress on the game after a while.

But I also wanted that the civilian population consumed some manner of trans newtonian minnerals as well. I would say the more you advance in the wealth expansion technlogy the more trans-Newtonian element the civilians would consume as well to balance it all.

do we pay that maintenence for comertial ships though?

No... this is something I have suggested before but I don't think Steve figure it to be worth it. In my opinion it would and could be a very simple wealth cost so no need to fiddle with maintenance space or any things of that sort.

My suggestion there still is a simple 1/20 wealth cost per year per ship based on their production cost. It would simply just show up in the Empire Wealth tab as a cost, such as Commercial Ship Maintenance post. It could be more or less expensive based on experience and balance of course, but I also think civilian traffic should consume resources (especially fuel) as well.

[Gabethebaldandbold]

Now,civilians eating minerals is dangerous, they could end up burning your stock when you are not looking, and then when you need your galicite, all of it is engines for freighters about to blow up, and your duranium is just now fancy spoons. If we want that to be a thing, we can always just not buy the minerals from civilian colonies. Fuel .ight be a diferent story if they get it from their own harvesters, or we can somehow limit it so they dont grab it all. Certainly would make everyone rush for fuel efficient engines before anything else.

[kenlon]

Something that might help address both high numbers of civilian ships and the sheer spam of civilian fleets would be:

• Shipping Lines to take a penalty on income based on the number of fleets.
• As the penalty increases, they have a larger and larger chance to combine group ships together into fleets.
• This will also slow the rate at which the shipping lines make money and buy more ships, preferably tuned to cause the Shipping Lines to build quickly to equilibrium against the size of your civilian economy, then slow down or halt growth until you've built more demand for them to fill.

Plus this will tend to naturally group up civvies into convoys, which allows for them to be raided en-masse rather than chased down one by one.   

But I also wanted that the civilian population consumed some manner of trans newtonian minnerals as well.  I would say the more you advance in the wealth expansion technlogy the more trans-Newtonian element the civilians would consume as well to balance it all.

Given that TN minerals are finite, this would be likely to get very frustrating quite quickly. 
If civvies are to consume TN minerals, then there needs to be an infinite supply of them, even if it is a very slow trickle - deposits that are "empty" actually go to being 0. 05 availability but still produce, for example. 

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Now,civilians eating minerals is dangerous, they could end up burning your stock when you are not looking, and then when you need your galicite, all of it is engines for freighters about to blow up, and your duranium is just now fancy spoons. If we want that to be a thing, we can always just not buy the minerals from civilian colonies. Fuel .ight be a diferent story if they get it from their own harvesters, or we can somehow limit it so they dont grab it all. Certainly would make everyone rush for fuel efficient engines before anything else.

You can disable civilian harvesters during game setup and CMCs can be deleted when you catch them.

Question to those reporting too many civilians:  Are all of those ships working or do you have groups sitting idle?  If it is the former, I would way WAI, but if it is the latter then limiting construction when ships are idle would solve the problem.

[stabliser]

Perhaps a percentage setting in race setup could indicate how keen civilians are to go into the space business. That way we could each find our own balance for the civs, it might be good if it could be adjusted during game with SM too. Then Steve doesnt need to get involved in getting it 'just right' to suit everyone, which of course isnt possible anyway.

If when playing aliens, the setting was chosen at random, it might be a nice addition, although its not hard to roll a die and set it ourselves.
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Another possibile thought, license the civ ships. If you dont grant an extra license they have to scrap one to build one.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Perhaps a percentage setting in race setup could indicate how keen civilians are to go into the space business. That way we could each find our own balance for the civs, it might be good if it could be adjusted during game with SM too. Then Steve doesnt need to get involved in getting it 'just right' to suit everyone, which of course isnt possible anyway.

If when playing aliens, the setting was chosen at random, it might be a nice addition, although its not hard to roll a die and set it ourselves.
-

Another possibile thought, license the civ ships. If you dont grant an extra license they have to scrap one to build one.

That seems micro-managy.  Demand limiting has the advantage of being fully automatic and allowing the civs to grow to however many are actually needed.