Fleet Upgrading

[Verx90]

will that federation fleet ever fly around?
If the AI still refits all the ships as soon as it can, I can predict the fleet will never actually do anything...

Luckly the federation fleet is mine , and will be mine till the end of time (that is coming , since the .war in heaven is harder than i remember and the Awakened empires keep spamming 110k fleet power around the 1000 star galaxy) so the ai will not refit it , i wont too, since i already rebuilded half of it because of battle loses . Atm refitting ship during war is just madness , refitting ship out of war its pure luxury .


Not for the price , the time . Even if you think time is gold , in war it is life.

 

[The013]

So no.... this is NOT wrong, this is exactly as it should be.

Well, with this change it's easier to scrap the existing fleet and rebuild it than upgrade. Might even be cost effective too, since you still incur maintenance cost for the fleet while it's being upgraded (which takes way too much time).
By the way, I suspect ship build speed modifiers don't affect upgrade speed.

The reason for this change was exactly to prevent switching back and forth between hard counters, instead forcing you to pick a balanced design that can handle all situations.

And I thought different components exist exactly for that: to be used in certain situations as necessary. Instead you're punished for trying to use different weapons. Might just as well replace all weapons in the game with multiple tiers of a "balanced weapon".

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Alloys is a broad term, but alloys are an overall representation of refined minerals. Breaking them back into minerals makes no sense, plus under that logic they should return minerals back, no?

Plus, I would argue that the increased upgrade cost does not help game balance, it undermines players that attempt to counter their opponents.

Exactly... so the old alloys you used can't be used at a 1:1 ratio and you will have to reprocess them... hence the 25% rough rebate on the upgrade.

But you have to understand this is mainly a balance issue that you make some rationalization around.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I don't have a problem with the time, but it should be reduced by how many shipyards you have. If I have 6 shipyards then the upgrade time should take 1/6 of the time if I only had one.

The price though does seem to scale oddly. putting some more armour on a ship should not cost almost the same as buying new ships.

I agree with the time as we already discussed in this thread several times.

The cost does not scale oddly... I have proved the exact formula and that is how it works.

 

[Savior59]

Well, with this change it's easier to scrap the existing fleet and rebuild it than upgrade. Might even be cost effective too, since you still incur maintenance cost for the fleet while it's being upgraded (which takes way too much time).
By the way, I suspect ship build speed modifiers don't affect upgrade speed.


And I thought different components exist exactly for that: to be used in certain situations as necessary. Instead you're punished for trying to use different weapons. Might just as well replace all weapons in the game with multiple tiers of a "balanced weapon".

I'm pretty sure I remember the Devs saying that they want to promote weapon countering, and to be honest this should be something that a player isn't punished for. If you take the time to observe what weapons and components your enemy is using, then you should be able to somewhat easily be able to adapt to your enemy. It should not be an ordeal to go from Paper to Rock to counter Scissors.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Id like to say just 2 things .

1 . 2017 days to upgrade my fleet , 6095 days for the federation . If you stop it , you lose YEARS of upgrade

2. Why upgrades use one 1 shipyard ? , i tryed to divide the feet in 6 but they just go in queue and dont upgrade till the first one dont finish ... ive to build more 1 shipyard stations and send there all the split fleets ?

The only thing we can currently do is break the fleet up in smaller chunks and upgrade them individually. This is not the best way to do the mechanic but until it gets looked at this is what you have to do.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

From what I can tell the COMBAT SYSTEM still relies on a rock / paper / scissors type of balancing. In my current game the neighbor to the north of me uses missiles, the neighbor to the south uses kinetics + energy. If I hard counter the missile opponent the kinetics & energy empire will have a distinct [50% damage] advantage against me. If I try to stay in parity with the k+e neighbor then the missile empire counters me. If I split my fleets then I could purpose build to counter the expected enemy but I'd be outnumbered in ships 2-1.

Because there's not a particularly good solution to the above it's probably more FUN for the player to be able to respec fleets at least somewhat efficiently.

I understand the math behind the arguments as it's pretty clear concerning upgrade costs & time. However I'd prefer a more plug-and-play approach to upgrading where you only worry about component build time & cost as opposed to hull or other factors.

Why is using no work, no thought and effort always equal fun for some?!?

Now you have to make actual meaningful decisions, take notice of enemy designs before a war every breaks out and try to figure out what the best composition will be long before anything happens. You should perhaps no longer put all eggs in one basket and potentially make you very vulnerable.

If you just can flip strategy on a dime where is the actual strategy... you also gain a very strong advantage of the AI which we frankly don't need.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I'm pretty sure I remember the Devs saying that they want to promote weapon countering, and to be honest this should be something that a player isn't punished for. If you take the time to observe what weapons and components your enemy is using, then you should be able to somewhat easily be able to adapt to your enemy. It should not be an ordeal to go from Paper to Rock to counter Scissors.

You can... it just take time and resources to do it and you will need to plan for it. That strategy has never gone away.

 

[Savior59]

You can... it just take time and resources to do it and you will need to plan for it. That strategy has never gone away.

It takes 46 alloys to upgrade two Armor components on a single Defense Platform. This is way too high of a cost to properly counter enemies (this scenario wasn't even a counter upgrade either, just a basic component upgrade).

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

It takes 46 alloys to upgrade two Armor components on a single Defense Platform. This is way too high of a cost to properly counter enemies (this scenario wasn't even a counter upgrade either, just a basic component upgrade).

Well that is the cost... if you can't afford it you can always choose not to do it. You don't need ti upgrade if you don't expect a war and the old one will do decently well if you happen to get into one anyway.

