Re: Balance Mod
Captain Kwok said:
However, If I do add the facility space modifier, the cost will probably jump up to 2000 points at the least. If I don't I might drop it down to 500 racial points.
Stock adds 10% to planet facility capacity - that means just 2 more facilities on a homeworld (I do remember it being 20% in a previous version - or was that SE4?) so it shouldn't be a major advantage as-is.
Captain Kwok said:
Colony Ships add extra supply and ordnance intentionally. They get transfered to the colony when it's founded, which can provide some supplies or ordnance right away to nearby ships that are nearby and low on supplies/ordnance.
Would it not be better to skip this functionality on colony ships and leave it to freighters instead? It isn't needed in the early stages of the game and does slow down construction - I was able to build a minimal CS (with just 2 cargo holds plus colony module and essentials) in 0.1 years while adding armour, etc pushed it to 0.2 (with shipyard build bonuses - skipping the cargo holds and even dropping an engine should provide a 0.1 year build without). That makes a bigger difference at the start when colonising in-system.
An ordinance/supply freighter would not only do the job better but it can be reused. The issue then is giving the AI enough smarts to know when to use them (e.g. building a colony in a contested system, building a colony on a border system - or even for all colonies built after first contact). Currently AIs send colony ships unescorted even into hostile space.
Captain Kwok said:
The armor is for two purposes: protection versus damaging warp points and to help a bit with ramming. Most of the AI races will kamikaze their colony ships if they are attacked.
Warp points that can affect a 350Kt colony ship seem pretty rare and ramming doesn't work in practice (colony ships being slower than the average frigate). I'd suggest the tradeoff in longer build times is not a good one.
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