Ships: Supply

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eleazar
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#61 Post by eleazar »

After reading this thread, and some older threads, here's an new proposal taking ideas from all over hopefully with the rough spots filled in, and exploits eliminated.
It's intended to hit the sweet-spot between strategic possibilities and low micro.



Rules:
* A system for redistributing resources between colonies, more-or-less like this is assumed.

* A ship on or within 1 StarLane Jump (SLJ) of a Planetary-Supply Lines (PSL) is completely resupplied and repaired at the beginning of every turn. (unless perhaps the ship is engaged in an ongoing battle from the last turn)

* There is a Resupply Range (RR) (probably connected to engine tech) at which ships can receive some supplies while outside PSLs. The amount of supply decreases linearly from 100% at 1 SLJ to 0% at RR+1 SLJs. Thus assuming a RR of 4, a ship has available the following percentage of it's total capacity for supplies at the beginning of each turn: (possibly the percent of damage that can be repaired per turn is the same as the resupply percentage, but that verges off the topic)
  • 1 SLJ = 100% resupply
    2 SLJ = 75% resupply
    3 SLJ = 50% resupply
    4 SLJ = 25% resupply
    5+ SLJ = 0% resupply
* A ship's supply line can only pass through empty or friendly systems. Systems with weaponless enemy ships count as "empty". "Ordinary" ships are used to protect or disrupt supply lines.

* Resupply only occurs when a ship is in system at the beginning of a turn. Ships are not resupplied while in transit in SLs.

* Entering a SL requires 1 unit of fuel per ship. Fuel is only consumed when initiating a jump. A ship cannot initiate a jump unless it has 1 full unit of fuel. Thus, ships do not get stuck part-way through a SL.

* Ships have a certain fuel reserve. If a ship depletes it's fuel (weather within or beyond RR) it cannot jump, though it can engage in combat as normal. Any idle ship may produce a small amount of fuel per turn. Perhaps .1 units of fuel. Thus a stranded ship could initiate a jump in 10 turns.

* Fuel, Resupply (and maybe repair) are converted from Production Points (PPs) in the connecting PSL network. If there are not enough PPs available in the nearest PSL network (perhaps an isolated, newly established/conquored colony) a ship/fleet will, if possible, automatically send it's supply line to a more distant PSL network, automatically choosing the route that provides the most total resupply. (What to do if there are not enough PPs available is admittedly a sticky point. The above is the simplest approach)

* A Rioting, or Rebelling colony does not produce PP, therefore, unless a conquered colony dislike's it's old masters, it will not be possible to immediately resupply a fleet from newly conquered systems. (This is very premature, but here are my initial ideas about riot, loyalty, and rebellions.)

* The player may have a global way to control how much PP is diverted from building projects to resupply the fleet.. Perhaps there is a setting, or "Fleet Resupply" appears in the production queue.



Results:
* The gradual diminishment of resupply with range is not realistic in detail, but provides much off the strategic value of a complex simulation of a supply chain without requiring any management from the player. Some quite interesting feints and maneuvers should be possible in the galaxy map as fleets attempt to surround and cut-off each other.

* Fleets near the colonies will generally be resupplied faster than they can use stuff up. You can probably ignore fuel unless the ship is near or beyond the RR.

* All cargo/supply ships are thoroughly abstracted, and behave in a more reliable/easy-to-understand manner than a fleet of invisible ships with actual calculated positions.

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Geoff the Medio
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#62 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Here's my take on the supply discussion. It has several features similar to eleazar's last post, but some details vary...

General:

-Fleets shouldn't get stuck in the middle of a starlane
-Hard range limits disliked
-Too free exploration / movement bad
-Don't like "privateers" or "escorts" or other semi-abstracted indirect effects. They may be "single number" simple, but as noted, this seems un-fun to me.
-Don't like "assigning ships to supply routes" or "setting supply levels" or abstract "supply fleet expenditure" that are hard to understand and visualize
-Don't like automated discrete ships / freighters moving about on their own. If it's a visible player-owned ship, the player should control it, and want to do so.
-Don't like having to manually plot a supply route - too micromanagy, especially if fleets are moving around and conditions changing rapidly. Can just automatically pick the best possible route (or one of, if equivalent)

Proposed:

Fuel:

-Ships all have default minimum speed that requires and consumes no fuel
--Moving faster uses fuel
-All ships consume equal amount, 1 unit or "1 jump", of fuel per starlane jump
-Ships using fuel travel at different speeds (depends on engine, ship mass, etc.), but always consume one unit of fuel to start a jump along a starlane
--A fixed initial amount of fuel determines how many jumps a ship or fleet can make, and thus how far it can travel, regardless of speed
--A fixed amount of fuel may take a different number of turns to consume, depending how many turns it takes to start enough starlane jumps
---A four-turn-long starlane takes 1 unit of fuel on the first turn and none during the next three turns
---Jumping along three short starlanes in one turn takes 3 units of fuel in that turn alone
-Ships have a fuel capacity, and fleets have a fuel capacity that is the sum of the fleet's ships' fuel capacities


Non-fuel supplies:

-Missile ammo, fighters, and crew are consumed similarly to fuel, but only during battles (and perhaps special events)
-Ships need missiles and fighters to fire or launch
--Not having any means those weapons can't be used
-Ships need crews to function
--Having insufficient crew has combat or other penalties, or allows the ship to be boarded and captured more easily
-Similarly to fuel, ships in a fleet can pool their crew and ammo


Ship damage / repair:

-Ships can be damaged in battle or by events
-Ship damage is much more difficult to repair than it is to replenish fuel or other supplies
-Fleets are more likely to need to return to a starbase or other suitable repair location to repair damage
-Specialized repair ships may exist that function away from repair locations


Supply routes and resupply:

