Question & Suggestion:
In the DB under FTC_ShippingLines there is a column maned "MaxAssets". Am i right to assume that means the maximum number of ships the shipping line can have?
If so can we have that added as a setting so we can adjust? I had a campaign recently where one shipping line had well over 100 ships, and i had 11 shipping lines in total numbering well over 800 ships. IF we could limit the Number of ships a line could have and possibly the number of shipping lines per empire it could help with late game slowdowns.
Make sure that you always SM the fuel efficiency technology so it is at minimum 0.5 after you research it. This makes the civilian build more expensive but more efficient ships so will have less of them but are a bit more efficient. This will help with overall performance... it does require some micromanagement as you need to SM in the actual level of efficiency that you researched when designing a more efficient engines for your commercial designs, but can be worth it for overall game performance.
I pretty much do this all the time now in my games. Your civilian fleet will develop a bit slower but it is probably worth it overall from a game performance perspective.
I would like if there were an option in the game that civilian ships always built their ships with the more expensive 0.5 engine as that will save game resources so I did not need to deal with this manually. I know it might not be realistic and they should use the more fuel efficient engine. But mechanically it does not really matter as they don't consume fuel anyway and game performance is more important.
--- I'd like it a lot more if the Civilians were always a tech behind. So at Fuel Efficiency 1, they'd be at well, 1... BUT at 0.9 they'd
still be at 1, only going to 0.9 when the player researches 0.8! Likewise with engines, armor and the like, so they'd develop more slowly. I'd also like to see Fuel / Mineral requirements added, with a tick box at gamegen to turn it off, of course.
The player would be able to set aside a portion of Fuel production for the civvies, whilst Civilian Fuel Harvesters which the player isn't buying from would be able to add to this. They wouldn't track nor consume Fuel, but rather the player would simply produce less and the overall range / number of ships would depend on how much is available. Minerals would work the much the same, determining what mineral expenditures the Civilian Lines could afford. Wealth would limit the total BP, while the Civilian Lines could make use of older tech to get around the mineral limits to some degree. Likewise it would ideally be tracked planet to planet with the player being able to designate some planets to be excluded, presumably via the existing "Military Only" restriction. Then the Civilian Lines could build tankers and even fuel depots / "bases" replete with mineral haulers and shipyards to "build" their ships. CMCs not selling to the player would make their minerals available to these shipping lines, so CMCs and Civilian Fuel Harvesters would give those lines something else to spend the wealth on. Bringing back subsidizing, but as a general % of overall wealth made available to the Shipping Lines and with the option for the player to further prioritize what percent of that available wealth would be available to what shipping lines on a line per line basis would also be really net and really complete the package.
