The main point of OP's proposal is the formulation of influence upkeep (periodic maintenance payment in influence points) costs for fleets and colonies, in a way that
- it takes into consideration galaxy size,so that it scalates well with any galaxy setting (otherwise it could only be balanced for a certain galaxy settings, which is same a saying "it's broken").
- it takes into consideration empires' relative sizes, so that it works well with empires of very diverse sizes.
The first point is of uttermost importance for obvious reasons (i.e. it needs to work for galaxies such as 20/2 systems/players, 200/2, 200/20, 2000/20).
This second point is very important to me, to help games in the latter stages still be fun for all players. That is, to keep difficulty more leveled depite some empires having done much better than others (either by luck o skill) so that we can avoid the issue "enemy empire has 3x more production than mine, there's no point on playing anymore, I've lost already", which is typical in MP games, or "enemy empire has 1/3 of my production, this is boring, I claim victory on my own and start a new game", which is typical in SP games.
Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 9:31 am
You are mixing fleet and (influence) upkeep.
A secondary objective of the OP's proposal is to make all upkeeps in game to be based on influence points and get rid of all the counterintuitive macros in default/scripting/common/upkeep.macros that do not solve the steamroll problem and create the recurring questions in new players such as "why next copies of same model costs more?".
Since a recent comment from someone somewhere (Vezzra? Ophiuchus? Can't remember who was or in which thread), I'm no longer sure about the need of a complex fleet influence upkeep: if a proper colony influence upkeep can work as intended, it shall suffice to add a flat influence upkeep per ship (and per building; in both cases depending on cost and/or size of the ship or building). At some point you no longer have surplus influence points for extra ships or colonies, so you have to switch production planets to influence, reducing your growth speed: Snowball solved (hopefully).
But I am sure ships (and builings) must pay influence upkeep.
Why ships and colonies?
Steamrolling is not a phenomenom restricted to number of colonies, one could also steamroll fleets. Otherwise, why would have anyone bothered introducing the "upkeep" factor for ships in FO?
Without ships having to pay maintenance, one would look for the sweet spot of colonies per universe size that would allow him to keep building more and more armed ships, probably with bombardment weapons or planetary system destruction weapons so that there's no need to conquest the colonies (that would increase influence upkeep).
No, we need to put a limit on the army sizes, for sure.
Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 9:31 am
you are not trying to adress the hard questions.
Well, as explained above, the OP's suggestion is about the formulation for the influence upkeep (maintenance). The hard questions, discussed in other threads, where out of the scope for this first phase of the discussion. But once the formulation in the OP is refined and accepted, we should indeed answer those hard questions.
Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 9:31 am
What happens with the fleet if you can't/don't want to pay upkeep for it?
Yeah, what happens? I hope we all can contribute to that question.
From the thread linked in the OP:
Krikkitone wrote: ↑Tue Feb 06, 2018 3:38 pm
I think that unless the more extreme version (double colony ownership) is used, influence should be a key part of restricting expansion with a non linear maintenance effect for colonies/systems. (quadratic...ie each colony has a maintenance cost proportional to number of other colonies..seems the simplest.)
Basically if "influence maintenance" isn't paid, colony loyalty begins to drop and colonies start producing rebels (which means if you are OK with having a continuous invasion on every single one of your worlds it doesn't matter.....but that should be impossible to maintain, eventually the worlds should become independent or depopulated)
So excessive colonization/conquest is colonization/conquest that you don't have the influence output to support (influence output would increase with tech and at best linearly with # worlds...but probably with a large population component)
I think it could be enough to use a colony rebellion mechanism and leave fleets alone (as in "when there is a lack of influence, the ones suffering it are the civilians, never the soldiers"). That would be simple and probably work well (but we are here to discuss the flaws that can have, right). Hard question here: which colony rebels first? That's for a following post, but some ideas: the ones farther away from capital, the ones with lower happiness (which can/could be different between planets thanks to species characteristics, buildings/specials in the planet or that affect it from the system or supply group, species-empire characteristics, influence projects from the enemy or the government, the pressence of armed ships in orbit, etc.), or a combination of both to help resolve ties.
Optionally, lack of influence could have effects on ships (make them unresponsive, turn then into rogue ships, lower their stats), as commented on the other thread on Morale of Ships. But that is quite more complex because of the hard question of "what ship rebels first?". I foresee this would be more complex than with the colonies.
Ophiuchus wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 10:06 am
I am a bit weary that we are a bit neurotic here "fleet upkeep is the answer to stop fleet snowballing! we could not solve fleet upkeep for PP (or there is too much resistance to it). now we have influence, so influence fleet upkeep is the answer to stop fleet snowballing."
I hope the above explanations let you undestand that this has resonable purposes, that will improve gameplay in different ways, and that it has nothing to do with anyone's neurosis.
Edit: keep in mind that the OP's formulation makes influence points grow slower with empire size, to a point that having the whole galaxy for you means you can barely pay for the colonies and a small army. This is somethine that PPs (or RPs) production never had, and so, yes, it is reasonable that this influence upkeep mechanics solve the problems that PP "upkeep" (not-an-upkeep) factor could never solve.