-Ships starting a turn in a system can be resupplied on that turn if the system is or has a supply route to a supply source
-Resupply replenishes Y units of fuel per turn, and Z missile ammo, crew or fighters
--Y and Z may vary depending on distance to supply point or tech, or may be fixed (eg. always 1 unit per turn)
-To have a supply route to a system:
--System must be within X starlane jumps of a supply source.
---Sources include any colonized planet, or specialized supply depots that may be built
---X may vary depending on size of colony, tech level, etc.
--System must have unobstructed path to the supply source
---There can be no hostile-controlled systems along the path
----Hostile-controlled systems contain enemy armed fleets, or highly developed colonies
-----Colonized but undeveloped worlds do not block supply (the supply ships just fly by unhindered)
-The shortest valid supply route, or one of the equal-length routes, is chosen and displayed to the player when a fleet is selected. The fleet's in-supply or away-from-supply status is made clear visually
--All in-supply systems, and the starlanes connecting in-supply systems are highlighted appropriately, so that it's clear what systems are in-supply and which aren't
--If no valid supply route is available, the blocked systems that prevent the route from being connected are highlighted appropriately, so it's clear which blocked systems are preventing supply from reaching further away
--If supply route length matters, the shortest length valid route is used
-A system being in supply lets a player have visibility into that system, even if there are no player-owned ships in the system
--Any supply-blockage in what would otherwise be a supplyable system is visible and clear to the player - perhaps not why there is blockage, but the fact that there is blockage
---The player can easily see where there are blockages near his/her territory. This means the player can send a defensize / cleanup fleet to that location to resolve the supply disruption - it's not necessary to fill your own space with defensive fleets in every system
---Any enemy fleets in "your" territory are visible
----Cloaking ships are useful, in that they can pass through enemy-visible systems without detection
--The player can't see into systems that could be supplied if other systems weren't blocked, and the player can't see whether these systems woudl be blocked if supply could get up to them
-No % supply effects due to blockage of supply routes. A system is either in supply or not.
--Reduction in rate of supply may occur if a supply route to a system is longer than it would otherwise have to be due to another system being blocked, but this is not presented as a reduction or % rate of supply
---The actual rate of supply and effects of distance may vary over the course of the game, so assuming distance effects can be simply expressed a % of maximum rate is premature
-More than one empire may be able to get supply to a particular system, even if they are hostile towards eachother, as long as there are no obstructions to either getting supply to that system
-"Pirates" or other supply disruption events can occur, which just prevent supply routes from passing through a system until they are resolved - these function just like any other blocking of a system


Considerations:

-Supply routes should be able to exist far enough away from supply sources that blocking supply routes becomes possible. If supply routes are only ~3 jumps long, then it's not likely that it will be possible to get blocking ships between an enemy fleet and their source of supply (in addition to it being too hard to actually get a fleet far from your colonies...)
-There should be some player choice in determining supply range. I like the suggestion of putting supply on the production queue, but I have a specific proposal for how it should work.
--One possibility is that, with appropriate tech, there becomes available a project on the production queue which extends the range that supply lines can extend. There may be several levels of this project, costing increasingly more. If the project is funded, then that turn supply lines extend an additional jump away from supply sources.
---I'm slightly wary of such a system though, as it seems rather un-fun to me. I imaging every turn going and checking on all fleets, seeing how long I need my supply routes to be this turn, then moving the "extend supply lines" project higher or lower in the production queue accordingly...
--Instead, there could just be projects or techs that permanently extend supply lines (at significant cost)
-I'm not sure whether supply should actually cost anything to provide. Presumably ships have some maintenance cost already... is there any particular reason that resupplying them needs to cost more?


Problems:

-Want to make very large ships slow and short-range, but having all ships consume one unit of fuel per turn to move makes this difficult
--Can distinguish ship sizes just by speed of movement...
---Can't have "fast-long", "fast-short" and "slow-short" as separate speed-range combos
--Could have very large (shorter range) ships have smaller fuel tanks (in turns) than medium (longer range) ships...
---Difficult to explain this

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utilae
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#63 Post by utilae »

Geoff the Medio wrote: -Don't like having to manually plot a supply route - too micromanagy, especially if fleets are moving around and conditions changing rapidly. Can just automatically pick the best possible route (or one of, if equivalent)
I think it is necesary to create supply routes, and there has to be a cost. If they were free to create, then players would just create supply routes between all colonies. A blockade would then be ineffective, as supply would just go around.

If supply costs (maybe the cost of invisible police/infrastructure/fuel stations) then players have to plan the routes. Blockades would be effective. Players could spend more on supply routes, to be blockade resistant. Or players could have few supply routes, to save money, though risk more blockade troubles.

I don't think it will be prone to micromanagement as (like you said) it will be clear where a supply route is blocked.
Geoff the Medio wrote: -Ships all have default minimum speed that requires and consumes no fuel
--Moving faster uses fuel
-All ships consume equal amount, 1 unit or "1 jump", of fuel per starlane jump
--A fixed amount of fuel may take a different number of turns to consume, depending how many turns it takes to start enough starlane jumps
---A four-turn-long starlane takes 1 unit of fuel on the first turn and none during the next three turns
---Jumping along three short starlanes in one turn takes 3 units of fuel in that turn alone
Now, this will give us micromanagement issues. I think we should just assume maximum speed and 1 unit of fuel used per starlane jump. Maybe each starlane could have a length in fuel units and that is how much fuel is used. Fuel would be used per turn per starlane. Eg a starlane has a fuel length of 3. To travel through would cost 3 fuel, regardless of whether it takes 1 turn or 7 turns.
Geoff the Medio wrote: --Having insufficient crew has combat or other penalties, or allows the ship to be boarded and captured more easily
One thing is that missile ships, having ammo will be subject to supply problems. But what about ships using plasma cannons and lasers. A PP supply required by ships to maintain systems could be used or this could be ammo instead. So what happens if there is no supply. % of plasma cannons wont work. Not enough crew, % lasers wont work. Or not enough ammo % of lasers wont work.
Geoff the Medio wrote: -Resupply replenishes Y units of fuel per turn, and Z missile ammo, crew or fighters
Wouldn't it be easy if fuel, ammo and crew, etc were all replenished by the same value X.
Geoff the Medio wrote: -To have a supply route to a system:
--System must be within X starlane jumps of a supply source.
Maybe. But it could create problems where the player has to make sure that there is a mine within range of a factory at every part of the empire. It may just be easier if the player has to only worry about the ratios of source to sink throughout the entire empire. So as long as there are 5 mines and 5 factories, then ratios are 1:1 and therefore excellent.
Geoff the Medio wrote: -A system being in supply lets a player have visibility into that system, even if there are no player-owned ships in the system
Are you saying, that no supply means no visiblity?
Geoff the Medio wrote: --The player can't see into systems that could be supplied if other systems weren't blocked, and the player can't see whether these systems woudl be blocked if supply could get up to them
What?
Geoff the Medio wrote: -No % supply effects due to blockage of supply routes. A system is either in supply or not.
Agree. This makes sense, as if you knew there was a blockade, supply would be diverted. And blockades are often always announced first, like war is declared. But note, that supply being blocked is not lost. It is sent to a sink, if it can. Otherwise it is stockpiled. So it is stockpiled at the source, the sink (if it is getting to much) or used by the sink.
Geoff the Medio wrote: --Reduction in rate of supply may occur if a supply route to a system is longer than it would otherwise have to be due to another system being blocked, but this is not presented as a reduction or % rate of supply
---The actual rate of supply and effects of distance may vary over the course of the game, so assuming distance effects can be simply expressed a % of maximum rate is premature
Yes, this needs decision. I say we just let supply flow freely over any distance. But as I have said above, when a supply route is created, there is a cost. The cost is greater with distance as you need more police, more fuel/repair stations and other infrastucture. Though note, that this infrastructure is useless to millitary/player controlled ships and only serves a use for the invisible supply ships (which would not actually be modelled).
Geoff the Medio wrote: -"Pirates" or other supply disruption events can occur, which just prevent supply routes from passing through a system until they are resolved - these function just like any other blocking of a system
We could make pirates a random special, a blockade that occurs and is not representitive of any empire. You just have to kill the pirates that are there (real ships). The other way, is that there could be mini empires that are 'pirates'.
Geoff the Medio wrote: --One possibility is that, with appropriate tech, there becomes available a project on the production queue which extends the range that supply lines can extend. There may be several levels of this project, costing increasingly more. If the project is funded, then that turn supply lines extend an additional jump away from supply sources.
---I'm slightly wary of such a system though, as it seems rather un-fun to me. I imaging every turn going and checking on all fleets, seeing how long I need my supply routes to be this turn, then moving the "extend supply lines" project higher or lower in the production queue accordingly...
--Instead, there could just be projects or techs that permanently extend supply lines (at significant cost)
I've addressed this above. Basically I think techs can just lower supply route costs, especially for longer supply routes.
Geoff the Medio wrote: -I'm not sure whether supply should actually cost anything to provide. Presumably ships have some maintenance cost already... is there any particular reason that resupplying them needs to cost more?
No, they can be what they cost. We just need to charge for creating supply routes.

