Naval Capacity and Spaceports

[Repeats]

Naval capacity for me has always been a bit strange. In the current game, in order to win you need lots and lots of spaceport; more than you could ever build ships from realistically due to the UI giving us 10 hotkeys. This really limits what you can do with tall empires, even though we have habitats coming in 1.5. Also, I never really understood how a planet low population planet with a high-level spaceport could achieve the same amount of support compared to a bustling planet with a low-level spaceport.

My suggestion is to change the naval capacity to be more favorable towards higher population, rather than relying on massive numbers of planets with static spaceport levels. Here are some reasons why:

1. Higher populations should be able to support the construction of more ships.
2. Naval capacity and ship production should be partially decoupled. Being able to cripple an empire in both production and cap with the destruction of a single building is quite devastating.
3. Giving attention to planet population will give players the option to invest in planet infrastructure as a means of a higher naval cap instead of gobbling up every available planet via Colony Ship spam.

Example equation for this (with X + Y = 9 to maintain 15 cap for lvl 6 spaceport):

PlanetCapacity = SpaceportLevel + X*FractionOfTilesPopulated + Y*FractionOfTilesBuilt

FractionOfTilesPopulated = Population/NumTiles ; Planets with full population give X naval capacity
FractionOfTilesBuilt = NumBuildings/NumTiles ; Planets fully developed give Y naval capacity

Using an equation like this allows players to keep up to ~60% (9/15) of their naval capacity even if all their spaceports are destroyed. The first fraction gives some usefulness for food, as it increases the population. The second fraction gives usefulness for fully developing planets, after spending tons of resources and time.

Why this could work:

Currently, most people just don't bother developing planets; pushing off the responsibility to sectors. While they can get the job done, they do it poorly. Giving some incentive to holding onto planets and developing them ourselves would be a nice addition to the game. Also, it would slow down the "expand at all costs" mentality, as up to 60% of your naval capacity now needs to be tended to.

Side Effects?

Food, Building Cost, Buliding Time, and Governors are now interesting ways to improve naval capacity. All of these things allow you to fill planets up faster and more efficiently. Migration could be a double-edged sword if your empire has a population that wants to leave. You could also use it as a tool to siphon away naval capacity from an enemy, only to boost your own numbers.

The equation does allow smaller planets to get naval capacity faster than larger planets. However, this would be a nice dichotomy for the research penalty of smaller planets (and why no one ever colonizes them right now). Do you colonize only the large planets due to the research penalty, or do you rush small planets to maximize your naval capacity before your neighbors?

The AI does have a history of leaving pops unemployed or just forgetting to clear blockers on planets. Not sure if this is working as designed, but it could be improved if a system like this were ever implemented.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
Repeats

 

[ranma100]

I expect that shipbuilding is mostly automated, using very few people. That is why a station does the same amount, no matter how low pop the planet it is around.

 

[dying0d]

I'd have to agree, and do wish that fleet supply represented by capacity, should at the very least be more toed to empire population numbers.

Like OP stated, this would force another dichotomy in ships vs research speed, and would make tall vs wide narrow a bit in regards to high tech but smaller, vs very low tech but massive fleets.

It makes sense that the supplies for said fleets come from somewhere and even if spaceports are fully automated, doesn't make sense in having more giant robot houses means you cam support more ships.

 

[Almond_Brown]

So I understand here. The OP purposes that Ships be built on Planets and not Space Stations? Otherwise losing Space stations and not being able to rebuild them, the enemy blockades, actually means that it matters not how much "capacity" the Planet below has for production, if its materials have no Station to go to...

If the enemy can fly around your Space and destroy your Production facilities at will and you cannot prevent it, it just doesn't matter how much any single Planets Pop can produce in materials. You still Lose.

 

[zanaikin]

Given that naval capacity is like some very simplified form of 'fleet logistics' -- how many ships your empire can keep supplied, I see no problem tying it to spaceports rather than population. In this context, your spaceports are akin to your supply bases where munitions are produced and loaded onto supply ships... whereas planetary population, while still contributing to capacity, represents very little (given how inefficient it is to lift supplies from planet-side and bring it into space).

