[QuarianRex]

PvK:

I've been playing around with 2.0 (I had tried out earlier Versions as well) and have some questions, suggestions, etc.

First, colonies. I like the premise of the mod in regard to colonies, emphasizing the importance of homeworlds while lessening the impact of quick expansion. It seems though that you have made too many tweaks to inhibit them, to the point of nullifying their importance altogether. I'll try to make comments and point out what seem to be problems (to me) in a manner that is at least somewhat coherent.

Upping pop weight to 1000kt and increasing time to reproduce by x10 to keep colonies from quickly maxing out - nice, very effective.
Severely lowering production/construction rates based upon pop - very nice, accurately reflects the reduced capabilities of a fledgling planet, or one recovering from war, plague, famine, etc. Also adds new visciousness to food contamination and neutron bombs.
Severely lowering the capacity of all cargo components - ouch. I assume that this is another way to inhibit the development of new colonies by further restricting pop transports. I can see the logic behind it but it seems to have far reaching consequences that cause more harm than good. As for its effectiveness, lets see. A fully loaded large starliner (standard control components, engines, and the rest cargo III - 70kt capacity) will provide 4340kt of cargo space, enough for 4 pop. That same starliner filled with standard cargo III's (at 250kt each) has a capacity of 15,500kt, enough for 15 pop. Would increasing the payload by a little over 3.5 times be unbalancing? Nope. Even with a 15 pop capacity it would still take 267 trips (not turns)to populate a 4000 pop capacity planet. Even if a planet is within one turns worth of movement from your homeworld (2 sectors for ion engines, 4 sectors for quantum) it would take over 53 years for a single ship to fill it up. That is over 530 turns (!). Granted, you wouldn't have just one. Even with a fleet of 20 liners going to a planet one turn away it would still take 27 turns, not to mention the fact that you would depopulate your homeworld. This also brings to mind the dreaded possibility that your home star might become unstable and require the evacuation of your homeworld. If you were lucky enough to find a habitable world in another system that is only 10 moves away it would take a fleet of 89 starliners with standard cargo III's (and ion engines) 3 years to evacuate the planet, while if they were equipped with proportions cargo III's would require a fleet of 334 for the same job in the same time. In the first case you might be able to salvage some of your precious pop, in the second you can kiss your empire goodbye. Also, if you're looking at realism and balk at the concept of a 1450kt ship hauling cargo of over x10 its own weight, you might want to think again. Cargo haulers usually weigh only a fraction of the mass that they are designed to carry. Transport trucks are a good example, as are tug-boats and trains, and these are all without the benefit of micro-gravity.
Lowering the effectiveness of virtually all facilities - double ouch. You've already ensured that colonies will develop at an extremely slow pace with the pop size (reducing the effectiveness of pop transports) and lowered reproduction/construction rate. Why do colonies have to work so hard and so long to produce something so worthless? A huge breathable planet with all 25 facility slots filled with research center I's (a herculean task in and of itself) only produces 2500 research points. That is virtually nothing compared to all of the work that went into it. This, more than anything else, seems to nullify the usefullness of colonies. I can understand the core concept of making colonies less important but this can easily be accomplished without completely marginalizing them. Lower the value of facilities, yes. But lowering them by over 80%?

The problem that I'm trying to point out is that proportions seems to have been turned into a battle of the homeworlds, with colonies having no effect on even extremely long term games. I was playing a game with v1.53(I think) that got up to @ 360 turns and there was no appreciable change in score other than for the occasional capture/glassing of a homeworld. And that was with aggressive expansion using a race with replicant centers and turning entire asteroid belts into rings of breathable worlds. Even all that didn't much improve upon the capabilities of my single homeworld. While colonies shouldn't overshadow the homeworld they shouldn't be contemptible either. There was a reason the British were so powerful in the 19th century, they had many non-useless colonies that reaped actual benefits for their homeland. Also the loss of said colonies (the U.S. comes to mind, those damn anarcy Groups...) dealt a severe blow to the British empire, not as severe as losing Britain itself, but it was important nonetheless.

The second problem is with units. It seems that fighters have been crippled. You have both lowered the damage that fighter weapons can inflict and lowered the number of fighters that can be put into combat at any given time (by lowering the capacity of cargo components). They might have survived one change but not both. Their only useful purpose now seems to be as planetary defense. Planets are now the only place that enough fighters can be stored to make them effective in combat. Granted, they are hard to hit, but that has always been the case (and is what PD and sensors are for).

Troops are also problematic. Why on earth did you make them so tough? 1600 for troop shields?!? Ouch. The problem is that I can't see why you did this drastic revision. To prolong troop combat? Lowering troop combat to 5 or even 3 turns (as I think was in previous Versions) is far more balanced and effective. So that there are some troops left after planetary bombardment? Troops are the Last thing to go in Gold (cargo is destroyed in this order- mines, sats, WP, troops. IIRC) and so don't need special protection to Last till the landing.

The real problem occurs when you just want to glass a world. The troop shielding provides more protection than the planetary shielding and armoured WP's combined. I recently assaulted an AI homeworld (in 2.0) and managed to bust through 17,000+ planetary shields and 60+ weapon platforms only to face 78 troops all equipped with 1600 shields apiece (that's a total of 124,800 shield points gents, and it all has to be chewed through). In the 3 turns that it took for my troop ships to get in place I only managed to take out 2 with most of my warships balzing. To add insult to injury, when I dropped the first 25 (of 150, I was expecting a long haul) large troops I took out all 76 defending troops an the militia in 3 rounds. Why you ask? Because shields are still unusable in troop combat, though I hear that this will be patched.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that mobile shield generators (and armor for that matter) mounted on ground vehicles should not be a more effective defense against bombardment than the actual planetary defenses (ie. shields and WP's). This tends to cause an unrealitic imbalance that I don't think was intended.

To end off I should mention some praise for this intriguing mod so that this doesn't sound like a rant or somesuch (which, I assure you, it is not meant to be). I like a lot of the changes you have made to the components. Turning solar sails into engines that give you supplies is beautiful and makes for an interesting alternative for those cross-galaxy hikes before warp point creation. Making quantum reactors supply storages of unholy capacity before granting unlimited fuel was quite sweet. Adding boarding defense to crew quarters is a nice idea but I thought that crew quarters already had a BD of 16. Does the additional 5 stack? The inclusion of combat bridges and incompetent master computers was a nice touch too.

For the game overall I do enjoy the leveling effect that the homeworlds have on play. Even neutrals are now worthy of long term alliances and such which is definitely a change of pace. It does make it a very different game and that is never a bad thing.

I hope that I didn't come off sounding like a disgruntled postal worker here. Please take anything I've said here with a grain of salt. I'm just trying to help a fellow modder and would hope for the same kind of feedback when I eventually get around to posting a mod or two.

P.S. I haven't seen any one mention this and I don't know if you have spotted it yet but there's a typo in the CompEnhancement list. Under heavy ship mount it has damage as x3 (as normal) while tonnage is x4. This didn't seem intentional since that trend wasn't found with any other mounts, so I changed it and started a new game since the AI kept building ineffective battleships.

P.P.S. You said that this was based on a bigger mod called foundations. Any connection to Asimov?