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Geoff the Medio
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#64 Post by Geoff the Medio »

utilae wrote:...players would just create supply routes between all colonies.
This thread is not about supply between colonies. It is about getting fuel, ammo and crew (etc.) to ships that are away from your colonies. Mines and factories or stockpiles are irrelivant.

If your various suggestions for the player to manually create supply routes are meant to apply to fleets, then no. It's not practical or desirable to require the player to manually re-plot supply routes every time they move every ship to a new system.
Now, this will give us micromanagement issues. I think we should just assume maximum speed and 1 unit of fuel used per starlane jump. Maybe each starlane could have a length in fuel units and that is how much fuel is used. Fuel would be used per turn per starlane. Eg a starlane has a fuel length of 3. To travel through would cost 3 fuel, regardless of whether it takes 1 turn or 7 turns.
This is self contradictory and irrelivant to the claimed problem.

Regarding the specific suggestion of variable-cost starlanes, if there's a reason to add this, we can, but you haven't provided one.
Geoff the Medio wrote: -Resupply replenishes Y units of fuel per turn, and Z missile ammo, crew or fighters
Wouldn't it be easy if fuel, ammo and crew, etc were all replenished by the same value X.
The value of "one missile" is totally different from the value of "one unit of fuel". They need to be balanced separately.
Geoff the Medio wrote: --The player can't see into systems that could be supplied if other systems weren't blocked, and the player can't see whether these systems woudl be blocked if supply could get up to them
What?
There are five systems in a row, as so:

A----B----C----D----E

Player has a supply source in system A. The player can send supplies up to 3 starlane jumps from system A. So, if there is nothing in the way, supplies could be sent to systems A, B, C or D.

Suppose there is an enemy fleet in system C.

No supplies can get past system C, so no supplies could get to a fleet of the player's located in system D.

If the player has no ships in (and thus no visibility into) system C, the player would be aware that something in system C is blocking supplies, but would not know what it was.

Unless the player has a ship in system D, the player would not know if there was anything in system D that could block supplies from passing that system. The player also wouldn't know anything else about what's in system D, as s/he has no visibility into that system.

The player would know what is in system B, as there is nothing blocking a supply route (or visibility) from A to B.

The visibility stuff works similarly to visibility within or near culture borders in Civ3, except that you can't see past enemy fleets. This is relevant to supply routes because it's important that the player know where there are blockages to supply routes to fleets, and keeping visible systems the same as supplyable systems makes thing simpler and easier to understand and plan around.

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utilae
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#65 Post by utilae »

Geoff the Medio wrote: This thread is not about supply between colonies. It is about getting fuel, ammo and crew (etc.) to ships that are away from your colonies. Mines and factories or stockpiles are irrelivant.
Ok, I assumed that whatever supply system was used would work the same for ships and colonies, with minor differences.
Geoff the Medio wrote: If your various suggestions for the player to manually create supply routes are meant to apply to fleets, then no. It's not practical or desirable to require the player to manually re-plot supply routes every time they move every ship to a new system.
No, I wasn't going to have the player do that for ships. I think I would rather abstract supply to ships through some means other than supply routes. If they are in a supplied system, they are 100% supplied. If they are not, then if they are within range/radius X of supplied system, they are x% supplied. If not, they are not supplied. Something like that.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Now, this will give us micromanagement issues. I think we should just assume maximum speed and 1 unit of fuel used per starlane jump. Maybe each starlane could have a length in fuel units and that is how much fuel is used. Fuel would be used per turn per starlane. Eg a starlane has a fuel length of 3. To travel through would cost 3 fuel, regardless of whether it takes 1 turn or 7 turns.
This is self contradictory and irrelivant to the claimed problem.

Regarding the specific suggestion of variable-cost starlanes, if there's a reason to add this, we can, but you haven't provided one.
It is relevent, considering I was rehashing your fuel idea. And I don't see the contradiction. Regardless, I still think it is simpler this way, rather than multiple speeds and different fuel usages at different speeds. If they player has to decided whether to make his ships go slow or fast to use less or more fuel, is that not bad micromanagement.


Also, side note. It was brought up before:
"If engine tech only allows 5 turns to get from A to B, then how can supply get there faster?"
I have the answer:
Assume a mine A produces 1 pp per turn. And a factory B uses 1 pp per turn. Fastest engine tech means it takes 5 turns for 1 pp to get from A to B. Oh No. Well, all this means, is that the first shipment takes 5 turns. So the factory does not start until 5 turns are over, and the pp has arived. Since 1 pp is getting to the factory each turn, the factory only has to wait 5 turns for the first shipment and not for any other shipment. Thus, pps travel instantly, except for the initial 5 turn delay.

This probably gets more complex, but that is the simplest answer to that problem.

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Tortanick
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#66 Post by Tortanick »

Geoff the Medio wrote: -Ships all have default minimum speed that requires and consumes no fuel
I don't like the idea of optional speeds, in the home systems with easy access to supply people will always travel at maximum speed. While I think there should be a home field advantage that's a bit too big.

Also if its the default speed that implies its not actually that slow, so travelling anywhere thanks to infinite fuel is possible, it shouldn't be.
Geoff the Medio wrote:-All ships consume equal amount, 1 unit or "1 jump", of fuel per starlane jump
-Ships using fuel travel at different speeds (depends on engine, ship mass, etc.), but always consume one unit of fuel to start a jump along a starlane
I'm not sure about always using the same fuel but that's for another thread. but if so use 100 fuel, that way when creating ship components it becomes possible to have 150 fuel tanks, 3 for the price of 2.

