Geoff the Medio wrote:eleazar wrote:Also, i planted a colony on a lousy world and watched it die. The production of research started falling after population reached 0, but persists for several turns afterwards before research dries up completely.
That's expected... In terms of game mechanics, the research meter moves towards the target research, which was presumably 0 after the colony depopulated, but won't get there immediately (on its own).
Hmm, i tried to disable production on an empty planet by putting "PopulationCenter" in the activation, but "PopulationCenter" somewhat misleadingly seems to includes zero population outposts. It would be nice if there were a term for colonies and outposts, and one just for colonies with population.
Geoff the Medio wrote:eleazar wrote:prevent the construction of new colonies on hostile/uninhabitable planets unless the "environmental encapsulation" tech was researched.
No, there's no way to do that. Part of the idea with "outposts" or zero-population colonies was that they didn't have the same location restrictions as proper (populated) colonies.
Yeah but it was "different location restrictions" not "no location restrictions".
Geoff the Medio wrote:I considered making it not allowed to found a colony (including zero-population) on uninhabitable planets (for the colony ship's species), but ended up allowing it. But originating colony ship species has no effect on zero-population colonies, since they don't have a species... So, it seemed odd / fiddly to require a particular species on an colony ship to found a species-less zero-population colony, or what will depopulate into one.
Putting a colony on an unsuitable world, and then watching all the population die to make an outpost is possible and may occasionally be strategic, but i don't think it should be considered "normal" gameplay. I would be no loss if it were not possible to place a doomed colony.
Geoff the Medio wrote:It could be set up so that only zero-capacity colony ships have no species-dependent colonization restrictions. Complicated rules of this sort make things more difficult for players, though...
"You can put an unmanned outpost in places where you can't put a colony" isn't that complicated. The downside of the current arrangement is that the game gives you the option of colonizing everywhere -- even when at the beginning of the game most of the options are bad. Saving the player's time and attention by only giving the option to found colonies that could survive, probably outweighs that complication.
Geoff the Medio wrote:Also, lore-wise, I figured an "outpost" or zero-population colony is small enough to not require any special fancy tech to create. It could be little more than a ship set down on the surface, or in low orbit. Environmental Encapsulation or similar would be required to support a large self-sufficient colony - enough to have a nonzero colony population in-game...
I'm not worried about plausibility or lore. We can rationalize it either way.
Besides the point above, i'm concerned with the progression of the game. Theres a better sense of growth and progress, if basic things like, where the player can put outposts improves as the game progresses. This might not have anything to do with species, but gas giants could need a more advanced outpost tech. And having the amount of places where you can found colonies increase with tech more clearly illustrates your advancement, than numbers changing
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Leave it alone for now-- i can move on with things as they are. Maybe playing with it i'll come around to your view.