Gauntlet03 Gauntlet03

The new colony negative penalty

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The new colony negative penalty

from Sins Forums
I like this idea over-all, it increases the cost of huge empires that grow rapidly. But I noticed that the 'negative' income never changes if you don't build up some infrastructure... this is Really annoying... it means I have to micro manage my planets even more.

Why doesn't the effect last for say 10 minutes of RT and then disappear... eventually the colony would 'pull itself up by its own boot straps'. To use a terrible presidential quote.
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Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top

eventually the colony would 'pull itself up by its own boot straps'. To use a terrible presidential quote.


Terrible? Where did you think the term 'booting' came from in reference to turning computers on?


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I like to talk dirty to mine to turn it on
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
I wouldn't mind having a permanent, low drain on the dead asteroids. You're making an effort to make them viable for supporting your defences, so it makes sense to me that they should be a liability.
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And when I take one via culture, I then have no way of getting rid of the drain I don't want. (Or even just when my frontiers expand). Ties into the whole "want to be able to 'salvage' planets issue, I suppose.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
I love the idea about dead asteroids always having a negative credit income.
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

Agreed on logistics for dead asteroids, but the permanent low drain doesn't make very much sense to me. The initial drain on colonies comes from the bare-bones infrastructure barely able to support any population.. but dead asteroids have no population and really no infrastructure. Already their only use is to create a defensive buffer without any logistics slots, if they had a permanent drain I imagine very few people would bother colonizing them.

Vasari might if it's in an advantageous position since phase gates are tactical, but a TEC player would really have no reason to except to slow an attack on their empire by a few minutes
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well, inside your territory no, but imagine its an intrusion to a few of your planets, i.e. a strategically viable spot. would be an intesting decision whether to bear the constant drain in exchange for a fortification or leave the enemy a possible weak spot to attack.

but again, planet manager is a good idea.

permanent upgrades with 20 planets? I don't know. I mean, you said it happened in a few games you played, so I trust you will know what you are talking about, but I'm having trouble imagining someone conqering 5 - 6 planets in 10 - 15 minutes in a game with 60 planets total. its in the starting phase isnt it?

in any case, thinking you had a vastly larger game size in mind, I thought of a rough balance method for much larger games. implement it once the game is done, because other stuff is more important and its just not the scale which the game was made for. but apart from some interface tools getting impractical in games with say 200 planets there is also the problem that compared to total lenght of the game, research will have ended way early. so ... for that a special option of infinite upgrades were cool. costs would just increase exponentially, so that at some point a single hull upgrade could cost 50.000 + creds and 40 labs, but due to the larger number of ships benefiting from it and the resources at your disposal it would stell be a viable investment. I think it has been suggested before. in any case, balanced or not, it would surely work better than a system where all research has been concluded with a third or fourth into the game and the rest is just about pumping out ships and maneuvering around.

this should probably go into its own thread.
Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top

And when I take one via culture, I then have no way of getting rid of the drain I don't want. (Or even just when my frontiers expand). Ties into the whole "want to be able to 'salvage' planets issue, I suppose.
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True. I definitely want the ability to abandon colonies, particularly in the case of dead asteroids that are no longer in contested territory.

I was thinking along 0.5-1 credits per second maintenance fee for the dead asteroids, and no need for upgrading population infrastructure, as there are not supposed to be any people on there anyway. To compare, currently it takes 2.5 per second until you upgrade the infrastructure, which costs 450+100+75 IIRC, translating to a net 800 credits using the black market as reference, plus probably at least 150 in lost income (60 seconds). With 1 per second loss, it will take more than 15 minutes to incur the same costs.