Geoff the Medio wrote: -Missile ammo, fighters, and crew are consumed similarly to fuel, but only during battles (and perhaps special events)
-Ships need missiles and fighters to fire or launch
--Not having any means those weapons can't be used
-Ships need crews to function
--Having insufficient crew has combat or other penalties, or allows the ship to be boarded and captured more easily
-Similarly to fuel, ships in a fleet can pool their crew and ammo
This is nice, but I would give all guns ammo not just missiles, weather it is pellets of anti-matter, gas that's superheated by plasma cannons, missiles or replacement laser focusing lenses. All the various types of ammo are abstracted into a single value of stored ammo.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Ship damage / repair:

-Ships can be damaged in battle or by events
-Ship damage is much more difficult to repair than it is to replenish fuel or other supplies
-Fleets are more likely to need to return to a starbase or other suitable repair location to repair damage
-Specialized repair ships may exist that function away from repair locations
All good, I'd limit the abilities of repair ships, they can fix up the hull and do minor repairs to components but nothing more. That's a discussion for another thread though.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Supply routes and resupply:

-Ships starting a turn in a system can be resupplied on that turn if the system is or has a supply route to a supply source
-Resupply replenishes Y units of fuel per turn, and Z missile ammo, crew or fighters
--Y and Z may vary depending on distance to supply point or tech, or may be fixed (eg. always 1 unit per turn)
Now why is this more complicated system better than a simpler system of "if distance to a supply source < X, supply, ammo and crew are set to 100%?"
Geoff the Medio wrote: -To have a supply route to a system:
---Sources include any colonized planet, or specialized supply depots that may be built

I don't really like the idea of supply dumps, I just can't see them adding much.
Geoff the Medio wrote: -Supply routes should be able to exist far enough away from supply sources that blocking supply routes becomes possible. If supply routes are only ~3 jumps long, then it's not likely that it will be possible to get blocking ships between an enemy fleet and their source of supply (in addition to it being too hard to actually get a fleet far from your colonies...)
This kind of supply should be short range since its designed to keep ships inside you're territory supplied, I support blockades more to prevent you're colony sending supply into an enemy empire one star lane away than as a real tactic. I always felt there should a second kind of supply lane for exploration and invasions, that's the one you can realistically blockade.
Geoff the Medio wrote:-There should be some player choice in determining supply range. I like the suggestion of putting supply on the production queue, but I have a specific proposal for how it should work.
Why, what dose it add? You're right to say its un-fun. I think you shouldn't manage supply for fleets inside or near you're empire at all, it just happens.

Geoff the Medio wrote:-I'm not sure whether supply should actually cost anything to provide. Presumably ships have some maintenance cost already... is there any particular reason that resupplying them needs to cost more?
Resupply should be free, it will keep jumping up and down as you're ships change orders and that prevents good economic planning. Per ship maintenance already covers the cost of active ships so leave it at that.


Problems:
Geoff the Medio wrote:-Want to make very large ships slow and short-range, but having all ships consume one unit of fuel per turn to move makes this difficult
--Can distinguish ship sizes just by speed of movement...
---Can't have "fast-long", "fast-short" and "slow-short" as separate speed-range combos
--Could have very large (shorter range) ships have smaller fuel tanks (in turns) than medium (longer range) ships...
---Difficult to explain this
fast-long, fast-short and slow-short can be done in the ship design screen. If you have lots of engines and fuel tanks fast-long. Lots of engines and weapons with few fuel tanks: fast-short. Few engines and fuel tanks for more fire-power, you get the idea ;)
Geoff the Medio wrote: If your various suggestions for the player to manually create supply routes are meant to apply to fleets, then no. It's not practical or desirable to require the player to manually re-plot supply routes every time they move every ship to a new system.
Where did you get that idea from? Applied common sense means that manually created supply routes to supply ships will automatically readjust every time the relivent ships change system. As for manually plotting them, that could be automatic too, all the player dose is design, build and assign the ships that will run the supply route.
utilae wrote: No, I wasn't going to have the player do that for ships. I think I would rather abstract supply to ships through some means other than supply routes. If they are in a supplied system, they are 100% supplied. If they are not, then if they are within range/radius X of supplied system, they are x% supplied. If not, they are not supplied. Something like that.
Far better to have ships store their supplies, if they are in supply they're stores are refilling, if they are out of supply they're reliant on their stocks.
utilae wrote: One thing is that missile ships, having ammo will be subject to supply problems. But what about ships using plasma cannons and lasers. A PP supply required by ships to maintain systems could be used or this could be ammo instead. So what happens if there is no supply. % of plasma cannons wont work. Not enough crew, % lasers wont work. Or not enough ammo % of lasers wont work.
I disagree, all weapons will work, then half way through the battle when the ammo runs out they all stop.
utilae wrote:
"If engine tech only allows 5 turns to get from A to B, then how can supply get there faster?"
I have the answer:
Assume a mine A produces 1 pp per turn. And a factory B uses 1 pp per turn. Fastest engine tech means it takes 5 turns for 1 pp to get from A to B. Oh No. Well, all this means, is that the first shipment takes 5 turns. So the factory does not start until 5 turns are over, and the pp has arived. Since 1 pp is getting to the factory each turn, the factory only has to wait 5 turns for the first shipment and not for any other shipment. Thus, pps travel instantly, except for the initial 5 turn delay.
The simplest awnser is "Screw Realism, it gets their instantly anyway" ;) unless the 5 turn delay is shown to have gamplay value ignore it. The explanation is good though :)

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Geoff the Medio
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#67 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Tortanick wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:-Ships all have default minimum speed that requires and consumes no fuel
I don't like the idea of optional speeds, in the home systems with easy access to supply people will always travel at maximum speed. While I think there should be a home field advantage that's a bit too big.
The "default minimum speed" was not meant to be an optional speed. The idea is that your ships travel at normal fast speed whenever they have fuel. When they don't have fuel, they travel very slowly. You don't get to pick which is used at any given time.
Also if its the default speed that implies its not actually that slow, so travelling anywhere thanks to infinite fuel is possible, it shouldn't be.
The unfueled speed is meant to be quite slow - slow enough that it's rarely useful to travel any significant distance without fuel. You could theoretically travel across the galaxy without fuel, but it would likely take a hundred or more turns.
...I would give all guns ammo not just missiles...
It doesn't have to be just missles that have ammo, but we shouldn't assume that all weapons will need ammo. Needing ammo or not could be an important balancing method or distinction between weapon types.
Geoff the Medio wrote:-Resupply replenishes Y units of fuel per turn, and Z missile ammo, crew or fighters
--Y and Z may vary depending on distance to supply point or tech, or may be fixed (eg. always 1 unit per turn)
Now why is this more complicated system better than a simpler system of "if distance to a supply source < X, supply, ammo and crew are set to 100%?"
It's likely a matter of balance...

