Why use Colony Ship?
 

If a Small Transport has the same size and cost and can also perform the colonization procedure, then what is the particular point of having a Colony Ship?

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Because small transports are farther up the tech ladder, I think.

It is, however, 1:46 AM and I am both tired and afflicted with a headache - And I don't play much.

Greetings, and welcome to the community chat room. In here you will find mixed-up nuts, wacko's, mad scientists and people who want to conquer the galaxy. And then there's the weirdo's... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

They're both available on turn 1.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Welcome aboard, and mind the ceiling (silly greeting message number 15).

Colony Ships have one fundamental purpose: they allow your enemy to know for sure your vessel *is* a Colony Ship, and not a small gunboat in diguise as Colony Ships can only do that, unlike Small Transports. So, if you somehow feel the need of painting a big target on your Colony ships, you should use the Colony ship hull; otherwise, Small Transports are just the same, and allow *some* amount of secrecy (of course, Small Transports aren't exactly ships of the line, and their possibilities are limited, but they can do something else).

More interesting are the Destroyers and Light Cruisers for Colony Ships: their cost is pretty much the same, and they can get one more engine. Light Cruisers will also have some room to spare, allowing for a couple of weapons, supply storages... and the other players won't know right away that your "Guns to their front" Light Cruiser is actually an unarmed Colony Ship.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Oh, yeah. It's for the AI, I think people concluded.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Can't you just make a design call for a Small Transport with a Colony module? I have been told one wily AI in TDM builds Light Cruisers with Colony modules and weapons, so it should be possible to do just that... then again, I know nothing about AIs (except how to cook 'em: they are quite tasty with a drop of red whine).

Colony Ships are sleek looking though (at least under the few shipsets I use), and it might be easier to find them when you have 758 planets and approximatively two thousand vessels. You should still give your Colony ships clear name though: mixing up those Rock, Ice and Gas colonisers is the perfect recipe for absolutely wonderful headaches.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

There was a story once of a Stars! game where one player named all his ships things like ...----___...

He was quickly eliminated by all the other players.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Hail yon fine-new-shaped-type-person! I bid you welcome to these forums and would point your attention to the standing rules about not provoking the zombie-mouse or drinking awful alleged beer products.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

[Space Pirate]
Hail, ye planet-lubber and welcome 'board me ship!
[/Space Pirate]

Now, where it really gets interesting, is when you're using baseships as colonizers. They're especially handy for Ring/Sphereworlds, as they can drop a whole load of pop on there right away if you stick 'em full of Cargo Bays. Also, while they're underway, the enemy isn't likely to attack you.

Also, if you're under threat from a powerful enemy (say, most of your systems have planets belonging to the other player in them), Baseships have an added bonus when used as colonizers - if you stick only 1 colony module on them and no cargo bays, you can arm it to the teeth. That way, if an unsuspecting group of three enemy LCs attacks what it thinks to be a harmless colony ship,..... imagine the look on their faces when the colony ship blasts the first LC with a single volley..... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Why would you use a baseship to colonise a ring/Sphereworld?. If you're at that level you should have plenty of large transports. I can see the reasons you mention but personally I wouldn't be sharing a system with someone I thought might attack me. Hell I generally won't even share a system with an ally http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

The point of having a colony ship may be to avoid confusion among new players. I can see a bunch of new players designing their ships and saying "WTF? Where's the colony ship? How am I supposed to colonize without any colony ships?". That's the only real reason I guess for them existing.

That said, I still use colony ships to colonize http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

It's also handy to have the colony ship image and template for mods that want to make them distinctly different from the unmodded game.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

It´s a union thing

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Alneyan writes:

"I have been told one wily AI in TDM builds Light Cruisers with Colony modules and weapons..."

I've seen the TDM Pyrochette, Tessellate, and Aquilaeians build armed colony ships from warship hulls. The AI colony ships usually operate alone, so they're easy prey for a true warship of equal size/tech.

Against the AIs I build the cheapest possible unarmed colony ships; the additional cost of weapons and/or supplies can make what should be a one-turn ship into a two-turn build. Also, I don't like sending my expensive weapons on a one-way trip; I'd rather put them on a reusable escort for the colony ship.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

BASESHIPS?!?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The largest I've ever put a colony comp on was a battleship. And I only used a BB because I wanted a colony ship that could colonize any planet type. Obviously this was late in the game when I could afford to throw away some resources to lessen the micromanagment a bit.

I did try role playing a hive race once that put colony modules in every ship. Didn't leave a lot of room for weapons though. My early ships were pretty much all set to ram. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

It is sad that it took me so long to realize you could use a transport for this. I had to be shown in a PBW game.

Play PBW, Learn new things!

I now use transports almost always. That way if I build one or two more ships than there are planets to colonize, they can me retrofitted to real transports. I found that was better than making ringworlds just to use up your extra ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Let me make some thing clear: I was talking about *stock* SEIV.

If you've got a Sphereworld, and you put a mere 4M pop on it for starters, growing your population to a size that makes the sphereworld worth its while takes a looooong time. If, on the other hand, you build a Baseship with just C&C comps, engines, a colony module and then only cargo bays, that ship can carry quite a sizable amount of population to the Sphereworld, which means that you can begin to truly harness the sheer power of the Sphereworld much, much earlier.

