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[Null Ganymede]

Amazing expansion-tier "patch". The following is a collection of interesting observations of nitty-gritty colony details.

General comments:

• Hazard rating is king. When you take mandatory defense / stability buildings into account, the cost of running a 12-slotted colony really cuts into profits. Colony slots are a scarce resource, so you probably want them 12-slotted... Unless it's just a personal logistics base, or temporary supplier for a key resource you can only source in-faction. See diminishing returns section.
• Best low-hazard worlds are habitable, which also has a chance of rare buildings. Remote survey red/yellow/orange stars first, ideally old ones (outside the "nebula" regions of the starmap) first. Do it in a fast-traveling fuel tanker and chart a path to avoid deep hyperspace (turn off "starscape" on the map) if you're starting out, otherwise wait for intel hints or luck.
• The accessibility calculation probably ignores "trade routes" that avoid deep hyperspace and the risk of losing fuel and supplies to storms. Your fleet doesn't - keep that in mind when choosing what to colonize until you're rolling in fuel and Solar Shielding.

Skills:

• Colony accessibility, stability, production increase, and income skills are all really really good. They easily make the difference between profit and loss early on, especially since the 30% income one probably multiplies gross revenue rather than net.
• Exploration salvage skills and salvage rigs and salvage gantry hullmods are really really good. As are high-resolution sensors (which drop now!) as are survey ships - your fleet's tooth-to-tail ratio will suffer.
• Until you're swimming in pristine nanoforges, Industry skills that make use of d-mods are really really good. Even afterwards, the sheer efficiency of a Field Repairs 3, Efficiency Overhaul-fitted clunker fleet is absurd. Particularly now that you're hauling a massive logistics tail for all that exploration and post-battle salvage.
• Logistics bonuses to extend your salvage-survey-combat-troop-transport armada operating range are really really... Okay, you get the point. The skill system has more points to play with but more interesting things to specialize in.

Basic economy optimization:

• As colony size grows, profits expand while costs stay fixed. Population growth is a huge deal! Decivilized subpopulations and freeport benefits outweigh costs, and supplying demand as it grows is important. Stacking colonies in one system as your initial large one also helps.
• Light industry is a euphemism for cooking drugs and selling them in a freeport. Without a freeport, it loses money. Presumably the luxury goods are all hollow and used to smuggle drugs out.
• Rare buildings (farms, ruins, etc) are extremely cost-effective.
• Accessibility is really powerful and makes up for missing volume of production. Stacking freeport, waystation, megaport, and the leadership skill (which was considered near-mandatory in 0.8 to begin with) results in corner-of-the-map upstart backwaters competing with size 8 core worlds on an even footing. The fact that the core worlds are not administered and constantly at war with someone doesn't help. Perhaps without maxed colony skills and the freeport access bonus supplying their demand is more of an issue, but, still. Most upgrades feel like a straight credit cost and there's no urgent need to run around setting up nearby logistics colonies to get a megaport up and running or whatever.

Advanced economy optimization is something I'm still figuring out. There are multiple sources of diminishing returns when trying to scale net profit horizontally:

• Duplicating production N times draws a slightly larger slice of the global global market value, but has N times the overhead. Eventually it stops being worth it.
• Duplicating production on the same colony only uses the larger output of the two. Tech-mining and a smelter will waste metal production from one. Tech-mining and fuel production will waste fuel production from tech-mining.
• Accessibility and stability (with some margin for Pather terrorism and piracy) are a big deal in addition to defense. This adds to the fixed cost for running a colony. You want your colonies to be somewhat specialized to avoid diminishing returns, or very low hazard ratings.
• Sector-wide demand is a market cap on how much profit exists to be made. For some industries with few consumers, you can grow that cap significantly and by extension grow your own profits. This is most noticeable with metals and transplutonics, which there's only 6 consumers (dang, the sector's in poor shape) for so your inevitable heavy industry will grow it significantly.

Defense:

• Fighting invasion fleets personally seems to affect standings, but letting your colony fleets autoresolve them away doesn't. That's kind of weird - maybe I did it with transponder off or something? Anyway, once your colony can fend off attacks with no direct assistance
  
• Stacking High Command colonies in one system results in fleets being swarmed at the wormhole without reaching your base. I don't know if that simulation fidelity applies for systems you're not physically present in (or if it's a simplified simulation where the fleets don't stack up, and defense stations on moons don't stack up with the one for the planet) but it's fairly one-sided when you're there to watch. Downside is, inbound missions also stack up.
• If key buildings get hit and revenue goes negative, shutting down industries for 25% build cost + 1-2 month delay in re-building tends to beat eating a monthly deficit. Also reduces odds of being raided, oddly enough.
• Do you optimize fleet doctrine for auto-resolve CR attrition warfare, auto-resolve and mobility to hunt down pirates and smugglers, or supporting the player's small strike fleet or a battlestation against uneven odds? Are star systems simulated at full fidelity when you're not in them - is there a fourth doctrine type for "away fleets" that auto-resolve a station battle only without running the wormhole gauntlet? Each playthrough will have different blueprints available, so there's a whole new design space to explore.
• Likewise for custom production. Your early volume isn't impressive, but can churn out frigates and destroyers quite quickly. The easy source of cheap hulls and modules (and the fact that guns aren't lost on death, and correctly managed D-mods are a bonus) mean there's a ton of specialized/throwaway fleet concepts that are now possible!

