Post by JagdFlanker on Sept 29, 2020 6:35:37 GMT -6
between the grate cleaning thread and a recent Drach answered question
i thought a future DLC could perhaps treat coal a little more like oil and each country could have a 'local coal quality' (or effectiveness) stat which affects how fast their ships can go and how fast their grates foul up
coal would be rated between 80%(?) and 100%, with the % being the speed the ship can go compared to it's actual maximum speed using their available coal. i don't know the actual performance hit with using the lowest quality coal, but it might be something that is determined to keep gameplay reasonable as opposed to using real world stats and calculations
some possessions would have coal similar to some possessions having oil, with different coal ratings for each
this could be historical, random, or a mix of both similar to how oil can randomly pop up in any possession
to keep it simple any country in the game that does not have natural coal deposits would automatically get the minimum coal rating their ships would use if they were blockaded, otherwise countries would automatically have access to the best coal type available in their possessions. if a country is blockaded and cut off from a better coal source, they might have 2-3 months of saved imported coal before their navy is relegated to using local coal
could even consider making coal storage something you can build - takes 1+ years to build a months worth of coal storage, it perhaps should be expensive so the player has to make a decision as to whether to invest in something that will become useless when oil becomes available, but also wanting to have as much high quality coal saved up in case war breaks out and they are blockaded. instead of straight "months of coal storage" it might be "x amount of coal stored divided by total coal powered ships in fleet" to take into account different fleet sizes, or turn coal into a number -
short/med ranged KE/DD each use 1 coal/month and long/extreme ranged KE/DD each use 2 coal/month,
short/med ranged BB/BC each use 4 coal/month and long/extreme ranged BB/BC each use 6 coal/month (or 2/4/6/8 coal/month), etc
if coal is turned into a number perhaps the only coal expenditure you have every month comes from the ships that get used in battle that month, as well as all ships on TP since they are always active. turning down battles might be a way to conserve coal, at the price of giving the enemy VPs
perhaps oil can be given a similar style treatment assuming there are different grades of oil fuel, and as well as possibly being able to build oil storage you perhaps also can build better refining to get better quality oil fuel which should be expensive and/or lengthy to build, and once completed permanently increases fleet maintenance of all oil fired ship by x%