User blog comment:CommunistPotato1945/Wiki Meeting - Numberspamming/@comment-10905876-20160611213804

Alright, after discussing the matter over with Zumwalt, we have agreed to a compromise.

Alright, with regards to the massive amount of ships Zumwalt has fielded, he has agreed to retroactively nerf his fleet down. One ship from every class of 3 million+ GJ toughness will be removed from the RP timeline. In addition, 20% of all other ships will be cut retroactively. In addition, the recent battle at Glacius will be considered canon, but with reduced numbers of ships from the Protoss. (However losses incurred by the Protoss will remain as they currently stand) As for the Aiur's Jewel class having 20 units, that was a case of an unfortunate typo.

All current classes of ships are going to cease production. Zumwalt plans to eventually build new classes, which will then enter production with reduced class size caps. The new Resurgent class will be grandfathered in with the new ships being produced with a reduced unit cap due to its recent introduction.

On the subject of revenue and resource management, there are some solutions that just haven't been very well articulated in the past. For revenue, while Zumwalt does not impose an income tax, he does use high taxes on consumer goods for revenue. In addition, government run industries, precious resource mining, and trade tariffs provide the additional income needed. This model is used by several other successful navies, with both the UAC and AIF providing significant revenue for construction and operation of their fleets from asteroid mining. In addition, asteroid mining combined with the retroactively nerfed fleet sizes does solve the issue of resource consumption. Which again, the UAC, AIF, Prometheus, Terran Dominion, and many others do, and have a combined fleet volume which is indeed higher than that of the Protoss fleet by a considerable margin. Yet, these entities have not stripped the Sol and Epsilon Octaneus systems to a barren wasteland. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that an entire solar system could provide the resources needed for the Protoss, along with trade with other entities providing anything extra. Especially given that astronomical research indicates that 20% of star systems have a Kuiper belt ranging from an inner radii of 20AU, to 50AU outer radii, which would provide a very considerable volume of resources.

Now, on the subject of staggered construction of ships. That is a well-established method to get lots of capital ships in service quickly, so long as sufficient production facilities exist to produce them. TATO has done it, and several other users have done it, with nobody raising a complaint, so that is indeed a valid means of production.

As for technology such as cloaking, that hasn't really been established as a limiting factor on construction times. Indeed, technology such as a cloaking device or ion cannons is merely a case of installing the unit, unless it is an unusually large example. Cloaking devices of the AIF type are at their largest, the size of a reactor. They are assembled off site, and installed during final fitting out, at best, a few days RP time to pop the thing in, hook up power and the heat exchangers, and turn it on. Smaller ships need even smaller cloaking devices. (Also, it is worthy of note that most of the AIF fleet does in fact use cloaking devices) So, unless there's some new unspoken rules on production, the level of technological sophistication shouldn't really be a major factor in production time. Indeed, if higher level technology is involved, wouldn't it be reasonable to suppose that that technological prowess would also allows faster construction, thus mitigating any added build time?

These are the compromises that have been made, thus reducing the number of ships while providing explanations of resource management, revenue, etc, for the remaining fleet sizes. Now, since this issue is well on its way to being resolved, let's go back to trying to actually, you know, enjoying ourselves. K?