You just have to get out of the old habit of upgrading as soon as some new technology comes along.

You have to weigh the cost versus benefit more now than before.

 

[Savior59]

Well that is the cost... if you can't afford it you can always choose not to do it. You don't need ti upgrade if you don't expect a war and the old one will do decently well if you happen to get into one anyway.

You just have to get out of the old habit of upgrading as soon as some new technology comes along.

You have to weigh the cost versus benefit more now than before.

Problem is though is at the current cost of upgrading now, there really isn't any benefit unless you're sitting on a plethora of Alloys. It's almost always a better choice to build 2-3 more corvettes than to upgrade 6 Defense Platforms with two better Armor Components.

The choice of building 1-2 more Corvette and upgrading your Platforms vs 2-3 Corvettes and not upgrading is much less obvious than building 0 Corvettes and upgrading your Platforms or building 2-3 Corvettes and not doing a basic upgrade of your Platforms.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Problem is though is at the current cost of upgrading now, there really isn't any benefit unless you're sitting on a plethora of Alloys. It's almost always a better choice to build 2-3 more corvettes than to upgrade 6 Defense Platforms with two better Armor Components.

The choice of building 1 more Corvette and upgrading your Platforms vs 2 Corvettes and not upgrading is much less obvious than building 0 Corvettes and upgrading your Platforms or building 2 Corvettes and not doing a basic upgrade of your Platforms.

Sure, you will have to decide what it is that you want... but upgrading just one component one step will be expensive and you should in general not do that unless as you say you have lots of alloys and can afford it.

You might argue that building more platforms is also better if you can or simply build a few corvettes and station them with the station until you are at a point you deem an upgrade is necessary.

The longer you can delay upgrades the more resources you will save. So now it become a matter of opportunity and risk which is much better in every way. Important decisions is good.

 

[Savior59]

Sure, you will have to decide what it is that you want... but upgrading just one component one step will be expensive and you should in general not do that unless as you say you have lots of alloys and can afford it.

You might argue that building more platforms is also better if you can or simply build a few corvettes and station them with the station until you are at a point you deem an upgrade is necessary.

The longer you can delay upgrades the more resources you will save. So now it become a matter of opportunity and risk which is much better in every way. Important decisions is good.

Important decisions are good, you are right on that, but not all decisions need to be important. To me, it just doesn't make much sense to have upgrading a few platforms be competing with the construction of 2-3 Corvettes, 1-2 sure, but 2-3 is just too much.

With that being said, I'm not asking for a brain-dead reduction in Alloy cost either (like 2.1), I just think it's generally overtuned now. I'd like to see it cost 75-50% of what it costs now to upgrade things, at this point the choices are a bit less obvious and there's a lot less of "waiting to upgrade until 50 years later".

Also, do you play MP?

 

[Nikotinlaus]

My main issue with fleet upgrading is that it is a micro horror. A fleet always only gets upgraded by 1 shipyard. So if you have a station with 6 shipyards you can cut the time of upgrading by 83% by splitting your fleet in 6 equal size stacks. But you have to do it manually....

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

My main issue with fleet upgrading is that it is a micro horror. A fleet always only gets upgraded by 1 shipyard. So if you have a station with 6 shipyards you can cut the time of upgrading by 83% by splitting your fleet in 6 equal size stacks. But you have to do it manually....

Yes... this is a major problem and should be changed.

You still might want to split up large fleets though even if it worked like that so you don't have to end upgrade in the middle of it or if ships was upgraded sequentially within the fleet one at a time, or six at a time if you have six yards.

 

[AlanC9]

will that federation fleet ever fly around?
If the AI still refits all the ships as soon as it can, I can predict the fleet will never actually do anything...

If anything, I've seen the AI not upgrading ships enough.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Important decisions are good, you are right on that, but not all decisions need to be important. To me, it just doesn't make much sense to have upgrading a few platforms be competing with the construction of 2-3 Corvettes, 1-2 sure, but 2-3 is just too much.

With that being said, I'm not asking for a brain-dead reduction in Alloy cost either (like 2.1), I just think it's generally overtuned now. I'd like to see it cost 75-50% of what it costs now to upgrade things, at this point the choices are a bit less obvious and there's a lot less of "waiting to upgrade until 50 years later".

Also, do you play MP?

Numbers is always in flux but 75% seem way to cheap but somewhere between 25-50 i would be OK with.

 

[Savior59]

Numbers is always in flux but 75% seem way to cheap but somewhere between 25-50 i would be OK with.

Oh no no I mean that the cost to upgrade ships should be 75-50% of what it is now. Example: Platforms should have cost 34.5 (46*0.75) or 23 (46*.5) Alloys instead.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Oh no no I mean that the cost to upgrade ships should be 75-50% of what it is now. Example: Platforms should have cost 34.5 (46*0.75) or 23 (46*.5) Alloys instead.

Ah.. Ok... sure. But remember that the cost is i proportion to the current component and the one being built. You can change the rebate of the old component in the defines, it is currently set at 25% if you set it to 50% you might get roughly what you want. You can play the game anyway you like... I mod many small things to my liking.

 

[SpectralShade]

Why is using no work, no thought and effort always equal fun for some?!?

Now you have to make actual meaningful decisions, take notice of enemy designs before a war every breaks out and try to figure out what the best composition will be long before anything happens. You should perhaps no longer put all eggs in one basket and potentially make you very vulnerable.

If you just can flip strategy on a dime where is the actual strategy... you also gain a very strong advantage of the AI which we frankly don't need.

where is "observing what the enemy is using and adapting to that" equal to "no work" ?

NOT doing anything, because the system makes it overtly punishing to try and adapt, is actually "no work".