Suggestion: change min pop requirement for colony ships to 0!

from GalCiv3 Forums

Title says it all. The requirement for colony ships to always carry at least a token population causes a number of issues in the game that i doubt are intended. 

The following issues all relate to the base game without DLCs/expansions, most recent patch:

- You can't launch a colony ship parked on a planet when you have less than 2B people on that planet.

- You can't launch from a shipyard either, if that yard doesn't have planets within range with enough pop to supply the minimum 1B pop required for that colony ship. If that shipyard is too far to get pop from planets, any empty colony ship parked there will be trapped!

- interestingly, that last problem gets circumvented by newly built ships: if there is not enough pop, new colony ships will be launched regardless - empty! Only if you cancel the launch, you get the above problem.

- troops modules don't have this restriction: you can use troops modules to ferry pop from one planet to another, and return empty if you want to. If I try the same with my 'BUS' designs, these ships keep part of my pop (1B, no less) moving across the galaxy, ad infinitum! This seems weird: why do we need a war tech for public transport to work properly?

None of this should happen. Plus I see no logical or balancing reason at all for this restriction - or am I missing something crucial?

8,456 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

None of this should happen. Plus I see no logical or balancing reason at all for this restriction - or am I missing something crucial?
End of quote

The fact it is extremely exploitable. (Planets will still grow with 0 pop)

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Horemvore, reply 1

The fact it is extremely exploitable. (Planets will still grow with 0 pop)
End of Horemvore's quote

If this is about colonizing planets without settlers, this is still possible: if you build a colony ship on a shipyard that is >6 tiles away from any supporting planet, that ship will be launched empty! If Stardock wants to prevent this, they should insert a check when trying to colonize a planet to make sure that the colonizer has at least the minimum pop per planet to unload. There already must be some check to prevent colonization of extreme worlds without the required tech, so this shouldn't be too hard to implement.

I suppose that idea hasn't occured to me since I always use Prolific and load up as much pop as I can to get the most from this ability.

 

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I've played a bit with MinShipPopulation set to 0. It's working as I intended. However, the upgrade cost for non-colony to colony ships is still the same.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

does this help the synths I would expect ? they sure need some love !

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I have now started a game with the newest patch active, MinShipPopulation set to 0, and the rush build cost set halved to a factor of 10 instead of 20. My race uses Prolific and Adaptable, and apart from being able to colonize the wrong type of worlds, the game finally feels like I hoped it feel to from the start.

 

This is working for me right now, but I sure hope that they get the Synth trait and immunity to taxation and morale fixed! (effectively, halving the rush cost is my way of making up for that shortcoming)