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Author Topic: Question about fleet size  (Read 728 times)

BreekiJack

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Question about fleet size
« on: July 11, 2020, 10:33:01 AM »

Hi i'm still new to the game

I'm a few tenths of hours into my first run. I'm having trouble balancing my fleet. It's currently consuming 7.4 supplies a day, mainly because i recently found a Legion XIV class battlecruiser. The thing requires 700 crew members, and i have to pay 34k monthly salary.

Basically i'm doing bounty quests and trade quests, but all my cash goes to supply and fuel.

The questions i'm asking myself are the following :
- how big should your fleet be consumption-wise ? Is 7,4 per day way too much ? The thing is that i recently took a 300k bounty mission to kill a ludic path orbital base and i was barely able to win, so i don't see how i'm supposed to play with a tinnier fleet.
- i didn't started a colony yet : can this help me get supplies cheaper of more money, allowing me to play with such a big fleet ?
- are the repairs you "buy" at a friendly planet or orbital station (repair ships for X supplies) cheaper that having your ships repair themselves on their own ?

Thanks a lot !
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SCC

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Re: Question about fleet size
« Reply #1 on: July 11, 2020, 10:41:07 AM »

7,4 supplies per day is indeed rather sizeable number, especially if you can't handle it. Unfortunately Legion is very expensive to run, so it would be better if you left it in storage at some colony or one of three abandoned stations (in Corvus, Mayasura or Yma). You can also get Fleet Logistics 3 (decreases maintenance by 25%) or Salvage 3 (increases loot, including supplies, obtained from battles) skills to help with supplies specifically.
Colonies come with their own issues and if you start small, they'll take a while to make their money back. You might not be ready for that kind of up-front investment yet.
Repairs done at stations are no costlier than ones on the fly, they're just faster.

Mondaymonkey

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Re: Question about fleet size
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2020, 10:55:27 AM »

Quote
- how big should your fleet be consumption-wise ? Is 7,4 per day way too much ? The thing is that i recently took a 300k bounty mission to kill a ludic path orbital base and i was barely able to win, so i don't see how i'm supposed to play with a tinnier fleet.

Well, dude, there are ways to make your life easier. First of all, there are personnel skill to decrease maintenance and efficiency overhaul hullmod doing the same. Also, do not forget to salvage a couple times debris field after each large battle. Having salvaging skills and a couple of salvage rigs would give you ability to maintain much larger fleet and even sell the supplies. Also, check if you waste supplies to nowhere. Some ships are just to hungry - get rid of them, some ships have D-mods that increase maintenance - restore them (usually cheaper to buy new). Having crew/cargo/fuel over capacity will cause supply consumption penalty, so do not have more than limit. Also, there are such thing as commission to decrease monthly credit loss. Many minuses, tho'.

Quote
- i didn't started a colony yet : can this help me get supplies cheaper of more money, allowing me to play with such a big fleet ?

Short answer - yes. But it takes a lot of time and money before it is. Initial stage is very expensive and require a lot of babysitting.

Quote
- are the repairs you "buy" at a friendly planet or orbital station (repair ships for X supplies) cheaper that having your ships repair themselves on their own ?

Didn't check, but I believe it is.

P.S. Simple screens with your fleet and detailed maintenance (hover the value and press F1 to expand maintenance list) would help to determine a problem.

P.P.S. Legions are hungry expensive ships. They are great, but not for early game stages.
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intrinsic_parity

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Re: Question about fleet size
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2020, 11:04:24 AM »

The 300k ludic bases are pretty tough fights generally because that tier of bounties has the most powerful stations. Pirate bases are generally smaller and much easier to kill. Usually the lowest tier (only one station module) are ~150k and the tier 2 stations are ~200k. You can pretty easily do the ~150k ones with just one cruiser (or even with just destroyers if you play it very well), so you should probably store the legion until you get the rest of your fleet up to snuff to fight the bigger bounties.

IMO, it's not worth fighting a bounty unless you can reasonably expect to win without losses or significant damage (or you can take a bunch of the industry skills to mitigate the pain of losing stuff).

Also RE colonies, in my experience, you either need to be prepared to routinely go there and fight pirate raids (with no compensation) or be prepared to dump 1-2 mil into defenses right away in order to keep the colony safe (tier 2 station, military base and upgraded ground defenses). I typically wait to start a colony until I can dump a bunch of money to build everything immediately because I hate baby sitting. Once they get going (size 5+) you will probably make 100-200k monthly from a decent colony (and more when they get large), but it takes a long time to grow that big, and early on they will only be making you 10s of thousands per month with isn't enough to afford all the industries and defenses you need/want or even the upkeep of a large fleet.
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BreekiJack

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Re: Question about fleet size
« Reply #4 on: July 11, 2020, 12:08:51 PM »

Ok thanks so i suppose i should keep my big ships into an abandonned station until i get a colony up and running.

Quick question though : surveying planets to choose where to settle, i didn't know that some colony gave you chips you can sell to factions... does this mean that the faction will try to settle there (if i sell them the info ?)

Thanks again everyone !
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Hiruma Kai

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Re: Question about fleet size
« Reply #5 on: July 11, 2020, 12:16:16 PM »

Quick question though : surveying planets to choose where to settle, i didn't know that some colony gave you chips you can sell to factions... does this mean that the faction will try to settle there (if i sell them the info ?)

Thanks again everyone !

Unless you're playing a mod that changes things, the vanilla factions don't expand, and even in the mods where they do expand, I don't believe the survey data chips matter.  Pretty sure they stack in inventory, which means they're all identical and can't have planetary data associated with them because you can't tell which planet which chip came from in a stack.

They're purely there for you to sell for credits with no other effect on the game.
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Aereto

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Re: Question about fleet size
« Reply #6 on: July 11, 2020, 12:19:42 PM »

surveying planets to choose where to settle, i didn't know that some colony gave you chips you can sell to factions... does this mean that the faction will try to settle there (if i sell them the info ?)
Currently, no. Factions don't have the ability to send colony fleets.

Makes things a lot easier when finding the right system to settle in, especially when one system has all of the needed raw materials to have overlapping patrol fleets. Especially at least Rich Ore/Rare/Volatiles that can be compensated with colony management skill for heavy industry and fuel production to be self-susustaining.
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