It may be too easy to replenish fuel and ammo if you just have to be within supply range for one turn to be instantly fully replenished. This might make it too hard to use attrition warfare, in which you weaken a large enemy fleet by using up its fuel and ammo, because it's too easy for that fleet to replenish with just a single turn of being supplied.
Geoff the Medio wrote:-To have a supply route to a system:
---Sources include any colonized planet, or specialized supply depots that may be built
I don't really like the idea of supply dumps, I just can't see them adding much.
Whether or not they'd be useful depends on balancing, and how far supplyable range is without them. They may be redundant in practice, but we should acknowledge the possibility that they might be needed... or that there might be other sources of supply than just your colonies.
This kind of supply should be short range since its designed to keep ships inside you're territory supplied, I support blockades more to prevent you're colony sending supply into an enemy empire one star lane away than as a real tactic. I always felt there should a second kind of supply lane for exploration and invasions, that's the one you can realistically blockade.
I'm not sure what your general point is here, but why do we need more than one type of supply line? Can't one set of rules work for determining whether fleets inside or outside your immediate empire area can be resupplied?
Geoff the Medio wrote:-There should be some player choice in determining supply range. I like the suggestion of putting supply on the production queue, but I have a specific proposal for how it should work.
Why, what dose it add? You're right to say its un-fun. I think you shouldn't manage supply for fleets inside or near you're empire at all, it just happens.
Depending how things are balanced, being able to chose whether or not to put resources towards making your fleets be able to resupply when further a way might be an interesting an low-micromangement choice. Presumably we'll have techs or other factors that determine how long supply lines are, so there's no reason to say there couldn't be an ongoing project on the production queue to do the same. Having a single or a few projects like this is pretty close to "it just happens", in that other than putting the project on the queue, or researching the tech, there's no additional player interaction required.
Resupply should be free, it will keep jumping up and down as you're ships change orders and that prevents good economic planning.
Good observation. There will be enough variations in available resources already without having to worry about how much resupplying a fleet will cost.
fast-long, fast-short and slow-short can be done in the ship design screen. If you have lots of engines and fuel tanks fast-long. Lots of engines and weapons with few fuel tanks: fast-short. Few engines and fuel tanks for more fire-power, you get the idea ;)
This was about balancing the ship sizes. To make the sizes different, there has to be limits on how much the specific ship desigin can move one size can into another size's area of strengths (eg. with regard to things like speed or range).
Far better to have ships store their supplies, if they are in supply they're stores are refilling, if they are out of supply they're reliant on their stocks.
That contradicts your above suggestion: "if distance to a supply source < X, supply, ammo and crew are set to 100%?" (Or perhaps you see why we might want a more complicated supply refilling system?)

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eleazar
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#68 Post by eleazar »

Here's an example of a longer fleet supply line as i envisage them.
Green is blockading Red at Arneb, however Red can easily cut off Green's supply line by moving part of the fleet from Kilja to Fetter.

Notice the dots grow further apart as the supply line gets longer and thus provides less.

Image

Tortanick wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote: -Missile ammo, fighters, and crew are consumed similarly to fuel, but only during battles (and perhaps special events)
-Ships need missiles and fighters to fire or launch
--Not having any means those weapons can't be used
-Ships need crews to function
--Having insufficient crew has combat or other penalties, or allows the ship to be boarded and captured more easily
-Similarly to fuel, ships in a fleet can pool their crew and ammo
This is nice, but I would give all guns ammo not just missiles, weather it is pellets of anti-matter, gas that's superheated by plasma cannons, missiles or replacement laser focusing lenses. All the various types of ammo are abstracted into a single value of stored ammo.
That's not a very useful abstraction. In battle the player will fire exponentially more PD pellets than Doom-Bringer missiles. A single Ammo meter makes no sense if it amalgamates both kinds of "ammo". The solution is to not keep track of the petty ammo (which would be clutter in the UI anyway) and just keep track of the big, powerful stuff. Thus if you don't count bullets in the battlefield, they don't need to be counted or combined into a clumsy abstraction in resupply.
Tortanick wrote:
utilae wrote:"If engine tech only allows 5 turns to get from A to B, then how can supply get there faster?"
I have the answer...
The simplest answer is "Screw Realism, it gets their instantly anyway" ;) unless the 5 turn delay is shown to have gamplay value ignore it. The explanation is good though :)
That's basically the correct answer, though we may explain it to the player differently. In truth, it's only a problem of logistics, which are not fun, and therefore, by the player. Presumably as Emperor you have a legion or tacticians who anticipate the positions of the fleet, and make sure sufficient supplies are en-route beforehand.

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#69 Post by Tortanick »

I disagree, if you make the simplistic assumption that the point defence and doombringer missile fire as often as they reload, and give them a large gap in reloading times, 1s and 10s for simplicity then over time track how many shots are fired.

Every row is 10 seconds past the previous one.

Doombringer PD
0 0
1 10
2 20
3 30

that's not an exponential difference, at all times the PD is exactly 10x more shots than the doombringer. In a more complex model I'd guess that the balance actually tips in the doombringer's favour, for example its got a longer range and can start firing earlier and is less likely to run out of targets. The only time a weapon's shots will be exponentual to battle time is if the weapon's rate of fire increases during the battle, that ability could be rejected for all weapons or worked around (fire and extra shots come out rather than actually fire faster)


Furthermore there are good gameplay reasons for making PD weaponry dependent on ammo, if a player labourously works to cut all supply lies to the supershipofdoom then after its ammo stocks are depleted he should be able to watch with glee while his ships destroy it with no resistance, PD retaliating against his fighters would ruin the fun of watching you're ships destroy a defenseless enemy super ship and imagining the crew panicking. In gameplay terms you could probably stick to long range weaponry and win with zero losses but it just isn't the same.

What's more a rare case situation of is a player who over uses fighters and manages to remove all ammo to that same supership then watches it safely return home because his fighters can't touch it. He may deserve to be punished for overusing fighters but he earned that kill and the PD weapons should be down.



I really like that map its almost identical to how I see things, the only major difference between that and my vision is that there would be military ships travelling on a constant trip between Asterope and Arneb delivering fresh supplies. They could attempt to run for the warp point despite a blockade, or attack the blockading fleet using a standard battle to determine the result.

The ships involved would be designed and built like any other, their effectiveness as supply ships will be determined by what you give them during design and of course the length of the supply route, if they use all their fuel travelling from Asterope and Arneb then back again they naturally cannot refuel the Arneb fleet, they can still provide ammo though.


I do have some questions about the map in general, not talking about the differences in you're or my design.

Assuming the empires don't have a treaty that allows supply ships past (since the dotted line doesn't take the fast route through Kilja) should Olympus have supply from both empire's or should it be effectively a blockade for both?

And do you think that perhaps Graffias ---- Asterope and Graffias --- Sualocin (among others) should be bright green lines to represent that while the colonies are not shipping supplies to empty space, they could if there was something their, like a fleet. Or the dotted line could stop at Graffias where the ships are met by a delegation from Asterope saving them from an uneccacary jump.





