Arround turn 300, with 55 planets, most of them with economic improvements, and 32 economic starbases, i get an income of 1700 credits. Which allows only 200 ships at 8 credits of maintenance, so 4 ships per planet, and nothing to defend the starbases/shipyards, no patrol or invasion fleets, and no money to do things like rushing a colony improvement, rushing a ship, nor upgrading old ships.
Another example, 77 planets, 48 economic starbases, all economic techs, and an income of 15 000 credits. Medium ship maintenance: 60 credits. So, only 3 medium ships per planet, and nothing else.
And for these 2 examples, i still had no warships because my shipyards was flooded by constructors.
What i need is the following:
- have enough money to maintain 10 medium ships per planet/shipyard/starbase, in addition to patrol and invasion fleets.
- have a military production that allow to build ships in a reasonable time, for example 80 turn to securize 2 economic planets, a shipyard, and a starbase. It means 2 turn to build a medium ship with a shipyard sponsored by two planets that have just a few manufacturing improvements.
- remove the constructor flood in shipyards to let place to warships.
- use the precursors ship components on more than one ship, because it is fun and logical that a race can produce more than one of these components.
So, I did 4 modifications:
First, I have reduced ship components maintenance costs by a factor 10.
Second, to increase military production, i created new starbase modules for the military ring: a military factory that have 4 levels, like the civilian factory of the economic ring. Another way is to reduce ship component manufacturing costs, but i like the idea of a military factory and it makes military starbases more strategic. My 4 levels of military factory increase the military production by 50%, 100%, 150% and 200%. It may be not enough, I didn't tested precisely, but the time to build a ship is more reasonable and the gameplay is better.
I think the best mod would be an increase by 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%, paired with a reduction by a factor 2 or 3 of the ship components manufacturing costs.
Third, I modded the construction points of the construction module. I set it to 4 instead of 1.
And finally, I allowed more than one per player precursors ship components.
I think this mod improve the gameplay on the following point:
- makes the game more military.
- allow a better defense of planets/shipyards/starbases.
- reduce the constructor flood when having a lot of starbases.
I didn't tried a difficulty different than beginner, but i wonder if the AI need to be adapted to my modifications.
I think the problems i initially exposed, are asking the following questions about the gameplay:
- Are ship components maintenance costs too high ?
- Are ship components manufacturing costs too high ?
- Are construction points of the construction module too low ?
- Is it a good idea to limit precursors ship components to one per player ?
- Why not a military factory for the military ring of starbases ?
When creating a new game, may be some options to control these points would be a good thing. For example, the user could choose a percentage to control ship maintenance costs.