Does anyone know why you can not upgrade to the II and up shipyards?

d'oh, matress inadvertently screwed up the prerequisites. we'll get it fixed soon. In the meantime, you can overwrite your "Resources\Data\TechObjectDatabase.xml" file with the attached one.

Eh? I've spent ages working on the Shipyards. I could've sworn that they were working now. .Iceman didn't notice any problems with the shipyards either, and I know for a fact that the Federation shipyards worked correctly because I tested them. Wierd.

I'll add this to the known issues thread. I updated it last night for the May version in case you didn't notice, Mike.

Yep, except for the detail about minors' shipyards I mentioned to MoE in a PM, they were correct.

@matress: They were "sort of" correct. Problem is, you set it up such that a FED_SHIPYARD_II has prerequisites of FED_SHIPYARD_I, KLI_SHIPYARD_I, ROM_SHIPYARD_I, etc. These were set up as separate prerequisites rather than being together in a prerequisite group. Items in a prerequisite group are "equivalent", meaning only one of them is needed, and it doesn't matter which one.

I also noticed that you made Utopia Planitia a shipyard rather than a structure (as it was in BotF). Is this what we want to do? I noticed that it has a lower shipbuilding bonus than the other shipyards, which seems odd to me considering that it's Utopia Planitia. And why did you make it an upgrade from the Federation Mark II Shipyard? If you want to make it available as an upgrade to the Mark II, that's fine, but you also need to add upgrade paths from the Mark III and Mark IV. Otherwise, if the player upgrades to a Mark III, he'd have to tear it down, build a Mark I, and then upgrade it. Speaking of which, do we really want to require the player to build a Mark I Shipyard and then upgrade to Mark II and then Mark III if they have requisite tech levels to just build a Mark III straight up? If so, we should just remove the prerequisites.

I also noticed that you're giving "+ Percent Shipbuilding" bonuses to the shipyards. Shipyards really aren't supposed to have bonuses. You could just as easily use the Build Efficiency property instead. Build Efficiency is the multiplier that gets applied to a colony's Industry output to determine how many build points are available for shipbuilding each turn. Thus, if you had 1000 Industry and a multiplier of 0.75, you would have 750 build points available for shipbuilding (and still have 1000 for planetary building). Instead of having a Build Efficiency of 1.0 and a +15% Shipbuilding bonus, you could just have a Build Efficiency of 1.15.

While we're on the subject of shipyards, this conversation has got me thinking that maybe shipyards shouldn't be a specialized structure, but a completely different type of object. If we stopped treating them as structures, then it wouldn't make sense for them to consume energy from the planetary grid (another problem I have with the current design). What would you guys say if I took away power requirements for shipyards? I don't think it would have much of an impact on strategy, because we already have tons of other structures to ensure that energy is sufficiently scarce .

It didn't work in that way in my experience though, Mike - I purposely set them up as separate groups so that they would work. And that way, if an Empire conquered another Empire's system, they would be able to upgrade any existing shipyards along their own path. Unless I misunderstood the system, each separate grouping means a separate set of requirements, rather than an extra set of requirements, correct?

Utopia Planitia in BOTF allowed for the construction of special ships. Seeing as no such option is available in the editor, (Either as a shipyard bonus, or as a ship requirement) I redeveloped it into a second Fleetyard for the Federation. Since the structure is tech 6 but the Fleetyards are tech 11 structures, I purposely gave Utopia a low bonus - but this is still a considerable bonus because the Feds get it 4 tech levels early. I then kept the Federation Fleetyard, but I increased the build costs slightly and reduced the bonus it provides to compensate. The tech 6 requirement also means that it cannot be an upgrade of the large shipyard - because that is a tech 9 structure. The only way to change that back would be to, as you say, make it a structure instead of a shipyard; make it a higher tech level building - which would defy canon since we know Utopia was around since at least TNG times; or to make it an upgrade for the medium shipyard instead of the large shipyard, which is what I did.

See? There was method in my madness.

As for giving the shipyards bonuses, one of the bonuses that I discussed with Dafedz for the Dominion was that they would be able to churn out ships faster than the other Empires, so we gave them a 25% construction bonus. We discussed this before I knew what the efficiency rate referred to, which is why it was set up that way. I didn't know that you could set the efficency rate above 100% either. If you haven't already done this yourself, i'll change the % bonus into efficiency bonuses once the editor works again.

