yeah, i believe that its official. the Last patch was advertised as the LAST patch, and all of MMs effort is being put towards other games and SE5. Or so I hope. we've really milked se4 for about all we can expect to get out of it, its been about five years now.
The problem with resource (or any kind of point) generation in space, is that its cascading. Normally, you are limited by what planets you can colonize and how many facilities you can put on each, and also by how close your neighbors are.
If you can start generating resources without expanding your borders and without needing to invest in planets, then you can grow exponentially as long as you have spaceyards free. the more you build, the more resources you have, so you dont have to worry about the investment cost. And if you have a 20K ship limit, you dont really have to worry about running out of ships.
Something like this might realistically represent some kind of new economy, but its only a playable idea if you have an artificial ship limit of a couple hundred. That way you have to trade off between warships and resource bases.
FYI, my resource generating components (when i was planning on doing something with them in a mod..) were designed back before the point generation ability existed, and we had to use negative maintenance. they looked something like this:
Quote:
Name := Microgravity Foundry
Description := Advanced metalurgy in microgravity is used to create mineral resources.
...
Cost Minerals := 300000
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 0
...
Maintenance Cost
Ability 1 Descr := Commercial contracting generates income from Space Platforms using this component.
Ability 1 Val 1 := -30
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
...
Name := Null-G Tokamak
Description := A supercolliding fusion laboratory in null gravity is used to create radioactive resources.
...
Cost Minerals := 0
Cost Organics := 0
Cost Radioactives := 300000
...
Ability 1 Type := Modified Maintenance Cost
Ability 1 Descr := Commercial contracting generates income from Space Platforms using this component.
Ability 1 Val 1 := -30
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
...
Name := Spaceborne Hydroponics
Description := Special horticultural techniques are used to create organic resources.
...
Cost Minerals := 0
Cost Organics := 300000
Cost Radioactives := 0
...
Number of Abilities := 1
Ability 1 Type := Modified Maintenance Cost
Ability 1 Descr := Commercial contracting generates income from Space Platforms using this component.
Ability 1 Val 1 := -30
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
|
of course i also had civilian base hulls with huge combat penalites and -75 maintenance, which acutally made these things profitable..