Ship influence upkeep
Moderator: Oberlus
Ship influence upkeep
(I thought there was a dedicated thread about this, but can't find it.)
Currently, ships' PP cost is increased by a factor that grows with number of owned ships (IIRC, it also factors in ships under construction).
And we've got a Engineering Corps policy that haves that factor but sets an upkeep of 0.1 IP per ship.
In multiplayer games, one player can adopt this policy and anything else good to speed up ship production and gift every built ship to an ally, which focuses on extra damage and won't touch policies that bring in ship upkeep. This makes allied empires much more powerful than non-allied or confined empires. It feels like an exploit, or at least it's OP.
The same kind of exploit can be used to greatly reduce the penalization from using Terror Suppression: the empire with this policy only keeps the ships needed to raise stability in selected worlds, and the rest of its produced warships are gifted to an empire without Terror Suppression. This is specially useful when your capital species is good/great pilots but dislike certain policies/buildings you do want to have, and not so much when you have a good pilot, non-capital species. Anyways, it still feels like a minor exploit.
And by exploit/OP I mean that it is unbalanced and reduces variety of successful strategies or makes some games frustrating for some players due to impossible victory.
If we make that all ships always pay some influence upkeep, and that policies only increase or decrease that in reasonable (balanced) amounts but never remove it completely, the kind of exploits described above are not useful or not OP any more.
Ships PP cost fake upkeep (more of a one-time tax) was introduced to help with steamrolling. Influence upkeep can do this at least as good as the PP one-time tax.
So I'm planning to make a PR to remove the upkeep factor from the ship build costs and give a base IP upkeep (negative IP output) per ship.
Ideally, different hulls would have different influence upkeep, so that a Titan costs 0.5 IP/turn and a basic small hull just 0.05 (balance as desired to encourage more or less ships), organic hulls have overall smaller influence upkeeps and stuff like that (more diversity in hull lines).
This probably can be done with FOCS-only changes, in a similar way to what Ophiuchus did for fuel.
But in absence of that, a default upkeep of 0.1 IP per ship seems like a good start and comparable to the current PP fake upkeep system when set to consider only number of ships instead of ship parts.
Either way, policies like Terror Suppression and Engineering Corps would increase this IP upkeep by a percentage, and policies like the proposed Feudalism or Stratocracy as well as others could reduce it.
Anyone against replacing PP-upkeep with IP-upkeep? Useful comments?
I'm specially interested on your opinion on this:
- Which one is better, PP fake upkeep or IP upkeep, and why.
- Which one is better, constant IP upkeep per ship or differentiated by hull size and/or type, and why.
Currently, ships' PP cost is increased by a factor that grows with number of owned ships (IIRC, it also factors in ships under construction).
And we've got a Engineering Corps policy that haves that factor but sets an upkeep of 0.1 IP per ship.
In multiplayer games, one player can adopt this policy and anything else good to speed up ship production and gift every built ship to an ally, which focuses on extra damage and won't touch policies that bring in ship upkeep. This makes allied empires much more powerful than non-allied or confined empires. It feels like an exploit, or at least it's OP.
The same kind of exploit can be used to greatly reduce the penalization from using Terror Suppression: the empire with this policy only keeps the ships needed to raise stability in selected worlds, and the rest of its produced warships are gifted to an empire without Terror Suppression. This is specially useful when your capital species is good/great pilots but dislike certain policies/buildings you do want to have, and not so much when you have a good pilot, non-capital species. Anyways, it still feels like a minor exploit.
And by exploit/OP I mean that it is unbalanced and reduces variety of successful strategies or makes some games frustrating for some players due to impossible victory.
If we make that all ships always pay some influence upkeep, and that policies only increase or decrease that in reasonable (balanced) amounts but never remove it completely, the kind of exploits described above are not useful or not OP any more.
Ships PP cost fake upkeep (more of a one-time tax) was introduced to help with steamrolling. Influence upkeep can do this at least as good as the PP one-time tax.