Geoff the Medio wrote:
Tortanick wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:-Ships all have default minimum speed that requires and consumes no fuel
I don't like the idea of optional speeds, in the home systems with easy access to supply people will always travel at maximum speed. While I think there should be a home field advantage that's a bit too big.
The "default minimum speed" was not meant to be an optional speed. The idea is that your ships travel at normal fast speed whenever they have fuel. When they don't have fuel, they travel very slowly. You don't get to pick which is used at any given time.
New information has removed my objections. Consider them withdrawn.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
...I would give all guns ammo not just missiles...
It doesn't have to be just missles that have ammo, but we shouldn't assume that all weapons will need ammo. Needing ammo or not could be an important balancing method or distinction between weapon types.
True you could have weapons that don't need ammo, but doing so would mean that even after wearing a supership's ammo down to nothing you couldn't laugh manically / smoke a fine cigar and watch a compleatly helpless ship get destoryed. If you can find a gameplay reason that's more important than this the use of ammoless weapons is fine by me but it becomes a value judgement at this point.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:-Resupply replenishes Y units of fuel per turn, and Z missile ammo, crew or fighters
--Y and Z may vary depending on distance to supply point or tech, or may be fixed (eg. always 1 unit per turn)
Now why is this more complicated system better than a simpler system of "if distance to a supply source < X, supply, ammo and crew are set to 100%?"
It's likely a matter of balance...
Good point, although of the two are close then I think we should favour the simpler machanisum, especially because of just how easily you can show it on the map.
Geoff the Medio wrote:It may be too easy to replenish fuel and ammo if you just have to be within supply range for one turn to be instantly fully replenished. This might make it too hard to use attrition warfare, in which you weaken a large enemy fleet by using up its fuel and ammo, because it's too easy for that fleet to replenish with just a single turn of being supplied.


Thats a feature not a bug ;), I think massive resistance to attrition warfare is part of the home advantage. Of course attrition by damage still works, just not ammo attrition.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:-To have a supply route to a system:
---Sources include any colonized planet, or specialized supply depots that may be built
I don't really like the idea of supply dumps, I just can't see them adding much.
Whether or not they'd be useful depends on balancing, and how far supplyable range is without them. They may be redundant in practice, but we should acknowledge the possibility that they might be needed... or that there might be other sources of supply than just your colonies.
Ok, I don't think so but I'm happy to admit I may be wrong on this.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
This kind of supply should be short range since its designed to keep ships inside you're territory supplied, I support blockades more to prevent you're colony sending supply into an enemy empire one star lane away than as a real tactic. I always felt there should a second kind of supply lane for exploration and invasions, that's the one you can realistically blockade.
I'm not sure what your general point is here, but why do we need more than one type of supply line? Can't one set of rules work for determining whether fleets inside or outside your immediate empire area can be resupplied?
My point is that the idea of distance from home being the only model of supply is too simple for invasion fleets and such, because if the opponent is too far from you're colonies you can't invade him without being totally dependant on a fixed amount of supplies you brought with you. You need some way, of moving the supply's a long way from home, if done right managing supply for an invasion could be part of the fun. However a simple system of distance to the nearest planet is perfect for ships at home because its simple to the point of ignorable.

Don't forget that not all wars will be faught between empire with nearby systems. I myself actually want a map type with a desert of useless stars dotted with "oasises" of good ones.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Depending how things are balanced, being able to chose whether or not to put resources towards making your fleets be able to resupply when further a way might be an interesting an low-micromangement choice. Presumably we'll have techs or other factors that determine how long supply lines are, so there's no reason to say there couldn't be an ongoing project on the production queue to do the same. Having a single or a few projects like this is pretty close to "it just happens", in that other than putting the project on the queue, or researching the tech, there's no additional player interaction required.
Its not that its micromangement, its just the natural extension of my desire for two seprate systems for long and short range supply management, having a option to extend short range supply strikes me as unnecessary, I can't actually think of a single good reason for it. If one comes up I lean towards reserach rather than production as the extension method

Geoff the Medio wrote:This was about balancing the ship sizes. To make the sizes different, there has to be limits on how much the specific ship desigin can move one size can into another size's area of strengths (eg. with regard to things like speed or range).
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Far better to have ships store their supplies, if they are in supply they're stores are refilling, if they are out of supply they're reliant on their stocks.
That contradicts your above suggestion: "if distance to a supply source < X, supply, ammo and crew are set to 100%?" (Or perhaps you see why we might want a more complicated supply refilling system?)
[/quote]
by set to 100% I mean that the stores become full, they move from whatever/120 fuel to 120/120 fuel.

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#70 Post by eleazar »

Geoff had quite a bit in his post about visibility and fog-of-war. I'd like address that subject, but i think it should be part of another topic because this one can be developed independently. I do agree that blocks should be as obvious as possible, but all the criterion may not be fulfill-able.
Tortanick wrote:that map its almost identical to how I see things, the only major difference between that and my vision is that there would be military ships travelling on a constant trip between Asterope and Arneb delivering fresh supplies. They could attempt to run for the warp point despite a blockade, or attack the blockading fleet using a standard battle to determine the result.
I really don't want to "fight" a dozens of boring try-to-run-my-supply-ships-across-the-system battles. If you have enough firepower there for a real fight, then that conflict can be be carried out as part of your normal fleet attacking a blockade.
Tortanick wrote:Assuming the empires don't have a treaty that allows supply ships past (since the dotted line doesn't take the fast route through Kilja) should Olympus have supply from both empire's or should it be effectively a blockade for both?
In that example Olympus is a system where both sides have colonies, but neither side has a military presence. If the military situation were different, the supply routes of one or both would be cut off.
Tortanick wrote:And do you think that perhaps Graffias ---- Asterope and Graffias --- Sualocin (among others) should be bright green lines to represent that while the colonies are not shipping supplies to empty space, they could if there was something their, like a fleet. Or the dotted line could stop at Graffias where the ships are met by a delegation from Asterope saving them from an uneccacary jump.
No. (if i understand you) That would obscure which systems are actually part of supply routes if there were green lines going nowhere.

Geoff the Medio wrote:The "default minimum speed" was not meant to be an optional speed. The idea is that your ships travel at normal fast speed whenever they have fuel. When they don't have fuel, they travel very slowly. You don't get to pick which is used at any given time.
OK, it seems our concept of fuel is the same now, with the exception of what to do when the fuel-tank is empty (or at least too low to make a jump.) Since the numbers are guesses we'll assume that the numbers are such that overall fuel-less travel time is the same.

The main practical difference, is with my proposed method of sitting idle for X number of turns to gather enough fuel to make 1 jump, the ship is more of a sitting duck, and it's also more useful.
It's more of a sitting duck because it doesn't get to linger, immune from harm, during it's slow passage through the SL.
It also can serve the purpose of an observation post.

But my first reason is that it made conceptually more sense. If "fuel" is used only when initiating a jump, and the length of travel within a SL depends on engine tech, it's rather convoluted to reverse it when fuel is gone, and allow fuel-less jumps but at greatly increased travel time which otherwise would have nothing to do with fuel. Either "fuel" is used only for jumping, or it should consistently effect other systems.

