New Research: Fleet Command

Fleet points define how big your fleet can be without costing any upkeep.

You start with 25 fleet command points. Each ship uses as many points as it has places for ship modules (scout 5, corvette 7 …).

The new researches give you additional command points, but reduce your overall productivity.

If your fleet uses more command points than available (25 + fleet command research), upkeep costs will occur. Upkeep does also lower the productivity of the colonies.

The ship list shows the current values:

The formula for the upkeep is:

( shipPoints – commandPoints ) / commandPoints

and the result is capped to a value between 0 and 1.

Here is an example:

6 scouts = 30 ship points

Base command points and no research = 25 command points

(30 – 25) / 25 = 0.2 => 20% Upkeep

Which would mean a loss of 20% on each produced good.

Aside from the upkeep constraint, empires can't build more ships than twice their command points.

Some benefits of the new feature:

• Since fleet size is restricted, fleet quality becomes very interesting. The strongest spaceships are built of ship modules made of special resources. Since each region does yield only one of the five special resources, most empires will have access to only one or two types. Trading with other players will get you these resources (or ship modules made of these).
• Everyone has to live with the fleet command constraint, and those who handle it best will have an advantage
• When empires build huge fleets during a conflict, their economy will take harm
• Wars won't be fought in a day anymore. During conflicts, the previously accumulated goods will be spent over multiple days, perhaps even weeks.

This new feature will not be merged in the currently running game or demos, but the next game will include it.

If you think the implementation should be simpler / more complex / completely different - just specify it in a comment, and I will take it into account and possibly change the implementation.