In mechanical terms, this actually opens more gameplay options. The doomstack may be heralded as the current 'meta' in how to wage war, but send a few raiding fleets to wreck the enemy's spaceports and that doomstack will soon see itself draining the empire's energy to empty (due to 'overcapacity') and its weapons functioning at 50% capacity (at energy bankruptcy). This essentially replicated the 'logistics war' aspect of modern warfare.

 

[Kayden_II]

I don't understand, Why It needs an additional Ship-Cap at All, because Ships have Maintenance-Costs (ECs and Minerals), Which are already Limitations ...

More Ships = More EC-Mineral-Ship-Maintenance-Costs, so that an Empire has a smaller EC-Mineral-Income ...

A wide Empire increases its EC-Mineral-Income rather by more Worlds (= more Spaceports) by more POPs (Suggestion in this Thread) on Tiles (without Buildings, but with Resource-Deposits or with Initial-Buildings) than a tall Empire via Upgrading ...

Such an additional Ship-Cap (by Space-Ports or in this Thread by POPs) promotes rather a wide Empire than a tall One.

 

[Repeats]

Regardless if the spaceports are automated or not it is just kind of a lazy mechanic right now. I can demonstrate that by an extreme case:

Say you have a planet with 1-2 pops on it, with no buildings but the colony ship. You can easily bulid a level 6 spaceport in a few years. Currently this spaceport will give 15 naval capacity. However, the planet is largely uninhabited, and would likely contribute nothing to spaceports ability to producing ships. As far as building the biggest fleet is concerned, this is cheapest possible method to doing it.

Now say you have a fully developed 25 pop planet with a level 6 spaceport. The entire surface of the planet is being utilized, and would be able to easily contribute to ship production. This takes a very long time to do, and it is not cheap to clear blockers + build infrastructure. But it still gives 15 naval capacity.

I personally feel that naval capacity isn't your ability to "store" ships in a hangar bay. In the game, the ships literally float in orbit 90% of the time. I personally feel that naval capacity is more in line with how many ships can be manned by a crew. You can easily build them, but you need pops to run and maintain them. In this avenue, you need more pops to produce highly trained crews. Fleet maintenance is supplying the crews with resources required to perform their duties. But if you don't see it this way, then my suggestion is pointless.

This my suggestion does do gameplay-wise:

1. Give small planets a purpose because fully developing them is faster compared to large planets
2. Gives more options to gain naval capacity through population building compared to spamming colony ships
3. Makes developing planets more meaningful overall in the game

It may not be completely realistic in terms of "why pops give more naval capacity," but it gives the player more options in how they want to play. It won't solve the tall vs wide dilemma, but it seems 1.5 will try to address that.

 

[SeeGee]

Do remember that each pop is actually 1,000,000 people. With 1 million people on a planet, i'm sure they'd be able to build ships when your society has reached the level of galactic expansion...

If a city has 1 million people, are they less able to produce a cruise ship than a city of 10 million? It only takes a small fraction of that to make some of the worlds biggest ships. The entire NASA program probably doesnt employ even close to 1 million people.

 

[terrycloth]

I think it makes a lot more sense that the spaceport (the level of space construction) matters more for how many space ships you can support than the development of the planet. Large planets teeming with population that can't support a fleet because they didn't invest in the infrastructure or technology to do so makes perfect sense.

It'd also make sense to be able to increase your fleet cap by building space-borne support facilities instead of having to have a planet attached. Maybe frontier outposts and fortresses should contribute?

Having your planets be actually full of people who are producing things attacks the maintenance of the fleet -- it already matters in a different way.

 

[Cordane]

Do remember that each pop is actually 1,000,000 people.

No, we already had this discussion - it's variable, both in terms of the first POP on a planet versus the 20th and in terms of gecko versus Garthim. But if you're trying to use human analogues, then it's actually closer to billion instead of million as an order of magnitude.

The capability of a planet to build and support spaceships would be based mostly on its orbital assets, which are represented in simplified form by our singular Spaceports. Because of the abstract nature of the tiles, we're not as able to show details like the density of surface launch and landing sites for shuttles and such across the planet. It would be useful to represent higher resource commitments across the planet by having a tile improvement, like a Launch Complex, to show planet-based (versus Spaceport module-based) investment in space production.

 

[Airowird]

FractionOfTilesBuilt = NumBuildings/NumTiles ; Planets fully developed give Y naval capacity

Your issue here is the definition of fully developed.

