Colony ships, for sale cheap!

[Fyron]

I said to incease the size, not the hit points. These huge colony ships would still be as vulnerable as the regular colony ships.

quote:

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So, instead I'll argue that private sources -- banks, merchants, industries, and the colonists themselves -- bear most of the cost of a colony ship. The cost paid by an empire is only the cost of subsidizing the colonization. In contrast, military ships are paid for entirely by the empire.

What do you think of that idea?

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That's a good idea, but it kind of misses the point. The point of making colony ships expensive is to slow down the incredibaly rapid rate of expansion, not just to make you spend more money.

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[dmm]

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I said to incease the size, not the hit points. These huge colony ships would still be as vulnerable as the regular colony ships.

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Aahhhh, I see.

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
That's a good idea, but it kind of misses the point. The point of making colony ships expensive is to slow down the incredibaly rapid rate of expansion, not just to make you spend more money.

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I was just trying to justify the current costs. I think the problem is more in the speed of building structures than in the speed of establishing colonies.
Example: You establish a colony on a huge world, and start building mines. [Edit: I mean mines as in mining facilities.] In only 30 years, you've covered the entire surface with mines. What??!! Holy Cow! that's a lot of mines!
Another example: In the same turn that you colonize, you can fill up the colony with settlers (from transports) to its max pop. What??!! Where did all that housing come from?
Sooooo, what you really need to do is to make all planets hold 6x as much stuff, decrease the capabilities of all facilities by 4x, get Aaron to add housing facilities to hold pop, and change the pop production bonuses to fit this new model. Then find some people who like to play excruciatingly long games!

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: dmm ]

[Phoenix-D]

"You should increase the size of the colony module by 600 kilotons and the colony ship by 620 kilotons and give the colony ship itself reduced maintenance"

Why bother increaseing the size? Just stick the reduced maintaince on the ship hull itself (ala the bases). No muss, no fuss, a warship with a colony component pays full price.

Phoenix-D

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
If you do that, then what's to stop someone from making a Baseship with a colony module on it and getting low maintenance fleets?

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Good point. You could apply the maintenance reduction ability to the hull instead of the compponent. That should eliminate that problem.

Geoschmo

[Quikngruvn]

Ah, great minds think alike.... Making the colony ship hull low-maintentance sounds like the trick. And a player could still get a slightly-faster colonizer with a warship hull... though with the maintenance as high as all that, I don't see why.

I was wondering if a player could try the argument the other way around, by making a warfleet of nothing but low-maintenance colony ship hulls, but a colony ship is required to be at least 50% colony module, so that scenario is not viable.

Now... how buck-expensive to make the colony module....?

Quikngruvn

[Fyron]

I said to put the maintenance reducution on the colony ship, not on the colony module.

With a med tech start and a medium homeworld, with no construction bonuses, a colony ship costs 4850 minerals and the homeworld builds at 2600 resources per turn. The colony ship takes 4850/2600 or 1.865 turns to build. The standard colony module costs 2000 minerals. To get a build time of X, we need to increase the cost of the colony module to some amount, as modeled below:

Ex: 3 turns to build
1) Total minerals production of planet/cost needed for X build time: 2600*3=7800
2) Extra cost needed: 7800-4850=2950
3) New mineral cost of colony module: 2000+2950=4950

4 turns to build
1) 2600*4=10400
2) 10400-4850=5550
3) 2000+5550=7550

5 turns to build
1) 2600*5=13000
2) 13000-4850=8150
3) 2000+8150=10150

6 turns to build
1) 2600*6=15600
2) 15600-4850=10750
3) 2000+10750=12750

7 turns to build
1) 2600*=18200
2) 18200-4850=13350
3) 2000+13350=15350

8 turns to build
1) 2600*8=20800
2) 20800-4850=15950
3) 2000+15950=17950

9 turns to build
1) 2600*9=23400
2) 23400-4850=18550
3) 2000+18550=20550

10 turns to build
1) 2600*10=26000
2) 26000-4850=21150
3) 2000+21150=23150

I suggest that we make the colony ship take about 8 turns to build, so the minerals cost of the colony module should be raised to 17950, or maybe 18000 even.

[Edit]
I removed the that appeared where it shouldn't have appeared.
[/Edit]

[ 18 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Spoo]

But you need to take into account the advantage to players who max out their construction trait. As it stands now, even with +50% construction plus the Engineer (125% base) cultural trait, a colony ship still takes 2 turns to build. If the build time was increased to 8 to 10 turns, those with the advanced constuction traits would be able to expand exponentally faster than those with out (5 or 6 turns per ship then each colony can send out more ships faster and so on).

[ 18 January 2002: Message edited by: Spoo ]