Additional Commercial Changes and Maintenance Simplification

[SteveAlt]

Just a hope -

  Will you add an option on the class design form to toggle the display of non-commercial systems to make it easier to avoid using military systems when designing ships?

Good idea. I have added that for v4.1

Steve

[Paul M]

Steve,
Not sure this is the best idea I've seen.  I've been playing a start from pre-TN race and requiring jumpgates to even start colonization is a major kick in the pants.  Either that or give the freighters a "jump mass equivelent" which is more in line with what they would have now so you can open jump points for them.  In my prejudiced view at least, jump gates are something for older established empires which have a core, and that core is connected via jump gates.  From a security point of view you don't want to give the nasty aliens an express highway to your home.  Also why should jump gates be a requirement?

As for civillian engines I don't see the value to this.  I currently have civillian and military engines by the existing rules.  The military ones have internal armour and IR suppression while the civillian ones have lower power output but better efficiency.  So there seems no requirement that you have two branches of engine technology as the current rules allow this for those that want it anyway.  The new proposal is just tooo starfire for me.  Frankly the way things work now for maintenance is not an issue to me I don't see any real need to change it.  Or else give a click for civillian ship or military ship which can override the default choice, as I don't see why geosensors are civillian but gravsensors are military, both are required for survey.

As for what happens when you destroy a jump gate, in my view anyway, is the destruction of the linked gate and you roll a d100 and depending on the results the point is destablized for several months, sereval years, several decades,  several centuries, or destroyed.  Shutting the gate down before destroying it will not cause this issue but the debrie field would be huge and basically say "here is the jump point."

[SteveAlt]

Not sure this is the best idea I've seen.  I've been playing a start from pre-TN race and requiring jumpgates to even start colonization is a major kick in the pants.  Either that or give the freighters a "jump mass equivelent" which is more in line with what they would have now so you can open jump points for them.  In my prejudiced view at least, jump gates are something for older established empires which have a core, and that core is connected via jump gates.  From a security point of view you don't want to give the nasty aliens an express highway to your home.  Also why should jump gates be a requirement?

You will be able to build commercial-engined colony ships small enough to make use of jump ships. Even with five cryo modules they will be circa 20k tons so obviously much smaller than that with one. You can also build military engined colony ships if you really needed too. With regard to jump gates, they will be much easier to build in v4.1 and cheaper to research so creating them will require far less effort. I noticed in several posts you referred to a Pre-TN start. The game is really set up for a regular start and pre-TN was added so players could mess around with a near-future start on Earth. If you are using pre-TN I suggest turning off both NPRs and Precursors for the first few years.

As for civillian engines I don't see the value to this.  I currently have civillian and military engines by the existing rules.  The military ones have internal armour and IR suppression while the civillian ones have lower power output but better efficiency.  So there seems no requirement that you have two branches of engine technology as the current rules allow this for those that want it anyway.  The new proposal is just tooo starfire for me.  Frankly the way things work now for maintenance is not an issue to me I don't see any real need to change it.  Or else give a click for civillian ship or military ship which can override the default choice, as I don't see why geosensors are civillian but gravsensors are military, both are required for survey.

The commercial vs military engines in v4.1 are very different. The commercial engines are MUCH better on fuel and the underlying assumption is that they are designed with minimum maintenance in mind. They pay for that by being larger and having a lower power-mass ratio. They are also designed to create a situation similar to the modern world where civilian ships are generally larger than warships but also much cheaper. The difference is much greater than that with existing engines with different power-efficiency modifications. Grav sensors are military because you need them to expand your borders where geo sensors are for use within an existing Empire.

As for what happens when you destroy a jump gate, in my view anyway, is the destruction of the linked gate and you roll a d100 and depending on the results the point is destablized for several months, sereval years, several decades,  several centuries, or destroyed.  Shutting the gate down before destroying it will not cause this issue but the debrie field would be huge and basically say "here is the jump point."

That's a fascinating idea. I really like the idea that the jump point is effectively shut down for an unspecified period. That makes destroying it a real decision and it also makes jump gates into potential bombs. You might build a jump gate just so you could destabilise the jump point. If the period for which the jump gate is shut down was extremely varied, perhaps from a few days to a few years, the Empires on both sides would have to maintain a watch as they wouldn't know when it might re-appear. Or even better - it might reappear in a different location! Shades of The Gripping Hand (The Moat around Murcheson's Eye in the UK).

