Maintenance

One thing i've never really got to grips with is the materials/maintenance capacity of units. I would appreciate someone outlining a definitive explaination; and I suspect not just for me...

Ok, you've got a currant pool of say 906 points to build with, and want to build a Star Destroyer, 112. What effect does the 64 (or what ever it is maintenance cost) have? I can't seem to grasp this.

Does it in some way have some effect in that if I concentrated all my resources on building units with a higher maintenance cost than construction (like Lancers, Assault transports, etc...) my Empire would unravel?

Help.

not sure what you mean.

You have three different resources pools, one for raw materials which are processed into refined materials by the refineries. The pool has no higher limit.

As for maintenance points you get 50 Maintenance points for every "pair". A pair is composed by one mine and one refinery. There will be moments when you have more mines than refineries, building some refineries will speed up the refination process (Always make sure that Raw Materials tend to Zero) and will also give you more maintenance points, of course this works vice-versa. If you have more refs than mines, you will have no raw materials to refine, building some mines will give out raw materials and complete pairs and thus give you more maintenance. Maintenance points are limited by the total amount of mines and refineries at your disposal.

Building high or low maintenance units will have no effect, unless you run out of maintenance points and have the much-dreaded shortfalls. Hope it helps.

Emm... I might not have made myself that clear.

I have 906 available construction points to build stuff with. What's the long term differance in building target a with a 116/64 cost or target B with a 12/29 cost. The latter is what i've never been able to grasp.

Simply, what effect to the game does higher maintenance than construction have?

Hmm, IIRC the maintenance value indicated the cost to uphold that unit. For example you can build an ISD, but it will need repairs, supplies, food for the crew, ...

As I take it, that's what the cost includes. How difficult it is, to maintain that unit in working order. At least I think it is

First post....and I finally found something I think I can contribute too.

Your question on the ratio of construction cost to maintenance cost is, IMO, unimportant. As long as you have both mines and refineries, you will always create more refined materials and so your construction potential is virtually limitless.

Maintenance cost is, on the other hand, highly important. As the game progresses, I try to maximize the game effectiveness per maintenance point. Some examples are building CC9600s instead of Assault Frigates...the two have relatively similar firepower but the CC9600 has a lower maintenance cost. Another example is replacing all your facilities with the advanced versions since they build units/buildings/ships faster for the same amount of maintenance points....same goes for LNR IIs, etc. that have more fire power/shielding but cost less (I believe) in terms of maintenance points.

Since you get your maintenance points back when you scrap a facility, by the end of the game, I only have advanced construction yards/shipyards/training facilities thus allowing me to devote more maintenance points to combat units.

The problems I always have however are supporting absolutely massive fleets when planets start getting slagged either by the occasional misplaced bombardment or Natural disaster. That's where increasing the maintinence per pair would come in handy.

I'd like to not only build my own huuuuuge fleet but have the Rebels do like wise. Or Vise-versa.

There may be a more elegant solution, but you can always use RebEd to reduce EVERYTHING'S maintenance cost by half. If I remember correctly the feature is called Mass% + or -, or something confusing like that (it should appear on the right of the unit stat window in RebEd). I can't remember if it affects, say, only capital ships or only capital ships for one side when you use it to change a capital ship stat en "mass", so you'd have to check which units actually were changed. (I think maybe you'd have to do fighters, troops, etc. separately, but I could be wrong). If you cut the cost of everything in half game balance and AI production should remain the same as before. And you can always restore the defaults.

If all you want is everyone to get more bang for their buck, this should work.