A thought on changing how energy works.

[Zanthra]

NOTE: The specific numbers and formulas I present here are only for example, to give an idea how the mechanics could work.

I have been thinking some, and I feel that in this game the ship caps seem to be an arbitrary limit to expansion. While the AI has limitless room to grow with the number of ships it can send against you, the player cannot. I feel that while there should be a limit, I don't think that limit should be a static thing.

I propose something like the following:

Instead of each unit counting against your total energy. Instead energy becomes a ship cap, and is calculated independently for each ship. Each ship you build costs a base energy times 2^(x/12) where x is the number of that type of ship you already operate. For example, if a ship has a base energy cost of 100, the first requires 100 energy, the second requires 2^(1/12) energy, ~106 energy (a total of 206 energy against your total produced energy) the third requires about 112.25 or a total of 318.25, etc. If the next ship of that type built would take that ship group's energy limit over your total production, then it cannot be built. The number 12 can be changed to change the scale at which the energy costs rise or fall, in the case of 12, the first costs 100, the 13th costs 200, the 25th costs 400, the 37th costs 800 etc, in other words every 12 units, the costs doubles.

With the factor at 12, and a unit with a base energy cost of 100:

Your initial homeworld energy production of 184,000 would cap at 81 ships with a base energy of 100.
The current fighter ship cap is 96, this would require over 428,837 energy.
At 1,500,000 energy production, the cap would be 117.
At 5,000,000 energy production, the cap would be 138.

When you consider that this increases the cap of all ships (or at least fleet ships) you have available as you gain energy, this can become significant.

I do propose something slightly different for turrents.

With turrets, the energy cost increase is not global, but rather planet specific, but the cap remains global.

Lets say base turret energy costs were set to 2000. With the formula of Base * 2 ^ (x/12) where x is the number that have been built so far on This Planet, and the 12 means the costs double every 12 turrets of that type built on this planet.

In this case, 29 is an important number, because 29 of those turrets on one planet requires 145,951 energy, and since the energy collector on a controlled planet produces 150,000 energy, it means that you could build 29 of each turret on each planet you control.

39 turrets on a single planet would cost 286,350 energy, meaning it would take the energy of two energy collectors to set up, meaning your other systems have to lose more than those 10 turrets to provide that energy.

I think this would create more opprotunity for defense in depth, where every one of the five systems between the AI and your homeworld has some capability of slowing and harassing the enemy, while supporting your fleetships. Allowing for longer strings of systems that the ships have to fight through to get to you, instead of one or two, and when it breaks you have to get everything to your homeworld and hope you can stop them. It would also substantially reduce the impact of putting defenses up on strategic worlds captured on the other side of AI system (when you build the energy collector on the system, you get enough energy surplus to build a set of turrets there) and importantly it could give more value to things like Zenith Power Generators, and Matter Converters.

One thing to consider however is how things like golems, and perhaps spirecraft, would be handled, and one possibility is to have them consume energy as they do now, reducing global ship caps (although the exponential scaling works in your favor for the debit). Another thing to consider is how to handle cases where the energy production goes down, and the ship caps go with it, although handling it as reclaiming works now, where ships continue functioning over their cap, but can't be produced. It's more complicated for turrets, as how should remains rebuilders handle turret wrecks when they are over the cap.

Does anyone else have ideas related to this? Good idea, terrible, etc?

[Zeyi]

Interesting idea, but I have to ask - based on what you said:

I have been thinking some, and I feel that in this game the ship caps seem to be an arbitrary limit to expansion.

If your issues with the current system are based on it's use of an arbitrary limit on ship caps, then how does replacing that with another system using arbitrary numbers fix anything? (Why would a second ship of the exact same type use more energy than the last?)

While the AI has limitless room to grow with the number of ships it can send against you, the player cannot. I feel that while there should be a limit, I don't think that limit should be a static thing.

