Solution for caps: The officer academy

posted on March 12th, 2012, 4:56 pm

Greetings all,
today I've played again vs. the AI and I asked myself, how things like caps could be solved. The limited use of certain ship classes is more or less a workaround for making certain ship classes not to rule the battlefield, because they are too effective. I thought about a solution, and this solution can be implemented for all kinds of caps we have: The officer academy.

Introduction:
The officers station is a station, where the admirals, higher officers and commanding personell resides. It is also the place, where those people are trained and put in their efforts to be a part of the fleet after graduation.

There are many officers for many purposes. While most of them will directly transfered to a vessel in order to do active duty on it, other officers remain on this station in order to control the fleet, expand its capabilities, reroute ressourced of sectors, make agreements with other people, recruit new crewman or are in charge of supplys, facitily capabilities and so on.

So, lets get to the point and lets make an example for the federation:
The Feds have a limit on their phalanx-class and avalon-class ships. So, would'nt it be good to have a dynamic variable, that defines those caps? Yes, we have the Academy for it and we train officers for fleet management.
We also have a place for extending the warp-in-slots (very expensive!), the veteran slots (medium-expensive), ship-caps (more expensive), mixed-tech-slots (a little expensive) and the training for officers for your flag-ship (can be dont only once a time). The Academy can be upgraded with quarters with a total limit of 8 additional quarters. If you want to build more quarters, you have to build a second station.

Lets split it up:

Fleet-Management-officers:
These officers serve directly under the command of admirals and are in charge to enable and/or free up the capabilities in order to maintain and build expensive ships for your fleet. While most ships dont need special preconditions in order to be build, some ships have. They use special equipment you cannot find or build in open space and are only available from certain research or fabrication-stations, which are non-regular. In order to get this equipment, those officers do the job for you to get all you need. From special contracts, to specialized personell up to materials, that is normally not available inside the borders of federation space. These officers need quarters and equipment to work at their full potential.

Effect: Frees up to one special ship slot of your choice for capped ships.

Red-squad:
These officers are the best candidates for your fleet to get the best of the best. They serve directly under the best captain of your fleet and enable the ship to be your flag-ship. You can only build one quarter for the red-squads, since you can only have one flag-ship.

Instructor-chambers:
These quarters are the primary source for your officers to get trained. They enable you do train advanced officers to the top-tier-officers of your fleet.

Effect: Frees up 4 veteran slots per quarter.

Admirals-quarter:
This quarter is meant to be the quarter of an admiral. He uses his influence to put more ships under your command and will also help you to control them.

Effect: Maximum ship cap is increased to +20 ships. (Note: Assuming, we have a max. cap on ships)

Fed-only:
Strategic personell:
These officers do their job by managing fleet movements and high-order decisions  for more than just one sector.

Effect: Increasing the warp-in-cap by 1.

Every quarter will cost you dil and tri (and maybe supplies). This will expand the middle game, because the gap between early game and late game will be increased by the caps of some high-end-ships, you might want to build.

posted on March 12th, 2012, 8:05 pm

So, this sounds similar to the Sins of a Solar Empire mechanic, where players pay resources to raise the cap.  I would love to see a setup like this: perhaps the Dominion start with high caps but their officer tech comes super-late, while the Feds start with low caps but gain the ability to increase those caps early on.

We'll have to see how the new balance works, though.  It may be that the devs have already eliminated the need for ship caps (well, maybe not)

posted on March 12th, 2012, 9:46 pm

This sounds similar to the way stock armada does it, your starbase could upgrade a certain amount of times to increase your officer limit (all ships needed a certain amount of officers per ship). Altho I cant say im a big fan of the way that works. Sins of a solar empire's system is a bit flawed in that you buy supply that permanently gouges a percentage of your income, weather you use it or not. Not a big fan of that either. I can see the merits in your proposal, but it sounds like this would make MORE caps to worry about getting rid of through research rather then deal with a couple ships here and there having caps. I do like the idea of a flagship though.

[Sheva]

posted on March 12th, 2012, 9:49 pm

Last edited by Sheva on March 12th, 2012, 9:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, basicly it will work to the machanics above, but with different ressources, tech-trees and so on for every fraction. For example the borg dont have a mixed-tech-cap, they dont have veteran-slots (only with captured ships) and so on.

But, they might set up a queen for this purpose.

The dominion can "build" founders, the rommies have their tal-shiar and the klingons might be close to the feds in all manners.

edit: Okay, the point is given, that you need more stations and some things might get more complicated, but I think its more logical the way you think about it. Maybe, the problem will be solved in synergy with the re-introduction of planets.

posted on March 12th, 2012, 10:17 pm

This sounds similar to the way stock armada does it, your starbase could upgrade a certain amount of times to increase your officer limit (all ships needed a certain amount of officers per ship). Altho I cant say im a big fan of the way that works. Sins of a solar empire's system is a bit flawed in that you buy supply that permanently gouges a percentage of your income, weather you use it or not. Not a big fan of that either. I can see the merits in your proposal, but it sounds like this would make MORE caps to worry about getting rid of through research rather then deal with a couple ships here and there having caps. I do like the idea of a flagship though.

