Colony feedback

So, I spent some time to understand how the colony currently works, to try to figure out how much it impacts the game, why it doesn't grow in most games, and if there is any way to exploit that mechanic, about the latter, I couldn't come up with anything...

Also I guess that this mechanic is a new and raw still, so maybe it's a good time to give my 2 cents for that.

Currently the colony serves as a resource sink, however what I noticed is that there are a lot of conditions for a colony to grow, basically if any of the life support resources is above it's limit, then it stops growing, even when the other 2 resources are really cheap.

1) so first suggestion would be to take into account if some of the life support are very cheap and count that in, also the speed at which it grows/dimishes could change more gradually making it possible for a colony to maybe even swing up and down during a single gameplay. Maybe instead of strict price bounds also have a budget (similar when deciding to upgrading) per some time (in the mod files, all values are for 1000 seconds?).

Second thing I notices, is that all the Job buildings that consume other resources than just life support will buy them no matter the price.

2) It would be really cool if consumption of a resource is increased by some percentage when the price is low and lowered once the price is already very high, like labs food orgys when food is cheap, or more crazy experiments in labs when chems are cheap, but when the price is high, colony starts consuming tighter.

3) UI wise, it would be nice if I could see the average consumption of all the resources the colony spends per second. Like I guess port consumes 0.2 fuel per second and each lab consumes 0.1 chems per second? But currently I would have to go through all the buildings, look their level, and then consider population compared to the current gap and then try to make an educated guess how much a resource is being consumed, meaning to figure out if colony has any impact.

4) Currently if I would want to influence the direction of the colony I would have to keep life support prices low, which is not something that helps me win, also I would have to keep the aluminium/steel/glass prices at bay and propably sink one of them to get specific type of jobs building, which again I think is too costly and the impact isn't really worth it. Maybe it is intentional that colony is not meant to be exploited strategy wise, but it would be cool if it is possible.

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Quoting ,

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I've been wondering if there is a way to manipulate the colony in such a way to make a Pleasure Dome domination strategy effective, even as a side-venture, since its revenues are dependent on total colony size (which managing the life support prices would increase).

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Quoting bigheadzach,

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well, you have to make sure that water price is below 40, oxygon below 60 and food below 80, which are still good prices, and that for an extended period of time, I didn't test how fast the dome income increases, but basically if you spend all your claims on that strategy then a single dome from someone else crushes that strategy. But yeah, I guess that in a game where all players are doing very efficient production all prices tend to drop so that colony will grow more naturally meaning if you spot an opportunity and grab 100% pleasure dome + build one that could work.

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Also the problem I see, is that in the early game when it matters it is very hard and costly venture, compared to trying to sell something for hundreds of dollars per unit, and in the late game when the efficiency gets high, then offworld markets become so huge players that colony becomes more and more irrelevant. + it takes some time for colony to grow, in the test game I raised colony to size 57, and it consumed around 5 power + it consumed everything in a very relevant pace, however, you have to consider that pop grows by 1 with 50 seconds so it takes 500 seconds for pop to grow by 10, meaning power demand grow by 1 per sec for example, and in the late game when all the prices drop, then the game is usually over much faster.

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