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[landryraccoon]

- Make Cryosleepers ships that can be salvaged to join your fleet.
- Colonies can only be founded by consuming a cryosleeper
- Cryorevival facilities are automatically available as a building for any colony founded by the player

Here's the reasoning : Starsector isn't a 4x game. Founding a colony should be one of the late game exploration and trade goals, not something that anybody can do with 1000 extra crew and a set of supplies. Furthermore, this change would give a lore reason why the core factions haven't colonized every single class V planet in the sector yet. A player with a modest start can easily colonize 4 planets by a mere 10 years after game start, so why hasn't the Hegemony already recolonized half the sector? And also, even WITH immigration, hazard pay, etc, a colony founded with 1000 people shouldn't be able to grow to millions in less than a decade..

The explanation should be that colonizing planets is hard. The reason every modest salvage fleet in the sector doesn't have their own colony to go back to is that setting up a colony on a new world without advanced domain tech requires thousands of people, years of investment and tons of scarce equipment. All of which is neatly bundled into these giant ancient Domain created arks that are scattered throughout the sector.

Also, in terms of the storyline - shouldn't other factions have more of a reaction to the sudden appearance of a new faction? The first one to pop up in ages, and with tons of advanced technology (that players usually have by this point in the form of nanoforges, synchotrons, etc..) that was supposedly very scarce in the sector? How does every faction respond to this new upstart, do they view them as a threat or a trading partner?

As it stands now, it's like "Meh. We're all gonna raid you or ignore you. Also the Hegemony wants to get into your business, but a few bribes can take care of that easily".

This also opens up possibilities for new and powerful terraforming items. If player colonies are capped at the sector Cryosleeper count, it actually opens up the design space to make individual colonies MORE powerful, since the player now can't drop colonies all over the sector. Maybe items or events can eliminate decivilized / cold / hot / high gravity, etc.. And this suggestion is intrinsically a buff to the first colony, since it means that Cryorevival facility has it's maximum effect on any world the player chooses for their first colony.

Edit : One other thought. If the goal is really to let the player have tons of colonies, gate the first one behind the Cryosleeper. That also sort of makes sense - founding new worlds requires massive effort, the sort of effort that an entire government / planet needs to get behind. Once the first colony is founded, the player has access to the resources and institutions needed to make more colonies work. I kind of think that planting colonies everywhere actually cheapens the mechanic of colonies (since they're a lot less special in that case) but it's an option if that's where the game is heading.

[Drazan]

I was sceptic at first but actually a great idea. Maybe you should still be able to found outposts with a few thousand people where you can store your weapons and ships. Think of it more like an operational base. But these would have no industry and no income maybe only techmining (which should be a structure anyway).
For real colonies thought i support that you need a cyrosleeper but they start at size 4.

[SafariJohn]

I agree with your concept, but I think the cryosleeper should remain a bonus - it is too hard to find to be required. It would be nice if it had a bigger bonus, like letting your colony grow to size 7.

[Amoebka]

A potential compromise is to allow orbital stations that never grow past 3 (pirate/pather style) from the start, and require cryosleepers for "real" colonies. This would both make colonies a late-game reward, and still allow for early game tech-mining outposts / resupply bases.

[robepriority]

Probably out of scope - but maybe make a cryosleeper a story quest?

[Schwartz]

Neat idea, however it limits the maximum # of colonies as there are precious few cryosleepers. Only 2 in my current game, I think that's about the average? As a compromise, it could require a cryosleeper for the first colony, and later colonies could be reinforced by migration from the first.

There's a disconnect between what the factions are able to do and what the player can do in a timespan of only a couple of years, as you pointed out. That's not cool, but 1) we want to have colonies because they're a cool mechanic and lots can be done with them, especially in interactions with the other factions and 2) we don't want the factions expanding, because the "sector is in a slowly decaying orbit around death". The player character has to work outside that narrative, so let's give him some leeway.

[SCC]

Cryosleepers could easily be changed to accommodate for other changes. They can be made easier to found (either through some generation changes or by giving the player hints about it), they can be made more numerous.
I myself don't care much, beyond that cryosleepers are, indeed, sleepers, in that they have little impact on how you play.

Only 2 in my current game, I think that's about the average?

It's always 2, like the Sith. It's never more or fewer, unless you use mods that explicitly let you change that number.

[Brainwright]

Colonies in general are a dumb idea.  It would make much more sense if you were just building a spaceport with the ability to safely store anti-matter fuel, and Domain-era law states you pretty much are the law if you run the spaceport.

