@Abbysall: It would definitely be a step in the right direction but I think all those other 4X games use more methods to discourage REX for a reason.

maybe you're right, I've only dabbled in 4X games before, so most of what I'm basing this on is coming from Civ experience. Maybe a system based on the colonies happiness levels, either being unable to produce a colony ship until reaching a certain happiness level, or a reduction in happiness every time a colony ship is produced? It makes sense in immersion terms, you'd need to make a system happy before going 'hey! fancy getting on this ship and flying off to a recently discovered ball of lava a few million light years away?'

Ok some solutions I came up with:

-> Make pirates wipe small colonies (1-2 inhabitants) and in one turn... colonies need protection (could encourage building larger colony ships later, although later in the game pirates aren't really a problem)

-> An upkeep for colonies depending on how many you have and how far away they are (a way to offset this by research would be nice (^^,) colonial rights comes to mind)

-> Maybe scale up the cost for the colonization module for some researched techs (not a lot.. just a little) (to offset the benefit of being able to immediately produce geo thermal plants and all the other exploits without having to build the old ones)



all of these will make expansion more difficult and slower in the early game.

but in the late game (especially on big maps) there comes a different problem: the Mali for having a big empire are getting to big those should be lowered. That might be an intentional rubber-band effect but .. well i never was a fan of punishing a player for doing well (but if you say thats a design decision I can live with it.. if there comes a possibility to just destroy colonies)

Im not really a fan of the extra upkeep or the cost of the colonisation mods, Colonising should be easy to do and afford.



I would be more infavor of new outposts being rebellious little gits that will turn coat if they are soo much as 2 jumps from a proper colony, turing the eXpand part of the game into much more of a diplomatic/economic/military challange as the rest of the game.

@Igncom1: I like your idea but I don't know why colonizing should be easy.

I don't think its easy to convince people to trade their living on a well developed system for a tiny spec of sand or worse lava, ice, barren rock several lightyears away.

Not to mention all the stuff you would have to bring to a new colony or the logistic effort of coordinating it with the rest of the empire (research efforts for example, or including it in the economy) especially when there is no method of instant communication between them. And even if there were such a method I think it would be difficult to coordinate everything. Nowadays there are enough troubles coordinating people that are in the same building

Well for the first few years your gunna be living off the colonyship its self, but in most sifi its assumed that you don't just colonise with the single ship, corporations and freelance groups would be moving there on their own to sicure all the good resource deposits and industry sites, setting up all the propper logistics and communication lines for you, untill your empire could build proper official ones you would just pay to use the civilian ones (Probobly why they start as outposts), and with mass immigration (New worlds arn't for every one but given the freedoms of living in an outer colony with little to no imperial or government presence, alot of people will go for it.



You make the whole operation official, businesses build everthing to make their profit and you get free colonys as is your right, by law or your biggest gun!

Even if companies do it there would be losses due to the sheer distance (especially in research and economy). And the bigger something gets the more difficult it is to coordinate it (Ask anybody who had to take care of a project in his life). Going there in a ship.. and maybe even getting people to do it.. is the easy part.. integrating it in your empire (so that you can really benefit from it).. not so easy.



Edit: We are talking years of transport here (every turn your ship needs to reach a colony is a year.. that also would apply to freighters that bring goods.. and research data.. well I don't know how to even implement that correctly)

Thats the capatlists problem to deal with, we are emporors!

Right now colonizing happens instantly if you use a colony ship.

If the colony ship had to orbit the system for one turn (i.e. have all of its movement points) you'd better send ships to acompany it or hope that no pirates show up.