Allow me to present an example. We have two players, player A and player B.



*Both players are playing as the same faction.

*Excluding their outpost worlds, both players have identical empires.

*Each player has 6 medium terran worlds as outpost colonies.

*The outpost colonies have no exploitations and no system improvements.

*Both players have 12 population units split evenly between their 6 terran worlds.



In the above example, the two players are mostly identical. I feel that they should be receiving the same expansion dissatisfaction penalty.



PROBLEM.

Player A's 6 terran worlds are located in 6 separate single planet systems.

Player B's 6 terran worlds are located in a single 6 planet system.



With the current expansion dissatisfaction system, player A is royally !@#$% with dissatisfaction, while player B's empire is cheerful as can be. Considering how close to identical the two players are, I can only view the MASSIVE difference in expansion penalty to be ridiculous.



Both players have expanded their empire by 6 worlds and 12 population. I don't see any reason for player A to be arbitrarily penalized for expanding his empire by the same amount as player B.

Six single-planet systems is dramatically preferable to one 6-planet system in almost every way except defensibility.

Player A has expanded to multiple star systems. Player B has not.



Why would Player A not have the expansion penalty?



Or are you suggesting the expansion penalty either be eliminated or replaced with an empire population penalty?

Ketobor wrote:
Six single-planet systems is dramatically preferable to one 6-planet system in almost every way except defensibility.

Actually they're identical except for the fact that the guy with the single system pays for his system upgrades once, while the six system player needs to pay six times....so the six planet system is actually the one that is dramatically preferable. That's without taking expansion dissatisfaction into account.



What I'm suggesting is that the expansion penalty remain, however I feel that the formula that determines the severity of the penalty should be based on the the number of colonists your empire is supporting instead of the number of outpost systems.

then it just starts feeling like the overpop penalty. i feel like the expansion should be system based. the fact of the matter is that the likelihood of 2 players having the exact same setup is pretty slim. chances are one will start on a crappy system and want to expand sooner than someone who was luckier. in his case he has to weigh in remaining on his starter system and developing it or take the penalty and expand to another system. the penalty also slightly limits players from just going out and taking over every system too fast.

Ketobor wrote:
Six single-planet systems is dramatically preferable to one 6-planet system in almost every way except defensibility.

Not by a long shot. You only have to pay for system improvements once and you stand a chance of finishing something (like ships) in a decent amount of time. That being said you should claim system fairly aggressively if only to "claim" them until you can send help (by using buyouts to start them up properly)



/topic: I find the overexpansion feature silly. It shouldn't depend on the number of systems/planet colonized at all in the first place (use population), and if anything your people should be pleased that they don't have to live in 4 inch apartments on the homeworld instead of having large apartments (or estates even) on a colony world.



Expansions to help avoid overpopulation.

you get disatifaction for the systems being away from empire as well (which is quite large if i rember) for example "outpost 1 - uncolonized - capital - outpost 2" outpost 1 will have disatifaction for being away for empire where outpost 2 dose not.

Ketobor wrote:
Six single-planet systems is dramatically preferable to one 6-planet system in almost every way except defensibility.

Care to elaborate?



You have to pay for each improvement separately, you'll get drastically fewer FIDS per system (at drastically higher costs, as each has to support all the improvement costs), there is no way to support low food planets growth via garden worlds in the same system, and by the time you've build your first battleship the game will be over.

How is that dramatically preferrable? :P

Moved to game design proposal