The player ownership would then be represented as stock.

This is the way it's been done for at least seven hundred years on this world, and the lore suggests that there's still a contemporary style of economics.  So why they don't use this system, I don't know.

The current style of government is like early 20th century Great Power politics, and we all know how sensible that turned out to be.

And yes, opening a sleeper ship should be a very big deal.  A whole quest, as the sleepers would be a faction unto themselves.

[SCC]

My guess is "space ports by themselves aren't enough to do what I want colonies to do". Orders tab hasn't appeared last update, it's been in the plans for a long time now.

[FooF]

To expand on the idea: if Cryosleepers were a bit more ubiquitous (say 10 of them drifting randomly) and each major faction had one that you could beg/borrow/steal/earn, there would be “enough” for the player to get multiple colonies up but still require some effort. Perhaps the faction cryosleepers were still functional and could be hauled/move under their own power. Of course, if you’re carrying one of these, you’d have a huge target on your back. Just getting it to the destination would be a major accomplishment (and tons of combat). Those that you find would just be luck-of-the-draw and would have to be used in-system (or perhaps a small radius around it).

However, the existing style of Cryosleepers would still exist as some sort of Domain-era magitech and that’s what cryorevival facilities would be for. In addition, the Domain-era versions could be used on multiple colonies and wouldn’t be consumed.

I also like the idea that a colony could make more Cryosleepers. Of course, it would have to be at a size that can afford to lose a few thousand colonists. Perhaps building them would also require a lot of resources also or it would require it’s own Industry slot and have a lot of demand.

Overall, I think this does make a lot of sense but it would make exploration considerably different than current. I think if factions had them (but didn’t use them) and the player can earn them or colonize in the faction’s name, that also puts a new spin on Faction relations.

[Brainwright]

My guess is "space ports by themselves aren't enough to do what I want colonies to do". Orders tab hasn't appeared last update, it's been in the plans for a long time now.

Nope.  "You just own the spaceport," is the best description of what kind of control you have over colonies.  It's not like you're really running the guys who settle around it to do their business.  The game doesn't even pretend you are.

[SafariJohn]

I think ports make more sense than colonies - with all the crazy tech laying around why shouldn't setting up a manufacturing base be easier than growing a settlement?

The colony size stat could easily be renamed "port development" and population split off into its own thing as the main determinator for raw resource production. Then colony/port sizes wouldn't have to be so tightly restricted to the 3-6 range. You could have size 1 to size 10 populations without stretching disbelief. More importantly it would put a natural limit on player factions: if you anger too many existing factions you probably can't get the resources you need to run your heavy industry and defenses.

[landryraccoon]

I really like the idea of factions having their own hoard of cryosleepers, which they can give to the player if they are especially chummy.

To flesh out the idea a bit more:

- Maybe let the player found stations cannot build industries. They allow storage, waystations and tech mining, kind of a "mid game" halfway point between colonies and just a salvage fleet
- To build a colony that supports industries, a cryosleeper is required.
- Cryosleepers can be obtained through exploration or through special quests major factions can offer when you reach Cooperative reputation level

The cool thing about obtaining a cryosleeper as a quest chain reward from a faction is that it offers an extra goody for building up reputation and siding with a faction, and offers more of a reason for diplomacy with the core factions instead of just glassing them all. Maybe if you're Tri-Tach you have to go hostile with the Hegemony and disrupt a major spaceport, or with the League you have to bring them a particularly rare colony item (like a synchrotron or nanoforge). If you're Hegemony maybe you have to "AI inspect" Culann, and attack their star fortress and raid an AI core. The possibilities are endless.

[SCC]

More importantly it would put a natural limit on player factions: if you anger too many existing factions you probably can't get the resources you need to run your heavy industry and defenses.

Personally, I hope colonies are going to be the way to go indepedent and in doing so *** off all other factions, but it doesn't seem like Alex is going to add any mechanics that encourage you to stick with any given faction (commission is some money and access to the military market, which may or may not have what you want, while your own faction provides you even more money and certainty in your equipment selection, so long you have blueprints for the stuff you want).

[Drazan]

Looks like lot of people supporting the idea that you can have ports/base of operations/space stations up to size 3 anytime just for convinience. And you would need a cyrosleeper for real colonies. Perhaps there should be more of them, or they should be easier to find. Or one cyrosleeper could be used to colonize up to 2-3 planets in the same system. I would love to see something like this.
Of course if the devs already have some idea underway then I would love to see that as well.