[Taqwus]

...on happiness --

Is there some minimum ratio of ships to colonies that one must have to stop mass riots?

In a long (maybe 280-turn), large (255-system) galaxy where eventually the Ukra-Tal, Xi-Chung and Fazrah all surrendered to me, *all* of their planets were rioting. The Ukra-Tal, first to go, were rioting for years...

It's simply wasn't practical to garrison them all, or to build useless warships just to hang out in each system -- I had stopped years before at a total of 19 DNs, 8 BBs and 1 BC, because more weren't justified from a military POV. In fact, the sole opposition was an isolated neutral that hadn't yet been found, and hadn't developed anything more menacing than a DUC-1 it seemed.

Never mind that they were now protected by the most powerful ships they'd ever seen (as in -- destroying fleets of 7 DNs, solo, with ease), never mind that given the chance I'd have improved their lives via atmosphere conVersion and similar facilities, never mind that my espionage system would keep them safe from saboteurs or that their previous leaders were incompetent...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night