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Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - Deantwo - 04-11-2022
In the old days the size of spacecraft you could manufacture was limited by the quality of the materials available (specifically the old TL value) and some research time, finding better quality resources was required to manufacture bigger and bigger spacecraft. Since its removal people have floated some ideas around about if or how the size of spacecraft manufacturing should be limited again.
Issues
I doubt we can expect a whole rebalancing of spacecraft combat. So I won't expect anything fancy like ship size classes or whatever else is normally being suggested by people. Best I imagine is limits that are easy to implement and understand.
Quality of spacecraft manufacturing materials can be annoying to keep track of. Anyone that remember the old TL technology system might be able to remember having to figure out their current size limit and then design their spacecraft blueprint out from that. This is what I would say is one thing I don't miss about the old system, having 32 different spacecraft size categories. This might not be an issue right now, but I think it is good to keep in mind.
Technology has no baring on spacecraft manufacturing, it only affect which modules can be manufactured and the end result quality level of the subsystems on the spacecraft. The research time on some of the more advanced modules (FTL drives) are very very long though, and I doubt we want more of those boring time sinks.
There are no special infrastructure requirements to manufacture the biggest of warships. You just need a spacecraft factory, warehouses filled with the materials and a tiny space station in orbit. Yes you need to actually have harvesting operations and materials manufactured, but that doesn't have to be in the same solar system at all and can just be shipped to the spacecraft factory's city. You can have a tiny city with a population of 10 manufacturing gigantic spacecraft, and this can be thrown down anywhere in just a few minutes.
Ideas
Advanced metal resources (Magmium, Vulcium and Adamantine) don't play any role in spacecraft manufacturing aside from a stronger hull module. This could be one simple way to limit the size you can manufacture a spacecraft at, simply have the hull module type limit it. It has the added advantage of being easy to understand by players and designers alike. For example the metal hull module could limit the size to spacecraft that can normally spawn on the ground. Converting existing spacecraft blueprints to a system like this should also be simple for Haxus to do, or simply allow us to do at the time of manufacturing.
What we don't want is a meaningless research wait timer. So making it a patent research seems like it would be a bad idea and wouldn't solve the issues above.
Limiting spacecraft manufacturing size by city infrastructure could be done by having it require a spacecraft factory of increasingly bigger size with a lot of citizen jobs to operate, so a tiny city with a population of 10 can't make a gigantic spacecraft. Or it could require special buildings like a space elevator and more orbital infrastructure, as long as it requires the city to actually have workers. It would give reason to have larger cities for a shipyard, rather than just a tiny city with lots of warehouses.
Conclusion
There are plenty of options for limiting spacecraft manufacturing size. The ideas I mentioned above can't be the only good ideas, so do share your ideas and give feedback. I assume a mixes of ideas to limit spacecraft manufacturing size by multiple factors would be best, such as all the ideas I mentions or something like that.
Lets brainstorm!
RE: Spacecraft Size Limiting - Rockinsince87 - 04-11-2022
EDIT: Scope CREEEEEP!!!!
- The only relevant items mentioned:
- Production capacity requirements
- Maintenance/overhaul (penalty for not having adequate shipyards)
RE: Spacecraft Size Limiting - Deantwo - 04-12-2022
(04-11-2022, 11:21 PM)Rockinsince87 Wrote: Honestly I have mixed feelings about hard limits. I would rather have actual systems in place rather then "limits". Let the limit be the empires ability to mange systems that mimic the reality of having massive ships.
...
Honestly in the end, hard limits are not a good idea. Soft limits that require players/empires to work around would be a great way set "limits". If an empire can a setup outposts far from home to maintain it's fleet of ships then wonderful. If an empire can maintain said fleet of ships, even better.
I don't think you read much of my opening post. Nowhere in it did I mention that ships should be smaller or that you should be able to have a limited number of big ships. I have only talked about adding more requirements to manufacturing of bigger ships. Such as requiring the empire to have their shipyard city be of a decent size and maybe access to some of the more advanced resources.
What you are talking about seem to be maintaining large ships, which is out of scope for this discussion. Sure some of your ideas might be interesting, but I would rather we discuss them elsewhere so this thread doesn't go off-topic.
EDIT: Renamed the thread a little bit so this confusion is less likely.
RE: Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - Rockinsince87 - 04-12-2022
Sorry, yeah I like the new title.
I kind of took the long road to agreeing with you
my bad.I'll edit my past post to prevent scope creep and further confusion.
Yes I 100% agree that there should be some kind of infrastructure requirement. Something like production capacity of the shipyard itself or having an adequate "parking spot" size at the space station in orbit. Shipyard capacity could be the actual size of the shipyard blueprint volume in relation to the hull you intend to build.
City population is a tough one. If you tie it to population size, then you would have to have a massive sized city to build those giga ships. It makes sense because that would simulate the workforce producing a ship of that size and not a colony of 10 citizens as you stated. Perhaps the shipyard volume and number of service jobs could balance the population requirement. So if you don't have adequate population it takes a very very long time to produce massive ships. If you meet the requirements it takes normal time.
Would you want to encourage accelerated bonuses to production?
I only mentioned the maintenance/overhaul requirements previously because it could play a factor. For example if you don't perform the overhaul at the proper city/shipyard then it takes much longer to complete like the mentioned volume and service jobs requirements.
RE: Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - drog007 - 04-12-2022
I'd suggest it make more sense to tie things like worker population to completion times rather than a hard size limit.
Having material and quality affect the maximum hull size makes some sense though.
RE: Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - Greydog - 04-12-2022
I'd like to see Haxus come out with a shipyard module. They could come in varying sized depending on the ship you want to build.
You would need to have one on the station to provide the spot for the larger ship
RE: Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - Rockinsince87 - 04-12-2022
(04-12-2022, 10:29 PM)Greydog Wrote: I'd like to see Haxus come out with a shipyard module. They could come in varying sized depending on the ship you want to build.
You would need to have one on the station to provide the spot for the larger ship
Excellent!
What if each module had a minimum hull volume allocation too? Something similar to the FTL minimums to engage requirement. I only suggest this because I would not want to see the Anchor station for example be able to produce big ships either.
Big stations, big ships?
RE: Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - Greydog - 04-13-2022
To take this a step farther ..
We could apply the modules and volume requirements to a ship as well, giving it the ability to stop and act as construction/supply hub, enabling us to construct ships and stations in more remote area's
RE: Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - Rockinsince87 - 04-13-2022
(04-13-2022, 12:56 AM)Greydog Wrote: To take this a step farther ..
We could apply the modules and volume requirements to a ship as well, giving it the ability to stop and act as construction/supply hub, enabling us to construct ships and stations in more remote area's
You could do that, it sounds flexible enough. So we would gain additional game play mechanics from this solution in addition.
So ground shipyards could be limited to a max size where the station in orbit could have its own manufacturing systems that can go further and potentially be upgraded.
Since said system is blueprint based it could be placed on a massive ship.
This could work nicely. There are order mechanics to transfer cargo so it's possible to setup resupply runs for the mobile base.
RE: Spacecraft Manufacturing Size Limits - Celarious - 04-13-2022
(04-12-2022, 10:29 PM)Greydog Wrote: I'd like to see Haxus come out with a shipyard module. They could come in varying sized depending on the ship you want to build.
You would need to have one on the station to provide the spot for the larger ship
Agreed! Would be cool to see this, same with adding it on ships for remote construction too