Mothballing

Ok just a idea to make navy s abit more interesting and realistic.

In real life navies are probably one of the most expensive things to up keep. In times off peace throughout history to save money the majority of the ships are laid up or mothballed. In other words put into storage with a skeleton crew to upkeep them. The in times of war instead of building new ships you can just bring out the old ones.

So I suggest making navy upkeep a heck of a lot more expensive. But allowing you to mothball some or all of your ships. In this mod they will only cost a fraction of there maintenance BUT you can move them and they have basically no defence and worse can be easily captured by enemy ships or sunk in later eras by bombers. When a war breaks out you can mobilise them again which will take one or two turns (where they will be super vulnerable) and then after they will be ready too use as normal with normal upkeep costs.

 

I actually like the idea of this. You could also say do this with ground and air units. by default say, a unit is not activated. In order to actually us it in military uses, one needs to activate it, simulating mobilisation. Also, makes it a whole lot more practical to maintain massive militaries. sure, It means ludicrous sized upkeep at war..which is nothing new. war isn't cheap. If you didn't go to war prepared, your lose. it also means one can be militarily powerful without paying as much money. it would require making it so they have the same wait in power as the mobilized unit does, to properly represent its real potential.
The AI is the concern though. Can It be trained to us this?

 

I was thinking as well groundforces but just kept it for navys to keep it simple.
But yeah haveing demoblised armys and reserve forces would be cool.

 

Actually that gave me an idea. What if units could be "retired" and could make a special building if you had a museum or special museums like Aircraft Museum for Aircraft or Naval Museum for Ships.

 

Thats pretty cool idea. Though I would still keep with the high military upkeep and mothballing.

 

So basically designing a mission to 'Mothball' or 'deactivate' a unit (making it incapable of movement and incapable of fighting), making it no longer count towards unit upkeep tallies when in that 'state' and then giving it a mission to 'Activate', which while it takes the round for it to do so, makes it possible to move and fight again? Interesting. Not the HARDEST thing to do but there's a number of things to think about, like how to get those deactivated units from intercepting and such.

And should they eventually be removed from the game if they've been deactivated for too long?

Also @Hydro: Actually... that TOO could work for nearly all unit types. And the level they've been retired at could play a major role. For example, you could have a building chain that gets built (like animals build buildings) from X Combat Type units, each step of the chain being better than the last and each step representing the level of the unit that was used.

For example, a 1-5th lvl unit would be able to create the first level building but if you then took a 6th lvl unit and retired it in the same city, you'd get the second level building which would override the first entirely.

ANY military unit could be used to produce these... but only the BEST military units would be able to generate the best versions of them, so you wouldn't really want to build military just to spread out to all your cities for immediate retirement, but rather would want to retire the best units you have for the best overall long term benefits (like more XP on new units of a similar nature since the retirees are bringing home tales, lessons, war stories, etc...).

These buildings would also help to reduce War Weariness and create a small bit of culture I think.

 

Thats basicaly the idea and the idea of it being removed is a good extension the idea being that if in storage too long it will have decayed too much.

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Reserve_Fleet for the real life Idea. Infact the US battleship IWO still in service so to speak but mothballed in case later needed. Infact it was activated for 1991 golf war. Also the british empire used this tecnique to keep such a large navy.

 

@Thunderbrd

I was thinking more like the Animal Myth buildings. Such as a Heavy Swordsman or Knight could be used for a "Medieval Exhibit". There would only be a limited number of types of buildings and each unit would only have certain types it could make.

 

I was right there with you. However, I'm just suggesting the following in addition:

1) Base the 'type' of building a unit can make on Combat Class and Level rather than the type of unit itself.

2) Allow the Level of the unit to qualify it for better versions of that Combat Class's building chain so that you're tempted, as a player to sacrifice the BEST units of each era rather than upgrading them.

 

If your saying what I think that the higher the unit the bigger the boost the building gives I agree. On the whole its allways the legendary ships and planes that get into the big museams. Though units need to be abit more better at surviving.

