So basically, Warcraft III's style of upkeep.

Personally, while I do think that upkeep costs should be dynamic in some fashion (not permanent once researched like they are now), I also think there needs to be a penalty for reversing upkeep costs. Otherwise, there's really no compelling reason 'not' to simply max your logistics as fast as possible.

Interesting. The cost of researching the fleet supply would still apply, and also the cost of building the ships, thus during the early game i dont think there would be much change. Upgrading supply too fast and you will find yourselve with a lot of supply but no ships. On the late game, powerful players with big fleets will have the full upkeep, if they the fleets, their upkeep goes down. Playing with the number of ships to pay low upkeep would be dificult, a ship once build is built, no way to scrap it for resources, and scuttling it means losing all the resources and time used to produce the ship.

On the bad side, the early game curve would change a little. Right now, I research the first level of supply, my upkeep is 9%, under this new system, my upkeep wouldnt be 9% until I max out the number of ships. Meaning I can have X number of ships, suffering only 3% upkeep, and would have more resources flowing in. Such a change should be closely studied to see its effects on the game pace.

Another bad thing, it could create a situation in which players end up fighting a war of attrition, by taking away the limits on our income. For example, playing in a large map, late game, full supply, my factories are 3 jumps from the nearest enemy planet. My enemy factories is also 3 jumps away from the same planet. I attack his planet, and destroy his fleet, while losing half of mine. With this new system, my enemy will have 75% more resources to make another fleet, while I still have more than 40% upkeep, plus i'll have to rebuild and upgrade the planet i captured. Thus when i move on to the next planet, i might find my enemy have rebuilt most of his fleet, while mine is only at 70% and many of my ships are still en route from my factories 3 jumps away.

I somewhat like this idea, but it has to carefully studied, as it can lead to games being decided simply by whom can make ships the fastest.

That's worse than 'whoever loses the first fleet loses the game' how?

The current method encourages snowballing. You lose a little, which hurts your ability to win more, which makes your loss easier and easier. If you lose a few ships, or even a whole fleet, it will be far harder to replace that fleet. Which is shitty, stupid design, tbh. Anything that encourages such a cascade is broken.

I've also been thinking about this lately...

I think it is more realistic for supply to be tied directly into the number of ships one has e.g. in real life, why would you ever have to build 100 supply ships when your fleet only needs 50 at present to reach full supply levels? (random example) In other games like MOO etc, each ship has a supply value (maintenance) attached to it - if you lose the most expensive ship, you notice an increase in your income because of the loss of the ship's hefty maintenance cost. I think thats the way it would be in reality. You could not build greater numbers of ships than your max supply capacity without incurring very heavy debts in these games. I think that style of supply makes sense...

I understand the arguments of ships being 'throw away units' but if you have a massive economy which you worked hard to build - why not use ships in such a way if you worked to build up that power? Is that not a potential strategy that has been curtailed by the current system? It is also only likely to happen late game anyway when other possible powerful counters exist e.g. try to destroy his economy and cost him enormously because of a huge upkeep that is now unsustainable. Also - Gabal's point about the enemy rebuilding his fleet is interesting, but it makes sense to me that an attacker would have longer supply lines than a defender and thus the defender should have a 'home field' advantage. If the attacker wishes to invade agressively, he'll have to be clever about it in order to avoid being wittled away by continuous attacks from the defender with shorter supply lines. Just some ideas to think about

Keep well.

No offense, but I wish people would stop using this as an argument.

Pretty much describes how I feel about it.

Two players battling against each other late-game could set up frigate-spamming construction. All other things being equal, if one player loses half of his fleet to a major defensive operation, he can build the first replacement ships TWICE AS CHEAP as the other player. This allows him to convert his strategy between capitals and frigates, and respond more nimbly to attacking player strategies. If the attacker is, for example, spamming fighters, the smart defender can scuttle to free up some production and supply and then start churning out flaks and hangars. Meanwhile, the attacker doesn't have the same empowerment to spend as much and switch gears to a different fleet balance to attack.

It's also much harder on David in a David vs. Goliath economy - if your more effective but smaller empire succeeds in opening the door to invading a larger neighbour, this option means the neighbour can react faster than you can because they suddenly start generating uberincome.

I think the idea of *downgrading* your research status (and paying the equivalent of a small infrastructure decommissioning fee) makes a bit more sense than just autogiving this for free. This option allows the player who just got their fleet annihilated to choose if they want to reduce their supply level altogether to gain the income bonus, but - this is the key bit - they lose the free ability to build their fleet back up to their original level again. They have to upgrade that level of supply again, which buys the successful attacker a bit more time to take advantage of their already-achieved larger fleet cap.

One other option is to cap the reduction. If you're at research level 8, the lowest you can possibly ever pay is the supply penalty for research level 6, even if you only have one ship left.

Sins games are already long enough.

-- Retro

Well then make the upkeep slowly 'tick down' instead of instantly plummeting to whatever it should be.

ACtually I think both side of the argument are good, also with upkeep being so high for massive fleets im guessing that gives huge maps a place i.e get more minerals afford the upkeep.

Also the way it is currently you have to weigh up the pros and cons of a big fleet. If you do get a big fleet you have to say okay I need to get X amount more ecco, I therefore cant sit with my current huge fleet and spam more and more I need to take colonies X and Y , defend them , level ecco , rinse repeat.

I do see both sides of the argument its just we have got to ask ourself is upkeep so bad just now that we cant get a big enough fleet to secure enough resources to afford a bigger fleet.

Im no guru but seems to me that the upkeep aids the way the game plays well. Feel free to correct me if you think Im wrong, I will be the first to admit I am still quite inexperianced at the game.

My fear is that sins veres towards build order/button bash combo and Im not saying this to dis-credit someone its just why I think any alterations really need well thought through and from multiple devs, in consolidation with bands of users veterans + well informed newbies , to strike a balance so theres still hope for all kinds of players should they play their tactic well.