Also, the discussion is moot as you forget that there are already incentives in place to boost the ideas for small/large planets you want:
* Small planets are already getting a bonus, they can grant 15 fleet cap like anyone else
* Undeveloped planets already are a burden, in the form of a science penalty
* Developing planets allows for more EC/minerals, thus increasing the max upkeep you can afford. Bonus right there.

So what exactly does your suggestion try to improve in the game?
You're talking about #planets vs #total pops, but in the end, anyone worth their tactical salt will always invest in building up a giant power plant or mine planet to support their space navy, which means all planets get fully populated. Just purely from a science perspective, it'ld be stupid not to. And as science adds to techs boosting fleet efficiency, that matters. (and enough so, imho)

 

[Diezy]

Fleet Limit is not a hard-cap, and the penalty of exceeding it isn't steep at all. Once upon a time, not long ago, it capped at 1000 and it wasn't much trouble to deal with.

If anything, it makes the fleet cap techs be worth researching. I mean, just look at the silly... extra sectors tech... ^_^;

It's quite fine as it is. More planets, more crew and more space infrastructure let you support a bigger fleet. I like to think of Spaceports as the means to get resources off-world to help your fleets.

After all, Gravity is a cruel mistress, even when it isn't about dying from a collapsing rickety balcony! Getting things off-world is quite the challenge, and a spaceport makes the planet much more useful.

 

[Airowird]

Given that naval capacity is like some very simplified form of 'fleet logistics' -- how many ships your empire can keep supplied, I see no problem tying it to spaceports rather than population. In this context, your spaceports are akin to your supply bases where munitions are produced and loaded onto supply ships... whereas planetary population, while still contributing to capacity, represents very little (given how inefficient it is to lift supplies from planet-side and bring it into space).

Just to point out the fault in your reasoning:
Spaceports may be the logistic center of your space-faring navy, the production or atleast the generation of the base minerals still occurs on the planet. It doesn't matter if you send raw minerals or complete gun shells into space, they both need to get there.

That said, I would simply provide the argument that this spacelift plus the means to supply your ships from the spaceport are the logistical bottlenecks, thus the capacity for ships is determined by the size of spaceports. The maintenance penalty for having too much ships would then come from both the increased power needed to have the space lift do overtime as well as the credits used to pay overtime to workers or the companies performing the work for you.

 

[dying0d]

Just to point out the fault in your reasoning:
Spaceports may be the logistic center of your space-faring navy, the production or atleast the generation of the base minerals still occurs on the planet. It doesn't matter if you send raw minerals or complete gun shells into space, they both need to get there.

That said, I would simply provide the argument that this spacelift plus the means to supply your ships from the spaceport are the logistical bottlenecks, thus the capacity for ships is determined by the size of spaceports. The maintenance penalty for having too much ships would then come from both the increased power needed to have the space lift do overtime as well as the credits used to pay overtime to workers or the companies performing the work for you.

Can't pay overtime to pops that are not there.

What I am saying is that capacity be tied more to pops than to spaceports, in that all thoseaerials they process or send to the spaceports (and that capacity they give) wouldn't be without them. I want spaceports to give capacity, representing bigger factories etc to supply said fleet, but I want it lowered, and have pips somehow add to the naval capacity in exchange.

This type of change would force a dichotomy between fleet size and research speed, and further put value on large world's instead of just get more worlds as it stands now.

I don't want naval capacity diminished in any way, just shifted from a build and forget building you spam on every planet, to more pops is the more efficient way to create capacity to supply fleets.

I currently just rush like mad to cognize as many world's as I can until I'm bottled in, while getting spaceports up and upgraded to maximize fleet capacity so I can snowball up those near me that have a problem with me, even in conquering a capital world full of population, I just bud another spaceport and that further increases my capacity. With refugees added in and the effect of all pops not staying after conquest, would slow down this effect of snowballing until a few pops grow on newly conquered planets. It would also benefit tall empires to boost capacity via habitats with pops, than to have to colonize a dozen world's to have similar sized fleets

 

[Almond_Brown]

If Planet Size mattered more than just it being a Planet, then the mad rush would then become to find and colonize Large Planets first, get your base Civ up and running and then back fill with smaller planets as a supplement.

So that change does not makes thing better in the long run, it just delays using any small planets you find until your bottled up after finding as many Big ones as possible as fast as possible. End result, null benefit.