[klausD]

Geoschmo,
why do you think that the time frame Aaron gave to SE4 is important? The idea that 1 game turn is a "month" is just an abstract measurement to have some flair. Nobody knows what "1 month" really is. (especially to 10legged aliens) 1 Month could be in our real earth time 4,54 years or just 4,54 days, who knows? Its pure speculation that in 1 month a fleet can achieve this or this. If in reality something like space combat or planetary invasion would exist, nobody knows how long such an action would Last. It could Last decades to conquer a whole planet or to fight out a space battle. With advanced technologies it could Last just several days. But this is also pure speculation. The time Calendar Aaron put in the game is just for fun, it has no meaning for the rules at all.

The move/combat system Aaron uses has been used before several times before. (In the Games Workshop game "Space Hulk" or in the SF-computer game "breach" for example) so I cannot follow your argumentation that in a "real TB-game" the current SE action/move system would have been something different. Above there are classical examples that it is a system which has already been in use several times before.

Director Tsaarx,
Manual supply: I thought already that there is no possibility in SE to mod this feature. (all in all you had to program a seperate pop up window which is used to distribute the supply points) I regret this really. Manual supply would have been a good feature for SE.

Population needed to operate facilities: I meant that every facility should require a certain amount of pop to operate it. For example I have 4 pops on a planet. I build 3 mines, each of them need 2 population to be active. This means that 2 mines are active and one mine-facility is not active.
This is the basic premise. But the definition what active is and what not, should be a further point for discussion. Regarding the special needs of SE I would say that facilities without the needed population could also produce a certain percentage of its job. (lets call it "automatization rate") Eg the third mine without the required pop in the above example is not fully functionally. It could have an auto-rate of 50%, which means that the mine produces 50% of normal (population supported) production rate. This is necessary IMO because in SE you have in the beginning to few pops on the planet. The build up of planet would be too slow if there is no auto-rate which produces at least a certain percentage.
(on the other hand, Aaron could of course handle population in SE5 as a rather linear number - like MOO2 - this would be easier and very clever. I think the non-linear handling of population was also a reason that the beta testers did not like the use of pop operating facilities)

Of course there could be technologies or racial advantages/disadvantages which modifies such automatization rates of a players race.

bye
KlausD