I actually would prefer it if the shipyards were considered as a different type of structure - in fact, if you make it this way, I would ask if the Orbital Batteries would also be added to this new category. If we take away the energy cost of the shipyards, what if we instead had them use Deuterium and/or Dilithium? The ships need these afterall, and the shipyards do build and refuel the ships.

If we remove the energy cost of the shipyards, what about the Orbital Batteries? Will they also be self-powered? Or could there be an alternative energy structure just for space-based structures? The Cardassians did that in DS9 afterall, even if it eventually proved to be the undoing of their defences.

Incidentally, energy might be scarce, but i've actually already increased the output of all of the energy facilities by 25%. It would've been worse if I hadn't.

Yes. Meaning if you have separate groups for FED_SHIPYARD_I, ROM_SHIPYARD_I, DOM_SHIPYARD_I, etc. then all of those shipyards must be present at the current location in order to build the object defining the prerequisites. Since only one shipyard can exist in a given sector, this is impossible. They need to all be in the same prerequisite group, so if you want to upgrade to a FED_SHIPYARD_II, you need a FED_SHIPYARD_I or ROM_SHIPYARD_I or DOM_SHIPYARD_I, etc...

You could still make it an upgrade for the large shipyard. There's no rule that says you can't upgrade to a design with lower tech requirements (as long as the design isn't obsoleted). It would be a worthwhile upgrade, too, considering Utopia Planitia has six construction docks compared to the large shipyard's four.

If you say so

OK, go ahead.

Sounds unnecessary--if that deuterium and dilithium are required to build the ships, why require them for the shipyards to sit idle? Orbital defenses will be their own type of object, different from shipyards or structures. They'll be similar to ships, actually, except for speed, crew, etc.

Depends. We need to impose some sort of ceiling on the number of orbital weapons that can be built in a system. This means either a hard limit or an intrinsic limit (i.e. limited by available power).

Speaking of needing adjustments, we need to adjust either the build costs of the ships or the build output of the shipyards. Currently, the game multiplies a shipyard's build output by a factor of 10. I did this a long time ago to speed up construction during testing and then forgot about it. So the actual build time of ships in the game is actually 10 times what it is now. We should figure out how we want to deal with this. Best solution would probably be to cut ship build costs to 1/10 of what they are now, and I can write a quick script to adjust all the ships so nobody has to do it manually.

I'm not disputing that you *could* do that. But Utopia Planitia is tech 6 whilst the Large shipyard is tech 9. If it was set up that way you'd have to wait 3 levels after you gained access to it before you actually meet the prerequisites of building it, which wouldn't make sense.

But they don't sit idle - they refuel ships, and that currently isn't represented other than the ships magically having full tanks whilst they are in range. Unless you've changed it, I haven't noticed ships using up fuel from my stockpiles other than during their construction.

The planet-based energy requirement was that limit, so removing the energy cost would remove the limits. IF we did decide to remove the energy costs, and we managed to come up with some other limiting factor, I would ask that that factor be flexible rather than a simple, random number. Bigger systems for example should be able to support/would need to support more of them to ensure a full defence net was in place.

One of the things that I liked about X-Wars was the way defences were built up. There were a number of different weapon and defence types. One of them was mine fields. As you built more structures in your system, they gradually covered more surface area on the planet, which meant you needed to build more mine fields to cover the additional land quadrants. Development of your system therefore had defensive disadvantages. The more mine fields you built, the more of the quadrants were covered, so the greater the defensive bonus you received. But building the mine fields in the first places takes away resources that could otherwise be used to develop the system, so it was a constant balancing act between ensuring your system was developing and that the defensive systems were developing at the same pace as your system. I don't know if this is to your liking, but tying orbital batteries to quadrants in this way might be one way of doing it. The higher the system population and/or the higher the tech level of the structures present in the system and/or the physical number of structures in the system could all be taken into account.

The numbers used in the game are merely placeholders - one of the first comments that Dafedz put in his database is that we simply didn't know what sort of numbers would be needed to balance the game, and they would be tweaked as we received feedback. Neither me nor Dafedz therefore have a problem with any of the numbers being changed. The easiest way to do it would be to do as you said and cut the build costs. Same goes for the Stations - it's even harder to build those, although I think the output of the construction ships also needs to be umped up (It's currently 50 industry for the type I construction ships and 100 for the type II's at the moment)

You wouldn't need to wait for the Mark III to build it. My proposal was to allow you to upgrade from a Mark II *or* Mark III shipyard to Utopia Planitia. They'd go in the same prerequisite group. Utopia Planitia is a larger facility, so I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to upgrade from a Mark III if you have one.