So I'm planning to make a PR to remove the upkeep factor from the ship build costs and give a base IP upkeep (negative IP output) per ship.
Ideally, different hulls would have different influence upkeep, so that a Titan costs 0.5 IP/turn and a basic small hull just 0.05 (balance as desired to encourage more or less ships), organic hulls have overall smaller influence upkeeps and stuff like that (more diversity in hull lines).
This probably can be done with FOCS-only changes, in a similar way to what Ophiuchus did for fuel.
But in absence of that, a default upkeep of 0.1 IP per ship seems like a good start and comparable to the current PP fake upkeep system when set to consider only number of ships instead of ship parts.
Either way, policies like Terror Suppression and Engineering Corps would increase this IP upkeep by a percentage, and policies like the proposed Feudalism or Stratocracy as well as others could reduce it.
Anyone against replacing PP-upkeep with IP-upkeep? Useful comments?
I'm specially interested on your opinion on this:
- Which one is better, PP fake upkeep or IP upkeep, and why.
- Which one is better, constant IP upkeep per ship or differentiated by hull size and/or type, and why.
Re: Ship influence upkeep
It's coherent with the new Influence mechanisms, yes.
But 0,1 influence as a base cost is quite high for Bad influence species.
0,001 influence per Ship part is probably a better way to go (maybe + something for the hull, especially if some hulls can get rebalanced through low Influence cost - I'm thinking of Sentient Hull for example, and/or some Energy hulls that scarcely see combat as of now).
I don't know if some ship parts could also have higher Influence cost ?
That could also be a way to avoid reliance on only one Species : either make the Influence cost slightly exponential for ships of one Species (starts at 0,0001 per Ship part and grows at a rate of 1,01 per Ship); or divide the Influence cost of each ship by the average Stability of planets of the Species piloting it.
It will probably also require more sources of Influence (and I repeat my request that base Influence production of the Imperial Palace would be +7 at least).
But 0,1 influence as a base cost is quite high for Bad influence species.
0,001 influence per Ship part is probably a better way to go (maybe + something for the hull, especially if some hulls can get rebalanced through low Influence cost - I'm thinking of Sentient Hull for example, and/or some Energy hulls that scarcely see combat as of now).
I don't know if some ship parts could also have higher Influence cost ?
That could also be a way to avoid reliance on only one Species : either make the Influence cost slightly exponential for ships of one Species (starts at 0,0001 per Ship part and grows at a rate of 1,01 per Ship); or divide the Influence cost of each ship by the average Stability of planets of the Species piloting it.
It will probably also require more sources of Influence (and I repeat my request that base Influence production of the Imperial Palace would be +7 at least).
- Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ship influence upkeep
Production point (PP) cost scaling with number of ships is nice in that it's somewhat self-balancing of production output, which determines (more or less) how fast an empire can produce ships, and fleet size, rather than only providing a disincentive to have lots of ships for empires that don't have a lot of influence points (IP) to spend. A mix of both is fine, but I would still avoid getting rid of PP upkeep / cost scaling entirely.
There are in general a bunch of balance issues with multiple empires and giving. Probably gifting should cost IP per ship (or planet?).gift every built ship to an ally
Aside: this is similar to tech trading in games that allow it: if there's no cost to sharing techs, then it's optimal to always trade them as much as possible, which can wildly distort the balance of research and lead to issues where some empires / civs get left behind due to being out of the club of traders, and players have to constantly check for trading opportunities to play optimally. /Aside
There were also some discussions about additional costs for gifting if the recipient doesn't already have planets populated with the species on the gifted ship / planet, to make it less obvious that one should share all species between allies. This needs to be combined with some costs to invading to do planet / species exchanges, though, as otherwise players can avoid the costs with some diplo shenannigans.
I'd just keep it simple and have a fixed cost per ship as the standard, with some exceptions possible when useful. In general, discouraging lots of ships from being produced is preferable for performance / memory / disk space use, and makes the fleet management interface easier to use, and battle results more understandable.Which one is better, constant IP upkeep per ship or differentiated by hull size and/or type, and why.
