Shipyards limit?

[ravenzachary]

Is the ten shipyards limit still in effect?

[zarkwizard]

The rule is 1 ship yard per colony with factories. The limit could still be imposed from earlier testing, it won't be there for the live servers.

Ship yards also are the only object that don't count to your object limit, but they do directly have an effect on your object limit. Normally it's +10 objects per ship yard to a cap of 1000 object, having more ship yard won't increase the object count beyond that, but it also gives you some wiggle room if someone goes around destroying your ship yards having more will keep your cap at 1000. ie. If you have 100 ship yards and someone destroys 10 you might still have 1000 ships with your real cap being 900 objects now. You won't be able to build any destroyed objects till you get your ship yard count up.

That's where the skill comes in that if you level up you get +10 objects per ship yard. So if you leveled the skill to the max level you would only need 10 ship yards to get the object limit of 1000 objects (Orbitals, and Ships are objects).

I know I went in to a little more detail about ship yards, but I thought it might help clear it up for new comers.

[ravenzachary]

The 1,000 object limit is going to present problems for large empires in big games. 100 objects per galactic sector isn't that uncommon.

[Trom]

The 1,000 object limit is going to present problems for large empires in big games. 100 objects per galactic sector isn't that uncommon.

I agree that the limit could be restrictive, especially if you are a combat person who has a lot of planetary defense. Your ships would end up being extremely thinned out and your insides would be defenseless as you try and expand outward.

An idea for a potential fix could be to have a 1000 unit cap on ships and another cap (maybe 500 or something) for the orbitals. Again, just an idea that could be implemented after we see how the first few games go.

[zarkwizard]

Everyone has the 1000 object limit. So everyone has the same constraint. It was always the plan that you couldn't defend everything. So what you do with the 1000 objects is your choice, you can focus on orbital defense, or on attacking power.

People will need to destroy things they deem unnecessary for their empire's growth. You can't defend everything ever, nor it that going to be our intent.

Whatever you do, you will always have weaknesses. While this came up in beta, the one thing we firmly believe is you shouldn't be able to secure every planet. We had a lot of people fighting over "meaningless" planets. Before we had trade, and the specialties it was important to acquire a lot of planets, but now it's not all about the land grab. You will need to trade and work together, utilizing the players around you to help you further your goals, think Survivor, or Big Brother.

We'll see how it plays out in a larger game, but at this point the object limits will not be changed.

As for:

I agree that the limit could be restrictive, especially if you are a combat person who has a lot of planetary defense. Your ships would end up being extremely thinned out and your insides would be defenseless as you try and expand outward.

That's the combat guys biggest weakness. Find their core, to destroy their empire. People have to make choices, then learn from those choices.. Warlords need to make the choices that work before for them.. Do they need things like "Jump Drive Operation" (Fleet Tree) which allows all Carriers, Dreadnaughts, Super Dreads, Monitors and PKs the ability to jump (+5 non capitol ships can jump per rank), or something like "Hyperspace Physics" (Science) so they can enter sectors with Black holes then go for something like "Jumpgate Construction" to allow them to jump ships via a gate.

With the jumping ability if you create jump beacons in your home sector you can easily jump your fleets home. You just need to make sure you either build jump gates, or have the fleet skills to allow for jumping. We felt that adding that ability (as well as push so you are notified when you are attacked) give the warlord a "flexible" play style to move their ships around quickly. If they choose...

[ravenzachary]

Ok, on the ships screen you should change the header to say:

Objects built x of y (1000 max)

This will remind all players there's a hard limit.

In games as large as 12x12, as the tutorial server is now, this means out of those 144 galactic sectors, any given player won't effectively be able to colonize and control more that about 10 galactic sectors actively or 20 galactic sectors passively. If you are architecting games so that they end with 7-15 large players at the end, then the cap will support that goal. If that was not your intent, then the cap will harm things.

My fear is this: trader player grows to 10-20 galactic sectors, extracts billions and billions in ore, gets attacked by a player and as an act of vengeance, creates a stack of 1,000 Dreadnaughts that just jumps from system to system. No one can defend against that and no one would be willing to abandon all their ships to create a competing stack of 1,000 Dreadnaughts.

"If you attack me, I am going to abandon my goal to win and just create a stack of 1,000 Dreannaughts to take you out."

We essentially have a nuclear option in the game, which could either help to balance or make endgames totally chaotic and frustrating.

Let's see how this plays out. I'm currently skeptical of the limit.

[zarkwizard]

Ok, on the ships screen you should change the header to say:
Objects built x of y (1000 max)

That is currently on the ships screen. Right at the very top "Objects build x of <cap>".

It is also on the build screen via objects available count.



