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[Mondaymonkey]

This one is sober, I swear.

Each and every modded (and vanilla, being fair) faction must have a heavy industry/orbital works if they wish to use their own ships in patrols. Even more, they literally obligated to use NF if they wish hight ship quality. If player uses several faction mods, all of them saturated market with a huge amount of heavy machinery/supplies/heavy armaments and usually not creating enough demand of them, so orbital works with pristine NF can suddenly became less profitable to player, than light industry or fuel. IMO it shouldn't.

Suggestion: separate "shipyard industry", that produce hulls only, consuming heavy machinery and heavy armaments. Can have several tiers with different impact on fleet size and quality. NF does the boost for that. Heavy industry loose hull production and second tier (orbital work) should be replaced with something else/removed. NF installed increase production, but nothing more.

BTW side suggestion: light industry can also use NF. (contribute bonus only to domestic and luxury goods, not drugs).

Predicted result: modded factions now would be obligated to have "shipyards", that will create demand not production. And having several tiers of that will add possibility to get desirable ship quality for that faction even without a NF (should be rare, not as in heavily modded game we have now, where you can usually see couple dozens of them and a half is pristine). For player it could be useful to build "shipyard" not heavy industry to be able to build ships without risk of punitive expeditions because of marketshare.

Obvious problem: Yup, additional structure that will eat both industry and building slot. Nothing more, than reason to have more colonies. See nothing really bad here.

[Megas]

I do not want to see this unless we have no industry limits (beyond the global twelve) or no colony limits (we only have that now because of alpha cores from Ordos grinding and Pathers that do nothing).  If Pather bug gets fixed, I do not know if I want to abuse cores because I need to babysit my colonies by constantly chasing Pathers like in the first v0.9a release.

But assuming this suggestion was humored...

I view Heavy Industry as the ship building industry, especially since the point of Orbital Works upgrade is solely increasing ship quality.  Heavy Armaments include vehicles piloted by marines, basically ships for ground combat, but we do not have a combat system for ground combat beyond a dice roll.  Machines seem like ship parts.  Maybe supplies can be shunted to Light Industry.

[Ced23Ric]

If "Shipyard" could be an upgrade/sidegrade to the Spaceport instead, with a demand of ship parts, you could have Orbital Works still do what it does, but your export volume would sink due to own demand. That'd also make it feasible for a colony to have an output of ship parts without making ships, for export purposes. I am sure there are other repercussions to this, and I do not know if you can have two parallel upgrades on a structure (Spaceport > Megaport and/or Shipyard > Megashipyard?), but this might shift the "yes makes ships" off of Orbital Works.

As for the ship quality and nanoforge; if "yes makes ships" is off the Orbital Works, a nanoforge would still improve quality/production, but, what if modded factions that do not wish to use nanoforges for lore reasons go the Templar way of doctrine fudging (maybe not the full 5-5-5...) for quality?

[DatonKallandor]

The problem is faction mods insisting on having their faction have high quality ships, when that's absolutely not what the state of the sector is. There's far too many nano forges, AI cores and synchrotrons in the mod factions - trying to introduce a mechanic to vanilla to fix bad design from mods is not exactly great.

[Megas]

The problem is faction mods insisting on having their faction have high quality ships, when that's absolutely not what the state of the sector is. There's far too many nano forges, AI cores and synchrotrons in the mod factions - trying to introduce a mechanic to vanilla to fix bad design from mods is not exactly great.

Since every standard faction in unmodded game (including indies and maybe pirates too) has at least corrupted nanoforge, who can blame modders for wanting to keep up with standard factions.  Without a nanoforge, ships are clunkers.  Clunkers are for desperate players starting fledgling colonies, not for established polities, including the apunkalyptic zombie pirates.

I would definitely find or steal a pristine nanoforge and synchrotron for my faction as I play, and I would certainly add those to my faction unless I went for junk or zombie theme (in which case, they get corrupted nanoforge instead).

Also, even with IP2, player cannot meet demand for supplies and fuel their piggy structures like megaports and waystations demand without those forges and trons, if avoiding use of cores.  I have no problem with every last faction having both a synchrontron and at least corrupted nanoforge just for self-sufficiency reasons.  (I do not want a shortage if I have waystation.)

AI cores is gratuitous, unless they are high-powered enemy-to-mankind types like Templars, high-tech pirates, or more AI.  Even Tri-Tachyon only uses one as an admin.  No one else (aside from player) in unmodded game uses them.  (That said, alpha cores are fun because they are the only way to play the total sector colonization game.)

[SCC]

I would rather not have Heavy Industry made boring. Already all other industries are there just to make you money. I'd rather have all (or as many as possible) industries give you some unique benefits.

[Hansag]

I like this idea. Granted I play with NEX and Industry Evolution (is that it's name?), with the later allowing for Salvage Yard as an industry (harvesting debris fields and derelicts for Metal and Ship Hulls). In addition, you can grant the colonies there autonomy and just get a small tax each month from them. But I digress.

