Limitations of # of ships

[Zetatron]

posted on April 18th, 2009, 6:40 am

Last edited by Zetatron on April 18th, 2009, 6:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well first of all, I would like to offer my gratitude for the FO3 developers and the supportive community for bringing this mod to all of us. I was a longtime menber since 2003 (NCC1701Z, no one probably remembers me) but ever since I couldn't log in properly, I just stopped writing on this board.

But anyway, my question for today is, why isn't there a popupation cap in FO? Most strategy games have a population limit, which prevents players from building a crazy amount of units and storming them in to the enemy's base. In previous FO versions, the A2 Officer slot was used as the Credit system in FO, but now that the A2 Patch Project gives us the ability to put limitations on a specific type of vessel or station, why not revive the Population limit again?

The AI, especially on Hard, churns a huge amount of ships and just attacks my base. It then focuses on less strategical gameplay, something that FO is made to avoid.

PS: I remember brining this issue up waaaaay back (3~4 years ago?), maybe I can find the old post again... hmm

Well anyway, it's good to be back =)

PPS: Star Trek Armada II: Fleet Operations - Shipbuilding limitations

That was a while back...

[Zebh]

posted on April 18th, 2009, 7:33 am

Last edited by Zebh on April 18th, 2009, 7:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

The building limit wouldn't be so important, because you usually have limited resources and building larger ships takes lot of time.

And there is a limitation system for some starship classes like fighter carriers.

posted on April 18th, 2009, 7:49 am

It does become a problem if the game runs on for a certain amount of time, when resources keep coming in at a fast rate, it becomes all about building the maximum number of capital ships possible. That was what A2 was all about. A1 balanced the population limit and resource availability to a perfect equilibrium, which is what made A1 so good.

posted on April 18th, 2009, 8:02 am

I agree.

Also I like the names on this thread.

[Zebh]

posted on April 18th, 2009, 9:12 am

Last edited by Zebh on April 18th, 2009, 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.

If I end up in situation when resources keep coming in at a fast rate and game becomes "Who builds the most capital ships", I had found out that the problem is often the map if there is too many moons.

Perhaps if it is possible, the building costs of certain ship class increases or decreases depending on how many ships of certain class you have at the time. So if you have 10 b'rels,  the cost for additional one on would be 10% more than normal. And if you lose all of them, the costs would decrease back to normal. That would at least limit the spamming of certain ship classes (or at least makes it tactically unwise).

posted on April 18th, 2009, 9:55 am

Heyho and welcome back to the forums

We don't like hard fleet limits in Fleet Operations, we have a soft limit - supply. Supply costs increase the more you order, so vessels get more and more expensive, however you can purchase an endless supply stock. You might already have noticed, that we introduced limitations to some vessels to replace the old credits system

posted on April 18th, 2009, 4:33 pm

In my opinion, a cap on the total number of ships actually makes the game less strategic because it simply becomes a race to rebuild after sending those capped ships. I definitely wouldn't say that "most games have caps" becaues I can think of quite a few examples of games that do not. Resource managment become a non-issue after you reach hard caps, and it simply becomes turtling. Look at Starcraft for example. Turrets don't have caps, so for Zerg and Protoss, they can simply creap their turrets forward over time while keeping a full army to prevent incursions. Even if every time they are attacked they lose their entire army, they still have the turrets. In fact, even worse are the Terrans... they have a cap, but also bunkers and seige tanks... which make the perfect turtling situation and discourage strategy in my opinion.