Re: Ship influence upkeep
PP cost scaling incentives bigger rather than smaller ships but does not help much in self-balancing. The difference in PP cost scaling between 10 and 20 ships is not that much but the difference in battle results is huge. If an empire is that ahead of another one in number of ships, it also is ahead on production. Increasing upkeep cost doesn't help too much because the empire ahead will still be ahead and its army will keep growing faster. That's the idea, of course, and not to systematically turn winning into losing and vice versa.Geoff the Medio wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:36 pm Production point (PP) cost scaling with number of ships is nice in that it's somewhat self-balancing of production output, which determines (more or less) how fast an empire can produce ships, and fleet size, rather than only providing a disincentive to have lots of ships for empires that don't have a lot of influence points (IP) to spend. A mix of both is fine, but I would still avoid getting rid of PP upkeep / cost scaling entirely.
But this same effect can be achieved with IP per turn in a better way:
- Having to put planets into influence to pay for your fleet, or to not colonize another planet, is self-balancing of production output.
- Having constant production costs is nice and doesn't invite for unfunny management of build queue for optimization of costs.
- IP upkeep can impose a hard limit, PP cost scaling cannot. We already have a hard limit on number of planets (a limit that can be pushed back via policies and planets set to influence), and it makes sense that we do the same for ships.
- Having two mechanics for the same purpose is redundant and not simpler, and I can't see the real gain here.
Agree, but that solves a different problem.Geoff the Medio wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:36 pm There are in general a bunch of balance issues with multiple empires and giving. Probably gifting should cost IP per ship (or planet?).
If we have empires that doesn't pay ship IP upkeep at all and empires that benefit from having a ship IP upkeep that they don't have to pay because they gifted ships to the first empire (exploit), a one-time IP payment won't suffice, it should be a real upkeep.
Solutions are either remove IP upkeeps from ships (replace by one-time payments in policies like Engineering Corps or Terror Suppression, but that break other things) or ensure all ships always pay some IP upkeep to balance.
OK, so constant cost regardless of "size", but maybe some differences depending on hull line?Geoff the Medio wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:36 pm I'd just keep it simple and have a fixed cost per ship as the standard, with some exceptions possible when useful. In general, discouraging lots of ships from being produced is preferable for performance / memory / disk space use, and makes the fleet management interface easier to use, and battle results more understandable.
Re: Ship influence upkeep
I currently like the combination more than any single of those.
If you have the cost based on two sources of production it will be probably more evenly fair than only if based on one of it.
Also I am weary of influence-related imbalances.
If IP upkeep becomes the main bottleneck in building empire/fleet (which didnt happen to me yet), it determines the maximum military power of an empire. You probably have to think a lot more about kicking out obsolete vessels.
With only PP upcost you can always grow the fleet (but always at slower pace).
Ship-count-based PP upcost is punishing small ships, Part-based PP upcost is not.
PP upcost scales mostly like: if you double the number of ships/parts, new ships/parts cost double as much. In principle this should help catching up, in practice it does not seem to be a decisive factor. I guess that is because of death stack mechanics - which are rather quadratic.
For this reason either we should try/should have tried something like four times the cost when doubling - or we need limiting the total number of ships/parts (like done with IP upkeep).
A good thing with both IP upkeep and PP upcost is that it goes down if you loose your fleet.
For me as a rule of thumb, gifting is ~always OK if it incentives evenly distribution between the empires.
Downside regarding PP upcost is that is leading to extremes. If implemented "right", one would pay in PP the difference in upkeep cost between the involved empires. A little simpler would be you have to pay e.g. 20%.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.
Look, ma... four combat bouts!
Look, ma... four combat bouts!