The AI is a galactic power, so they should feel like a limitlessly impending doom in my opinion, the second part here I just don't understand where you drew this conclusion as this is not at all the case. Ways to increase the number of ships available to you include unlocking higher marks with knowledge, unlocking new starships with knowledge, capturing/hacking advanced research stations and fabricators, broken golems, mining asteroids, nebula missions, fallen spire missions, human colony rebellions.. etc etc

Whilst only being able to build a hard cap of 96 mark I fighters might not make a great deal of sense, it is kind of a core game mechanic at this point, changing that would *really* mess with balance on a huge scale. I think one way to explain the hard cap from a lore perspective is to say that is the maximum number the AI controller used can handle (as human ships aren't actually manned). Each ship uses a different controller with different logic specific for that ship, etc etc (let's not get bogged down speculating lore).

One thing I can resoundingly agree on is that energy could do to be changed now. Since crystal is gone energy should become a bit less available I think. In most games I'm energy safe once I've got 2-3 planets, and once I have a ZPG i'm good for the long haul. In a fallen spire game I'll have millions of energy unused so I do think a re-balance is needed but not quite to the extent you are suggesting.. I'd like to see some alternate matter converters that produce varying energy at different costs or if we were really lucky a matter converter with a 'sliding scale' type thing where we could adjust the amount of energy we need on the fly (but with a minimum base cost so that you can't just leave them running at 0 cost/0 energy produced) and energy collectors reduced to maybe 100k energy. The home command station could perhaps do with a cheeky 50-100k bonus though.

[Zanthra]

I think you are right, I really don't have any problems with the ship cap mechanic. I guess the main reason I was even thinking along these lines was really about the turrets. The problem I have is the state of setting up chokepoint systems with impenetrable defenses, and it becomes win or lose in that one system. I guess I feel there should be a bit more flexibility in where turrets are used, at the cost of how many turrets any single planet can field. The change in the energy system came from the turret idea above, and I thought, "How could this fit with other ships?"

Some other ideas I had related to it:

Give every system a base allotment of turrets on top of the global pool. I don't feel this fixes the problem, you still fortify one system, and build the base allotment in every other system.

Under the current energy system, you could make turrets cost exponentially more energy (small exponent as above) the more already on a planet, but I feel the binary nature of energy now would cause more problems than it seeks to solve if you try to keep energy stable.

I definitely feel that setting up a few turrets in a system should not cost much, but quickly become a large strategic cost as you increase it to the point where it can defend against waves itself.

[Aklyon]

Have you tried using Core Turret Controllers?

[Lancefighter]

Honestly, energy right now, for me, is a completely forgettable mechanic. I cannot think of the last time I was in a game and anywhere near my energy limit.

I dont know if this would actually change anything, but I feel like energy probably should be looked at at some point.

(note: fallen spire games tend to make conventional resources weird, so I am not sure how other 'real' games work)

[Toranth]

Honestly, energy right now, for me, is a completely forgettable mechanic. I cannot think of the last time I was in a game and anywhere near my energy limit.

I dont know if this would actually change anything, but I feel like energy probably should be looked at at some point.

(note: fallen spire games tend to make conventional resources weird, so I am not sure how other 'real' games work)

In single-homeworld, non-FS games, I'm frequently tight for energy.  I've built 50+ Matter Converters any number of times, even with no superweapons.
In FS games, I expand so much that Energy is rarely an issue, unless an Exo wipes 5 or 6 systems.
In multi-HW games, I'm almost never short of energy.  Only when I get all the Core Turret Controllers and try to beachhead dozens of AI planets.

[Draco18s]

Me, I tend to go middle-AIP (I try to keep it under 240, but that's not always possible) and I rarely rarely rarely have energy problems.

Oh, and that's including not having a ZPG.

[Histidine]

Between Core Turret Controllers and Miniforts, in my games (sometimes FS, usually have a ZPG at some point) I only occasionally get power shortages on account of overbuilding starships.

Unless the AI knifes into a weak point and pops a few command stations (and thus the energy collectors). Then it's !!PANIC!!