unjashfan wrote:
Increase the base supply range for outposts from 0 to 1
Why?
This is to allow outposts to serve as "connectors" that link up planets that may be too far away from each other (think of it as another option to extend supply). Assuming the other changes I've suggested were implemented, it may be wise to connect planets via outposts rather than to build "space elevator Jr.'s" on newly colonized planets (that would take quite a long time). Of course, one could spam these outposts everywhere for this purpose, but these would become major liabilities since outposts have poorer defenses than fully established planets.
The current rules are fairly generous about not consuming fuel when moving through systems that are connected to supply. This is intended to avoid making players have to worry about fuel when ships are within supply range. Why is it specifically useful to make the rule depend on the destination system, rather than the system a ship is leaving or passing through?
My thought on this is to make fuel consumption a little less forgiving, in hopes it will make fuel tanks appear more valuable to players. With the current supply and fuel mechanics, a well established empire does not need any fuel tanks at all.
Quote:
Increase the base supply range for outposts from 0 to 1
So, for outposts the bonus from Orbital Construction wouldn't be shifted to a building, it would be given for free up front? Plus the building is still available to them?
While the idea of free supply from outposts is quite attractive, they can become liabilities as I have explained above. And IMHO, it's not as easy as it looks. With a supply range of just 1, planets/outposts would only be able to connect to an adjacent system. If there are a few empty systems nearby, sometimes it would be impossible to connect to a certain system just because there's no adjacent system to set up any links. Extending further out would actually require one of these outposts, which makes any potential colony more expensive, and also more difficult to defend since the outpost connecting to it is also a target. (Then there's that nasty upkeep, which racks up over time)
Also, we could make the building a planet-only building so it can't be built on outposts. Of course, the building will be unlocked separately from outposts. Making outposts a little more expensive is also a possibility. One benefit from this change would be a lot less hell on low density maps, which, since the last time I checked (which was quite long ago), are abundant with empty/asteroid only/gas giant only systems.
Have you really tested this theory on many different galaxy settings? Elliptical is fairly dense, but the others vary quite a bit......
I always test on random galaxy shapes on medium density. I've only played a few low density maps, so I'm not going to elaborate on that. However, regarding galaxy shape, the main difference is usually the length of the starlanes, which does not affect supply at all. Interestingly enough, maps that aren't very dense tend to benefit more from the supply because ships will be able to travel a greater distance (in uus, not starlanes) before running out of fuel. Denser galaxies have more stars per square uu, are much easier to explore, and especially in the case of elliptical galaxies, have more interconnections between stars (i.e: more possible ways to connect planets together). I've never had any major supply problems in any of my test runs, even with the greater number of empty systems.
From my test game experiences I can tell that once I get the logistic focus and/or the space elevator, I hardly need them anymore, because at that point I usually have researched enough of the other supply range extending techs that supply range isn't an issue anymore.
Exactly what I have been experiencing.
A supply range boosting building of course introduces the problem that the player is tempted to build it everywhere
One way around this is to give these buildings an exponential build cost so that subsequent copies of the same building become much, much more expensive to produce. Something like 50x2^N, where N=number of buildings already built. The first one would cost 50PP, then 100, then 200, 400, and so on.