colony ship and transoprt ship balance
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Is it just me or are these ships too unbalanced?
A colony ship is fairly cheap. Compare it to a scout. Costs 25% more and can hold billions of people???? This is just too silly. I would really like to see this changed, both to be a bit more realistic and also to extend the whole colonisation into mid game.
Perhaps leave the current colony ship, but make it an outpost ship. It can claim a planet but will never grow into a colony. An outpost can also be destroyed from space by a powerful ship (cruiser or above). Add a real colony ship, which can hold 10M people at the same cost of an Avatar (500). This is a HUGE ship. Just think of it. How much building would be required? This would also give much more realistic colonies. None of this instant 1 billion population systems which are immediately useful. It should take decades or even centuaries to make a new colony useful! Perhaps at a higher tech add a 100M colony ship.
Transports are even more annoying than colony ships. They cost 2.5 time a scout and can caryy 40M+ troops??? What is this about. I can build a transport, hope to an enemy planet. Drop 40 million troups. Purchase another transport. Load 35 millino troops. Move to another planet. Capture it and continue like this till the entire enemy is destroyed. Unfortunately to make this realistic the whole 'entire population = soldiers' idea needs to be changed.
I would suggest that only a fraction of a planet are soldiers. Let this fraction be set by the user (0.5-20%), but soldiers cannot add production and have an upkeep cost. Now make transports fixed size with realistic costs. 10M transport = 500 cost (be realistic, this thing would be a whole city in space complete with invasion craft. it should cost at least this much). 100M transport = 2500 cost. Now when you invade a planet you just have to defeat the troops, not the entire population.
To make the game more interesting battleships and greater should be able to bombard from space. This can reduce troop numbers (good player), reduce good numbers and destroy social improvements (neutral player), reduce troops numbers, buildings and population (evil player).
To capture a planet you would therefore defeat the enemy fleet, bombard until the trrop numbers are low enough, and then invade with your transports.
Paul.
A colony ship is fairly cheap. Compare it to a scout. Costs 25% more and can hold billions of people???? This is just too silly. I would really like to see this changed, both to be a bit more realistic and also to extend the whole colonisation into mid game.
Perhaps leave the current colony ship, but make it an outpost ship. It can claim a planet but will never grow into a colony. An outpost can also be destroyed from space by a powerful ship (cruiser or above). Add a real colony ship, which can hold 10M people at the same cost of an Avatar (500). This is a HUGE ship. Just think of it. How much building would be required? This would also give much more realistic colonies. None of this instant 1 billion population systems which are immediately useful. It should take decades or even centuaries to make a new colony useful! Perhaps at a higher tech add a 100M colony ship.
Transports are even more annoying than colony ships. They cost 2.5 time a scout and can caryy 40M+ troops??? What is this about. I can build a transport, hope to an enemy planet. Drop 40 million troups. Purchase another transport. Load 35 millino troops. Move to another planet. Capture it and continue like this till the entire enemy is destroyed. Unfortunately to make this realistic the whole 'entire population = soldiers' idea needs to be changed.
I would suggest that only a fraction of a planet are soldiers. Let this fraction be set by the user (0.5-20%), but soldiers cannot add production and have an upkeep cost. Now make transports fixed size with realistic costs. 10M transport = 500 cost (be realistic, this thing would be a whole city in space complete with invasion craft. it should cost at least this much). 100M transport = 2500 cost. Now when you invade a planet you just have to defeat the troops, not the entire population.
To make the game more interesting battleships and greater should be able to bombard from space. This can reduce troop numbers (good player), reduce good numbers and destroy social improvements (neutral player), reduce troops numbers, buildings and population (evil player).
To capture a planet you would therefore defeat the enemy fleet, bombard until the trrop numbers are low enough, and then invade with your transports.
Paul.