Sure technobabble could be devised to explain it, but it's much cleaner to explain it thus:
• "Jump Fuel" is consumed only when opening/entering a SL.
• The speed of travel within a SL is dependent on the SL-Engine tech (powered —like most systems— by a nearly inexhaustible reaction) and the mass of the ship.
• An idle ship automatically gathers/generates jump fuel, but it takes several turns to get enough for a single jump.

Tortanick wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:
Now why is this more complicated system better than a simpler system of "if distance to a supply source < X, supply, ammo and crew are set to 100%?"
It's likely a matter of balance...
Good point, although of the two are close then I think we should favour the simpler machanisum, especially because of just how easily you can show it on the map.
If you take into account that your proposal has 2 different types of supply lines with totally different rules, yours certainly is not the simplest. It's really unfair to compare half of your resupply proposal to the entirety of another.

Also there is no difficulty displaying "resupply that vary depending on distance to supply point". I've already provided an obvious mock up.
Tortanick wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:I'm not sure what your general point is here, but why do we need more than one type of supply line? Can't one set of rules work for determining whether fleets inside or outside your immediate empire area can be resupplied?
My point is that the idea of distance from home being the only model of supply is too simple for invasion fleets and such, because if the opponent is too far from you're colonies you can't invade him without being totally dependant on a fixed amount of supplies you brought with you. You need some way, of moving the supply's a long way from home, if done right managing supply for an invasion could be part of the fun. However a simple system of distance to the nearest planet is perfect for ships at home because its simple to the point of ignorable.

Don't forget that not all wars will be faught between empire with nearby systems.
Actually the inability to launch a fleet all the way across an empty galaxy is an intended feature. Calling it "too simple" is like calling warfare in the Roman world "too simple" because they couldn't directly attack Britain from Italy. But warfare could take place across those distances. Intermediate bases of operations need to be established, some sort of production created closer to the intended target— or allies found who can lengthen your Planetary Supply Routes with their own. The process is actually richer in strategy (and counter-strategy) than merely launching a fleet across the empty width of the galaxy, and wracking up a huge bill in cargo ship maintenance

Geoff the Medio wrote:This was about balancing the ship sizes. To make the sizes different, there has to be limits on how much the specific ship desigin can move one size can into another size's area of strengths (eg. with regard to things like speed or range).
Well you can also adjust the size of the fuel reserve.

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#71 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Addenda to my above suggestions:
-Ships have a fuel capacity. Different ships have different capacities for fuel.
-Unlike crew and ammo, (most?) ships cannot transfer fuel to one another. Each ship must be separately refueled. This eliminates the need to micromange transfer of fuel from a fleet's pooled supply to a few ships that want to travel further away from the fleet than they would otherwise be able, and it eliminates the possilbity of cheating the intention of the supply system through micromanagement by shuttling fuel-carrying ships back and forth to a fleet.
Tortanick wrote:...distance from home being the only model of supply is too simple for invasion fleets and such, because if the opponent is too far from you're colonies you can't invade him without being totally dependant on a fixed amount of supplies you brought with you.
Making conducting extended battles far away from your supply lines difficult, we motivate slower, more careful expansion, and the increase the importance of galactic geography, tactical positions, and shape of empires. The alternative, having battles work too easily anywhere regardless of where empires actually are, moves the combat game more towards just being a battle of who can produce more ships.

Also, making getting supply far from your bases difficult motivates the design, production and use of long-range self-sufficient force-projection ships, which are distinct from shorter-range ships that can only be used near home.

It also makes it important to establish a source of supply near a remote empire if you want to conduct extended wars far from your main production base / sources of supply. This might be done by constructing supply depots to extend your supplable range, or by using a carefully planned strike (military or via alternative warfare or equilvalents) to capture a local source of supply as the first step in conducting a larger war.

Alternatively, you could research techs or invest in infrastructure that allows you to have extra-long supply lines... But these would remain vulnerable to being cut by smaller enemy fleets behind your invasion fleet with the express purpose of cutting off your supplies.
eleazar wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:When [ships] don't have fuel, they travel very slowly.
[Alternative: Ships sit] idle for X number of turns to gather enough fuel to make 1 jump... [like] a sitting duck because it doesn't get to linger, immune from harm, during it's slow passage through the SL.
It also can serve the purpose of an observation post.
Those are good points, and automatic fuel regeneration is a good alternative. It may be possible to include both, as both serve a similar main purpose (what to do with ships out of fuel, since they shouldn't be stuck indefinitely), and differ just in the details.

That said, I'm not sure having a ship stuck on a starlane for several turns doing nothing, even if it's not vulnerable during that time, is really a benefit. Presumably the ship/fleet is visible moving along the starlane, and thus open to being caught when it comes out, and you're not getting any benefit from the ship(s) while they make the crossing (and potentially are paying maintenance in the meanwhile...)
But my first reason is that it made conceptually more sense. If "fuel" is used only when initiating a jump, and the length of travel within a SL depends on engine tech, it's rather convoluted to reverse it when fuel is gone, and allow fuel-less jumps but at greatly increased travel time which otherwise would have nothing to do with fuel. Either "fuel" is used only for jumping, or it should consistently effect other systems.
A similar argument could be made about supply... should ships self-supply in addition to getting supply from supply lines?

That said, there should be some sort of functionality along these lines, perhaps with specialized supply / fuel generating ships being able to supply the rest of a fleet, in order for fully nomadic empires to be able to exist in the game, consistent with the rest of the rules.

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#72 Post by utilae »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Addenda to my above suggestions:
-Ships have a fuel capacity. Different ships have different capacities for fuel.
-Unlike crew and ammo, (most?) ships cannot transfer fuel to one another. Each ship must be separately refueled. This eliminates the need to micromange transfer of fuel from a fleet's pooled supply to a few ships that want to travel further away from the fleet than they would otherwise be able, and it eliminates the possilbity of cheating the intention of the supply system through micromanagement by shuttling fuel-carrying ships back and forth to a fleet.
Ok. Thats good.

But, I liked the idea of a shared pool for fuel, maybe in the shared pool system, ships that leave initiate an automatic effect where all ships in the fleet are alloacted even amounts of fuel. The ships leave. Then the remaining ships in the fleet have all there fuel shared again.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Making conducting extended battles far away from your supply lines difficult, we motivate slower, more careful expansion, and the increase the importance of galactic geography, tactical positions, and shape of empires. The alternative, having battles work too easily anywhere regardless of where empires actually are, moves the combat game more towards just being a battle of who can produce more ships.
Yes, this is what we want (the first part of the quote). Though, I still havn't (I think) seen much discussion on how exactly supply lines will be created and used between ships and colonies/supply depots.
Geoff the Medio wrote: That said, I'm not sure having a ship stuck on a starlane for several turns doing nothing, even if it's not vulnerable during that time, is really a benefit. Presumably the ship/fleet is visible moving along the starlane, and thus open to being caught when it comes out, and you're not getting any benefit from the ship(s) while they make the crossing (and potentially are paying maintenance in the meanwhile...)
Yes, it goes against your goal of having no ships stuck in the middle of starlanes. But, I think if we have a safety mode, where ships can only move somewhere if they can get back into supply, then players who don't use the safety mode and get stuck are at fault.
Geoff the Medio wrote: A similar argument could be made about supply... should ships self-supply in addition to getting supply from supply lines?

