Colony population

I think colony population needs to increase faster up to the first 100Mu, then it can slow down to get the rest of the way to 400Mu like it is now. I colonized a planet over 24 hours ago (probably around 30 by now, don't remember exactly when it was), and it's only gotten up to 61Mu population. At that rate, it'll probably have been around 48 hours or more by the time I get to 100Mu to actually get a factory for the colony, then another 24 hours to build the shipyard before I can build anything besides harvesters and outpost ships there. Which puts it upwards of three days before a new colony can do anything. And you can't even just send the resources back to your home planet easily to use em there if the colony isn't fairly close to home in the first place.

Maybe anotehr solution would be to get the first factory before 100Mu population?

I was thinking about this too last night. Tsagoth has stated that his latest change makes it so a colony takes about 7 days to get to 400mu. I am all for slowing down growth, but this seems too extreme. A week is a significant portion of the total game time. It means that only colonies created early on will have any impact on the game. Also, it means that colony acquisition through warfare will be largely pointless, since it will be impossible to defend an acquired colony from a counterattack (or, more realistically, it won't be worth trying to take a colony in the first place, because it won't provide you any advantage anytime soon).

One of the things we discussed is have a factory available from the start of a colony, but it's production speed is hampered till you reach 100mu. This would allow you to build things right from the time you place a colony. Think Civ, and how you can build a wonder somewhere, but it will build faster if you have a higher population.

Thoughts?

Having one factory to start would be ideal... but until you get 100m population (what's the u stand for in 100mu anyways?) the build rate is increased by 50%.

0-99m pop: 150% build time
100m+ pop: 100% build time

u = units
Ku = Thousands
Mu = Millions
Bu = Billions of units.

I would point out that if you put points into Planetology, your population grows somewhat faster.

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Originally Posted by Tsagoth

I would point out that if you put points into Planetology, your population grows somewhat faster.

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You have to keep in mind that servers only exist for about 60 days maximum, right? So if each colony takes 7 days to gain 400m population, we're talking a good chunk of game time before they are fully functional if you place one or two colonies a week.

How much faster does Planetology increase the generation of population? I can't log into the game right now otherwise I'd check :)

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Originally Posted by zarkwizard

One of the things we discussed is have a factory available from the start of a colony, but it's production speed is hampered till you reach 100mu. This would allow you to build things right from the time you place a colony. Think Civ, and how you can build a wonder somewhere, but it will build faster if you have a higher population.

Thoughts?

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That's certainly better than nothing. At least you could pump out some fighters or something.

The problem, previously, is that colonies were untouchable, presumably until endgame. The problem now is that they are indefensible. If someone is bent on taking your new colony (whether as counter attack, or whatever), you have to be able to defend it for almost a week before it actually becomes useful to you. I have a feeling that the resources spent defending it are not going to be justified by its greatly decreased value.

One thing that bothers me about this in general is that "conventional" attacks on colonies are not part of any existing win conditions. In the current model, there is arguably no point in attacking colonies at all. "Fully grown" ones are effectively impossible to crack, and battling over fledgling colonies doesn't really get you anything (it gets you a tiny colony that will take a week to be of any value if it isn't taken back immediately).

I feel like slowing their growth does not address the fundamental issue, because it only makes colonies vulnerable at a time when they are not providing any value anyways. If killing colonies is not directly part of any win condition, the only reason to do it is to cripple a player's production capabilities. That aspect of colony combat is not addressed here, because by the time they have production capabilities significant enough to be worth targeting, they have already reached "invincibility."

Does that make any sense?

I've given this a bit more thought. If base growth rates are going to stay the way they are now, the Planetology and Genetic Manipulation skills should be rethought. I don't actually understand what Planetology does, so I'll ignore that for now. Genetic Manipulation should be moved down to Tier 1 and/or have it's bonus increased by MUCH more than 4%. As it stands now, 2 days of research for a 4% increase in growth rate is laughable. I might also propose that Researchers get a bonus to these skills above what the other specialties do (much like traders get +10% per rank of Advanced Mineral Collection).

