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[Megas]

@ xenoargh:  Much as I like to sat bomb enemy colonies into the Stone Age, player suffers too much accessibility from multiple auto-hostile.  I mean, why sat bomb when player can act like a vampire and just stealth raid the enemy to zero stability and let them collapse on their own.  Enemy is still dead almost as easily as bombing, but player does not suffer any consequences for killing them.  The player gets away with bloody murder!

I know Alex says bombing should have consequences, but so far, the consequences are so bad that I always raid the enemy to the ground if I want them dead.  Not as satisfying as nuking the planet, but still kills the enemy all the same without the backlash.  It should be useful and satisfying to bomb colonies, but it is not right now.

Sat bombing = Awesome but Impractial.
Excess raiding = Boring but Practical.

P.S.  I guess what I tried to say is if bombing would send everyone to kill you, then stealth raiding would be the way to go to kill those enemies one-by-one while maintaining enough plausible deniability (translated into -5 or -8 rep per incident, which is peanuts if rep was bright green before the raiding began).  Factions should not be easily felled by a few raids for other more realistic suggestions to work.

[TrashMan]

xenoargh, you're right in saying that agency is in the player's hands alone. This should be alleviated.

Well, I certainly think so, for these minor threats.  I don't mind if, say, the [REDACTED] decide it's time to launch the Third AI War, that the player needs to step up.

It would add a lot to the endgame to have [REDACTED] act up and start actual large attacks.

I agree that pirates and pathers should be a small threat. Unless they have their own actual empire - with planet and infrastructure.

But honestly, I don't like the idea of the player taking over the galaxy at all. It's too far-fetched of a scenario, especially given the time frame. I can see the player creation a nation-state, a small power, but if he gets too uppity, he should be put down like a dog (unless under protection by another big power).
Basically, as long as you're not a real threat and are of some use (doing bounties, trade) the other powers might leave you alone.
Bu if you start expanding too fast or too much.. well. Why would they let you get to that point?
Kinda like Dragonball where they let their opponent power up for however long it takes.

[Gennadios]

I haven't had a chance to try the new patch, but my only concern is that in some cases it wouldn't make sense to have colony size 1 start at millions of population.

Example is a Barren colony with only tech mining and a spaceport. I wouldn't expect a colony like that to be up to a million pop. Hundreds of thousands max.

[Baqar79]

I mean there's no reason to believe that the scale and prices of the star sector economy would be at all related to how they are on earth. It's clearly established in lore that ships are constructed with nano-forges and other technology that doesn't exist, so it's not clear at all how expensive that would be. It's also not clear how expensive raw resources are. It could be incredibly cheap to construct and operate a ship if the manufacturing technology was advanced enough and the resources were cheap enough. It might then be profitable to run small scale trade to supply something that isn't produced on a small colony.

What is reasonable for a trader to do is based on what is profitable, and what is profitable is based on made up technology, so there's no connection to how the economy of earth works.

This is a pretty decent explanation for how a small number of people can put out such a large amount of industrial capacity.  It isn't really clear how much automation has advanced; but it isn't too difficult to imagine that setting up a decent mining operation may simply require someone placing a box labeled "Starter miner kit", pressing a button and have it build itself an entire mining facility on it's own without having ever been present.

I think the ships in star sector are 3D printed, or at least something similar to that.  Apart from a few small cases with the bigger factions (Tri-Tachyon, Hegemony), no one appears to be designing brand new ships, instead relying on "blueprints" to be able to manufacture ships.  Perhaps even the manufacturing facilities for starships (aka heavy industries/orbital works) is also built from a simple fully-automated package that requires very little user input.

In any case, I think I would actually like to see player colonies scaled down a bit; getting populations above 10^8 shouldn't really be possible in the time frame of the game, at least not without mass migration from bigger colonies like Chcomoztac which would probably not make the Hegemony all that happy.

Actually, looking at the Planet screen by size, Hegemony is much much bigger than any of the competing factions (looking at each factions two biggest planets):

Hegemony:
1 x 10^8 population planet
1 x 10^7 population planet

Sindrian Diktat:
2 x 10^7 population planets

Luddic Church:
2 x 10^7 population planets

Persean League:
2 x 10^7 population planets

Tri-Tachyon:
1 x 10^6 population planet
1 x 10^5 population planet

Seems power isn't all about population as Tri-Tachyon can somehow hold their own against the Hegemony despite having a significant population disadvantage.  Perhaps power is much more contingent on ownership of old Domain artifacts, than manpower.

