Whats so bad about the UI????

[Raapys]

In this very off-topic thread I'd like to continue the trend: Doesn't anyone else find it a little strange that we're supposedly transporting millions of people in a smallish cargo ship? And that a recently established colony can pump out huge starships in a matter of 'months'?

Yeah, I know, mods and all. I'm just wondering, where did this idea come from originally? I mean, it's nowhere realistic that a year after we establish a colony on Mars we'll have millions of people there and build dozens of ships a year.

So that leaves the reason that it must have been done for gameplay. Which begs the question: would it really be so bad if the home colony continued to be the main base of operations for the entire game( except troop-occupied homeworlds taken from enemies)? MoO3 deals with this a little better, as it takes quite some time to actually get a colony operational( slow moving population, lots of things has to built on colonies ), and very long to make it production efficient. I wouldn't say it lowers the 'fun' of the game any, though.

[Atrocities]

This is why we need progressive ship building capabilities. You can't even build a ship yard until your population reaches X amount. Then the yard is only X amout useful until population increases are met or expansion yards are built.

I like to limit my colony ships to 1 million population and require more engines for the ships. I have thought about making colony ships huge costly ships but that would just slow the AI down and make it a lot harder for players.

There is a give and take from game play vs reality. You just got to go with the flow and ignor the obvious at times.

[Suicide Junkie]

You mean the whole "population required to operate facility" thing that was tried and then dropped in SE4 too?

[Atrocities]

Suicide Junkie said:
You mean the whole "population required to operate facility" thing that was tried and then dropped in SE4 too?

Ya sure whatever works.

[Suicide Junkie]

Of course, you could always just plug in realistic population modifiers...

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/...opModifier.zip

Say, 5% build rate for 1M people and add 1% rate for every 20M people added after that.

[dmm]

Off topic: Remember, at the very beginning of every game, these societies have already mastered intrasystem travel. (Neptune and Pluto on opposite sides of the Sun, and the trip only takes a bit over a month. Think about it!) And they've also developed warp point interstellar travel. Plus, they've developed planetary colonization, and the colonization ships only take a few months to build. CLEARLY, there is widespread use of robotics and a highly segmented society. MOST of the population of a homeworld does NOTHING, unless you count 1) sitting on their fat ***** eating fried chippies and/or doing nasty things while refusing to use their keyboards while playing computer games; or 2) posting dirty comments to game forums. So when they colonize a new planet, they take a few million of the useful clean-mouthed keyboard-using people who know how to program in C++ or at least Excel and that's all they need to terraform the whole planet and build a superstardestroyer.

On topic: The problem with the default keyboard shortcuts is that you need BOTH hands, since many of them are uppercase letters (and the CapsLock doesn't work) or else they are Ctrl-something. The solution is to reassign the shortcuts, but you really shouldn't have to do that.