Food requirement for ship and station crews

[Falcrack]

Should ships and stations be required to carry a certain amount of food onboard in order to feed the crew? It wouldn’t take up much space, and would not be consumed quickly, but it would be a consideration especially if you are leaving your ships undocked for an extended period of time, and contribute to operation costs. This would justify the existence of food factories in space, so the products they produce would not just be useless window dressing ware, but actually be an important consideration in the overall economy. Go long enough without feeding your crew and/or employees, and they would leave for greener pastures, so to speak.

[Alan Phipps]

The problem is that this would open the door for similar questions about water, oxygen, waste disposal, recycling and excess heat dispersion. Just how micromanaged do you want each of your ships and stations to be? In X-X3 games the non-automated stations required race-specific food as a prime resource anyway.

If you can leave all this routine-type management to be done automatically by ships' captains and station managers then why even bother implementing it as you can instead just assume it is being done?

[CBJ]

I voted for stations only.

[Morkonan]

I think it's too much to track. ("No.") I do, however, agree that every asset, in some way, should or could be included in some form of supply chain.

Manufacturing stations would naturally already be in some form of logistics chain, directly managed, automated by the player or part of the overall trade AI.

Ships need, at the very least, e-cells. Either their own AI is seeing to that or the player has automated supply for them.

Trade stations can be included in either a player constructed chain of trade/supply, like the regional trade-station CLS hub-like thing, detailed in the old X3TC forums years ago, making about the only practical use out of player-owned trade stations possible, or as part of the AI's natural economy. (IF they could actually sell something.)

Now, if there are purely residential stations, then I'd change my vote to "yes." Everything should have the possibility to be a useful part of gameplay and having to work out logistics chains is one of the important gameplay activities for the player.

Otherwise - No.

Reason - It's redundant, since the station will already be in some sort of logistics chain.

[gbjbaanb]

I vote no. While a cost of running a ship or station is a very good thing, microing it isn't.

so a fixed cost to subsume all the little things into one overall value lets you have the additional gameplay element without the management hassle - you simply pay local suppliers to get you all the stuff the station needs, or every time you dock for a ship without having to spell it all out.

However, maybe a better interface would be for all the individual supply requirements to be listed, and the player could supply them manually if preferred, and everything that wasn't supplied by the player gets automatically fulfilled by local traders.

so a player could turn up with a cargo bay full of cheap food that "fell of the back of a transport" and supply a station so the local traders would then not sell food to the station as it was already filled, making the regular cost of supply cheaper. Maybe that's the best approach for everyone rather than a simple 'running cost' number in credits.

It would also allow (if desired) for complex supply to be forced to be supplied by the player - like the old raw materials inX3, most would be bought automatically by the station but rare stuff would need to be found by the player (eg a hypothetical new factory making teleport cells from pink nvidium crystals, no NPC will supply that making it part of the player's gameplay)

[Ezarkal]

Station only.
Supplying food to ships would be way too much maintenance.
I guess if they keep the current jumpfuel/drive system, your capship could do a full ressuply while refueling. (Fuel, food, missiles, etc.) But otherwise, it would be way too much micromanagement. A maintenance fee would be much easier to handle.

As for stations, well... in XR most of them use food ration of BoFu anyway. In fact, I think the only player ownable stations that doesn't use food as a production resource are the energy cell production stations, which still use them as secondary wares. So I guess it wouldn't be an issue to add a food "maintenance cost" for the station.

[Earth Ultimatum IV.]

Nope. If X4 was more about having a single station and taking care of it, with more deeper control & stuff, like a tamagotchi, then sure. But if it works like previous games, where it's more about building several stations and managing them from the larger scale, then no.

[lordpazuzu]

I think this should be implemented not as a micromanagement option but as an optional thing. Like the actual boost when you give secondary resources to boost production. Because of that I voted for ships also, having a bit of food in cargo space should boost the AI behavior in some way for ships also.

[vkerinav]

I'd vote yes to an upkeep cost for stations and ship. Making an actual ware that you would be more of problem, though not as much for stations--consumption could be 'always on', unlike goods used in the production chain, but it could still be handled by the manager.

We could then potentially have station modules that produce food supplies for the station, reducing logistics, but taking up a slot you could otherwise use for something else.

So, yes to upkeep costs, no to unnecessary micromanagement.

[Kitty]

I voted "stations only", but you can count it as "stations and capital ships only" if you imagine capital ships as having lot of people.

In the recurrent costs, we have things linked to production, and others linked to time. I think that having a factory full of workers that are just waiting for a never to arrive cargo of mineral should cost something.
But the food supply of a lonely pilot is just negligible, especialy if he gets paid. And if the ship is remote-piloted, it is even less.

[mr.WHO]

No food requirement other that for regular producion cycle - it would add too much logistic micromanagement hell - or worse farms, farms everywhere!

