ship limits and surrender

[Suicide Junkie]

I was actually contemplating starting a game with P&N mod, or something similar, and setting a very low ship limit. that way the few ships that are built would be upgraded over time with premium components, nanotubes, and other such stuff. the game would be forced to focus more on ship design and tactics rather than industrial might.

I'm afraid that your players would just build Battlemoons, and industrial power would remain a key element.

OTOH, you could easily outlaw them, or just disable Battlemoons with a mod tweak.

Without Battlemoons, I can see the endgame being jammed full of 1000-component ships
Even Fleet-on-Fleet slugging matches that drag out for months or years at a time.

[Jmenschenfresser]

First off, 100 ships isn't actually a "low" limit. 100 dreadnoughts even in the unmodded game take a good number of planets to support them. I'm not even sure why we have a limit that goes up to something like 20000. I have to wonder that if you had 255 systems each with every sector containing a huge mineral rich planet could you build that many. (I'm not going to do the math on that one.) I would say in a decent sized galaxy with 10 players, only the top half could reach that number and most likely only the top couple. Given that they are building top o the line ships.

That being said, I contemplated this sort of game a while back. My reason was a little different. Played in a large galaxy, a limited number of ships couldn't be everywhere at all times...forcing a bit of strategy on the player were his empire to grow beyond the limit. I had the feeling though that it would phase out any smaller designs, as you wouldn't want to waste that slot for something other than the best...as SJ stated.

[Pax]

Um.

Crystalline Technology and 120% Maintenance Aptitude. With the Crystalline Restructuring Facility III ... you're paying about 3.5% net maintenance in your home systems. 5% elsewhere.

I'd expect you could support a quite fair-sized fleet, if you weren't also building LOTS of other stuff, at those rates.

[capnq]

I have never hit a ship or unit limit in all the games of SE IV I've ever played.

[Suicide Junkie]

Don't forget, you can mothball the ships you build, and save them for wartime.
Zero maintenance during peacetime, so all you need is time to build up 20,000 ships.

[Fyron]

And, you can retrofit and repair mothballed ships, so they are never out of date.

[rdouglass]

As a side note I've always questioned the 'ship limit' about numbers of ships. IMO, the limit should be based on tonnage and not sheer numbers of ships. That way, if you set the limits low, a player that focuses on small, fast ships is not penalized in late games.