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capnq said:One of the chief criticisms I've seen of SEV is that many tech levels don't give you anything worth researching. (I vaguely recall complaints about needing level 10 of something to build orbital spaceyards? I still don't have SEV to check myself.) Kwok's Balance Mod addresses this, among other things.
Have you looked at PvK's Proportions mod for SEIV? It did a lot of what you propose for making the homeworld much more productive than colonies.
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Actually, yes I did look at the Proportions Mod for SEIV and that's where I got some of my ideas from. It's a cool mod and I loved playing it, but I never was keen on the idea of ONLY your homeworld ever being a huge production place. I was more keen on the idea of being able to develop other planets.
The idea is that colonists are trying to make do with a virgin planet in an early colony. Getting an economy up and running while you're trying to build your infrastructure is tough and requires importing nearly everything. The idea isn't necessarily to make colonies expensive to maintain, but instead to have them produce relatively little until they get up and running. With investment and time, they could effectively become second homeworld. Think about, say, Colonial America, when people knew how to make firearms, explosives, and huge masonry buildings, but were living in log cabins, caves, and sod huts, but then were eventually building stone forts, cannons, and then highways and factories.
As for the above population concern, there IS an ability that does that. Planet Maximum Population, it's called, and it calls the sum of every ability that has it. I do believe this will work, but if it turns out to be too hugely micromanagement I might take it out.
As for balancing, I'm going to work some math to make sure it's at least mostly balanced but, all things considered, perfect balance is almost impossible in something complex. I understand that but I'm going for it anyway because that's the direction I want to take. All things considered, I think having some unbalanced things is advantageous. I want a mod where nobody can really stare at it for hours and completely break it, as everything will also have a counter of some sort. Either way, perfect balance isn't what I'm going for. I'd love for people to just go "Oh that looks neat" and spec their empire in what they want.
As for the ability to construct large ships, that's where the infrastructure comes in. Just because you can think "Hey, let's make a ship the size of a moon" doesn't mean you can afford it. Yes, you'll need to develop yourself some before you can crank out a Worldship, but that's the idea. Making a big metal shell is an easy to thing to think of, it's accomplishing it that's hard. Plus, that gives you the option of building these enormous hulks early or waiting for later and sticking to swarms of small ships.
Even so, I'm shying away from the BIGGER = BETTAR idea that Space Empires games tend to lean toward. I'd rather wars be based on what bonuses you have, what you've researched, and how you fit your ships rather than how big you can make things.
Now there's technology...that's one of my biggest gripes with SEV and that's where I ultimately ended up starting. The idea of funny cross-tech things and passive research greatly appeals to me.
Ultimately, I do understand that this is a massive undertaking but the fact is, I don't have much better to do with my time at the moment.