[PvK]

Thanks for the Feedback, Mylon!

One of the themes of Proportions is that there is often no single "right" choice, and that few things are actually useless, even if their appeal might not be seen immediately.

One of the main trade-off choices in colony development is a matter of time and resource investment. In general, however, it is most efficient to "fill up the slots" with cheap facilities first, and then steadily upgrade or scrap and replace them with larger ones. It is inefficient to build a Complex or Megacomplex if you haven't already used up all the slots you intend for that type on ordinary-sized facilities.

Building a spaceyard to increase planetary development is usually worthwhile for a planet with more than a few slots. Shipping population there is also very important, if you want the colony to develop with any speed. The resource value of a planet is of course a major factor - cities are of course best to build on planets with high values in all resources.

Generally it won't be possible to fully develop ALL colonies at once - a few of the best ones in good locations should be concentrated on, while the others can be slowly built up, and a resupply & spaceyard network is important to develop if you want to have reasonable fleet mobility in your part of space.

On a good planet, urban facilities (city +) are the best ones to have, but are major investments of time and resources, so they are not always the best ones to build, at least not at once. I recommend only building them on planets in defendable positions, and only after filling up most or all of the planets' slots with small facilities. Generally you really want to ship at least 20M population there and build a spaceyard there before trying to build a city. An exception is a Tiny planet with high resource values in all slots - these may be best starting with a small city, and then upgrading.

Another approach is to let your opponents build colonies while you build military bases and invasion fleets... and then take their colonies...

I'll look at the settlement and community facilities again, but I'm not sure there is any better way to do it given the intrinsic SE4 upgrade system. Some players specifically requested a way to make a small civilian presence on a colony without building up a full-scale city. If upgrades are allowed, SE4 with always charge 50% to upgrade to any higher level, which means there is a limit to the span of costs that can be offered along one upgrade path, without creating a cost shortcut that makes ordinary construction hugely inefficient.

I'm not sure what you mean about training facilities. Anyone can build level one facs by default, which train up to +5. The level two facs are +7 ... probably worth it, but 2% isn't a big deal - the research might be better in other areas. Training Fac III requies another level of Military Science and Advanced Military Science, so not all races will bother to rush for that, particularly since it only trains up to +9. Again, it's worth it, but there are a number of other R&D paths which are just as useful, or more so.

PvK