I know rally points have been discussed before but production vectoring is different. If anyone has played an old DOS game called Warlords (or Warlords II), there was a nice feature called production vectoring. In that game production from one city could be sent to any other city owned by the player. In that game it would take 2 turns for the production to show up at the new city. If the target city fell while the production was en-route, then you lost two turns of production.



This is different from rally points in that units do not actually move on screen. Instead they would just appear at their destination. In "real world" terms this is the same as what is commonly done in manufacturing: components are built at different locations, shipped to their destination then assembled. In Endless Space, ships would be assembled in parts, shipped to the destination system in X turns then assembled there.



Such an ability could be given generically to all races, such as allowing production vectoring of up to 5 systems to be sent to a single system and the transit time is 3 turns. Or it could be implemented by faction such as the Amoeba can vector 8 system with a 4 turn transit since they are trade experts, while Horatio can only vector 4 systems with a transit time of 6 turns. Obviously, blockades would block the vectoring on either the source system or the destination system.

I can see how this would be a huge help in setting up a new system's infrastructure, but... there needs to be a loss somewhere, to account for the hassle of sending industry across space and time. Industry represents the output of a collective workforce, or something along those lines. You can't beam it up, transport the workforce itself, and some things can hardly be built in individual components. Yet even then, the logistics costs would be huge, to know in details who builds what, so that it all fits together (I'm thinking about Airbus and its A380 that I know got some trouble). And then comes the transport costs itself.



You could abstract it all by applying a loss coefficient on top of the delay, or maybe adding a Dust cost to account for the additional expenses. It would certainly need to be balanced carefully, because I'd exploit this day and night to speed up my expansion.

I agree there would need to be balance in the game if this feature were implemented. It could require a structure(s) on both the sending and receiving worlds. It would also require certain technology(s) unlocked as well.



Maybe it could be based on the system's trade route cap? As soon as war breaks out, trade routes end up being worthless anyway. Maybe this would make them useful or even critical even when the bullets start.

I agree with using trade routes as a mean of transferring industry, instead of using abstract transport vehicles and infrastructure. This transfer is using civilian ships and the like, only for government contracts instead of personal profits through trading. Trade routes are pretty much run by civilian merchants. Then system improvements giving trade routes would become mandatory for new systems! Awesome!



Yes, I played Aurora a good while ago. This influenced my vision of a proper spatial empire. Always more civilian transports and colonizers! Subsidize and give government contracts!