[JDL]

OK back from lunch,

I just went through the begining of a SE3 game and I realized, various things slow the pace of expansion in the beggining of the game.

-the fact that there were SIX different researchable colony types greatly reduced the # of planets you could access in the begining, yet made for more bloodthirstyness when youfinally did research a particular type.
-Basic indutry and research facilities took .5 years to build EACH.

Also

Partly built ships showed up in combat minus their incomplete components. (No Captain Kirk, the Enterprise B doesn't have a tractor beam, It'll be installed Tuesday)

you STARTED with beam and pulse weapons, which gave you a choice of weapon that you could gradually reasearch instead of the (ok now that i researched phys 1, phys 2 is right around the corner so ill just research that and be done with it.) The research setup should force you to stay in beam/pulse mode for a long time rather than rewarding the missiles, missiles, missiles >>> PHASED POLERON CRUISER syndrome. The beam/pulse weapons are the HEART of any scifi genre.

OK, here's one that should have stayed in SE ((4)) 1.0 let alone se3. There is NO incentive to get armor early in the game since they made chemistry cost the same as physics. armor is a fundamental, primative protectant, that should be early in the game, not just later when you are like (ok, well, I don't really NEED armor on my 1200 shield point dreadnought, but I could use the ECM value of the stealth and scattering armor, so ill just research the whole armor tree in 10 turns now that I have 10 giant planets and research 3).

More as I think.

JDL