Ships automatically refill their on-board deuterium reserves from the global stockpile as they expend fuel. In other words, they only get refueled as they travel--they don't expend deuterium if they're just sitting idle.

Hehe, I think I did mention the construction bonus (and the lack of any sense) somewhere... And the docks.

As for no pre-reqs on shipyards, then why are there pre-reqs for structures? Why can'y I build a Farm 6 from the ground up? Also mentioned earlier. The upgrade system in the game is really bad.

Another issue also mentioned earlier. While restructuring the whole thing, maybe it's time to decouple the shipyard production from the structure production..?

Actually, IMO it does. Notice that the way the game deals with new colonies is not very good. If shipyards don't take power to operate, then you can build one in each and every system you own (they're way too cheap too, mentioned that a couple of times already...), without any pop assigned to power srtuctures or additional power structures required. Since colony ships don't cost pop to build, that's bad. Every system can build colony ships when colonized. Also, every system will extend your ships' range.

But that's just my experience with other games in the genre, I'm sure it's totally not relevant for this game...

considering that that most shipyards are space platforms they should operate well on solar-panel, nuke, or fusion generators. which in ideal setting should provide energy bonuses to their system; however there has to be some kind of set back to offset this. maybe pricing increase to manufacutring them.

Well I could easily increase the cost of the Basic Shipyard for all of the races. I always thought the Basic Shipyard was too cheap - it was always one of the first structures I built - which doesn't make sense when a new colony *should* be investing in food production, energy production, etc etc. Building a space platform should only be possible once a colony has grown to a sufficient size to be able to support it. I believe the industrial cost is the same as it was in BOTF though, so BOTF was also flawed in that particular respect.

IIRc, nope, in BotF cost was something like 500 or so (or was it 1000?).
At the risk of sounding repetitive (and annoying), consider decoupling ship construction from structure construction. That way one has to assign pop either to factories OR shipyards. Since apparently Intel structures are going to be scrapped, use those slots for the shipyard, so that UI changes are minimal.

I agree that shipyards ought to be more costly. Do we have a consensus that shipyards without energy requirements are acceptable if they are more costly (read: time consuming) to construct? .Iceman, Valcoren, Matress, et al?

.Iceman's idea of shipbuilding being a separate infrastructure category is interesting. It would be a pretty radical change to how shipyards are represented in the code, though. It would also replace the notion of multiple construction docks in a single shipyard with instead having multiple shipyards with one construction dock each.

They'll always be on, but that's not a bad thing. You don't run the risk of seeing your fuel range decrease suddenly - partly good, as it makes people not wonder what happened when they see their ships get stranded for a lack of energy ; though it was also an interesting thing (denying your enemy the range).
There should probably be some kind of upkeep. Maybe require the shipyard to be manned to provide the range bonus; remove the pop (see below), and lose bonus.

Docks can be represented by the number of "slots" available. For balance, those slots can be capped not by pop/10 like usual, but by pop level like trade routes or something. Or have the pop upkeep cost be higher (then 10 as usual) for shipyard slots. Tech level would add additional slots.
Even simpler, and keeping with the current trend, each 2 or 3 levels in a "shipyard" tech (or Construction area level) unlocks an additional dock.

I agree. That caveat with sudden decreases in ship range was rather confusing, though it will still happen when shipyards are destroyed (but I think that's less confusing).

Right, that's sort of what I was thinking. Unit labor costs aren't fixed at 10--they can be any number. I've just kept them all at 10 for the consistency's sake.

I rather like this idea. Each dock has to have labor allocated to it. Shipyards could show up on the Production tab, but they would be unlike other production facilities in that only one can be built per system, and the additional slots are provided by upgrading to larger shipyards. The player would also have the option of keeping some of the construction docks operational but leaving others inoperable, rather than the current "all or nothing" system. OK, I'm pretty sold on this idea. What say the rest of ye?

Yeah, i'm happy with this idea. Separate them and give them population blocks. Larger shipyards then allow you to allocate more people as the number of docks increases. One thing that would make it a good idea to separate them in the code may be that we plan to have shipyards and orbital batteries in the tactical combat though - would the game know to show these structures in combat if they weren't separated? Kenneth and Trashman have already created the models for these structures.

