shipping line herd management

[sneer (OP)]

one of my games
year 2110+
I have 4 shipping lines
1st is awfully rich with 50k on hand and has almost 200 ships
rest has stable finances with 20+ ships
total 260+ ships and potential for more or much more
I doubt I need so many
It certainly slows me down
how about check box for each shipping line with a number of ships they are max authorized ?
(when it is lower than actual no replacement ships are build for old ones )

p.s. If somebody could tell me how to use spacemaster to reduce them ...
my turns already are damn slow
p.p.s. or maybe even better to implement self detruct option to merchant vessels ?
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,6698.0.html
that would help avoiding such situations

[Alfapiomega]

+1, giving shipping lines authorization to build more ships is a great idea how to control the clutter.

[alex_brunius]

I would like an auto regulation mechanic instead.

If a shipping line reach say around 50-100 ships they double the size of new ships commissioned instead. Perhaps make this number a bit random too for each company for flavor so you don't end up with 5 shipping lines with the same amount of ships.

They still keep actively building ships for their revenue after this number but will replace old smaller ones instead with new bigger ships. Eventually you could have shipping lines with massive 64x cargo hold vessels or even bigger.

This would mean that successful shipping lines will have much much larger ships instead of many ships slowing down the game. The game-play effects is that they can effectively haul the same amounts as if they had thousands of ships, but without slowing down the game!!!

(Also huge freighters are damn cool)

[Erik L]

(Also huge freighters are damn cool)

And make really big explosions when you^H^H^H the bad guy shoots them.

[MarcAFK]

You could thin their numbers down with tractor equipped ships, but if that's too much micro management, try dropping a few hundred thermal sensor equipped mines into your shipping lanes ^evil grin^

[Five]

It would be nice if in the civilian shipping line tab we could do something like putting a number amount per company for the amount of ships they are allowed to build. Kinda like the government granting them licenses to build them. I'm pretty sure that the government is currently trying to do something similar with granting them permission to do flights and missions now, at least to government places like the space station.

This way we could keep their number down to manageable levels and the government could have some control over those pesky civvies. Not sure how easy it is to code that though.

Great game either way though

-Five

[Vandermeer]

I have pretty much given up on civilian ships. In my second game I myself had four shipping lines, one of ~800 ships, the second 400, and the rest near 100, to which you must add the incountable numbers of two befriended npr races. Every 1 day intervall I clicked took the game nearly a minute to process, slowing all the gameplay to a terrible crawl.
Eventually I gave up and started a new game where I never invested in any shipping line again so that this madness never starts. Eventually one single ship gets started from your first shipping line nontheless (programed by the game I guess), but I blew that wretched thing up as soon as I saw the message. Since then it has been beautiful silence between the stars. I am in year 2135 now (much further than in the other game) with multiple colonies, handmade ressource supply-lines and many star systems discovered, and still a 5 day increment only takes less than 5 seconds to calculate. (also aided by that I instantly mobilized heavy invasion forces when I met my first npr race - "Exterminate them all in the name of the greater good performance!")

I would love to have the realism and immersion that civilian ships offer, and that you would have to worry about your civilian fleet as a considerable economy factor and such, but as it is now they are just not worth the trouble. On one hand they completly glue your game to the ground, and on the other they don't offer any vital advantage either. My economy works perfect without them - actually still overachieving for the bigger part of this game.

[Alfapiomega]

The airtraffic falls under government management. I really think it is a good think in the game as well.

A simple box where one can give licences to the shipping lines to modify their size is perfect. It allows player to change things, balances the game and doesn't carry any extra cost

[Zincat]

So, I understand that civilians are responsible for a good part of the terrible slowdowns of the game? I did think that their number was rather excessive but, that's kind of bad. They are very useful in limiting your fuel usage/cargo needs, especially for moving large amounts of infrastructure, and that's particularly important with a conventional start.

Also, does gutting your own civilian sector help at all? I mean, even supposing you do keep them down.... won't the alien races create a million civilian ships anyway? Cause if they do then there's not much point in staying without civilian ships when every race near you do use them...

If civilians are one of the main sources of the slowdowns, then perhaps rather than keeping down your own civilian sector a different, general solution is needed, one that also influences the NPRs. Because only limiting yours civilians shipping lines to a set number with a checkbox does nothing for the ships the NPRs build.

I think a variant of what alex_brunius posted would be good. Perhaps a hard-cap on total civilian ships for each race based on number of populated colonies (Not colonies designated for other matters, like automated mining or fuel depots or such.) That, and when the limit is reached, the ships slowly start to get bigger (so you still have an increase in capacity).

Just a quick example, say, 10 ships for each inhabited colony under 1 billion people, + 5 ships every billion people (so your 5 billion earth gives you 30 maximum ships). Divided between cargo, colony and spaceliner in a roughly euqal amount (I don't know, 4 cargo 3 colony 3 spaceliner every 10 ships). This would keep the number down unless you colonize a hundred planets, AND it would also limits the NPRs, thus keeping down the civilian sector a great deal while still letting you use them for coloniziation/transport, especially considering the ships keep getting bigger.

P.S. This approach you can even rationalize/RP, by saying that there's no need for more ships due to trade (and more populated colonies generate more trade)

[Zincat]

By the way, is there any way to selectively remove some civilian ships? I mean, if I could target them, I could shoot down some of them specifically (say: all spaceliners, or only obsolete ships) with myh beam startships. But as far as I can see... there's no way to target them, so I have to use mines? I'd rather not use mines in my systems....

[Steve Walmsley]

There is a mechanic that allows shipping lines to scrap an old ship when a new one is constructed. The problem is that if all the civilian ships are currently on missions, none of them are scrapped. I need to add some code that flags a ship to be scrapped once it finishes its current mission. That would significantly reduce the number of ships.

I also like the idea of adding larger civilian ships in the later game to reduce the overall number.

[Zincat]

There is a mechanic that allows shipping lines to scrap their old ships. The problem is that if all the civilian ships are currently on missions, none of them are scrapped. I need to add some code that flags a ship to be scrapped once it finishes its current mission. That would significantly reduce the number of ships.

I also like the idea of adding larger civilian ships in the later game to reduce the overall number.

Actually from what I can see the ships are not scrapped even when a lot of them are doing nothing. In this game of mine, I have over 1250 civilian ships right now, and more than half are doing nothing... but the companies are still filthy rich (I get 18000 wealth a month by taxes on passengers lines alone), and they launch 2-4 new civilian ships ever 5 days....

I'd probably do some sort of "crowd control" right now if I could. But I can't think of a way, least using hundreds and hundreds of mines in my systems, which is rather... dunno... not good?

[MarcAFK]

The other alternative is with tractors but with over a thousand ships would take a bloody long time I imagine.

[sneer (OP)]

how about 3 things
1st - box with number of authorized civilian ships
2nd - civilians running bigest possible designs
3rd button - recall all civilian back to earth and hold

it should not be work extensive for Steve and should solve any problem

and 4th
I would add "self destruct button" to each merchants somewhere in shipping line info just in case ...

[Alfapiomega]

and 4th
I would add "self destruct button" to each merchants somewhere in shipping line info just in case ...

I would hate to be on that ship.