eleazar posted while I was writing this I'll have to edit this to take into account his post. Ok done.
eleazar wrote:
Basically i find it boring in classic MoO, and current FO, that the only strategic significance that a colonies' position has is the distance to the enemy. If a colony is not near the border it doesn't really matter where it is— it just becomes a statistic adding production to your empire. There's no downside to grabbing colonies at random throughout the galaxy, besides defense issues. There is no connection or interaction between colonies.visible mock-up.
When I first heard that I thought it was a great idea, I was thinking of a simple system whereby colonies with excess supply in minerals or food would ship to nearby (one starlane perhaps) colonies with excess demand. However I'm having second thoughts:
Firstly wouldn't is be like having "super colonys" spanning multiple worlds, and rather than increasing the stategic choices being made when choosing a colony it would just add the number of neighbouring inhabitable worlds to the list of desirable features, right above size and mineral wealth.
Secondly an isolated colony would still be an advantage, if it can just scrape out self sustiance and add a little research to the empire why not colonise?
Thirdly, it dose make managing colonies a lot harder, think of this situation: You have 3 stars Zeus-Apollo-Athena Linked together in that order. Zeus and Athena have a manufacturing colony, Apollo has a mining colony.
Currently Zeus uses all of Apollo's minerals for production, the player then starts up production on Athena, this will mean Apollo will have to ration minerals between Zeus and Apollo. I think having to worry about this all the time will get annoying, fast.
Perhaps an alternative solution to the silly gameplay mechanic of "colonise everything" should be money rather than resources. A new colony needs subsidies from Empire Bank until it gets on its feet, a lot of subsidies. Even more so if its trying to terraform or on a hostile environment.
This means you will eventually start colonising everything, but you have to pace yourself or the economy will collapse trying to support all the fledgling colonies. It also makes the early game a tradeoff between a tight defensible empire, and spreading thin to claim lots of territory and filling it out with colonies later.
marhawkman wrote:Going along with the map analogy...
should we have fuel? And use the supply as a way of replenishing it?
I was thinking that supply is either fuel, an abstract number covering both fuel and ammo, or two numbers one for fuel one for ammo. I don't think it matters at this point in the discussion.
Sandlapper wrote:
Additionaly, in regards to the fleet at Cannon, I think there should be someway to convey whether there are optional supply routes available. For instance, if another fleet blockades Sual, will the supply route reassign itself to an alternate route to maintain supply? It would be helpful to know, ahead of a fleet commitment, what options are available, "just in case".
Well in my system that's the players choice, dose he think his supply fleet can take on the blockade or not, and dose he want to try. But easy access to extra information can't hurt.
[edit] eleazar changed my mind with his point of clutter.
Sandlapper wrote:Additionally, newly colonised systems would also have to "grow" to a point of minimum production, to qualify for a supply contributer. So if your fleet has a string of victorys, and you colonise several new systems, you would not be able use these systems immediately for supply. You either "grow" your systems, or build supply depots. Note: depots incur a high maintenece cost.
I love the minimum size idea
, but I still think a "depo" should be a fleet haning around in a system with lots of supplies so another fleet can drop by ask for some.
eleazar wrote:marhawkman wrote:should we have fuel?
I don't want fuel, but there are really only 3 options.
- 1) * ships have no limit on how far they can go
2) * ship's range is limited by a flyable-area, and if that area changes, the ship is (a) marooned, (b) destroyed, or (c) automatically sent back to the flyable area (as in MoO1,2).
3) * fuel is at least sometimes used to calculate how far a ship can go.
I don't like "1", or "2b,c", nor is anyone else supporing these. So unless i'm missing something i'll have to grudgingly decide between "2a", and some form of "3".
I go for 3, there is a flyable area consisting of supply producing colonies and nearby systems, flying around here fuel never falls below 100%, when flying outside this "flyable area" fuel matters and military supply routes can keep it topped up
eleazar wrote:
Sandlapper wrote:One caveat I would allow, in lieu of building a depot, if a system on a supply line doesn't meet the minimum production requirements, it can pool it's resources with any adjacent systems one starlane jump away, if the adjacent system(s) is\are not supporting another supply line already.
I believe there has already been extensive discussion (in other threads) about weather fleets will be supplied by the mineral or industrial production of planets. I won't attempt a recap, but if military supplies are produced by production, (due to the nature of redistribution of production resources) any
connected planets will almost certainly be allowed to contribute. For reasons discussed
in this thread production resources flow instantly between connected planets.
That's not the way I read it. I thought that if the production of a colony exceeded some arbatary value then it produced infinite supplies, otherwise none. That struck me as a good idea.