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[Lukas04]

1. The Problem

Starsector lategame has a few issues, and while its generaly a variety of things (lack of new exploration content, basicly having found all the loot you need), Colonies are often an aspect that seem more broken in design than in lack of content.

Colonies, while really cool, are often also some of the weakest gameplay out of an otherwise great package. but despite that, due to the large power boost they give, they start taking up a significant part of the gameplay loop in the lategame. While this isnt an issue by itself, as moving the primary way the player gets put in to battles from exploration to colony management makes sense, it often fails to actually put the player in to the combat gameplay as it is supposed to. This is improved with things like the Hostile Activity event now, but at its root it slowly expands to take up all your time.

A player has to make a choice on where they spend their credits on. In the lategame, this is often:
1. Expanding the Colony.
2. Expanding the players fleet.

The issue with this is, that putting money in to the fleet is wasteful. Why ever spend money on something that makes far less money than the simple upgrade you could purchase for the colony. Just upgrade the colony, wait a few months, and boom, now you have even more money, which you can use to make a stronger fleet!....but you spot another upgrade that could improve your cashflow even more, so you decide to go for it first, and repeat. This is an extremely passive playstyle which the game heavily encourages. This is not an issue every player will run in to, but it is an easy trap to find yourself in. You will often see people that reach this part of the game, waste a year on colony, and then stop their run.

2. Proposed Solution

My personal solution to this would be to split the players currency and the player factions currency in to seperate inventories.
Implementing this basicly means:

- Faction Currency is used for expanding colonies and the faction.
- Player Currency is used to expand the players fleet.

The player of course would still get their own share from colony income, but not a cut that breaks the games scaling, becoming a late-game variation of a faction commission, which will help you keep your fleet afloat, rather than paying for all of its expansion. This removes the feedback loop that pressures players in to hyperfocusing on the colony improvement.

Now, keeping the two entirely seperate however would be a mistake too. The player should be able to move their own money in to the factions bank, but this should be something they only have to do early game to jumpstart their faction. This keeps the requirement of a certain amount of progress from the player to reach this part of the game, without forcing the player to give their credits away for ever.

It opens the door towards more Structures and Industries that either provide quality of life or incentives that arent displayed in forms of credits.
In the current game, this is basicly Heavy Industry, as it allows you to construct your own ships.
Meanwhile tech-mining, as it doesnt create money, unless you get really, really lucky with its rewards and sell them, is often a less desireable choice.
Mods like IndEvo already play in to this side of colonies, and i think this change would make it even more desireable to use those kinds of structures first, instead of immediately growing the factions growth.


3. Side Effects

In the first place, it doesnt really make sense that the player, as a sole person, has access to the entire factions funding for just their own fleet. It basicly paints the player as a dictator by default. of course they basicly are as they have total control anyways, but i think the other aspects are easier to ignore.

Bounties become more desireable again as the cut from the faction income may provide the fleets upkeep, but not enough to expand it.

I think another large benefit is that having a colony fail is a lot less punishing.
You will still loose that colony, but that will be the only punishment you have. If one of your colonies really messes up right now, it can quickly make your fleet bankrupt.
This also means that you can introduce stronger colony threats without it feeling bullshitty, as there is a bit less on the line.

[xenoargh]

The merits of having a separated budget are obvious. The AIs should have such a system to allow them to grow dynamically, if nothing else.

Less so... is why do these things cost the player money at all? IRL, the player would raise cash through long-term loans, sell stock or otherwise defer direct investment as much as possible. It's reasonable that the player has to invest, say, $100K into a new Colony, but after that, if it's growing and stable, it should be able to grow on its own.

So instead of having a direct cash-for-stuff-then-wait-and-be-bored™ mechanic, there should be a guns-vs-butter system, where the player can direct how much of the Colony cash flow is used for defense vs. growth. 100% into growth means that the player has to go and physically defend everything constantly, but gets huge growth numbers, defense 100% with endgame-size colonies should mean no more bothering with Path / Pirates / Raids; only things that are real threats are determined attempts to sat-bomb Colonies back to the Stone Age or [[Really Scary Endgame Stuff]].



From there:

Colonies should start small. They default to Size 3 now; why not Size 1, where they represent a small core of engineers, biologists, etc.?

Direct income or loss, monthly, to the player represents what's left over, if there are any profits at all. This shouldn't be a gravy train until Colonies are pretty big (Size 5 or more) but it should be a steady, if non-spectacular, source of income past Size 3. Until then, they're spec projects with huge monthly losses on the books, but it shouldn't cost the player other than contributing initial capital. If the player wishes to skip this phase, they can import more people and pay more up front- say, a million credits to start at Size 3. Obviously, Size 1 Colonies are growing quickly, but they're so weak that even a successful Raid probably means their populations are gone.

