More cargo-related questions! ( a tangent, actually)

[Freyland]

Thank you all for your responses on my previous double-post regarding cargo. A new, yet related question: In my first game, I have my powerful homeworld in one system and a new colony in another system. I was concerned for the safety of said colony, so I had my bored homeworld make some satelites to stuff in my newly created cargo ship (thanks to you all). On the same turn I start the cargo ship on it's merry way, I hit the build que on the colony planet and realize I can build the same satelites on the colony in the time it takes for my cargo ship to arrive! So, again, am I missing something? I realize the importance of troop transports, carriers, and "people-movers" (sorry, from Detroit area ), but is there an actual value to transport ships when you can build whatever you want at the destination instead of shipping it across the universe from point a to point b?

As always, thank you very much.

Jonathan

[Talenn]

Sure, theres a really good reason IMO. Your new colony only has one build queue and thus is severely limited in what it can build in a timely fashion. I have a tendancy to carry Planetary Defense Weapons Platforms on transports to drop on newly founded colonies in hotspot areas.

That way, the fledgling colony is:

1) better protected as it instantly has a full complement of ground batteries and

2) is more productive as it can concentrate from the start on building the facilities necessary to become a productive addition to the Empire.

Also, I've modified my data set a bit so that low pop planets (ie freshly colonized ones) actually build quite a bit slower than the hugely populous Homeworlds. This goes even farther to encouraging cargo ship and transport of population and platforms.

Talenn

[Vilemare]

I agree with Freyland here. I mean the production capabilities of newborn 5M colony with no industry are around 50% of your 4G homeworlds production in terms of units. I went ALOT further than Talenn here. I totally killed the inherent production capability of colony from the 2000 it is to a measly 100 (You need to build SY now to make ANYTHING fast and building SY takes YEARS in my universe). I did surgery on the pop modifiers so that the SY rates are totally decimated from low population. I gave a bit more for the normal production rates (mines and farms and such) but those are pretty badly butchered also. At the beginning of game: I can't afford to keep active war ships now, if I wan't to keep developing some colonies. Most of my fleet consists of transports trying to build up workforce to key colonies and trying to bring up defence installations from home world to keep those colonies from slimy alien hands. If I just had time to fix the AI to like these modifications ... it is pretty lost by default now.

[Talenn]

Vilemare:

Yes, screwing up the AI is precisely the reason why I havent altered things farther in this regard. I have been able to retool the AI to function quite well with the changes I have made, but something like that is a bit too radical for it to handle.

I prefer a slower buildup period as well, but not quite as slow as you seem to have there. I think it is somewhat refreshing to have a semi-fast 'time to engagement' in SE4 rather than the interminable waiting like in MOO/MOO2. I cringe when I think back to waiting 20+ turns for a lousy Colony Ship...

Overall, I'd prefer a minimum pop level per facility. Its in the game settings file, but it doesnt seem to be enabled. I think this would really be the thing to make the early population transfers seem more worthwhile. Of course, they prolly took it out for a reason...perhaps even the same reason as above: the AI couldnt handle it.

Having played a good number of games so far, though, I'm getting used to the quick buildup. I guess the focus is a bit different than MOO/MOO2 etc. Instead of working towards individual colony management and optimization, SE4 focuses the player more on the empire as a whole. I am constantly looking to expand rather than hanging back and slowly developing a fewer number of worlds. Its definately a different pace, but its one that I dont really mind.

That said, though, I'm still looking into ways to make population more useful and necessary. As it is now, I dont really care whether I colonize with 4m, 34m, or 134m. I dont really notice that much of a change.

Talenn