Colo rush: it's not so easy...

sounds a way to slow initial colony rushes possibly mitigated in later game by techs allowing for more kit based colony ships that become said basic structures when they land

But currently, you cannot colony rush. You don't have the production capacity! You have to build up your factory base. I don't think that is going to be changed...

You do get faster at building colony ships as the game progresses, but you are also going to be running a smaller colony ship then the standard one. Cheaper, faster. But at the cost of carrying less people.

It is quite possible in GC2, currently, to not be able to fill up a 2 pod colony ship from your smaller or newer worlds. Not enough people.

A few things to keep in mind. GC2 doesn't have the mad every 2 turns off launches another colony ship start.

Also, you have to build a starport on planets other than your initial one, so you can't just pop a colony ship out of nowhere.

Yes, there is a high expense for the purchase of a starport, in order to then buy another colony ship. Buying these two items (as opposed to building them) will cost so much that it is too expensive to do that every time. It could be useful in emergency situations, where there is a race to a specific important land-grab. For instance, you might need Pluto as a refueling station in order to reach Ceti-Alpha-6. Or maybe that PQ-20 planet is dangerously close to enemy territory and the race is on. But the expense would make it too much to do as a Standard Operating Procedure, because many more colonizers and starports could be built than purchased.

It seems like a part of the gameplay issue is arranged, but I still see the use of colonies automatically building "Basic Infrastructure" before anything else. Just as all colonies in the past took some time before they could really go onto some more advanced structures. It might not be extremely long to get a minimum, but still pertinent.

It normally takes a while before everything is arranged to tackle further matters, and it'd include this period where you need to wait its preparation. Things as an Achille heel as well as the costs to bring. It also shows the time it takes to go further. It might bring the need for balance towards the cost of star ports and other things, but this is a normal process.

Example: For Mars, would structures of similar importance to a star port (or other things) be needed before it'd get its star port? Would they take enough time to build (as a star port) to consider them as something to be built first?




PS: Sorry if I do not test GC2... it brings me to not know what are recent developments. I'm very happy that colony ships cannot pop from the beginning now and that we will be able to colonize "properly" hehe

Adding a "Basic Infrastructure" building stage before you can get your planet producing useful stuff slows down the game needlessly. There is no fun added by introducing a delay between colonizing and production. The colony rush isn't really a possibility as the game stands since you need a starport, then a large factory base to build quickly. At current values, you're easly 100 turns in before you have your second colony ship produced (you start the game with one).

Adding a "Basic Infrastructure" building stage before you can get your planet producing useful stuff slows down the game needlessly. There is no fun added by introducing a delay between colonizing and production. The colony rush isn't really a possibility as the game stands since you need a starport, then a large factory base to build quickly. At current values, you're easly 100 turns in before you have your second colony ship produced (you start the game with one).

Fun added: Strategy + game feeling for those so "inclined" (it's like a colony, form its tents to extracting materials for building).
"Takes too long": As in any game, you do not add an element without balancing the others. So it could take the same time if so preferred.

Also, the idea is that they use the colony ship to make their base of operations on the colony.  The colony ships are like flying cities that then find permanent homes on their new worlds.

Fuzzy, I've played galaxy conquest games that had that feature. It won't help with GC2. GC2's start for any new world is very slow. It's plays very similar to Acsendancy, for new worlds. The only significant difference in colonizer usage and new world development is that in Acsendancy, you can refit your colonizers for much cheaper then building a new one... in GC2, your colonizer is a one shot ship.

CariElf said:

Also, the idea is that they use the colony ship to make their base of operations on the colony. The colony ships are like flying cities that then find permanent homes on their new worlds.

If colony ships are flying cities, can't I get taxes from those citizens?

Colony ships are not productive cities until they have located resources to exploit (a planet), so there is no revenue to tax.

According to CariElf, there are people living on that ship. All you need are people. People have revenue. People generate revenue. Tax them.

If a colony ship really is a flying city, then that means there is an economy happening on that ship. That means there are things being produced, bartered, and sold. Therefore, every colony ship should generate revenue.

Of course, there is a question of if the ship generates its own food, or has to have that supplied. If it has to have it supplied, that means colony ships should cost. And if it needs raw resources to produce material goods, those have to be supplied as well. All that should make a colony ship very costly on maintainence. And you'd have to keep an eye on their morale, or they could rebel and go rogue/independant or even join your enemies.