Re: Ship influence upkeep
I'd prefer the IP upkeep part-counting instead. So you can have a "good small hull" with few slots.Oberlus wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 2:13 pmOK, so constant cost regardless of "size", but maybe some differences depending on hull line?Geoff the Medio wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 1:36 pm I'd just keep it simple and have a fixed cost per ship as the standard, with some exceptions possible when useful. In general, discouraging lots of ships from being produced is preferable for performance / memory / disk space use, and makes the fleet management interface easier to use, and battle results more understandable.
This gives design flexibility in two degrees of freedom. You can change the hull stats, the number of slots, and balance against hull cost.
So the "end game hulls" might not be not good cost/benefit, but because they have the right hull stats they have more combat power per IP upkeep.
Right hull stats probably means lots of structure and lots of external slots, so they save on the number of total internal slots used.
This still favors less, bigger ships, but it is more open to design.
If you loose your fleet you can switch to more cost efficient designs (instead of maintenance efficient designs) until IP upkeep rears its ugly head.
OTOH ship-based influence based upkeep is maybe easier to predict i guess. So having a ship that is double the cost and has exactly double the stats (2xstructure, 2x external slots, same speed, stealth, same internal slots) is basically the same, just has half the maintenance cost per combat value.
Another thing which I failed to mention about PP upcost - it is taking the PP cost of the hull/parts into account. That cost is already balanced. Of course one could also base the IP upkeep on the PP cost of the ship design, but I think nobody talked about that yet.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.
Look, ma... four combat bouts!
Look, ma... four combat bouts!
Re: Ship influence upkeep
I need to try it out to see that. A priori I can't see why this could be true.
Me too. It needs to be done properly (in a way that achieves what is expected), or dropped. I still think it can be done right.
With ship-based, it is for each extra ship, cost factor grows 0.01, so second ship costs 1% more than first one, and fourth one costs 4% more than first one but "only" 0.97% more than third one.Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Thu Dec 30, 2021 4:09 pm PP upcost scales mostly like: if you double the number of ships/parts, new ships/parts cost double as much.
In principle this should help catching up, in practice it does not seem to be a decisive factor. I guess that is because of death stack mechanics - which are rather quadratic.
Doubling number of ships increase the cost depending on actual number of ships. The average cost of 5 ships is 103% the cost of 1 ship. Average cost of 10 ships is 105.5%, 2.4% greater than having 5 ships. Average cost of 20 ships is 110.5%, 4.7% greater than average cost of 10 ships. So the cost increase gets faster/worse the greater your ship count is. And I think that is quite good for the purpose. But the effect is too small.
If we change current factor increase from 0.01 to 0.1 (which is probably a clever way of turning games into something quite slow), average cost of 5 ships is 130%, 10 ships 155% (19% greater than 5), 20 ships 205% (32% greater than 10 ships, 58% greater than 5).
For part-based the results are similar.
If we wanted to make sure that building 2N ships costs 4N times the cost, we would need a bigger factor, and I don't know why but that seems like the wrong fix for this.
Re: Ship influence upkeep
So my suggestion for the moment would be: introduce a ship-count and PP cost based IP upkeep (so actually a fraction of the PP cost as influence upkeep cost) AND use a PP part based upcost factor five times higher.
Let's playtest in the next slow game and see what we find out.
Let's playtest in the next slow game and see what we find out.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.
Look, ma... four combat bouts!
Look, ma... four combat bouts!
Re: Ship influence upkeep
I don't have much of a strong opinion here, I'll playtest what you guys come up with and see. I just want to mention that my main problem with upkeep as is, is that its not displayed anywhere in game. So if we could have the added cost displayed somewhere that would be great.
Re: Ship influence upkeep
You mean the colonies' IP upkeep, that one doesn't know in advance how much will upkeep grow if another planet is acquired?
Or you mean ships?
Re: Ship influence upkeep
I meant the ship upkeep, though it'd obviously be nice to know how much extra a colony will cost.
- Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ship influence upkeep
I used Engineering Corps in my last test game, and there was no sum of the ships Upkeep cost available (that I was able to find).