I'd argue, though, that a "colony" is NOT a single part. Sure, there are examples of such... but realistically, most 1-ship "colonies" in history were closer to refugees and exiles. Genuine, state-sponsored "colonies" tended to be multi-ship expeditions, and furthermore had a steady stream of followup ships bringing additional supplies, further colonists (specialists needed after a few years, but deadweight at startup... ), etc etc etc.Bigjoe5 wrote:It used to be that the standard hull was the smallest hull with internal slots; since having even 1 internal slot allows you to do cool special stuff that ships without such slots can't do, it makes sense that not every hull gets one. I wouldn't mind going back to that. That doesn't remove the need for large slots, though. It seems wrong that a laser takes the same amount of space as a Laser Cannon, and I'm not at all a fan of requiring multiple parts to get the effect of what is conceptually a single "part".
OTOH, maybe I'm straying into "realism" here, and should start looking nervously 'round for tar & feathers...?