Fleets cost FP to operate

[Valiant70]

Fleets... Fleets everywhere. Well, if they worked they'd be everywhere, but hey.

In the process of getting them to work, we need a proper drawback in exchange for their potential. FP seems like the logical currency to use for this. Here are a few basic ideas for the mechanics:

• Fleets cost FP for every turn during which they are active.
• Bigger and more numerous ships cost more FP each turn.
• Losing the flagship has a FP cost similarly to a player dying.
• Overheating or taking over an enemy flagship earns faction points for you.

Seems like a waste of a good opportunity if FP and fleets don't intertwine. Your thoughts?

 

[lupoCani]

I strongly disagree.

The cost to own a fleet is the blocks to build it, same as with any other collection of ships in any other context. The only "potential" inherent in fleets is "not being a useless pile of blocks because everything has to be piloted manually" - a problem that's long overdue for a fix, not a superweapon that needs balancing.

 

[nogg]

lets get the fleets to work correctly first... and make a way for factions with few players to have a way to generate FPs, then it could be a good addition

 

[Crimson-Artist]

i'll reiterate something I posted in another thread about fleets.

I had an idea back when fleets first came out that players should only be able to have maybe 1 or 2 fleet slot natively and if they wanted more fleets they needed to build space stations and designate them as fleet home bases. This would make players have to build more space stations in order to have things like automated patrol fleets within their territory.

 

[Valiant70]

I strongly disagree.

The cost to own a fleet is the blocks to build it, same as with any other collection of ships in any other context. The only "potential" inherent in fleets is "not being a useless pile of blocks because everything has to be piloted manually" - a problem that's long overdue for a fix, not a superweapon that needs balancing.

I see your point, but you've made an error: You're not accounting for the value of a pilot. Without any cost to operate fleets, you essentially have an unlimited number of pilots. They're stupid, granted, but in theory they can fly and shoot. (They don't work in current versions of the game, but that's beside the point.) In other words, the act of piloting a ship has some worth in and of itself and shouldn't be free.

and make a way for factions with few players to have a way to generate FPs, then it could be a good addition

Official configs need to reverse the way FP works so that territory earns points. That way you earn points by claiming territory and spend some to protect it.

 

[RB101]

Fleets shouldn’t Cost FP, unless they are over a certain size.

(How this “size” is determined is a bit difficult to work out)

 

[Alendon]

For my i agree a bit, but this should be only a optional thing for servers, so you have an config where you can declare that a fleet can just have 5 free ships, with a mass of ... and all more cost fp and or are forbidden. Maybe that the defending command cost 10 fp per turn and the mining 20 per sector

 

[OfficialCoding]

This suggsetion would not work at all. It would essentially make lone wolf factions impossible. Fleets are a way to have ships without pilots. If it cost FP, people would just stop making fleets, or find a workaround.

 

[Valiant70]

This suggsetion would not work at all. It would essentially make lone wolf factions impossible. Fleets are a way to have ships without pilots. If it cost FP, people would just stop making fleets, or find a workaround.

Official configs need to reverse the way FP works so that territory earns points. That way you earn points by claiming territory and spend some to protect it.

 

[NTIMESc]

• Fleets cost FP for every turn during which they are active.
• Bigger and more numerous ships cost more FP each turn.
• Losing the flagship has a FP cost similarly to a player dying.
• Overheating or taking over an enemy flagship earns faction points for you.

Depending on what faction points are actually supposed to be simulating, this suggestion may or may not make sense. Are faction points representing consumable resources, like food and energy, that would be used to operate a fleet? Or are they representing some kind of diplomacy or influence in the galaxy?
According to the NPC faction update notes, there is already a substantial point system in place behind the scenes for diplomacy, galaxy resources, faction expansion, etc. My assumption is that eventually player fleets, which are essentially just AI/NPC fleets, will have much more autonomy, where the player will not be micromanaging them. I can imagine just designing the ships, and then issuing an order to expand into a territory.
The the npc faction config has a lot of variables already, and once its dynamics are balanced, and AI is improved (and given more functionality and autonomy) this topic may become a non-problem.
In the event that the currently planned system fails or has to be scrapped, this might be simple, quick fix to replace it, just for the sake of maintaining some level of playability.

Official configs need to reverse the way FP works so that territory earns points. That way you earn points by claiming territory and spend some to protect it.

I dislike both variations of the current faction point system. It's only purpose seems to be to make homebases vulnerable. I really hate that it can go negative just by not playing, and I also hate having to quickly go out and stake a claim on a system I'm not likely to have any influence over any time soon, just so I can start earning points. Since so many other aspects of the game need to be worked on, I'd prefer that the points system just be disabled altogether, until it has some functionality of more value.

 

[Skwidz]

I like the idea of paying your fleet captains/crew their salaries more than a turn-based fleet point system.

 

[Arcaner]

I really like this idea.
It could wonderfully go along with something I suggested not so long ago Factions Redefined (Updated! )

 

[MacThule]

Fleets... Fleets everywhere. Well, if they worked they'd be everywhere, but hey.

In the process of getting them to work, we need a proper drawback in exchange for their potential. FP seems like the logical currency to use for this. Here are a few basic ideas for the mechanics:

• Fleets cost FP for every turn during which they are active.
• Bigger and more numerous ships cost more FP each turn.
• Losing the flagship has a FP cost similarly to a player dying.
• Overheating or taking over an enemy flagship earns faction points for you.