[RawCode]

there is no easy way to implement "realistic" balance and keep game fun and simple.

if player able to set colony and build all infrastructure in 200 days without any old tech, well, entire sector should be colonized already.

if multi planet government or mega corporation have fleet of 50 ships, well, lone player absolutely should not have 30 ship fleet with infinite spare ships stored inside bottomless shipyard.

[TrashMan]

I haven't had a chance to try the new patch, but my only concern is that in some cases it wouldn't make sense to have colony size 1 start at millions of population.

Example is a Barren colony with only tech mining and a spaceport. I wouldn't expect a colony like that to be up to a million pop. Hundreds of thousands max.

You can adjust the scales to start at 100.000 and have special category for small colonies.
A size 1 colony is 10 people. A tiny village in the middle of Africa has more people. That is so redicolous that it's pointless to even have it on the map.

[Megas]

if player able to set colony and build all infrastructure in 200 days without any old tech, well, entire sector should be colonized already.

I do not think so.  Given how Diktat, League, and Pirates bully players with endless expeditions and raids, and how AI is incompetent with some important tasks, I bet many (under AI control) that try to build new colonies fail and end up as ruins that the player conveniently finds to tech-mine.  The biggest thing preventing colonization of the sector is bloodthirsty established factions or pirates raiding new colonies, and only the player is competent enough to defend his colonies long enough to let his colonies grow big enough to become a new established power.  What needs explaining is how most of the core worlds have not decivilized without player intervention up to 206, due to their utter incompetence at defending themselves from big Pirate armadas full of Atlas IIs.

Then, after the player builds something good, is how the established factions are still around after poking the dragon (the player) way too many times before the poked gets tired of constant poking and starts burning all of the core worlds to the ground and kill everyone (or let pirates do most of that work for him) just to be left alone.

P.S.  Alternate explanation:  Most of the new colonies build by NPCs are the pop-up pirate and pather bases, and it becomes a war of who wins, the pirates or core worlds.  Without help from the player, I bet the pirates win.

[RawCode]

actually, current implementation of pirates makes no sense at all, they act exactly how redacted should work instead, spamming huge fleet, like 600 ships before 91a version and attacking specific system with extermination goal.

pathers are "dreaded mana" that get ships literally from gods, as they have no production of any kind.

[TrashMan]

@Megas - that no one in the entire galaxy is capable outside of the player is not a good explanation And while it may somewhat work for independants, what about factions? Surely major players should be able to make nad defend colonies? After all, they have ships to spare to send on endless raids!

When I give faction survey data on a pristine planet, why don't they do something with it? Honestly, it would be a good way to make the universe more alive and reactive.
That way the player can help factions - given them the location of a pristine world should be a great relation boost. And it should also mean that that faction would send a colony fleet after a while (in-game year?). Then a small new colony would be established and other factions might try to take it over. WAR. Growth.

Imagine the glorious chaos if you were to give all the good survey data to a single faction? OR split it between two strongest for maximum violence? OR heck, give it to the pirates or luddites!

[Megas]

@Megas - that no one in the entire galaxy is capable outside of the player is not a good explanation...

Be that as it may, it is the only one enforced by the game at its current release.  True, not ideal.

[Megas]

actually, current implementation of pirates makes no sense at all, they act exactly how redacted should work instead, spamming huge fleet, like 600 ships before 91a version and attacking specific system with extermination goal.

Pirates dwarf Chichomoztoc.  They too must have infernal stocks drawn from the netherworld.

Pirates are good enough at decivilization that if I want to kill everyone, I would let pirates do much of the work for me!  Why do I need to get my hands dirty when I do not need to and let some eager tool do it for me for free?

[Malleator]

I definitely don't like the limit on industry, I end up with so many empty slots.

[uzsibox]

I definitely don't like the limit on industry, I end up with so many empty slots.

Anyone found a way to edit that?

[SapphireSage]

Its in the settings.json.

Full Path is Starsector directory/starsector-core/data/config/settings.json

Look for "maxIndustries". The array is the size of the market and the numbers represent the max industry per pop. For reference the sizes are [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
So, if you wanted 6 industries at size 8 you might change the default to [1,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,6,6]

[outdated]

I think colony management isn't management at all. All you do is pick 4 industries, fend off raids and wait for colony to increase in size.
And that kinda sucks. I'd much rather see something like stellaris's tile based planets.