Fwurg

[Stuiter]

This prevents players from dropping their fleets as they will become expensive.
I see this increase the interaction between player and that is good. We also do not have 1 big United Nation army, but each country contributes.

[Elmer]

I very much like this idea. Having a fleet now have actual impact and can be a viable role-play choice without being set back too much compared to fluff-based players :)

I think we also need to re-evaluate the fleets of the NPC's, but that is for when we are clear about how the rules should change.

[Chriz]

I agree that we should scrap the Union ruling that Union Defence fleet have magic upkeep rules that make them superior to member fleets. I also agree with Brend that it is logical that the Union should have 6x 4/4/4 fleets in reserve.

I propose to change the Union wide military advantage from magic upkeep rules to: The Union is capable of maintaining maximally 6 fully upgrade fleets in Inactive status for 250 / fleet / . This would be half the current Union budget for military fleet upkeep. If these fleets are ever activated again the Union will feel the pain of the normal rules with distance factors.

After another long discussion with Brend we came to a few conclusions.

1. The image we had about military fleets in the war was simply wrong. There never should have been so many 4/4/4 fleets since they should be rare and mighty.
2. A 1/1/1 fleet is already a intergalactic fleet that has the power to attack worlds with the proper technology and blockade complete sectors. We should not underestimate them.
3. A 1/1/1 fleet should be affordable for a starting faction and thus should cost less than 100 / in upkeep.
4. Giving a fleet 3 extra dots should double the upkeep since it doubles the power. 2x a 1/1/1 fleet should have the same base upkeep as 1x a 2/2/2 upkeep. You already pay for the being at two places at once in the distance factor.
5. Actually destroying the property of another faction should cost you more than the faction you attack. This should never be a economic option. This is why siege technologies should greatly increase the upkeep of your fleet on top of the base upkeep.

Proposal

Based on the reasoning presented, I propose the following numbers.

Union Defence Fleet upkeep

• Inactive: 250 per for maximally 6 fleets.

Military Fleet Upkeep

• Base upkeep: 75 per
• Upgrades 1,2,3: +25 per
• Upgrades 4,5,6: +50 per
• Upgrades 7,8,9: +100 per

These rules lead to the following upkeep table:

• 0 upgrades:
  75
  per
• 1 upgrades:
  100
  per
• 2 upgrades:
  125
  per
• 3 upgrades:
  150
  per
• 4 upgrades:
  200
  per
• 5 upgrades:
  250
  per
• 6 upgrades:
  300
  per
• 7 upgrades:
  400
  per
• 8 upgrades:
  500
  per
• 9 upgrades:
  600
  per

Conclusion: building a military fleet gives a faction a lot of power, maintaining a 4/4/4 fleet has the same cost as maintaining 8x a 1/1/1 fleet and is reserved for crazy people that have confidence issues.

[Brend]

Due to our discussion, I am strongly in favour of the upkeep scaling proposed by Chriz and the reasoning behind it. A 1/1/1 fleet is very powerful as Chriz already said, and we should not lose focus of that.

I do not agree that the Union fleets should still have a magic upkeep reduction -- instead, we might go for a one-time OOC shift of the Union budget to fix everything into working fashion. In the next part of the discussion, we should first look at the fleet rules for members as those are what's really important! The Union part of this can be discussed after, and shouldn't take to long.


So, if we change the upkeep of the fleets to the proposed level, we should inspect the auxilliary rules and racial characteristics related to the military rules.

Armies: We propose to increase the upkeep of armies to 25 per . This puts them neatly at the same level as the first 3 fleet upgrades with regard to upkeep. This way, factions that just created a fleet directly have the interesting choice of upgrading the fleet, or building an army; this has fluff consequences.

Defence Forces: This only changes a world's defence, so no change.

Combat Ability: This characteristic boosts armies with +●●, this is too good. We should change this to +● so it is equivalent with half an upgrade.

Coordinated: Since this characteristic scales on population and only allows half of the fleet cost to be covered, it scales very well and offers a neat benefit, so no change.

Militaristic: We didn't touch the construction costs, so no change.

Telepathic: This characteristic offers the equivalent of half an upgrade. This still seems to be in balance with the smaller fleets, so no change.

(Since we didn't change the construction costs, and don't plan to, we don't have to rework the construction costs of other options. This saves us a lot of discussion and work ^_^)

[Gerben]

Not entirely sure on the exact changes for Union fleets, since there are some things than need to be clarified (such as 'Homeport' and trade fleet reqs.) but im down with the 250 / /fleet for inactive cost and the normal payment scheme for defensive and combat ready. It makes pulling the Union war machine a real thing to avoid.

On the player mechanic, Chriz's proposal seems reasonable and well thought through, I'm willing to support it

[Elmer]

I'm starting to lost count how often I like the new proposal, but every new proposal is better than the previous one :P, so I like this proposal over the previous ones.

Also, fleets are impressive, but from the movies and series, this doesn't always come forward (for artistic purposes). In my experience a picture often gives a good impression, I like pictures. Therefore the image here gives a nice indication of a 1/1/1 fleet. (NOTE: this is an indication, so your fleet can exists of only fighter equivalents). For further clarity: The big circular ships (a.k.a. Lucrehulk battleships) are larger than kilometres sized. The ships in front (munificent class) are up to a kilometre. They are all capital ships though (e.g. very impressive and very, very scary). I have also a picture of what I imagine as a 4/4/4 fleet.

[Brend]

RemcoSwenker kicked it off, and I just finished it: the rules update for the Military Fleet overhaul.

I'll open a rules changed topic in the coming week after everyone has had a chance to review the edits!