Seems like a waste of a good opportunity if FP and fleets don't intertwine. Your thoughts?

Distance from home should also be a factor, or at least whether the fleet is in friendly territory or not. 'Cause logistics. It's absurd to be able to field huge fleets and war titans without any sort of infrastructure or notion of logistics.

The other side of this is implementing additional FP revenue from planet claims, non-HB stations in different sectors, etc.
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This suggsetion would not work at all. It would essentially make lone wolf factions impossible. Fleets are a way to have ships without pilots. If it cost FP, people would just stop making fleets, or find a workaround.

I believe that this assumes no change to current FP generation dynamics ever occurs. I would assume that if the OP feature were adopted, it would necessitate a reworking of FP so that small "lone wolf" factions were completely viable and realistic fleet deployments could be possible. I don't think we should write off a concept for changing the way FP works based on the FP currently works; it seems a circular premise. Can't change X because X doesn't allow it. Changing the way FP works is not only easy to accomplish from a technical perspective once a good vision is in place for its future, it's something much discussed in the community and some might even call it "long overdue" - the current FP system is a stub, an alpha-iteration placeholder.

 

[Pacific_Jim]

This should definitely be implemented once crews and NPCs become actually viable. Though as said the way in which FP is generated should be totally overhauled.

 

[Nosajimiki]

This is very Alt exploitable.

If I wanted to kill someone's HB, I'd enter their faction with an alt, build a ton of unarmed drones (1-to-a-fleet). Then I'd come in with my main account and blast them all until it drains the faction's FP, then go blow up the HB and steal all their resources. I also don't like the idea of FP for maintenance costs for the same reason. I could just churn out a ton of drones and fly them all 3 galaxies over where they would consume FP until they kill the HB protection.

 

[MacThule]

This is very Alt exploitable.

If I wanted to kill someone's HB, I'd enter their faction with an alt, build a ton of unarmed drones (1-to-a-fleet). Then I'd come in with my main account and blast them all until it drains the faction's FP, then go blow up the HB and steal all their resources. I also don't like the idea of FP for maintenance costs for the same reason. I could just churn out a ton of drones and fly them all 3 galaxies over where they would consume FP until they kill the HB protection.

Good point! Pretty easy to deal with though I think; nobody should be able to spawn infinite fleets under a faction's flag without proper authority. That would be lame. Lower members of factions should definitely not be able to have infinite numbers of faction fleets or forget espionage - you'll have noobs ruining factions out of sheer puppy ignorance. Fac leaders would have to be able to set numbers or total size of faction fleets a given rank could control. So a rank 4 player might only be able to command only 2 faction fleets (a mining fleet and its escort, lol) that cost faction maintenance and risks FP, I probably wouldn't let a rank 5 command anything but whatever ship they're flying, and maybe let a rank 3 command 5 or 10 so they could handle regional defense actions, garrison stations, etc. Just make the faction fleet limits fac-owner adjustable. There is still risk exposure, but no system can make players immune to misplaced trust and espionage efforts.

All that said, I don't even see FP loss on flagship death as fundamental; the main thing is FP maintenance to keep fleets standing in the first place with cost scaling by fleet power and distance from friendly territory. The flagship FP loss dynamic may unnecessarily clutter the concept.

 

[Nosajimiki]

Good point! Pretty easy to deal with though I think; nobody should be able to spawn infinite fleets under a faction's flag without proper authority. That would be lame. Lower members of factions should definitely not be able to have infinite numbers of faction fleets or forget espionage - you'll have noobs ruining factions out of sheer puppy ignorance. Fac leaders would have to be able to set numbers or total size of faction fleets a given rank could control. So a rank 4 player might only be able to command only 2 faction fleets (a mining fleet and its escort, lol) that cost faction maintenance and risks FP, I probably wouldn't let a rank 5 command anything but whatever ship they're flying, and maybe let a rank 3 command 5 or 10 so they could handle regional defense actions, garrison stations, etc. Just make the faction fleet limits fac-owner adjustable. There is still risk exposure, but no system can make players immune to misplaced trust and espionage efforts.

All that said, I don't even see FP loss on flagship death as fundamental; the main thing is FP maintenance to keep fleets standing in the first place with cost scaling by fleet power and distance from friendly territory. The flagship FP loss dynamic may unnecessarily clutter the concept.

That would help with deliberate sabotage, but there is also the issue of officer fall-off. If an officer stops playing for a few days/weeks, then the FP burden of his assets would fall on everyone else. If you make officer fleets visible/controllable by a founder, then he could in theory moderate rogue assets, but then you'd have the risk that if a founder decides to oust someone, he's have unlimited access to that person's private assets. Generally, if you are infiltrating a faction, you want to keep stuff hidden in deep space so that it can't be taken when you become discovered or so that you have a place to bleed off stolen assets to your actual faction.

 

[NaStral]

Im not sure any kind of blanket FP coast to fleets would necessarily be good. Using such a mechanic to control a fleet's total number and mass might be a good thing to prevent player excess.

 

[Nosajimiki]

If you do upkeep, it needs to be something that affects the player level, not the faction level, to prevent abuse (like crew salaries or fuel costs).

 

[MacThule]

If you do upkeep, it needs to be something that affects the player level, not the faction level, to prevent abuse (like crew salaries or fuel costs).

This then opens up abuse of factions feeding themselves alts to pump their fleet capacities.