We'll most likely be making some adjustments to colonies so they're more of an investment that you'll need to protect and nurture early on. We'll want to sit down and run some numbers first though.

On the issue of players picking of outposts with cruisers and then converting them to energy arrays I don't really have an issue with that considering that it takes one T2 tech and one T1 tech from a separate tree. Also, if the outpost was actually defended this would be much easier to fend off. It's possible that the ATK / Cost balance of energy arrays / cruisers, etc. need to be looked at but on the whole I think it's a good strategy. If you're not defending your outposts then you should expect them to get ganked.