Now, I've always seen GC1 colony ships as more sleeper ships. Small crew runs the ship. A few modules of colony starting equipment (some robotics and small self contained factories which will be used to create larger facilities once on planet). And then... modules after module full of sleeper tubes (some form of hybernation or statis tubes). If all those billions on a ship are nothing but cargo, that would explain why they don't pay taxes, and don't need anything. And why they never rebel. And why you could sell them to the other civs in GC1.

I was really just pulling CariElf's leg. There's no way a colony ship could be anything but a sleeper or cloner ship. Otherwise, all civs would reorganize their worlds along the same lines of their colony ships, and take advantage of the civil peace/security that grants, while gaining the bennies of on site resources.

The colony ships are like flying cities

Cari, after following this thread after your comment, perhaps it would be better to call colony ships "flying proto cities", the idea being that the equipment to set up a city's infrastructure is there, but needs a planet on which to be established?

Also, the idea of taxing colonists before they have establish a colony sounds like it would (in real terms) discourage people from being colonists. It adds such a touch of unreallity that I think I would have difficulty making myself believing in the concept within the game.

Isn't human communications great?

Here's my last word considering the situation, and anything done will fit me.

I never played Acsendancy (looks like I should give a look), but I am not worried about miracle start-ups anymore as it seems solved anyway. And I'm now half-convinced on the rest (as I saw ships as minimalist: a bunch of tents with food production and shovels). It is then more an issue of a weak(er) colony which is building itself in the beginning, like colonies up to now.

I will state my case basing on the best example I have (Constantinople), just to show that up to now it was not easy EVEN when everything was paid to pressure-colonize. But after, I guess that everyone will do as he wishes and I could consider that as in GalCiv most of the economy is not player-driven (so let's say that colony ships produce starports and houses all at once). But here goes, and make your own opinion of what makes sense (and works):

One can easily look at the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul). Constantine just decided that he wanted some kind of "new capital" there where there was basically nothing (!!). A "New Christian Capital"? Yay! It got its own production extremely fast for a new city (Constantine paid BIG bills, the money flew, Roman Eastern cities were plundered), and the housing was crap because it was built too accommodate so much people so fast. But it took a while before it had its INTRINSIC production. And this is in the case of someone paying for EVERYTHING like mad (yep... try to propose to build Neo-Washington on Mars in 10 years or something......crazy).

This is what I look at here, and when I see Constantinople I know that you can hardly find exemples more extreme of "everything is paid, all ressources (of the ROMAN WORLD!!) goes to it". Even in such a case... But as I mentioned, I now see Cari's point and even if I appreciate the consequences of "oh, my colony is FORMING", we can still consider that people build basic infrastructures (housing / industry / commerce) at the same time as part of the... "colony ships' basic housing-industrial-commercial infrastructure"

the idea of taxing colonists before they have establish a colony sounds like it would (in real terms) discourage people from being colonists. It adds such a touch of unreallity that I think I would have difficulty making myself believing in the concept within the game.

How is that unreal? That would be called, INCOME TAX! And sales tax! Think about it. If you work on a cruise ship, and you are making money doing it, your home government taxes all the money changing hands (if it has sales taxes, income taxes, VAT, etc etc etc). Now, take that ship, make it kilometers long, and cram it full of poor, eager colonists living their lives between all the bits of equipment which will be used when they finally reach their new home world. As long as those people are making money, or spending it, that ship is generating taxable money. If that is sufficent amount, or the government draconian enough, then taxes would be generated.

Now, if it's all a moneyless economy on the ship, or those colonists are inactive (sleepers/statis)--- so that the ship is jut a really big freighter slowly going somewhere, with a small crew--- then certainly no taxes from that.

Colonists are FROZEN. No production is taking place, no labor is being performed, everything is packed away in crates; there is nothing to tax.

I don't see how the colonists would be making money in route to their destination. Odds are, either you're treating your colonists similar to peace corps (free room and board) if the government wants colonization more than the populous does, or as a prepaid expedition if it's the other way around, so little money is being spent on the ship either way. Also, it's quite possible that the colonists are in stasis as you mention, as I remember the troop module description being some kind of meat freezer joke.

Basically, if the ship doesn't generate product in route, you are at best taxing money you (or someone else) had to pay the people to get on the ship.

