Freighter Network

[Puke]

interesting, this sort of fits in with the organics based economics model from my old GritTech mod, and the more recent (and actually complete & published) Grit-Econ mod.

Just working off the numbers that you quoted (sure, they can be lowered) I think thats too much profit. Rather than lowering them much, I think it would be better to actually make the empire pay for the mineral cost of the ship. That way, you would have to produce enough resources (could still have a 1 turn build rate) to make it worth building the freighter in the first place.

Also, it may be good if the launch pad generated resources. That way, you would be incented to place a mineral launch pad on a high mineral planet. you would be incended to place a radioactives launch pad on a high radioactives planet.

[geoschmo]

Puke said:
Also, it may be good if the launch pad generated resources. That way, you would be incented to place a mineral launch pad on a high mineral planet. you would be incended to place a radioactives launch pad on a high radioactives planet.

The idea though, as I understood it, was to disassociate resource production from facilities and make it dependant on a steady stream of merchant traffic flowing around the empire.

[Puke]

well, right.. but youve got to be able to build your initial ships somehow. would the original colony construction and freighter investment be funded completely by the homeworld?

and would resource bonues on planets be simply ignored, then?

if thats the way of things, you might completely change the gameplay, and reduce all planets to one slot each. that way their colony type would be directly related to what facility they had on them.

[Magnum357]

Ya, I sort of agree with Puke. In my mode, you still need to have Mineral/Organic(Workforce)/Radioactive facilities to produce Resources for you. The Frieghter Network is in my mode to give you an "Extra Boost" of income for your empire, not as the sole basis of income. Besides, how would the AI build anything without stock resource facilites? Got to give em a chance right?

Another problem I'm having is resource storage. In stock play, you have 50000 points for each resource. I was thinking of lowering this amount considerably, but am not sure if this is wise. In my mode, I set this at about 5000 points, so far, my frieghters are going the Shipyard to be scraped at a fairly regular basis (at 110% scrap). The game seems to give me the extra income for one turn, but the next turn it sets back to 5000 points. What I want to know is it better to just keep the storage value at 50k like in a stock game? Or would setting the storage value of things at lower values make this Frieghter Network idea more valuable (and more costly if your Frieghters are destroyed)?

Also, I wanted to make the Storage values low because it would create more incentive to build Storage Facilities on Colonies instead of just tying to build as many Launch Pads as possible.

[Suicide Junkie]

The main problem with stock storage facilities is not how much they store compared to the base/minimum per empire.

Their problem is that they do not store much compared to how many resources you get from an extractor.
Instead of storing a couple turns worth to spend once, you could replace that storage facility with an extractor and get more resources to spend ALL the time.

In Carrier Battles mod, I increased the storage per facility to 200k. Now it actually has a considerable benefit compared to an extractor... You can have 1000 minerals each and every turn, or you might want 200 turns worth of storage for emergency spending all at once.

[Magnum357]

Ok, so you decided to make Storage Facilites very valuable (compared to stock) by increasing their Storage capacity by 10X. I was thinking the same thing too.

But you only answered half of my question. In my example above, I've set Storage capacity as low (at least initially) to experiment with the idea of "one turn profit" you might say. Right now in my mode, Frieghters take a little time to build (about 5 months average depending on design) and move at a limited speed. When they reach the Shipyard for scraping, I get that 110% pay which seems to boost my resources above the limit for one turn. After that, the program sets my Storage Resource limit back to the 5000 value the next turn. What I want to know is if this method is useful in a mode or is it just a waste of time/money/energy to have an extra boost of income for one turn?

What if I had a large fleet with Maintance above my extraction/trade/storage? Would this extra "one turn profit" margin be useful or a waste of time as it wouldn't help much?

[Wolfman77]

You can only carry over your maximum resource storage from one turn to another. If you have it set at 5000 that will be the most you can have at the start of a turn untill you buils more storage facilities. 5000 sounds a little low if your ships scrap out at 11000 though.

You can mod in stock resource facilities as AI only if you want, then the AI can do their normal thing and you can have the freigters for human players. If you want them for just a bonus then 110% might even be too high, unless you had freigter hulls that were less at the begining of the game, like 2000 then after reaserching you got more expensive ones. Otherwise they might be too powerfull at the begining and too weak at the end of a game. Trial and error is the only real way to know as I don't think anyone has tried this before to the extent you are.