Steve

[Paul M]

Not seeing it in action makes comments speculative of course.

My primary point is that a new empire on the stategic security side can't afford to be leaving breadcrumbs in the stars pointing home so until you expand outward some your primary colonization effort should be jump based not gate based.  And even with the development of a core of gate linked worlds you would have the fringe be jump linked.  Just consider the insane risk you are running otherwise, much like when in starfire an enemy gets your warppoint maps.

So long as you can colonize by jump ship I'll be happy it just looked like it would be impossible.

Ah as all the interesting fiction had the pre-TN start I thought I would give it a try.  For campagin 3 I'll disable the blasted AI ships (even though I turned NPR chance down to 3% that was not enough).  It is more than a few years since frankly 30-50 years are pretty much required to get your tech base installed and running, a good 20-30 of which are spent at home doing refits to your economy and ICBM bases.  I think I will add ruins to the planet and modify the starting number of research stations somewhat to make it a lot less of a slog.

From the current pre-TN start campaign:  
Year: 1370 Pop: 600 Conv. Ind: 600 Res.St: 2  Shipyard: 1/1 (500 T), 16 IBML, 6 LTA, 10 LTI

Year: 1411 Pop: 1320 Const: 265 Ord: 52 Fuel: 48 Mines: 238 Maint: 20 Res.St.:13//Pop: 26 Const: 5 Fuel: 1 Mines: 14 Res.St.: 2  plus: Shipyards 4/24 (max hull size 6k/5K/4K/3K), Ground Training facilities: 2  Civ Spaceport: lvl 10, Naval Academy: lvl 1, Planetary Sensors: 5//1, Mass Drivers: 1//1
Mining colonies AMines: 12//Amines: 7  Massdriver: 1//1
Fleet: 12 DD, 6 DDE, 11 DSSV, 6 GeoSV, 6 GravSV, 1 CS(200K colonists) , 5 FT (10K hold), 6 FT(30K hold), 1 TK, 6 TK(jump), 6 Terraformers, 2 TT(2 div cap)
PDC: 11 interceptor bases, 5 attack bases
Groundforces: 8 HQ, 5 HVA, 10 INF, 3 AST, 10 ENG, 9 GAR, 6 LTA, 6 LTI
This is probably similar to the start of a normal tech race.

[SteveAlt]

Be aware there is a difference between Non-Player Races (NPRs) and Precursors. The Precursor ships are high-tech remnants of a fallen Empire. Their bigger ships guard ruins (which were once Precursor colonies) and smaller ships may be found in about 6-7% of systems where they were trapped when some calamity hit their jump gate network. There are no Precursor colonies - they are just robot ships. NPRs are Empires like your own that function in the same way. They build their own ships, factories, missiles, etc. and explore the galaxy in the same way as you. It sounds like you have been running into Precursors rather than NPRs.

Steve

[sloanjh]

Be aware there is a difference between Non-Player Races (NPRs) and Precursors. The Precursor ships are high-tech remnants of a fallen Empire. Their bigger ships guard ruins (which were once Precursor colonies) and smaller ships may be found in about 6-7% of systems where they were trapped when some calamity hit their jump gate network. There are no Precursor colonies - they are just robot ships. NPRs are Empires like your own that function in the same way. They build their own ships, factories, missiles, etc. and explore the galaxy in the same way as you. It sounds like you have been running into Precursors rather than NPRs.

Steve

Will Precursors follow you through a WP?  The ones I've run into (and I'm certain that they are Precursors) seem "tethered" to the planets they're guarding - when they lose contact with one of my ships they stop (rather than continuing onward to the point of lost contact), plus they refuse to get more than a set distance away from whatever they're guarding.

On NPR generation - do you make NPRs nastier as a function of elapsed time (similiar to the multi-system NPR rules you wrote for SF)?  If so, that might be the explanation for the high-tech NPRs - if they're tuned for 30 years after a "normal" high-tech start, then I could see them having some nasty tech levels when compared to the situation after a pre-TN start.  If you are doing such tuning, maybe it should be adjusted according to the player race('s) total (average) tech points achieved so far, which would accomodate the wide range of possible starting techs and population sizes.