 

Hmm. I am still not entirely sure. Are you saying that say a Longbowman would be worth more than an Archer? Ot the other way around?

Likewise I am thinking buildings such as ...

- Prehistoric Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Prehistoric unit)
- Ancient Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Ancient unit)
- Classical Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Classical unit)
- Medieval Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Medieval unit)
- Renaissance Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Renaissance unit)
- Industrial Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Industrial unit)
- Modern Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Modern unit)
- Trans-Human Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Trans-Human unit)
- Galactic Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Galactic unit)

- Naval Museum (Req Museum and Made by Water unit)
- Aircraft Museum (Req Museum and Made by Air unit)
- Space Museum (Req Museum and Made by Space unit)

- Taxidermy Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Subdued Animal unit)

- Clockpunk Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Clockpunk unit)
- Steampunk Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Steampunk unit)
- Dieselpunk Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Dieselpunk unit)
- Atompunk Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Atompunk unit)
- Biopunk Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Biopunk unit)
- Cyberpunk Exhibit (Req Museum and Made by Cyberpunk unit)

Since the museum is not around until around the Renaissance Era you would have to save up those older units if you wanted to have older exhibits.

 

Dont think age would matter. I mean in the UK we have the HMS victory the flagship from the battle of trafalger layed up as a museam and exibition ship.

We also have a WWII Heavy cruiser the HMS belfast laid up in central london.
Both I would say are important and have a good history attached.

 

Well, I was saying that the higher the LEVEL (earned by xp) of the unit, the better the building it can make. By assigning the building chain to a combat class, perhaps we should make the Era the unit is built in a sub-combat class so that we can arrange building chains by Era as well. Thus, a higher level Archer would be able to build a better form of the same building type the lower level Archer would be able to build but a Longbowmen unit would be building an entirely different kind of building since the Longbomen unit would be attached to a later Era definition.

 

I'm not sure if this goes without saying, but in the event this gets incorporated you should be able to mothball aircraft too.

 

Yeah it kinda goes without saying. Active Airforces should be pretty expensive to upkeep and so should Tanks and helicopters.

I would also suggest no being able to mothball stuff just anywere but have a tree of buildings designed where you can mothball stuff. The buildings would start from the classical era and be just for ships and move onto aircraft and such later on.

 

I know we have an exhibit somewhere in Canada for the 'Bluenose', which is also on our dime (10 cents)... exact place eludes me off the top of my head. :/
I know we have a couple of our ships on exhibit, same with the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow on display, even though it never saw active service due to cancellation.

 

It absolutely should NOT take only one turn to reactivate a mothballed unit if this is done. Being able to have a standing army of 500 units activateable in 1 turn at zero running cost is massively over-powered.

I suggest new tile improvements (or possibly immobile units that auto-build on a new tile improvement just because the implementation might be easier). These would be 'mothball warehouses' (or something) and behave like transports (hence why it might be easier to make them pseudo-units). Each one WOULD have the normal unit upkeep cost, but also a capacity of how many mothballed units it can hold. It would take the same number of turns as the warehouse's capacity to un-mothball from it. Thus you could build 10-capacity warehouses (10:1 cost reduction while mothballed since you pay for one unit instead of 10), but if so it would take you 10 turns to un-mothball the units. Various different capacities could be available (you also have to devote a tile and spend the time building the improvement).

 

One turn was just a figure thrown out. But the point of the idea really being the unkeep cost would be much higher than now. So ok your keeping it at say near zero upkeep (it will still cost some) but when activated it will use up a vast amount of the money saved as war is expensive. Unless its a national emergancy your not likely to actived all mothballed units, not unless you HAVE to.

 

To achive this we can

reprogram sleep function
- unit in sleep will generate 1/4 cost
- unit with sleep will be unable to fight (capture as a prize)
- sleep we be available only for water and air units

of course we must rise 4 times maintiance costs for water and air units

 

Sounds pretty good to me. Though still think you need to throw a turn or two to mobalise.