I guess if you have Heavy Industries doing Ship Hulls, Heavy Weapons and Supplies, being able to then upgrade it to:

• Orbital Works (Ship Hulls)
• Munitions Plant (Heavy Weapons)
• Space Chandlery (Supplies)

Even in vanilla, I found myself having 60+ Gamma Cores, and several other cores to which I probably had 20 Corrupt Nanoforges and several pristine ones sitting in storage. To this, you'll find more or less all the blueprints as well.

As such, I would even go so far as to say the tier you have puts a cap on the size of ship you are able to build.
Maybe a Scrap Yard or Heavy industry can give you some clunky Frigates or Destroyers (Lore: The Valkyrie can land on planets).
Want those Cruisers and Capital ships, build them in orbit at your Orbital Works.
Want some juicy high-tech ships? Build a Technologistry and make some AI-cores available.
No, just Midline floats your EVA-suit, okay then skip the AI-cores, but at least have a nanoforge of some sort attached to it.

So what if you have to specialize an entire planet to making the ships you want. Having low-tech d-mod loaded ones are the way this sector is supposed to travel. Would be nice if one could press a particularly offensive d-mod and be asked if repairing it is desired. But again, I digress.

[FooF]

I was going to suggest some kind of "Lesser" Industry option before "Heavy" that is cheaper to initially construct and upgrades to Heavy (and Orbital Works). That way the player has access to ship building and the blueprints they've acquired sooner. As it is, Heavy Industry is the one of the first industries I *want* but can rarely afford. I really couldn't care less that Heavy Industry generates credits: that's not its primary role for me. It's simply the only Industry that has major ramifications for my playstyle and how I acquire ships.

However, then I remembered that the Contact mechanic in the next update will allow limited-use of faction/planetary shipyards so that you can build ships without the requisite of Colony+Heavy Industry. Assuming that's available before mid-game, I think that's a fair enough stopgap.

[Megas]

I was going to suggest some kind of "Lesser" Industry option before "Heavy" that is cheaper to initially construct and upgrades to Heavy (and Orbital Works). That way the player has access to ship building and the blueprints they've acquired sooner. As it is, Heavy Industry is the one of the first industries I *want* but can rarely afford. I really couldn't care less that Heavy Industry generates credits: that's not its primary role for me. It's simply the only Industry that has major ramifications for my playstyle and how I acquire ships.

However, then I remembered that the Contact mechanic in the next update will allow limited-use of faction/planetary shipyards so that you can build ships without the requisite of Colony+Heavy Industry. Assuming that's available before mid-game, I think that's a fair enough stopgap.

In my case, I do not build Heavy Industry because the major factions send their expeditions of doom just for daring to produce anything other than food before I have my endgame fleet and colony defenses ready.

By the time I can build Heavy Industry and can defend it, the game is almost already won, or at least able to sat bomb all of the core worlds for the total core kill.

[FooF]

@Megas

I'm usually shopping systems for my first Colony not long after I have my first Cruiser... I don't find early hostile expeditions to be all that threatening, though as I said, Heavy Industry is a huge investment at mid-game (so I tend to push it back).

But, to your point oft-repeated elsewhere, babysitting colonies is not particularly fun and Heavy Industry invites more of that.

[Megas]

I'm usually shopping systems for my first Colony not long after I have my first Cruiser... I don't find early hostile expeditions to be all that threatening, though as I said, Heavy Industry is a huge investment at mid-game (so I tend to push it back).

In my case, my first cruiser is the starter Apogee.  Majority of the rest is whatever clunkers I loot from pirates and expeditions, until I can build it.  Early expeditions from majors are beatable, but if they scale too fast like named bounties, then they probably scale faster than I can progress.  (Thanks more expensive ships.)  I do not want to take that risk until my fleet or my colony defenses are (or close to being) powerful enough to crush three max-strength expedition fleets.

P.S.  I do build my first colony as early as possible.  However, I do not build industries except maybe Farming until I am ready to crush endgame threats or my colony grows too big (size 5 or 6), whichever comes first.  In the meantime, I build orbital station and some defenses to repel the pirate raids that come, and growth is kept to a minimum while my fleet is weak.  Food exports from Farming seem safe enough.  Mining has aggravated Tri-Tachyon before, and every other industry that produces exports has aggravated League and Diktat one time or another.

[Histidine]

One other effect of every mod faction needing heavy industry is that Refining, already very profitable in vanilla, becomes even more so with a modded game.

The economics effects of excessive Heavy Industry/Orbital Works could be mitigated slightly by having modders move these facilities to smaller markets, but that looks a bit odd and introduces certain complications like easier blueprint raiding.

I too would like a way for factions to be able to use non-imported ships as defined in their faction file, and avoid the massive ship quality penalty of cross-faction imports, without needing their own HI/OW.
Doesn't need to be as large a change as the OP proposes, could simply have an "Assembly Yard" that consumes the ship parts commodity and enables non-imported ships without the quality penalty? Could even be an NPC-only industry/structure.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

There is another industry involved in ships: the military base
So one option would be moving to hull part production to military bases.

[SCC]

One other effect of every mod faction needing heavy industry is that Refining, already very profitable in vanilla, becomes even more so with a modded game.

(It sounds like number of heavy industries increases, but you forget to increase number of Refining industries and other industries as well, leading to a natural, but unexpected shortage, heh)