Colony population

[JetJaguar2000]

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?

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?

[JetJaguar2000]

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?