Mothballing Megastructures

[Jorlem]

Let's say you have a Sentry Array, and so does the empire next door to you. If you conquer the system their Array is in, it provides no benefit to you, but still costs upkeep.

I would like to request the ability to turn off megastructures, to save on upkeep. As a way of balancing this, perhaps there could be a startup cost when it is turned back on, based on the length of time it was off (for example, if it was mothballed for a year, turning it back on could cost half or 25% or some other percentage of what the normal yearly upkeep would have been.)

 

[HFY]

The simplest thing might be turning them into the ruined version of that megastructure. You'd be able to bring them back, of course -- at a cost more substantial than their yearly maintenance, but that's fine, resources including alloys are more plentiful over time.

 

[nat.hol]

Nuking the megastructure would be the solution ?! This is an exotic concept of "mothballing" there XD
In the first place this doesn't make sense in a roleplay point of view. Secondly I'm afraid at that cost you may not want to mothball anything in the first place.
Bringing back such a ruined megastructure online would need:
- A megastructure building slot for the duration of the repair, which is critical and does not really grow more plentiful over time
- At least 10'000 alloys, which is the market equivalent of 60'000 energy credits. (This means that you'd have to mothball it for at least 75 years, as a sentry array has an upkeep of 100 and a repair cost of 15'000 alloys, to reach 0 in losses... Mothballing is supposed to save up resources though)

It'd be much better to have a real mothballing option that applies -100% to upkeep (or maybe -90%, reflecting the fact you still have to maintain it somewhat). The reactivation would only need time with no additional resources.

 

[HFY]

Nuking the megastructure would be the solution ?! This is an exotic concept of "mothballing" there XD

You talking about using the Colossus?

Lol, sure pal.