[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
<snip>
-Trade routes/ resource distribution (ie the "invisible" ships which instantly move your minerals, rads and orgs from the colonies to the corners of your empire.) This has been long argued, and the wrong implementation could really ruin the game. I believe it could be done well though, probably through some highly abstracted system which keeps civilian transports invisible, but works out for each system how much infrastructure traffic flows through it and then measures each empire's level of influence in each system. This would be a cool motivator for taking treaties, since your "invisible" ships would benefit from allied protection=-) Don't expect to see this in a patch anytime soon though=-(

Maybe something similar to Civilization - the farther a planet is from the nearest homeworld, the less resources it provides to the empire's coffers. For instance, a colony 1 system away "loses" 5-10% of it's production in transport. We'd probably have to have different factors for different types of systems. For instance, if the new colony is separated from the nearest homeworld by an empty system (asteroid, new star, nebula/storm), there'd be an extra 10% penalty to production; if separated by another colonized system, the penalty would only be 5%; a black hole system would create a 15% penalty to production (hazardous shipping lane), etc. We could even mod in different penalties for new systems