The original officer system was one of the thing i never liked.
I've never been a fan of either the Avalon or the Phalanx and I'd rather see them removed all together, but people in the community love them so they're here to stay (please FO players around the world, go on a massive ranting to remove the Avalon and Phalanx).

The unit cap, as annoying as it is, is needed to maintain a balance. If there's a way to get a cap without a "hard cap" that would be nice, but bringing back the officers is IMO not the way to go.

posted on March 12th, 2012, 11:39 pm

I agree with you on the point about the cap Andre, but I dont mind the Phalanx or Avalon. I wouldnt miss the Avalon if it disappeared, I like the way it looks and all but I was never a fan of carriers for the Feds. The Phalanx on the other hand I like as a ship option just not a huge fan of the model itself. With and updated model I would like the ship alot more. To be honest I dont really see a huge problem with the way the cap works as it, I would just like to see more interesting option on how to aquire supply.

posted on March 13th, 2012, 12:20 am

Well, as for the phanalx and avalon, I think both ships could use a little tweaking. I LIKE fighters, but it should be more... eh... usable through fleet management. Up to now, only one ship will carry out fighters, while the rest of the fleet got nothing. IF we use a fighter carrier, the numbers should grow a little up, like 6 or 7 of those. Up to now, the avalon is pretty useless, because their fighters dont do anything in fleet engagements. Wasted time, ressources and supply.

I also think, that every race could use them, instead of the borg.
Maybe something like this:
Starbases will get fighters as stationary defense. Those fighters deal a little extra damage and can follow the enemy and wipe out artillery ships, while themselves be too weak to hold off a raiding force.

On the other hand, the ships that carry fighters should be increased. Not just of carrier, but more ships that launch them. The Avalon itself, the souvie, the big D, the neggie and so on... So you will see more of those fighters in action.

But back to topic: Gaining supplies would be something a trading station or a planet might give you. A station in space.... I think, that should be borg exclusive.

posted on March 13th, 2012, 2:47 am

Alternative idea for "hard caps": Have the current hard cap-ed ships instead have a supply drain effect.
If unable to accommodate the supply needs of one of these ships ... aka: supply = 0 ... then the ship suffers sub-system breakdowns every 5 sec.

posted on March 13th, 2012, 4:16 am

Alternative idea for "hard caps": Have the current hard cap-ed ships instead have a supply drain effect.
If unable to accommodate the supply needs of one of these ships ... aka: supply = 0 ... then the ship suffers sub-system breakdowns every 5 sec.

Only problem with that is, you may as well take the ship out, no one will likey build it ever if it drained supply. Either that or it would have to be and uber awesome ship. None of them are worth that kind of penalty at this point.

posted on March 13th, 2012, 6:50 am

I hate to be that "online guy", but I have to just throw in there that the caps exist for a very important reason.  I can attest from personal experience that when you play the AI the caps seem arbitrary and stupid, but in MP the caps are critical.

  What I would recommend is asking for an option in Fleetips setup that allows you to choose "no caps" in game like free tech.  I would guess that stands much more of a chance

posted on March 13th, 2012, 9:30 am

Yes, an option for "no caps at all" would be cool. Maybe different caps available (warp-in, special ships-caps, mixed-tech-slots and veteran slots)

posted on March 13th, 2012, 11:16 am

I hate to be that "online guy", but I have to just throw in there that the caps exist for a very important reason.  I can attest from personal experience that when you play the AI the caps seem arbitrary and stupid, but in MP the caps are critical.

  What I would recommend is asking for an option in Fleetips setup that allows you to choose "no caps" in game like free tech.  I would guess that stands much more of a chance

We know that the caps exist for a reason, but the idea of a hard cap seems wrong somehow and another solution instead of the hard cap would be nice. The semi-officer like proposal from the OP doesn't sound to appealing to me either.

The officer limit was one of those things i never liked from A1/2 and i'm not anxious to reintroduce a similar feature to replace the hard caps.

posted on March 13th, 2012, 12:24 pm

What about tying vet-caps to overall number of ships built?

posted on March 13th, 2012, 2:57 pm

Wouldn't a simple solution for limiting a certain type of ships numbers to give them a passive negative effect to the same type of ship in a certain range? that would limit the ships numbers per fleet and ad to the games synergy even tho in a negative kind of way.

For example give the avalons fighters a 5 percent damage reduction per avalon within artilery range. that way the player won't put many avalons in 1 fleet and most likely wont make many of them because they would become to week.

or if the goal would be to limit the number of borg cubes in anemy teretory give them a speed reduction for every cube in artilery range. (i could imagine those cubes making disruptions in subspace or whatever because of their size and engine capacity or some kind of simular technobable)

posted on March 13th, 2012, 5:05 pm

While the caps do allow us to make more powerful units than would otherwise be possible, it also strongly follows the storyline of Fleet Ops. The Tavara, Phalanx, Avalon and other units are rare and unique craft that were never mass produced and are not expected to be so. It is expected that you cherish these few chassis as such.

That isn't to say there won't be upgradeable caps for features in the future however