Fleet Supply & Upkeep...?

Because you need a bigger fleet? That's the only way to get a larger fleet...

Personally I always hold off on researching fleet upgrades until I start coming under attack so that I can keep the most of my resources for booming.

Think of it as expanding the infrastructure necessary to support your fleet. The cap is 2000 fleet points, but it's not available right away.

You get the ability to support a small fleet at the start with no maintenance, but as you want to expand your fleet it takes more and more money to keep it going. Hence, you start losing some of your income but gaining the ability to build more ships

This is balanced out by the fact that as you're needing more ships you're also expanding, so you have more planets, mines, trade ships, and refinery ships raking in the resources

Ahhh okay - I've obviously not hit the cap then. I upgrade it along with Capital Ship Commanders when possible.

I thought it was operating behind the scenes and I was potentially being penalised because I'd not got my Fleet Supply/Upkeep correct.

Many Thanks!

I usually only upgrade capital ship commanders when I anticipate building a cap ship, otherwise, it's just wasted credits. Likewise, if you boost your fleet upkeep before you need the capacity, you could end up spending more than you need to. Just keep an eye on the fleet cap and when you're getting low, boost it up.

On the top of the screen, just to the right of center is current fleet points. Your standard frigate is 4 fleet points, a capitol ship is 40 (or 50 depending on your race) etc. You can mouse over it and a small screen will popup with details, how many of each ship, how many points used by them collectively, etc.

Generally speaking, avoid upgrading fleet supply unless you need it, when you hover over your economics (Credit, Metal and Crystal) you'll see how much is being deducted for fleet upkeep. As mentioned, the first level is 0% upkeep cost.

Its kind of silly that it doesnt scale back down. Imagine being in a large multiplayer game and having a bunch of enemies team up on you. Your empire gets cut down to just a few planets, but they are heavily defended and wont budge, your allies start attacking the enemies and they have to fall back.

Your fleet is decimated, you only have a few planets left, but you still have to pay full upkeep, meaning that your chances of making a recovery are slim.

What they should do is make the research just upgrade your fleet cap, and then have the upkeep % based on how much of that cap you are using. Anything 100 or under gives no upkeep, and then the % steadily increases as you go over that cap in a curve, but hitting the current values when maxed for whatever level of cap research you currently have.

Yeah that sounds like a reasonable idea as well. More dynamic upkeep like Warcraft 3 had. If you get owned, going back down to no upkeep while you rebuild would help a ton to recover. Maybe make it an option when starting a game to have "Dynamic Upkeep".

One thing that was a surprise to me, and thus possibly for readers here, is that the upkeep cost of fleet supply is COMPLETELY INDEPENDANT of how many ships you actually have fielded.

Zero ships = same upkeep
Max ships = same upkeep

So once you have those fleet supply points, you may as well use them.

The price of ship upkeep is negligible compared to the price of bureaucracy, maybe?

Dynamic upkeep would be nice but the current risk that comes with an upgrade is also quite fun. I just make sure I don't upgrade that unless I absolutely need it, can nearly immediately build a fleet, and can hold my own well.

That's the intention.

Don't think of the upkeep being the price of maintaining the ships, but rather of maintaining the infrastructure to construct and maintain the number of ships.

The infrastructure to construct the ships is represented by the frigate and capital ships factories.

Indeed, the infrastructure to maintain the ships seems OK to grow with the number of ships supported but must be also sized back when no more ships. At least we could have a scrap fleet upkeep button to scrap this infrastructure (structure dismantled or people fired). After a huge battle when I need to recover I would preffer to research all over again fleet support than to have this infrastructure feast of my money with no ships to support. This only makes the game too rigid and no fun. Think of a game of atttrition where your huge sized fleet gets slowly decimated with no possibility to rebuild. This makes creating huge fleets a "do or die" endevour. If your fleet is not strong anymore, you may aswell quit the game.

Me and my buddies started to play again this game after we abandoned it long ago. The reason for abandon was exactly this silly upkeep. Hopefully the designers read the forum and include in the Rebelion  expansion at least a button to rollback upkeep.

Necro