v2.0.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Bremen]

I'm not a big fan of mothballing because, honestly, I feel it adds little and would increase micromanagement. I don't mean to imply that it wouldn't be useful, simply that in a case where no one gets it is essentially equal to everyone having it.

Also these are spaceships, and even in the case of RPed alt-historical settings probably all kinds of advanced in a very hostile environment (and if you think there's nothing in space to wear things down, look up "vacuum cementing".) It seems entirely reasonable to me that you can't just leave them lying around and then come back to fix them up without totally rebuilding them.

[Kristover]

Rather than wasting time on mothballing, which I feel would be a thing that would barely get used and would work contra to the underlying expansion paradigm that underpins this game, I think tying a ship's age to and increasing cost to refit would be more in line with the game mechanisms.  It certainly creates more choices - when do I commit to refitting my venerable fleet of cruisers which have served me well vice building a new line of modern cruisers?

[Migi]

Can anyone name a semi-modern example of mothballing which worked?

Just because historical examples have debatable or negative total economic outcome doesn't sound like an argument against adding the feature at all, it sounds like an argument about how the mechanics should be balanced.

While I like the idea of using repair slipways to mothball ships, I expect that if you need to use the shipyard screen to mothball ships then that would cause micromanagement issues. Adding a command for a fleet would probably be better.

[TMaekler]

The main reason for people to want to mothball is to have more firepower ready if an attack occurs. This however is not how a military runs. You have to have ships and crews combat-ready in case an emergency appears - but you have to pay the price for that: Maintenance. Mothballing is however interesting to an upcoming long war campaign, i.e. when two great powers begin to clash, you want to widen your military as much and quickly as you can. Being able to make a number of ships battle-ready within a period of lets say 6 to 9 months could be interesting in such a case.

To make this possible my idea for mothballing would be:
- make it available for 2nd generation tech. I.e. only ships that don't contain the latest generation of jump drives & engines can be mothballed
- a mothballed ship is reduced to 25% of its maintenance points when mothballed and needs to run through a maintenance facility to be made combat-ready (dust it off so to speak)

[alex_brunius]

Just because historical examples have debatable or negative total economic outcome doesn't sound like an argument against adding the feature at all, it sounds like an argument about how the mechanics should be balanced.

I disagree with that idea.

Spending development time on adding a feature that very few players will use because it's balanced after historical models such that it's almost never useful/meaningful, would be a big waste of dev time. Much better developing features that would be enjoyable and used by a majority of players instead of a select few.

[nakorkren]

I would respectfully submit that we have strayed very far off topic in this discussion of mothballing... This thread is for discussion of changes implemented in 1.14.0; there is a separate thread for discussion of suggested changes.

[Agraelgrimm]

I may be getting a little confused here on the discussion but from what ive understood, people are requesting mothball to decrease the maintenance cost and etc and still have some form of coherent firepower avaliable. Well, we have those, they are called carriers. You just make a big ass carrier, could be a commercial one, and put your ships in it. They wont get their maintenance clock running nor will use the maintenance and everyone is better for it. You could also just put those ships in a space station around a planet and it will get the same result.
So no need to add a whole pain of mechanics to achieve something that can be done without it. And you can RP that around. The American Navy had scores of ships sitting on dockyards and ports on reserve and etc.

[Migi]

nakorkren is correct, extensive discussion of suggestions belongs in the suggestions forum.

You just make a big ass carrier, could be a commercial one, and put your ships in it. They wont get their maintenance clock running nor will use the maintenance and everyone is better for it. You could also just put those ships in a space station around a planet and it will get the same result.

To rebut your point, to stop the maintenance clock you need military hangers, which means the carriers need to be built in a military shipyard. The carriers themselves cost MSP to keep the carrier maintenance clock at 0, if you keep them out of port then they will suffer failures which cost MSP to fix.
Because MSP cost is based on the ship cost, I think you can create carriers which cost less to upkeep than the

[Droll]

... I think you can create carriers which cost less to upkeep than the

They got him, the lizardmen got him.

[Agraelgrimm]

nakorkren is correct, extensive discussion of suggestions belongs in the suggestions forum.

You just make a big ass carrier, could be a commercial one, and put your ships in it. They wont get their maintenance clock running nor will use the maintenance and everyone is better for it. You could also just put those ships in a space station around a planet and it will get the same result.

To rebut your point, to stop the maintenance clock you need military hangers, which means the carriers need to be built in a military shipyard. The carriers themselves cost MSP to keep the carrier maintenance clock at 0, if you keep them out of port then they will suffer failures which cost MSP to fix.
Because MSP cost is based on the ship cost, I think you can create carriers which cost less to upkeep than the

... Which leads me back to Space Stations on planets with enough population.

[Person012345]

I strongly oppose increasing maintenance costs over time. It simply doesn't make any sense from any standpoint and wouldn't add anything to the game, just reduce choices.

[Vandermeer]

... I think you can create carriers which cost less to upkeep than the

They got him, the lizardmen got him.

RIP Migi, I know how it is to be hunted for your maintenance hangar secrets. Your arcane knowledge was not meant for the wider world.

[Migi]

... I think you can create carriers which cost less to upkeep than the

They got him, the lizardmen got him.

How very Droll.  Pun intended
I'm pretty sure the remainder of the sentence was just "ship it contains."
I might try to make a simple proof of concept later.

... Which leads me back to Space Stations on planets with enough population.

A Space Station that you can build on the ground needs the no armour checkbox enabled. They can only have commercial components. Enabling no armour for the design will remove any military components already in the design, and prevent you from adding new ones.
Hanger Decks (and boat bays) are military components. They freeze the deployment clock and the maintenance clock.
Commercial hanger decks are commercial components. They freeze the deployment clock but not the maintenance clock.
Freezing the maintenance clock means you won't pay any MSP for upkeep and it won't count against the maintenance facilities capacity.

[Destragon]

Will be interesting to see if and how the orbits and environmental considerations will have an effect on Bioengineering/Genome Sequencing  if it reappears

Yes, I have been thinking about that. In the past, creating a new species wasn't that important because you could terraform your way out of most situations, with the exceptions of high gravity and where you maxed out on greenhouse or anti-greenhouse. Now there is a scenario where it can be impossible to create an ideal world due to the temperate range exceeding that of your primary species. Creating a species with a wider temperature range looks very attractive in that situation. I suspect I will have added that functionality before v2.0 is released.

Since 2.0's release date seems to be getting narrowed down, is gene modding still on the table for it or might it be skipped for the first release?

Edit:

I've changed this for v1.14. NPRs now suffer weapon failure and consume MSP to fix it.

This isn't listed in the changelog, but it's still part of the update, right?

[Borealis4x]

I'd like it if you could set the minimum age, or rather, service time for officers to spawn. An O4 is typically in their mid 30s, not their early 20s.