I just can't see a colony ship as a capitalistic entity. There is no way for them to engage in commerce with other societies. It has always looked more like a commune to me, with everyone working to produce the basic needs of their community (food, clothing, water purification and recycling, health, etc. etc. etc.) each to his/her needs and by their abilities until they reach their destination. There is no commerce in that kind of life. It is a pure swap of work for survival. No commerce, no revenue, no income. Even when they reach their destination, there are still startup costs (which are really so skimmed over in GC1) that could cause a drain on the empire until the colony becomes self sufficient.

I just can't see a colony ship, or any new colony, as a productive contributer to any empire. It simply defies reason. Instead, I see them as an expense to the empire that the empire is willing to finance to garner the returns it should get after the colony becomes a productive partner of the empire.

I would also like to add that there are a plethora of examples in our history to support my arguement and no historical examples to support any colonising expedition as a taxable entity until (and unless) the colony that was eventually establised became productive enough to be revenue producers.

Wow. Look at all the chatter, just for me pulling CariElf's leg.

I've said, that if they are a sleeper ship, or a moneyless society, there'd be nothing to tax. You cannot tax cargo while it is in transit, and you cannot tax what people do not have.

There are indeed incidents where new colonies were revenue/tax sources shortly after being founded. Those were very resource focused colonies, but they did turn a profit quickly, and that was why they generated revenue for the motherland.

Now, that being said, we need to remember we are talking fantasy, not reality. In reality, we never had something the size of Manhattan with 10 times the population density travelling 6 months to a year to reach its new geographic location. If people are living and working in their travelling Manhattan, they are either living in a moneyless economy (sharing everything with enforced rationing) or they are using capitalism to distrubite their resources. However, I have difficulty seeing such a large community shifting from a moneyless society to a capitalist one, just because they got plantside. After all, when they first get there, the only infrastructure will be the colony ship itself. And people with power have a bad habit of just not surrending it just because they said they would. Reality implies the transition from ship life to planetside would be a much more troublesome matter. Indeed, why wouldn't many of your colony ships just go trucking off for deep space, cutting all ties with you? The people in charge would then have their own personal king and queendoms them. At least, some of them would. Now, that wouldn't make for a fun game, would it? You build a colony ship, and give it orders to cross 6 sectors to colonize a new planet. Somewhere along its trek, it decides it doesn't belong to you, and just takes off for the edge of the map, never to be seen again. Certainly more realistic but not more fun.

So, it just makes sense to me: colony ships must be sleepers. Now, star bases, those are flying cities. They just don't fly anywhere very fast.

That last comment brings up a point. Aren't their people on those Starbases? Should'nt Starbases have their own population. When you launch a constructor it should be carrying ,say, a million people. a small drain on population, but still, it's there. As the base has limited life support, exsess people are shifted to nearby planets. That could be coded as a pop growth bonus. Every new module would bring and allow another mil of dudes. This would be cool, because it might allow you to use boarding vessels to take the Starbase. Now that would be cool.

im far too lazy to read it all out... so this what i have to say How 'bout Colony ships have PEOPLE FREEZERS or they are "living cities" so they Generate slight income and have some saying in elections they have morale depending on how long they have been on the ship and their home planets original morale. also on a higher note if it is to be living cites shouldn't the pop increase? (its still a city with livin ppl "doing stuff"...)

also one more thing realted to the Basic infastructre thing im sorry it cannot hapen to easily...however the colony ship can "Deploy" itself into a Intial Colony tile where YOU Should pick it...rather than random Now i do belive some sort of Inital Colony rush Limit would make the game better If it is people freezer The Size needed for pplz is less and can hold more if it is a living city it actually is a bit higher (Pop) when it gets there And they can make 'nough money to help their maintance fees that they do themselfs NOW they are far from productive.(They make food for themslefs and are based on that until they get to a planet) Anyways fill in the holes plz!

Why do you care which tile your colony hub is in?

Why do you care which tile your colony hub is in?

Unless SD has set precautions, I suppose it is possible for it to land on a very nice bonus tile (which you would have wanted to put the appropriate improvement in instead). But I've never seen this happen yet, so I would think that either the bonuses are generated post-colonization or the colony does not land on one with a bonus. In either case that problem is nonexistant, so there is no need for manual landing.

Hell that was a good answer, that possibility hadn't occured to me!

But as you say, I haven't actually seen it happen either so you're probably right about bonuses being applied post-colonisation.