The game has pretty high abstraction level.

You have fleets, ships belong to fleets. Now I need to make a fleet upgrade/customization/reconfiguaration. This customizatiuon belongs to the fleeet, not to ships and affect all ships the fleet has (or combat rulers for that fleet, etc).

Example reconfiguration: choose weapon type (laser, phasor, etc), choose missiles type (standard, faster, MIRV).

Now how to make the mechanic for this reconfiguration?

I thought of two:

1) you can change it anytime, when you do a progress bar starts (X turns) once it reaches end the customization is applied

2) every 50 turns you hget a big event "modernization" and during that turn you can chnage anything you want, it takes effect immediatelly; you have some options to trigger modernization even quicker (for a price)

i would expect opportunities for upgrade after a string of wins, critical wins, or the capturing of a mineral/resource depot.

Plus, to change the weaponry for a whole fleet shouldn't be instant. The fleet should have to wait a couple of rounds.

Also consider having "hard" and "soft" fleet upgrades.

New signal encryption protocols, targeting software, shield modulation methods, and things that might give your ships some small extra protection or bonuses of some kind, but can be rolled out near instantly. They could be the difference between a battle ending in a draw or narrow victory and it ending in a strong victory where you took far less overall damage.

However upgrading from the Mk I weapon to the Mk II version is going to take more time, while upgrading to the new unobtainium armoured hulls, or from the 200mm to the newer and harder hitting 280mm cannons, are going to take the fleet far longer to finish the roll out of the change. The medium or large upgrades could then be the difference between the fleet being annihilated and a clear victory.

Part of your risk/reward mechanic can then become how long do you put off your major upgrades, and how much do you invest in your quick upgrades? Holding off on deploying the major upgrades means the next upgrade cycle you do has more time to be improved and packs a bigger punch for the same resources, but leaves you more exposed in the mean time. Put it off too long and you'll lose your next war/engagement before you can finish the major overhauls. Conduct major upgrades too often with too small of improvements then sucks resources from your economy.

Well, it's not exactly, or at least not primarily, about upgrades but more about customization. Like you want fleet A to fight Cylons so you give them lasers and EMC; fleet B is designated to fight Glurlons so you give them extra anti-radiation protection.

That's the primary purpose for this mechanic, to allow customization vs a specific enemy.

I would say it would be best to allow the player to choose when to make these changes to their fleet, but the changes still take time depending on the extent of the changes, and whether or not the given resources to do said changes are at hand.

Your fleet yard and support infrastructure would then determine how long major changes actually take to do, your industry centres and infrastructure determine how long it takes to actually produce your weapons/armour, and finally your logistical centres and storage determine whether or not you can keep suitable stock piles for a number of weapon/armour types on hand at any given time.

Investment in your logistical/storage ability means that you can stockpile various styles of weapons and ammunition, which when combined with a properly sized fleet yard and support infrastructure you have the ability to field what would normally be a horribly tiny fleet for general defence, assuming you keep up on your intelligence gathering ability. You don't need a massive fleet on hand all the time that is ready to defend against "anything", because you look at what is coming your way and then perfectly tailor your ships to defeat it in a highly efficient manner.

Cylons have a fleet coming at you? Load up the EMP missiles and basic nukes. After you've killed off that fleet, return to the shipyard and load up the biological weapons to knock down that incoming Zerg like thing heading your way.

Or maybe you rather invest less in stockpiling or fleet yards, and invest insane amounts into your general industry. Embrace Just-In-Time delivery. Wear your opponents down and produce new and terrifying weapons faster than their intelligence geeks can process reports for their spies.

Want a missile heavy force? Well you can change out warheads for a fraction of the time and effort to address a new threat, but you're going to need a steady flow of them to the front lines. Contrast that to your beam weapon fleet, which uses barely any munitions resources while in combat, but takes a week at the fleet yard rather than a day to refit and change the ship's weapon effects.

Do you build your ships with a generalized hard-point system so you can reduce your refit time requirements? Or do you go with internal weapons mounts buried under massive armour where they're far harder to destroy?

Your fleet yard and support infrastructure would then determine how long major changes actually take to do, your industry centres and infrastructure determine how long it takes to actually produce your weapons/armour, and finally your logistical centres and storage determine whether or not you can keep suitable stock piles for a number of weapon/armour types on hand at any given time.

Investment in your logistical/storage ability means that you can stockpile various styles of weapons and ammunition, which when combined with a properly sized fleet yard and support infrastructure you have the ability to field what would normally be a horribly tiny fleet for general defence, assuming you keep up on your intelligence gathering ability. You don't need a massive fleet on hand all the time that is ready to defend against "anything", because you look at what is coming your way and then perfectly tailor your ships to defeat it in a highly efficient manner.

Too complex and beyond the scope of the game :( You are the Emperor, I'm not gonna simulate stockpiles, it won't fit this game. What you do is decide what kind of ships and how many each fleet gets. And that's it, no moving things around, no producing weapons. These things are simply below the level you, as the Emperor of a magnificient Empire, worry about (since you have to track plots to overthrow you and that takes most of your time) :)

Now I need some simple mechanic that tells "modernize/configue this fleet so it's good against X".

After you've killed off that fleet, return to the shipyard and load up the biological weapons

There is no "return to shipyard" mechanic. Military formations are supposed to guard the borders all the time and should not be recalled only advance/retreat (the game uses WWI frontline like mechanic but in space).

There is no "return to shipyard" mechanic. Military formations are supposed to guard the borders all the time and should not be recalled only advance/retreat (the game uses WWI frontline like mechanic but in space).

So supply ships will come to the border guard and delivery the supplies?

An emperor doesn't need to be down in a storehouse counting shells, but do you think they're not going to care whether or not their armies are out of ammo or have massive amounts of supplies? Wars, especially since the First World War, have been wars of logistics. Armies were annihilated based on the volume of shells that could be brought to bear on a given sector, and land was held based on the number of new bodies that could be brought up to fill the gaps. If you are going to have a game inspired by WWI front lines, then you are going to want to care about supplies and logistics modelling of some form or another.

So supply ships will come to the border guard and delivery the supplies?

Yes. But it won't be shown to the player. Supplies is just a maintenance cost.

An emperor doesn't need to be down in a storehouse counting shells, but do you think they're not going to care whether or not their armies are out of ammo or have massive amounts of supplies?

If fleets run out of supplies the Emperor will undoubtly execute the "Grand Admiral of fleet logistics and munitions" and replace with someone more competent :) And that's about the level of detail I aim for in regards to logistics :)

Wars, especially since the First World War, have been wars of logistics.

No logistics, I'm not gonna simulate logistics, not in this game :) Honestly, they made soooo many games (basicly every single one) which focus on logistics it made me sick as a player and I wanted to make something different.

Besides, there is no ammunition since there are lasers and food can be replicated onboard :)

In short, the game is not about logistics and I want to shield the player from that aspect.

Bump

OK, I almost finished it, now I need some mechanic to prevent the player from switching back and forth.

- you research "fleet modernization" technologies

- then you go to your fleet panel and see a list of all available modernization

- when you click "Install" button that modernization will be installed on the fleet, when you click "Uninstall" it will be uninstalled

- each fleet has a limited number of "modernization slots" (like 2-3) so you can never install everything

There can not be any delay when installing these (OK, at most "will be done next turn", but that's it, no waiting X turns after clicking Install, althrough there might be "unable to install new modernization until X turns passed" mechanic if needed).

So, how to prevent the player from switching these all the time?