"If you attack me, I am going to abandon my goal to win and just create a stack of 1,000 Dreannaughts to take you out."

I suppose if someone makes that threat, take it seriously.. While they aren't a warlord, it was never our desire to gimp anyone from taking a seriously aggressive stance.. It's the chance you take when attacking other players. You'll have some that might go off the deep end and abandon their end game, just to thwart you. It's kind of the point. It also allows them to build a massive fleet to go for the artifact win, which everyone has that ability. You'll need fleets like that just to fight the aliens to take their planets with the artifacts.

Would that single person be able to destroy the entire galaxy, hardly.. Could they cause some serious damage to those around them.. Yes, most certainly. You all better band together and find his home world and destroy it, before he acquires more home worlds. Did the Borg feel bad about destroying planets? Did Star Fleet have enough defenses to fight the Borg... simple answer is no (and Star Fleet probably wouldn't have won if it wasn't a movie in their favor).

Raising the object cap to 5000, wouldn't change anything. The ultimate mechanic will remain the same. What's to be said that a player doesn't do the same thing, then built a fleet of 5000 ships, instead of 1000. It doesn't change anything in the long run. When we ran the numbers with the changes in place we felt that the scale wouldn't change anything in the long run. We'll see how things play out in a real game, and then decide based on player feedback, and their thoughts as to the balance of objects.

[Tsagoth]

The old ten yard cap is in effect currently. I have removed it on dev and the new ship limit is 1010 ships plus whatever yards you have. Yards are counted as ships, but your limit is raised by however many yards you have, so in effect yards don't count.

I'm not currently posting patches to Samaqan while we're in review.

[ravenzachary]

The top of the shops screen only shows you your current cap based on your shipyards and talents, not the max cap of 1000, which I am recommending you also include so that players understand there is a max cap.

Right now, mine says:

Objects built 178 of 100

(which clearly is a bug)

But there is no mention of 1000.

[Trom]

Everyone has the 1000 object limit. So everyone has the same constraint. It was always the plan that you couldn't defend everything. So what you do with the 1000 objects is your choice, you can focus on orbital defense, or on attacking power.

That does make sense to me. My only concern is really with people who want to make fleets of carriers with fighters on board. Loading each carrier up to capacity means that a relatively small fleet of them could eat up a substantial number of your allotted slots. Otherwise I am all up for the cap. We will see how it all pans out over a few games.

[zarkwizard]

That does make sense to me. My only concern is really with people who want to make fleets of carriers with fighters on board. Loading each carrier up to capacity means that a relatively small fleet of them could eat up a substantial number of your allotted slots. Otherwise I am all up for the cap. We will see how it all pans out over a few games.

Fighters on carriers are no longer part of the cap, and you no longer have to load carriers. They come fully stocked with fighters. So if you build a carrier, it counts as one object.

[zarkwizard]

The top of the shops screen only shows you your current cap based on your shipyards and talents, not the max cap of 1000, which I am recommending you also include so that players understand there is a max cap.

Right now, mine says:

Objects built 178 of 100

But there is no mention of 1000.

Ok, something isn't right there.. We'll have to look in to that one, and way the cap was ignored. As for there being no mention of the 1000 cap... I'm not sure... LeeDot would be the one that would need to comment on that. I thought it was mentioned in one of the tutorial videos, but I could be mistaken. I'll talk to him today and see what he thinks.

[Cheerio]

Fighters on carriers are no longer part of the cap, and you no longer have to load carriers. They come fully stocked with fighters. So if you build a carrier, it counts as one object.

YESS!!! Fleet is a legit specialization if all you want to do is give warlords a hard time :) this should be funny to any one that remembers my constant desire to play fleet in beta.
What class of ships are aliens going to be rocking? Like, will they tend to fall on the capital class size, or be a mix?

[zarkwizard]

YESS!!! Fleet is a legit specialization if all you want to do is give warlords a hard time :) this should be funny to any one that remembers my constant desire to play fleet in beta.

We actually have a "Fleet" specialization that we want to add to the game in the future. It's got some cool abilities, but for the time being we left it out. That and the Diplomat Specialty.. but that's a secret.. sshhhh....


What class of ships are aliens going to be rocking? Like, will they tend to fall on the capital class size, or be a mix?

I think aliens are about 1500 Super Dreads, and 400 fighters or something like that.. Takes 2-3 players working as a group to take em down.. You need to beat them first shot though.. because once they get a taste of your pathetic ships they'll hunt you down like the Borg in ST:NG. Maybe that was a secret to... Nothing to see here.. move along...

[Snax]

Good to know. I'll be sure to direct my prey towards the aliens and sweep up the remains. Someone's bound to bite.