emember it.

Star Pilot, that single last ship of the Drengin home fleet could only retreat once per two turns. OR, it could be forced to move away from the battlefield +1 movement so that it cannot come back immediately and have the problem you mentioned. Or, If it tries for a second time to retreat, have the % chances reduced a lot, and perhaps making a 3rd time impossible.

enemy ship might be able to capture the damaged vessel. You can capture ships even though you have reached your limit and only larger ships can be captured (not corvettes or defenders etc)

rate fortress and of course contriibute nothing to it's old empire's economy.
12. Escort. Effectively anti-piracy.

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I like the idea of a smaller number of ships. Large fleets always seem to be a drag for me to deal with, for all the reasons discussed above. If I were to suggest a compromise to the big/little problem, I would have each planet you own give a certain number of ship points. The number of points would be related to planet quality, population, random bonuses, etc. Each ship would take up a number of ship points until it is destroyed or decommisioned. Thus for larger maps, you have more planets, and thus more ship points, and thus more ships. DIfferent classes of ships would require more points, so things like colony ships, transports, and cargo ships don't instantly consume you military capacity, and so bigger ships are more of an investment then smaller ones.

To make me more attached to a certain ships, I'd have an experience system that provided interesting bonuses depending on what the ship had done as well as how long it had been around.

Right now, ships still COST money. Including colony ships. So money is the limiting factor for what you can maintain. More profitable empires can have more ships. The more a ship has in it (high tech weapons, lots of engines, etc), the more it costs per turn.

Balanced, that would negate the need for logistics or ship points. Small empire, small fleet. Giant map, tons of settled worlds, and you can support huge fleets... unless your empire isn't profitable.

I think it'll depend on my position.

My preference would be for fewer, more powerful and more personalized ships. However, depending on the size of my empire and how many sides of it I can get to touch the map edge, I may have quite a lot of territory that I need to have ships stationed along in case my neighbors come knocking. So, I will probably be forced to scale down the quality of my ships until I have enough quantity that I can have enough ships at enough places at once.

So money is the limiting factor for what you can maintain. More profitable empires can have more ships. The more a ship has in it (high tech weapons, lots of engines, etc), the more it costs per turn. Balanced, that would negate the need for logistics or ship points. Small empire, small fleet. Giant map, tons of settled worlds, and you can support huge fleets... unless your empire isn't profitable.

This would make sense. Logistics is then just about how many ships it is possible to orchistrate at once. A high logistics means that large fleets could act well together, well a low logistics would mean that too many ships together would just end up getting in each others way, so rendering large fleets useless (or uncreatable, as your generals realise this and so 'advise' you against it).

I guess my position boils down to this: I hope that the cost for maintaining a cubic ton of starship greatly increases in GC2, so that we end up with far fewer ships. If we can add in perks, such as the ships' battle histories, that would be gravy.

I just had a thought. When you have more models of ships in use, you need to allocate more resources to build parts for maintainance and repairs. Think about it. You live in the age of interchangable parts, and many ships use the same kinds of parts, but if you have a model with an outdated engine, few other ships will have that engine, so engines for this ship are special order. This costs more than if it has the same engine as everyone else as you have to dedicate a set of factories to produce replacement parts for it's engine. In game terms, why not increase the logistics cost of all ships for each model still in production. So if you have 4 kinds of ships, recon, fighter, defender, and starbase it will cost you less per ship than if you have 10 kinds of ships to confront multiple threats. The cost should increase exponentially, so that players have to find a balance between having the right ships for the right jobs, and maintaining what ships they have. Now on the other hand, if you "obsolete" a model, this means you have stopped production on parts for that model. The cost for the your per ship in the fleet is calculated as 1 less. However the costs for any obsolete ships should gradually rise, as fewer parts are shared with other models, parts not shared are going out of stock, and more and more repairs are needed as the ships become jury-rigged when neccessary parts are unavailable. ("She cannot take much more Captain or she's gonna blow!")Altogether, this could give people a little more to consider when building and upgrading a fleet. Do you want to create a new model to face a new threat? If you do, is it cost effective to upgrade another model and obsolete it? Maybe you could just build the new model, and obsolete one that serves little purpose anymore. Later on, when an old ship just costs more than it's worth, do you want to simply scrap it, or do you want to refit it so that it uses parts still in service?

Just adding my two cents. I think this might be a good comprimise between having a lot of ships vs, having a few ships that do their jobs well. In my example of the 4 kinds vs 10 kinds, the former player would be able to pump out tons of generic ships to overwhelm, while the latter would counter with a few ships specially outfitted to handle the threat.

That's a very interesting idea, Zippo342. I think I like it

I am not in favor on limiting the number of ships, but the maintanance cost should be relative to some factor, logistics, number of planets, galaxy size etc. and yes add a maintaniance sost level option to the game-setup this will allow for different playing styles.

Personally I dont like loosing ships, but I don't have or want anny attachment to individual ships, why be attached to a ship crewed by a few hundred or at the most some thousand people, when my empire comprise of planets inhabited by billions of people. I just don't se the point, after all I'll send 5 billion troops to invade the Drengi homeworld a few weeks from now.

Let's have fleet assignment and automated refit of ships. When I discover a new better or cheaper fusion cannon, I want to be able to say, "from now use version X in stead of version Y", and all new ships will be outfitted with this version, and any ship comming in for a refit will get them as well. And my ships will be refitted at some rate, set by my abilities and choises.

One thing I disliked in MoO2 and SpaceEmpires III was that I had to maually designate ships for upgrade. It's nice to have as an option, but not as a requirement.

I disagree with you on the automated refitting of ships, Martin the Dane. If you don't want to take the effort to refit a ship, then it shouldn't get refitted. I believe you should be forced to send a ship that you want refitted to a shipyard, and take it out of commission during the refit. Otherwise, you get to have your cake and eat it too, which is silly - you get to keep the use of your ship out in the field, and you get the better stats. That makes no sense.

When a U.S. Navy ship is refitted, let's say when the battleships of the late 80's and 90's were refitted with missiles, that wasn't done at sea. They sent them to a shipyard, and made the upgrades. That's how refitting works.

Now, battlefield repairs I totally agree with. But not just automagically upgrading ship systems in the field without any facilities or penalty whatsover. That's just lazy and cheesy, in my opinion