Kwok's next Mod

[aegisx]

I should qualify this as more as a PBW/MP change.

It becomes a mad colony rush,. Check out http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/2782. This old guide outlines how to pump out 17 colonizers by turn 11. So all these ships will likely find planets to colonize, no real thought on having to support them resource wise.

How do you counter that type of expansion other then being forced to follow the same path?

[Captain Kwok]

There's two items I would modified to tone down expansion a bit:
- Slightly more expensive colony modules
- Reduced population modifiers below 100M

Regardless in any competitive PBW environment, you're going to have to expand as possible anyway.

[aegisx]

I agree expansion is necessary, but I would like to see some drawback to the rush strategy.

[Captain Kwok]

The main drawback is that most of the colonies are poorly defended and have minimal facilities, the player is running on the edge for resources, and is stuck with slow builds for most of their inner SYs. They are very vulnerable to an early attack.

[aegisx]

Early attacks are difficult to pull off. All he has to do is build a few WP's on a planet (1 turn) and it can defend pretty well against early ships. Also, If he already has a 2- 3 times colony advantage, the loss of a planet or 2 is insignificant as he can out-produce you.


As it should be, the empire with the most planets will tend to win the game. There are exceptions of course. Your changes should slow it some though.

How about this... Production level on planets are partly based on population right? Maybe this formula needs to be changed. Right now a newly colonized planet (10M people) can produce 2k I believe. This seems a bit high of a start, perhaps it should be more like 500. If a planet has 1000M, I could see it being closer to 2000.

[Fyron]

A caveat: turning the mod into a population transport-fest isn't the best idea, IMO. Mods like Proportions and P&N PBW do this, making it require lots of pop to get decent colonies. In multiplayer, it generally just serves to slow the game way down, and make it drag on. Its fine for single player, where you can hit end turn like a champ, but multiplayer tends to bog down for a while at the start. Sure SE5's migration can mitigate it a little, but if you start requiring very high pop levels to get decent production, you will add the necessity to build a bunch of population transports in order to play effectively.

If you just set the base build rate to 500, and don't fiddle with the population modifiers, you effectively get a situation where you have low build rates, until you build a space yard. The SY will take quite a while to build (20 turns instead of 5), slowing down expansion, without adding the unnecessary micromanagement of extra population transports.

[AstralWanderer]

Baron Munchausen: If you're looking to be logical try hanging the base and ship construction techs off of a theoretical "Engineering" field.

Good idea - this could be supplemented by requiring a second theoretical field ("Minaturisation" in line with the comments above or "Large-Scale Construction") for higher levels of ship design.

Baron Munchausen: And please, please break up Stellar Manipulations already! It's been a catch-all for various almost unrelated techs for much too long.

I'd second..whoops..third this. It would seem better suited as a prerequisite theoretical field.

aegisx: How do you counter that type of expansion other then being forced to follow the same path?

One option would be to add minimum population requirements (if possible) to key facilities (shipyards, resupply depots) and to have these increase with level (on the grounds that more advanced facilities require better infrastructure support even if they need less staff). That way, expanding empires either have to focus on building up one or two colonies to gain access to better facilities faster, or use older facilities on new colonies and upgrade when population permits.

[MasterChiToes]

Are the ruins' tech rewards moddable? I've noticed that they aren't completely random, and with the Balance Mod changes in tech costs the results can be worthless to unbelievably valuable.

[Fyron]

AstralWanderer said:
"One option would be to add minimum population requirements (if possible)..."

Not possible at present.

[BlueTemplar]

you will add the necessity to build a bunch of population transports in order to play effectively

But many players could find it worthwhile to build an attack fleet instead of a coloniser/pop transport fleet!
That would give you a real choice on how do you want to play the game...