John

[Paul M]

On the topic of geosensors, what I don't like about them considered "civillian" is that a survey fleet will carry them and this puts you in the potential situation of having two maintenance schemes on the ships in your fleet which just complicates the survey sitation more then is necessary.  Geological survey expands your empire as well so I'm not sure why there is any reason to rate it as civillian.  I am not arguing for both systems (gravsensors and geosensors) to be civillian but for them to be both military.  Just to keep the maintenance scheme the same for survey purposes is my main concern.

In my two campaigns the first time I encountered the aliens they had a homeworld that was 50% greater EM output then mine, I then found a colony in another system, spent a year making first contact and then they must have found a closed jumppoint into my home system...and well 19K Ton and 12K Ton ships against my 3K DDs armed with short range weapons wasn't even worth of the name fight.  In the second case I encountered the ships during a planetary probe but had not detected a colony in that system so they were possibly precursers, nor was the planet they were near actually capable of supporting life easily if memory serves.  In the first campaign they had lvl 28 active grav sensors and in the second the ships had lvl 21 active grav sensors if that helps.

And yes it would be good if as John suggests the NPRs are keyed off the player.  I started campaign 3 and increased my starting research stations to 6 (1 per 100 million pop) and that works much better.

[SteveAlt]

Will Precursors follow you through a WP?  The ones I've run into (and I'm certain that they are Precursors) seem "tethered" to the planets they're guarding - when they lose contact with one of my ships they stop (rather than continuing onward to the point of lost contact), plus they refuse to get more than a set distance away from whatever they're guarding.

The ruin-guarding precursors will tend to stay near the planet as protecting it is their primary mission. The 'pirate' precursors - which are the ones trapped in systems as a result of the ancient war - lack jump drives but will follow you through a jump gate.

On NPR generation - do you make NPRs nastier as a function of elapsed time (similiar to the multi-system NPR rules you wrote for SF)?  If so, that might be the explanation for the high-tech NPRs - if they're tuned for 30 years after a "normal" high-tech start, then I could see them having some nasty tech levels when compared to the situation after a pre-TN start.  If you are doing such tuning, maybe it should be adjusted according to the player race('s) total (average) tech points achieved so far, which would accomodate the wide range of possible starting techs and population sizes.

The population of the NPRs is based on a bell-curve with the the average player race population at the centre of the curve. The size of the population and the government type determines the number of starting research labs. The formula for starting tech points is based on the starting research labs and the game years so far (shown below):

Tech Years = Game Years + 20
Starting Tech Points = Starting Research Labs x TechYears x 300

Steve

[SteveAlt]

On the topic of geosensors, what I don't like about them considered "civillian" is that a survey fleet will carry them and this puts you in the potential situation of having two maintenance schemes on the ships in your fleet which just complicates the survey sitation more then is necessary.  Geological survey expands your empire as well so I'm not sure why there is any reason to rate it as civillian.  I am not arguing for both systems (gravsensors and geosensors) to be civillian but for them to be both military.  Just to keep the maintenance scheme the same for survey purposes is my main concern.

Just because geosensors are rated as civilian does not mean the ship on which they are mounted will always be classed as civilian. It is far more likely, given the size and low mass-power ratio of civilian engines, that your geosurvey ships will be equipped with military engines, which will make them military ships. Particularly if you want to be equip them with a jump drive. A truly civilian geosurvey ship will likely be much larger and slower and will operate within the confines of the jump gate network.

In my two campaigns the first time I encountered the aliens they had a homeworld that was 50% greater EM output then mine, I then found a colony in another system, spent a year making first contact and then they must have found a closed jumppoint into my home system...and well 19K Ton and 12K Ton ships against my 3K DDs armed with short range weapons wasn't even worth of the name fight.  In the second case I encountered the ships during a planetary probe but had not detected a colony in that system so they were possibly precursers, nor was the planet they were near actually capable of supporting life easily if memory serves.  In the first campaign they had lvl 28 active grav sensors and in the second the ships had lvl 21 active grav sensors if that helps.

And yes it would be good if as John suggests the NPRs are keyed off the player.  I started campaign 3 and increased my starting research stations to 6 (1 per 100 million pop) and that works much better.

The NPRs are already keyed off the player. As I mentioned, it was the pre-TN start that caused the imbalance. Any precursors will be the same tech level regardless of the player's capability.

Steve