That said, there should be some sort of functionality along these lines, perhaps with specialized supply / fuel generating ships being able to supply the rest of a fleet, in order for fully nomadic empires to be able to exist in the game, consistent with the rest of the rules.
I like the idea of nomadic empires. And want that feature. So how are we going to do it. I supose, there has to be a ship that is self sufficient, able to produce supply and be a source for supply. As though the ship has a factory, a farm, a mine, to produce pp, food and minerals.

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#73 Post by Tortanick »

eleazar wrote:
Tortanick wrote:that map its almost identical to how I see things, the only major difference between that and my vision is that there would be military ships travelling on a constant trip between Asterope and Arneb delivering fresh supplies. They could attempt to run for the warp point despite a blockade, or attack the blockading fleet using a standard battle to determine the result.
I really don't want to "fight" a dozens of boring try-to-run-my-supply-ships-across-the-system battles. If you have enough firepower there for a real fight, then that conflict can be be carried out as part of your normal fleet attacking a blockade.
If you have enough firepower then the battle could be you're supply ships trying to destroy the blockaders rather than just run past them. If you don't have the firepower run for the warp point or back the way you came.
eleazar wrote: The main practical difference, is with my proposed method of sitting idle for X number of turns to gather enough fuel to make 1 jump, the ship is more of a sitting duck, and it's also more useful.
It's more of a sitting duck because it doesn't get to linger, immune from harm, during it's slow passage through the SL.
It also can serve the purpose of an observation post.
I like the sitting duck arguement

eleazar wrote: If you take into account that your proposal has 2 different types of supply lines with totally different rules, yours certainly is not the simplest. It's really unfair to compare half of your resupply proposal to the entirety of another.
No its not the simplest overall, its the simplest for the ships at home half, that's where simplicity is important.
eleazar wrote:Also there is no difficulty displaying "resupply that vary depending on distance to supply point". I've already provided an obvious mock up.
Its easy to show if any supply is getting through, hard to show the amount

eleazar wrote:
Tortanick wrote:Don't forget that not all wars will be faught between empire with nearby systems.
Actually the inability to launch a fleet all the way across an empty galaxy is an intended feature. Calling it "too simple" is like calling warfare in the Roman world "too simple" because they couldn't directly attack Britain from Italy. But warfare could take place across those distances. Intermediate bases of operations need to be established, some sort of production created closer to the intended target— or allies found who can lengthen your Planetary Supply Routes with their own. The process is actually richer in strategy (and counter-strategy) than merely launching a fleet across the empty width of the galaxy, and wracking up a huge bill in cargo ship maintenance
Well attacking anywhere is taking it to far, but some system for attacking an empire a moderate distance away and sending supplies is required to the front is required, it should be a fun and involving part of running an invasion.

Geoff the Medio wrote:Making conducting extended battles far away from your supply lines difficult, we motivate slower, more careful expansion, and the increase the importance of galactic geography, tactical positions, and shape of empires. The alternative, having battles work too easily anywhere regardless of where empires actually are, moves the combat game more towards just being a battle of who can produce more ships.
We shoudln't be enforcing any style of gameplay, attacking "anywhere" isn't a good idea, but similarly attacks shouldn't be limited to being close to home.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Also, making getting supply far from your bases difficult motivates the design, production and use of long-range self-sufficient force-projection ships, which are distinct from shorter-range ships that can only be used near home.

Such a force always will be an option if fleets can share supply and the amount of supply is customisable during ship design, however forces like this are naturally more vunerable to attrition than those reciving fresh supplies from home. Both tactics should be viable and fun to use.
Geoff the Medio wrote: It also makes it important to establish a source of supply near a remote empire if you want to conduct extended wars far from your main production base / sources of supply. This might be done by constructing supply depots to extend your supplable range, or by using a carefully planned strike (military or via alternative warfare or equilvalents) to capture a local source of supply as the first step in conducting a larger war.
I still don't like like supply depots, but the idea of capturing and oppressing a local source of supply (a colony) as the first step sounds fun. If I can't have military supply routes then I'd compromise to that.

How would you balance it though, if every captured planet starts producing supplies then there is no home field advantage for the defender, and invsion fleets would barely need to worry about supply. Something along the idea of establish a beachhead, fortify for a while then attack.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Alternatively, you could research techs or invest in infrastructure that allows you to have extra-long supply lines... But these would remain vulnerable to being cut by smaller enemy fleets behind your invasion fleet with the express purpose of cutting off your supplies
However if you use real military ships you get to have nice battles between the supply ships and the smaller fleets trying to cut you off.
Last edited by Tortanick on Tue Jun 05, 2007 10:08 am, edited 5 times in total.

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#74 Post by marhawkman »

I was only gone 2 days..... *reads through 2 pages of posts*

Okay.... It seems we need to define "supply source".

My idea:
The most common supply source would be a supply depot. These are built on planets and will ATTEMPT to fully resupply your ships. Your tech level of supply generation will determine how much supply is actually generated. (NOTE: since supply is shared between planets ships get refueled as long as your empire has the fuel they need. Too many ships and your empire just can't make enough fuel.) When you colonize a planet a supply depot is automatically built there as part of planetary colonization. (maybe have only a small one automatic and need to build a bigger one later?)

supply ships would exist as a way of producing fuel for your fleets in deep space these ships would be huge, slow and (generally) helpless.
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eleazar
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#75 Post by eleazar »

marhawkman wrote:My idea:
The most common supply source would be a supply depot. These are built on planets and will ATTEMPT to fully resupply your ships. Your tech level of supply generation will determine how much supply is actually generated. (NOTE: since supply is shared between planets ships get refueled as long as your empire has the fuel they need. Too many ships and your empire just can't make enough fuel.) When you colonize a planet a supply depot is automatically built there as part of planetary colonization. (maybe have only a small one automatic and need to build a bigger one later?)
No, that's the rejected Moo2-type approach where you need to build the same mundane buildings on nearly all your colonies. The fact that you proposed they be auto-built highlights the pointlessness of of a distinction between a planet and your "supply depots".

It's much more the FO way to have colonies produce supplies from available PP (as i've suggested). We already have an "industry" focus which can produce ships + buildings. There's no need to devise a knockoff method to produce stuff for the ships.

Other method's consistent with the FO approach:
* any colony can produce unlimited supplies
* a colony can produce an amount of supplies based on a meter like infrastructure or the amount of defense (however that will work)

These are simpler, but also more exploitable.

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