I haven't got a problem with scrapping the energy costs if we're bumping up the construction costs as well. However, there needs to be a concession with this - home systems should always have a shipyard prebuilt, or on early tech games you won't be able to do much exploring or defending even with the starting ship(s) that you have (Which also begs the question of where those ships came from if you don't already have a yard), especially if the starting ships are destroyed by a random event or combat.

The minors special shipyards would probably have to be converted to structures giving construction bonuses (which means the Tellarite facilities would be merged). Minors' shipyards have to be scrapped too, but that's not really a bad thing They're still better than the empires' in some instances, which is weird. The confusion with minors shipyards would go away, that's another benefit.

I think that makes sense. I could add it as a game option ("Home systems have pre-built shipyards").

Yep. Actually, I had already asked a couple of times why the heck didn't the empires start with a shipyard already built...

There could be a raw materials bonus cost for shipyards BTW, or a credits maintenance cost, so that you don't build one in each and every system you colonize - when there's nothing else to build, build a shipyard, to increase range.

A credits maintenance cost might be a good idea. But then again why use credits when I previously suggested Dueterium and/or Dilithium. Credits might be applicable to the Orbital Batteries as well, if we're still looking for some sort of limitation on them.

Because Deuterium and Dilithium don't make sense. A shipyard doesn't need them to sit idle, and they automatically get consumed by the shipyard when it constructs a ship anyway.

I wasn't complaining lol. Even if the shipyard isn't in use, the lights and everything are still turned on. Chances are it's powered by Fusion reactors, which consume Deuterium as a fuel source. Therefore they should use Deuterium. [/end pedanticism]

lol, consider yourself overruled.

I am in complete agreement to the shipyard change, and the labor fee is a great idea. so the votes are all in (haha) …. oh M.O.E. I feel some more random events coming of this idea!

I think yall need to look at that patch you have created because it does not work. I have tried multiple levels and different races and have been unable to create any new star ships beyond level 3. beyond that everything else about this game is great and i can not wait for the finished product.

Well, shipyards are in space, they can use solar panels for their basic power needs... No Deuterium needed. Doesn't mean they cannot *cost* some when built.
BTW, above I meant raw materials cost (only), not raw materials bonus cost (duh!).

Which BTW is kind of weird concept - orbital facilities taking power from ground facilities... nothing that hasn't been mentioned already though, hehe.
Same deal with the orbital batteries. I also warned some time ago about sabotaging (or turning off) power structures to take down defenses. Another suggestion: have a structure that controls orbital batteries - an Orbital Control Centre if you will. The higher its tech level (/size), the more batteries it can control. A bit like the minors' defensive structures (and these would be scrapped, they suffer from pretty much the same thing as shipyards), but working better; no more % bonuses, they're silly, like I also mentioned before. This approach would have the benefit of not discriminating smaller systems (as opposed to an option that relies on system size); those already are handicapped by lower ground forces' strength.
Now, a daring suggestion I've been considering posting for a while. Ground combat is lame, there are no troops per se. Orbital batteries, as per above, would need a limit. So why not use population in both those situations? Have a defenses screen. It would have "Battalion slots" and "Battery slots" (equal to the max # of batteries in the system). These would normally be empty; if the system is in danger of being attacked, the player could transfer pop blocks (as many as he wants, up to the max for the system) from production to these slots, to defend the system; of course, the system's production would suffer - but what else would you expect from a system that is under martial law? It makes sense. It also makes sense that after a ground battle, some people on the system have died and consequently the system's production has been lowered - which doesn't happen now. The # of battalion slots available could again be based off a new structure, Barracks for example, that would increase with tech level (/size); or a combination of tech area levels. Of course, this last suggestion kind of trumps the fact that defenses (above) were independent of system size.




But UP has a cost more or less equivalent to a fleetyard... IIRC.
How much of an advantage is it to have access to it a few levels earlier? If you start building it, you cannot upgrade other stuff until it's finished.




IMO, first ALL costs should be reviewed with a relative perspective - take a look at the cost for a structure, a ship, a station and a shipyard, and they don't make sense.

Did you upgrade the shipyard? IIRC level 4+ ships require a medium shipyard?

Edit: I just noticed you reported not being able to upgrade shipyards to level 2. Is that still the case?