Well its clear, the current system is clear as mud
If its that hard to understand then I've done it wrong. So how about something like the following:
Duna: desert planet with subterranean water and anomalous fossils
Index: 2.5 (terrestrial, arid, hot)
Minerals: 2
Food: 1
Oddities: 1
Hazards: sandstorms, earthquakes (!!)
* Surveyed by the Space Hamsters in GT-1 (Index: 1.5)
Where Index is the cost multiplier for anything you build
on the planet (lower is better here). Any useful adaptations you have decrease this by 0.5, to a minimum of 1.
We'd assume all resource collecting costs a default of 2EP to set up, with any exceptions noted in brackets. If there are no slots left or you don't want any resources, you can just build an outpost to only boost your ship range, but that still costs 2EP (x Index).
So getting +1 resource/turn generally costs 2EP x (adjusted index for your race), rounded up.
Making a new Developed World will also cost 5EP + 5EP x (adjusted index for your race), so that could get really expensive, and will mean habitable worlds have more value for development, while having more dilemmas about environmental destruction.
There would also be an element of risk involved in creating the first colony on a planet. Environment, hazards, and distance from your nearest colony will all factor into the equation. If a colony fails you don't lose much EP, most is refunded, but it means you have to try again. This uncertainty disappears once you have a toe-hold on the planet, otherwise there is no discount.... /idea
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QUESTION TIME
Strongly disagree with base-cost being a one-time payment. This would lead to exponential income explosion for anyone who focuses on developing colony resources and there would really be no reason to do anything else, including fight wars or trade resources. So to create a game with more than one 'reasonable path to game-play' i don't think reducing colonization cost should be a thing.
You make a good point. I certainly want to make other avenues viable.
1) that the planet list should include what sorts of colonies are already present on the planet.
I'd rather not have this in the stats as it involves a lot of book-keeping for me. I was hoping it'd be simple enough to have one resource icon per 1x tapped resource on the map, and you can see by the colour who owns it.
and 3) should agents and diplomats come with their own small ships so they don't need to be transported? Otherwise they cost a LOT of maintenance costs to use (once for the ship, once for the unit)
I'm not inclined to do this either - feel free to create a UU prototype that is a self-moving diplomat. Otherwise I think there's plenty of explorer ships and freighters around. Plus I like the idea of diplomats getting stranded somewhere.
To start bringing in income from them I would then need to set my newly built freighter to transport resources from the colony to a developed world (the capital until such time as another devloped world is created).
Freighters aren't needed for internal needs straight away, only to trade with other races, or to remote mine other systems. My idea is that as you get bigger / more spread out, with more resources flowing around, you will need some Freighters assigned to freighter duty, or you'll lose EP income. This will be noted in the stats.
Your miscellaneous-utility-ships-not-on-the-map can handle this for now.
TAssuming all that's accurate how are you indicating what resources on a colony world are currently being exploited?
Again, that's what the coloured resource icons are designed for. One for each 1EP's worth of resources coming off that planet.
Why do I have 8EP to spend this turn? I spent all 6EP of my treasury last turn, and the 5EP banked from production is still not 8EP, even after the bonus +1 from the asteroid.
Thanks for letting me know, that was a boo-boo in the stats. It should be fixed now.
Also, is it profitable to send our trade goods, aka "Tech Goods," to any planet/outpost or does it have to be a developed world that wants a "Consumer good"?
'fraid not, though I did change it this turn so that Fortress Worlds can
receive a trade good and consume it for 1EP, though they don't have anything to offer in exchange.
You'd need two different types of Developed World for internal trade. A Metropolis trading with a Tech world, exchanging 1 trade good each, would create 2EP in profit.
so to extract another Oddity it would cost a total of (4EP BC)+(Flallore BC +2EP)+(Oddity Extraction 2EP)= 8EP
Is this the correct way to calculate it?
No, the Flallore BC replaces the default one
So its 4EP in total. But hold fire, because its clear this is not intuitive, so I'll be changing it round.
Once last question, how can we tell how much of a resource, say minerals, that a planet can produce if maxed out? Or is the number (Minerals: 2EP x1) the resources that can still be extracted?
Again this is where I was hoping players could do the math and save me from some admin - you'll see one resource icon on the map for every point being extracted, colour-coded to the owner. The stats would always list total resource potential of the planet, ignoring how much is already being extracted or not.
@Daftpanzer
Am I in contact with the Yuma at this point?
Again, you'll need to be in direct contact ship-ship or ship-planet. So no, not yet - at least nothing meaningful in game terms.
At the moment, you'll be picking up radio signals leaking from Grand Hive that probably don't make much sense. Feel free to send a SETI signal if you like
Another quick rules question, can explorers move after surveying a system and if so can they potentially survey multiple systems in the space of a turn.
No - exploration will consume the whole turn if you want to do it properly. Though for game purposes, it doesn't matter how far they had to travel that turn, so long as its in range.
I am also still not 100% sure if I need to assign my freighter to hauling duty to get the benefit from my colony or if I can assign it to space mining duty?
Again, no, don't worry - you'll be warned when internal traffic reaches the point you need dedicated freighter lines. For now your freighters can strip mine empty systems or trade with other players.
(Sorry, this quick question's getting quite long) the rules clarifications are getting a bit scattered throughout the thread. Can they be consolidated into the first post? I'm sure there was mention of outposts but I can't find the costs/rules?
Noted - I'll look into doing that once I've figured out how to do the flipping planets in a way everyone can understand easily
I took outposts out initially as I thought it would be too confusing...
EDIT: I've also noticed my diplomat is still on the homeworld, she was supposed to go off with the explorers.
Noted - consider it retconned from this point.
The fix should be pretty simple: if a faction gets a cost bonus, denote it with '-', and a penalty with '+', then the player will know to add or subtract from the Base Cost. Everything else I think is largely self-explanatory.
