So, the industry limits basically do what they're meant to - force some decision-making over what you build on which planets, rather than just building everything everywhere.
(They also, as a side-effect, force you to find multi-planet systems. You need at least one military base per system; if that's taking up an industry slot on your only planet, well, it'd better be a
really good planet.)
With the changes that are incoming, commerce will be going from "never build this" to "must-have", which further constrains available industry slots. Keep in mind, the commerce change is
not a buff to colony income; it is essentially replacing the current income bonus from high stability.
Given that context, I'd suggest the following changes to industry mechanics:
- Remove the industry tag from mining, tech-mining, and farming (but not aquaculture).
- Global -1 reduction to industry slots available at all colony sizes.
- Having an active star base increases industry slots by +1. (No penalty for being over your industry limit, i.e., if the starbase is disabled in combat, it doesn't shut down whatever orbital industries are making use of it, just prevents building something new in that slot until the starbase is repaired.)
There are two sets of reasons for these suggestions; one set that's a lore-based justification, and one set that's a gameplay-based justification.
Gameplay Justification:
First, this means that planet-local resources are never useless. In the current paradigm, you'd never build mining on a planet with, say, poor minerals and nothing else. (And tech-mining, in its current state, is
very hard to justify if it occupies an industry slot.)
Second, this makes a strong and obvious incentive for building a star base early rather than late; this isn't super-relevant to experienced players, but should at least reduce the number of new players trying to figure out why their shiny new colony is getting raided into the ground by pirates. (Speaking of: Could we please get partial-credit on star base construction time? It would be very nice if an almost-completed low-tech star base had, say, two operational sections instead of zero.)
Third, this adds a very obvious progression path for a colony: you start by setting up basic resource collection, then move on to centralized high-infrastructure industries.
Fourth, this reduces the impact of having an extra required industry if you want your colonies to turn a profit.
Lore Justification:
Mining, Tech-Mining, and Farming are all resource-gathering operations; they function in a very different fashion than centralized industries, and are limited more by what resources are out there than they are by how much room you have in your cities. Building an orbital manufacturing plant just doesn't compete with wide-spread ground-bound farms or mines or scavenging expeditions.
And the Star Bases - well, their description pretty much outright says that they're work-places. This change just makes that actually true, instead of them being purely military installations. (I actually have a slightly more dramatic thought, here: what if step one of colonizing a planet was just building the star base? This would fit better narratively with the pop-up pirate and pather stations...)
