10M colonists in the "USS Discovery" seems much too few.

Yes 100M colonists is much bether then the 10M.

How do others feel?

I agree....often more worthwhile scrapping the first colony ship and building a new one (with more colonists) from your first planet...

I think it would be nice for the player to decide how many colonists the "USS discovery" would have. How about allowing colony ships to land on a planet to unload and load colonists as the player sees fit. So a colony ship should be a one use ship when colonizing new worlds, but be able to land on worlds that are part of your empire as many times as needed. The only problem with this is that colony ships will almost be the same as transports, except that they cannot invade worlds. All this aside I still have a problem with the amount of population that can be transported in this game. I don't think its good, that the cost to build a colony ship for 10 million people is the same as 10 billion people. Their should be added cost or some sort of penalty. For example in Stellar Frontiers a colony with 10 million could be moved around the map faster than a colony of 10 billion.

Perhaps having the number of colonists in the 'USS Discovery' tied into the Advantage Factor? At Cakewalk you would get 200, the AI would get 10. At Suicidial you would get 10, and the AI would get 200.

The whole idea of more colonists on the USS Discovery is to make the game start faster. I think tying the number to the skill level would defeat that purpose. Also, I think 200M is too many in some cases. If you have to colonize a low class planet (class 10-15) it may result in an unmanagably angry colony.

Cheers,
Jack

I don't really want this changed. A 100M colony ship allows for productive colonies, but is a bit to fast expansion. If you want a fast game, make an advanced start-up option where you already have half the technologies researched!

I like the idea of two types of colony ships. Small 10M colony ships which are cheaper and quicker to build and large 100M colony ships which cost more and have to be researched. This adds strategy and allows for rapid start-up expansion, but at the cost of small colonies which are vunerable and less productive until you add population with transports.

A colony ship or transport with infinite capacity like present (for the same cost) does upset my sence of realism / balance.

Paul.

I like this!

I also dislike the Idea of this game that you could put 1000M and more of popolation in one colony ship. And the best Solution for the starting Colonyship would be that it is empty in the Starting System so you could decide how much people you load in.