No Maintainence a Feature?!?!

JLXC · #1 February 21st, 2001, 09:17 PM

I posted this once before the patch, but I see it wasn't fixed?? If you take +20 percent maintainence reduction and merchant you pay NO upkeep at all for ships. If this is a game feature it's unbalanced, as whoever does it can literally pump out new ships every single turn without limits ever! How can you keep up with that in a normal 1 planet start? I have had 300 ships by turn 30-40..... if you were in a multi-player game the guy who does this wins every time, no hope. I can only hope that people either outlow it in multiplay, or it gets patched out.

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I'm an Idiot? Well if that's not the kettle smelling the pot's back!

Talenn · #2 February 21st, 2001, 09:26 PM

Just go into the Settings file and crank up the cost of the Maintenance Trait. That would alleviate the problem in a multiplayer game.

Unfortunately, it can screw up the various AIs 'General' file as they will be spending too many points if their races has the trait. The obvious solution there is to go in and alter their files by the correct ratio of the change that you made. For example, if you doubled the cost of the trait, cut their amount of reduction in their race file by half. If you quadruple the cost of Maint Reduction, simply quarter their ability in the race file.

That will take care of the problem in both Single and Multiplayer games.

Hope it helps!
Talenn

Hydraa · #3 February 21st, 2001, 09:33 PM

Also realize that to use this unbalancing feature, you need to spend 2500 racial points + take a specific culture which gives you -% in combat, intel and research. So there is a cost associated with this. Also if the ship limit is working and is set to a low number it may not be as worthwhile to go free maintainence. However with the new limits on colonizable worlds it may increase the usefulness of having low maintainence.

Emperor Zodd · #4 February 21st, 2001, 09:43 PM

This is a good example why using no more than 2000 racial points is warranted.

Sinapus · #5 February 21st, 2001, 10:02 PM

Or, you could go into settings.txt and change the basic maintenance percent to something above 25.

dmm · #6 February 22nd, 2001, 12:57 AM

Wow, hadn't noticed that before, JLXC! I'll have to use it against my kids.

(I'm REALLY bad.)