I would also reconsider the "rank" system too. For one thing, I don't know if this has been reported, or I'm imagining it, but I don't think subsequent ranks actually take less time to research than the first one. Also, though, for anything above Tier 3, the time to research is so long, and the per-rank bonus so small, that learning multiple ranks of something in Tier 4+ feels pointless. The game will be over before you get a chance to benefit from all that research. Somehow I feel this needs to be adjusted. I don't know if it's fewer ranks with larger bonuses per rank, or adjusting times downwards, or what, but who is going to get to Rank 9 of Graviton Physics or Super Capital Ships or whatever?

Honestly, the time required to learn skills should change completely... it should work more like this:

Current training time for a Tier 1 skill is 12 hours a rank or 108 hours total: 12/12/12/12/12/12/12/12/12

Instead of being a flat time for all 9 ranks, it should instead curve with something like this...

1 hour
2 hours
4 hours
8 hours
12 hours
16 hours
18 hours
20 hours
24 hours

That's 105 hours, which is practically the same amount of time but a much better curve for the game.

Because as it stands right now, having to wait literally DAYS just to get a single rank in a skill (+2% dmg to cruisers??) is kind of tedious and un-fun for me.

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Originally Posted by Noah David

Honestly, the time required to learn skills should change completely... it should work more like this:

Current training time for a Tier 1 skill is 12 hours a rank or 108 hours total: 12/12/12/12/12/12/12/12/12

Instead of being a flat time for all 9 ranks, it should instead curve with something like this...

1 hour
2 hours
4 hours
8 hours
12 hours
16 hours
18 hours
20 hours
24 hours

That's 105 hours, which is practically the same amount of time but a much better curve for the game.

Because as it stands right now, having to wait literally DAYS just to get a single rank in a skill (+2% dmg to cruisers??) is kind of tedious and un-fun for me.

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That's the absolute reverse of how the tutorial implies it works. According to the tutorial:

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Researching new ranks is considerably faster than learning a new technology.

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That is not actually true, but it would make more sense IMO. The first rank often unlocks access to a ship type or grants an ability, while additional ranks just increase the skill's effectiveness. If the first rank was easy to acquire, everyone would have at least one rank of each skill, and player builds would become more homogenous and boring. If anything, the first rank should take the longest, and subsequent ranks should be quicker.

I'm not sure I would go that far. I think there is still a place for skills that grant you access to a new ship or ability taking a long time to learn. I actually kind of like the dilemma of deciding whether now is a good 3 day period to start learning something big, or if you should leave your queue open to learn something shorter that you might need soon (like another rank of Advanced Shipyards).

But yes, there is something obnoxious about the timing of some skills. For sure the bonuses per rank are pathetic; 2 or 3 days research for +2% in some tiddly wink stat is sad. Anything that is going to take multiple days to complete feels like it should have a big payoff. There are a huge number of skills in the list that I would just never consider wasting time on (basically all the purely stat-based ones that don't grant access to new technology).

Keep in mind, as I implied above, subsequent ranks of a skill are SUPPOSED to take significantly less time to learn (according to the tutorials). I don't think this is working properly right now. I don't know if it's a bug, or they decided against it, or what. I do think if they get that aspect working, it still needs to be tuned per-skill. The idea of subsequent ranks in Advanced Shipyards, for example, taking less than 12 hours is frightening. I wouldn't want to see a situation where people could double their fleet capacity overnight.

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Originally Posted by JetJaguar2000

But yes, there is something obnoxious about the timing of some skills. For sure the bonuses per rank are pathetic; 2 or 3 days research for +2% in some tiddly wink stat is sad.

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I would love to have some clarity on what the percentage increases are actually a percentage of. They always seem to do far more than the number would lead you to believe. For instance the 3% increase in RO production at first increases the amount by an infinite percentage, then by much more than 3% leading me to believe it is something like 3% of max possible production, not a current value. So while it sounds like a tiny increase, it actually has a dramatic impact.