Of course, you could say that a bare-bones colonizer coupled with several large transports can achieve the same results, but this will still take more time. You can do the same with a colony baseship and a fleet of large transports. I mean, if you've got the economy required to support the construction of a Sphereworld, no doubt you can spare plenty of resources to build a Baseship colonizer instead of a CL or DD colonizer.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

A single large transport can hold almost as much population as a baseship colonizer, moves faster, and doesn't get used up after the first population drop. In one PBW game, I've got a ringworld barely half a dozen turns after colonization, colonized by a light cruiser, that's already over 10 billion population just from a single large transport repeatedly dropping population on it. Using a baseship colonizer would have required more construction time, more time to fill it up with population, and more time to actually get there and colonize, all just to save a single trip by the large transport. Baseship colonizers are in general counterproductive. Meanwhile, I love being able to emergency build monoliths in 1 turn with that +100% population bonus http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif. Pretty soon I'll start shipping excess population OFF of that ringworld to the rest of my dozen or so ringworlds, including TWO triple mollies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

On the other hand, if you've already got a sphereworld and have built a new one right next to it, and the original one has several billion pop living on it, you can build a Baseship in an acceptable amount of time and use it to essentially get an extra trip with the large transport without the transport actually ferrying that population. If you couple that singe large transport with the baseship, however, you double the amount of pop you have after colonizing, and need a turn less to get the same amount of pop on the sphereworld..... I'm not making any sense at all am I?

Also, a colony baseship actually carries quite a lot more pop than a large transport. Large transports weigh in at 900kT in total, while the Baseship can count on more then 1200kT in gross cargo space, not counting the colony module, engines, and Master Computer. You're using Master Computers of course, since you've got the tech and economy to build a Sphereworld.....

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

The definition of that is what really matters here. It is very easy to build a light cruiser colony ship in one turn at high tech. A baseship colony ship filled with cargo bays costs over 20000 minerals and is quite impossible to build in less than two turns, and that's if you're building it on a planet with almost 10 billion population and emergency building. If you're building it at a sphereworld, you're wasting valuable facility-building time; if you're building it at a huge planet, the only other possibility, you've been lax in moving population to sphereworlds to get the maximum bonus from it. You could argue that build time doesn't matter since you can start in advance and have it ready for when the sphereworld is constructed, but that still doesn't change the fact that you could build a light cruiser colony ship AND another large transport in about the same amount of time and for about the same cost as the baseship, and you'd get to keep the transport.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

I use the colony ship because it is a colony ship and that is what it is for. In the same way I use the Battle Cruiser for cruising to battles or the Battleship to battle ships.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Ok, I see where you are going with that. So you use Destroyers to destroy things, transports to transport cargo, and escorts to escort you other ships. So that leaves me with a question. What do you use a Frigate for? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Swearing, of course! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Space Frogs!

Frigate! Frigate! Frigate!

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Oh great...
"Fox! Over here! I really need your help!"
"..."
"Fox! If you don't get those guys behind me, I'm done for!"
"Fox, take care of that stupid frog, will you? I can't stand to hear any more of his whining."
"Sorry, I can't go on any longer! I'll have to pull out!"
"HIP HIP HURRAH! HIP HIP HURRAH! HIP HIP HURRAH!"
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Uh...Ok... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

It's from a video game called Starfox... there's this frog called Slippy who's a really crappy pilot and you end up saving his butt all the time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Yes I remember a mate had that. Indeed Slippy combined neatly a deathwish with extreme incompetence. Sadly you also had to keep him alive.

Of course he was nowhere near as annoying as the crazy frog ringtone frog who should be hung, drawn and quartered before being burnt at the stake and his remains dragged around the kingdom as a warning to other frogs harbouring ringtone ideas.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

HAD to keep him alive? Hmm, they must have fixed that in Starfox Assault (the only game of the series I've played) - if you don't save him you just lose points on your score and he's not there when you fight the boss to scan him and show the health bar... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

edit: btw, here's a cartoon about Slippy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
(warning - coarse language)
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2005-02-09

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Although getting wide of the thread, I think you have to have a colony for 5 or ten turns before you get pop production bonuses. That will give you time to build a spaceyard, otherwise you are stuck at 2000 (3000 emer) a turn max.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

Colony ships... because nobody suspects the colony ship will glass a planet and then colonize http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

---

For the 64 game, there was only one level where keeping slippy alive was critical to your progression.
Losing him meant you had to play a side quest rescue level.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

What about cloaking devices on ships that have colonization modules? Can a planet be colonized by a cloaked ship or would it have to decloak first?

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

It has to decloak first.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

My personal 'solution' to the question 'why use colony ships' was to make the colony module much more expensive and then give colony ships a maintenance reduction like bases. So, yes you can put colony modules on other hulls but it's a heck of a lot cheaper to use actual colony ships. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

In one game I put all three types of colony modules onto a baseship so that it can colonize any planet, but it was too expensive and slow to build them so I stopped doing that.

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

I loved putting a neutron bomb on my colony ships back in SE3. All of the facilities on the planet remained when you recolonized it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: Why use Colony Ship?
 

I guess my reason to use the actual colony ships is to penalize myself against the AIs, particularly those that use LCs, and for role-playing/flavor reasons. I always wind up expanding faster than the AI races regardless.