Since the Hegemony did nothing wrong and AI cores are a bad idea, seriously did no one learn anything from the last great war, there's basically nothing on [REDACTED]. The following are mostly gimmicks, but I'll still spoiler:

Spoiler

• Installing AI cores when there's no shortage reduces consumption sector-wide by 1 unit. This causes a tiny drop in gross revenue!
• Alpha AIs in colony buildings (as opposed to administrator positions) *probably* won't go rogue on you. Yet.
  
• Remnant fleets are basically free defense, and red beacons have a ton of good planets. Transverse Jump and a red warning beacon on a yellow/orange/red star is an easy start that I'm going to abuse until it's patched.

[close]

What a patch, great job Alex and Dave!

[DiM]

Spot on tips and tricks, great post.

Edit : Here's a few of my own, albeit not strictly colony related.

- Gamma cores are not always worth installing. They just reduce the demand of a particular good, which you may yourself be supplying (selling) to the industry, and therefore actually decrease overall colony profits. This is especially true for larger colonies. You can remove and reinstall cores easily to check if they negatively impact overall profits.

- Comissions provide a sizable monthly stipend, and are definitely worth getting early on while you have no colonies to defend. You can resign them later on - do this in person for a moderate reputation hit which shouldn't be an issue.

- Shepherd class drone tenders are cheap and have both a salvage gantry and surveying equipment built in! A great addition to any fleet composition short of a full battle armada. Even in battle they provide a good distraction.

[Draba]

Until you're swimming in pristine nanoforges, Industry skills that make use of d-mods are really really good. Even afterwards, the sheer efficiency of a Field Repairs 3, Efficiency Overhaul-fitted clunker fleet is absurd. Particularly now that you're hauling a massive logistics tail for all that exploration and post-battle salvage.

I'm really not a fan of clunkers.
To get them in the first place you give up the salvage you'd get from them, direct conflict with salvaging 3 you probably want for blueprints anyway.
After that you have to fix them up further reducing available supplies(so your expedition's range/lifetime). Mothballed they probably slow you down.
Out of the very early phase building replacements is just much more practical, cheap enough + painless + you get full combat strength for the 30 ship limit.

Something minor like compromised armor on an already paper high-tech thing is practically a big supply discount, didn't think about that.

As colony size grows, profits expand while costs stay fixed. Population growth is a huge deal! Decivilized subpopulations and freeport benefits outweigh costs, and supplying demand as it grows is important. Stacking colonies in one system as your initial large one also helps.

Really not a fan of decivilized subpop either, the +4 modifier is tiny compared to everything else you get (freeport by itself is +25) and comes with 25% extra hazard. Dunno how modifiers translate to actual growth %.
It's in the temporary status section but didn't see it ever go away, can you do anything about it?

Duplicating production on the same colony only uses the larger output of the two. Tech-mining and a smelter will waste metal production from one. Tech-mining and fuel production will waste fuel production from tech-mining.

How on earth did I not notice this one, was also talked about in the blogposts

Accessibility and stability (with some margin for Pather terrorism and piracy) are a big deal in addition to defense. This adds to the fixed cost for running a colony. You want your colonies to be somewhat specialized to avoid diminishing returns, or very low hazard ratings.

Yep, as a rule of thumb aim for max stability as it's the modifier that doesn't reduce income from your other colonies.

Fighting invasion fleets personally seems to affect standings, but letting your colony fleets autoresolve them away doesn't. That's kind of weird - maybe I did it with transponder off or something? Anyway, once your colony can fend off attacks with no direct assistance

They do reduce standing even with transponder. The absolute dicks

Stacking High Command colonies in one system results in fleets being swarmed at the wormhole without reaching your base. I don't know if that simulation fidelity applies for systems you're not physically present in (or if it's a simplified simulation where the fleets don't stack up, and defense stations on moons don't stack up with the one for the planet) but it's fairly one-sided when you're there to watch. Downside is, inbound missions also stack up.

4 high commands on close to max size colonies in the same system wreck invasions so far.
One of the reasons to consider higher hazard worlds is this convenience.

Spoiler

Installing AI cores when there's no shortage reduces consumption sector-wide by 1 unit. This causes a tiny drop in gross revenue![/li][/list]

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I was confused by this so hard earlier.
It reduces your consumption, so reduces global market size, so when everything is already saturated just means one of your other colonies will sit on that resource instead of sending it here.

What a patch, great job Alex and Dave!

Repeating it so much I'm starting to sound like an absolute fanboy, nvm seconded again

[fededevi]

- Shepherd class drone tenders are cheap and have both a salvage gantry and surveying equipment built in! A great addition to any fleet composition short of a full battle armada. Even in battle they provide a good distraction.

They provide decent cargo and fuel capacity too.
Use them with a Nav relay and an ECM Package and they become quite useful even in big battles.

[DiM]

Another cool tip for starting players is to do a tour of all of the core world systems. Some of them, like

Spoiler

Maxios

[close]

have ruins that you can freely and safely explore for great loot