[Rei Ayanami]

You mean that the player would have to take care of it manually, tell each ship to get food? I think that'd be far too much micromanagement, even more than having to search for a crew for each ship in X:R.

Also, how would a need for food affect a ships behavior? Will it be that when i'm in the middle of a huge battle with the Xenon fleet my capital ships contact me "Sir, we ran out of burgers and pasta. We must retreat!" and i have to do it or else they'll self-destruct because they're hungry?

Well, i guess it could be done that ships automatically restock food, similar to jumping fuel in X:R... as long as the player doesn't have to take care of it manually, i guess.

As for stations, if it's done then either an upkeep cost would be ok or just have every station require some basic food ressource for production as primary or secondary ressource.

However, keep in mind that an upkeep cost - while providing a nice credit sink - also kind of restricts what the player can do at certain moments:
Without upkeep cost i can do whatever i want, freedom.
With an upkeep cost i might be locked into constantly having to get more credits for the upkeep cost, especially when i don't have a large empire wiht a steady cashflow yet.

An upkeep cost for luxury-things like production-boosting specialists wouldn't be that bad, though, since those are usually used by people who already have enough money.

[vadiolive]

I believe game need sink
or otherwise after 20h game you become rich and well boring

Expand element think and plan

[MegaJohnny]

I voted yes for stations, relating to that service personnel stat. I always felt X could do with more to represent common workers beyond the "population" stat on the UI. In XR we got mass traffic and residential modules which gave a great visual impression of population - having some basic needs for your station workers would really help make it part of the economy.

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

Most wares already require food rations to manufacture. If you don't have enough food, your goods don't get produced. It's an abstraction, but it's clearly meant to represent exactly what you're suggesting.

I don't really see how the economy would be any functionally different if something like "workforce size" were to go down instead.

[spacecoyote99]

Most wares already require food rations to manufacture. If you don't have enough food, your goods don't get produced. It's an abstraction, but it's clearly meant to represent exactly what you're suggesting.

I voted "Stations Only" for this reason. If manufacture already requires rations then I don't see the need to also have separate food consumption. Besides I'd be a bit annoyed if all my staff dies because I can't get food to them in time

[Falcrack]

Most wares already require food rations to manufacture. If you don't have enough food, your goods don't get produced. It's an abstraction, but it's clearly meant to represent exactly what you're suggesting.

I voted "Stations Only" for this reason. If manufacture already requires rations then I don't see the need to also have separate food consumption. Besides I'd be a bit annoyed if all my staff dies because I can't get food to them in time

My idea was not that staff would die. They would simply resign! Less workers would mean slower production, but food would not in and of itself be used in production. It would be needed to simply keep your workers there. So food would be consumed regardless of production status. Neglect this, and station crew would leave, and it may take some time to get fully staffed again if they all leave due to no food and you want to get it going again.

[ishmaeltheforsaken]

My idea was not that staff would die. They would simply resign! Less workers would mean slower production, but food would not in and of itself be used in production. It would be needed to simply keep your workers there. So food would be consumed regardless of production status. Neglect this, and station crew would leave, and it may take some time to get fully staffed again if they all leave due to no food and you want to get it going again.

So then is the only difference between your idea and the way it is currently that there would be a delay between acquiring food and restarting production, as opposed to the immediate resumption we have now?

What kind of gameplay would this delay add or facilitate?

[Falcrack]

My idea was not that staff would die. They would simply resign! Less workers would mean slower production, but food would not in and of itself be used in production. It would be needed to simply keep your workers there. So food would be consumed regardless of production status. Neglect this, and station crew would leave, and it may take some time to get fully staffed again if they all leave due to no food and you want to get it going again.

So then is the only difference between your idea and the way it is currently that there would be a delay between acquiring food and restarting production, as opposed to the immediate resumption we have now?

What kind of gameplay would this delay add or facilitate?

It would add a running cost to station ownership, not simply the system where we have it in X3, where so many 20 meatsteak cahoonas + 10 ore + 200 e cells, for example, are needed to make a laser. In the new system, 10 ore + 200 e cells would be need for the laser, and 20 meatsteak cahoonas are needed every day just to keep the employees there.

It would add an extra challenge to station ownership. The extra challenge could be fun, depending on whether a challenge is something you like!

[CutterJohn1]

I vote yes for food.

Cost is imo vitally important to balancing the game, especially lategame when the player has a money machine. Without ownership costs player power just spirals out of control until you have an armageddon force that nothing in the universe can match.

But, and this is my opinion only, cash is just not interesting enough on its own, because having a commodity cost adds in a logistical consideration. You can't just put a fleet on patrol in BFE and forget about it. You have to incorporate that fleet into your overall empire mechanism, by keeping a fleet tender active that resupplies it.

This, I feel, makes the NPCs feel more like actual people with their own needs and desires, and less slave AIs that do your bidding unquestioningly.