Running maximal Defense pushes all but the strongest, most-stable economies deeply into the red, and should cost the player real money past, say 70%, representing them digging deep into their personal resources to keep their worlds' economies from crashing during a war; during early lategame (i.e., early colonies) a 30/70 mix of Defense / Growth results in a steady, unspectacular level of profit and smallish defensive fleets that aren't totally worthless vs. small Pirate fleets.

Economies that have a bad mix- Defense vs. Growth is pushing them into the red- should steadily lose Stability and take some time to restore to order and profitability, unless the player can provide the cash.

This opens up Factions being able to change naturally without much intervention- they can spend their internal budgets in occasional decision-making that doesn't need to be "smart", but fixes obvious problems over time. It also provides a very natural way for Stability to cause Factions to declare and choose to exit states of war; as they fight, they'll raise Defense, eroding Stability, and quit when "exhausted". This allows them to have reasonably-realistic periods of warfare and real game mechanics underlying their long periods of peaceful distrust that may even reverse over time, with the exceptions of the Pact and Pirates. It also explains why they aren't annihilating each other- the costs of war are so great that it's not sensible to get into conflicts for long periods.

Pirates and the Pact are both explained by such a system. They're always spending more on Defense than most Factions would, even at peace- 50/50 or worse. They're destabilized and have smaller Faction budgets as a result. Bases established reflect this, and should probably be counted as a "building", dragging down Growth in the short term, but expanding it once built (the loot fuels economic growth, basically), so that there's a real limit on their spam, and they would have cycles where they can build big, nasty bases, but they can't just do it forever without pushing Growth upwards and giving up some spending on Defense.

[Lukas04]

Could most definitly use it to add more complexity to the colony system, though i dont think that is really what it needs at the moment.
Micromanaging isnt what Starsector Colonies are about and i dont think they should be, and in the early stages of a colony it should preferiably be the player that has to offer most of the defenses.

Being able to add a higher innitial budget and get different results based on the investment would be a good idea though.
This would also remove some of the boring wait you get when you already have a large colony and want to expand to other planets.

[xenoargh]

I wrote a bazillion responses to this, before realizing that honestly, I just keep falling into the same trap.

The problem is... it just doesn't matter if we pile on another mechanic. That's not the problem with Colonies, it never has been.

Without a clear reason to exist, in the game-design sense, they're just ornaments we buy to justify spending more time on a run. This is their central problem- they are, at this point, a fantastically-complex series of systems without a coherent raison d'etre.

I think this is why, despite each version adding more baubles, they still aren't all that satisfying. By the time you can afford them, you don't really need the money they provide. But they serve no larger purpose, other than introducing yet-another thing to keep an eye on. This goes back to the central game-design question: if victory via conquest is forbidden, and the only "victory" might as well be a loss state, then what?

I presume Alex has a "what" in mind. So time spent on yet-another bit of mechanical complexity for these systems is largely a waste of time. Develop the "what" or "whats". Then re-examine these questions.

[Lukas04]

Went a bit on to the topic in the original post, but in my view, what colonies should be:

1. A way to keep your fleet sustained in the late game (but not provide a free way to expand that fleet as much as you want to)
2. A way to unlock further tools for the player, like custom ship building.

I think this is a pretty realistic thing that the colonies could be adjusted to, specificly with the changes mentioned in the original post.
This wouldnt require a large rethinking of colonies, just a large change of applications.
As also mentioned in the OP, IndEvo already plays in to this side of colony management, and you can argue its part of why its so extremely Popular (though theres lots of aspects to it of course).

Its also a good idea to use Colonies as a way to get the player in to more combat, as combat through exploration starts running dry at that stage of the game, but i think its more important that the other game fullfills those other 2 points first.

I do think colonies have a place in this game, it makes the player feel involved with the sector and thats really fun for the kind of game starsector is, its just that it creates a loop that is far worse than starsector can offer to the player.

[Jackundor]

I wrote a bazillion responses to this, before realizing that honestly, I just keep falling into the same trap.

The problem is... it just doesn't matter if we pile on another mechanic. That's not the problem with Colonies, it never has been.

Without a clear reason to exist, in the game-design sense, they're just ornaments we buy to justify spending more time on a run. This is their central problem- they are, at this point, a fantastically-complex series of systems without a coherent raison d'etre.

I think this is why, despite each version adding more baubles, they still aren't all that satisfying. By the time you can afford them, you don't really need the money they provide. But they serve no larger purpose, other than introducing yet-another thing to keep an eye on. This goes back to the central game-design question: if victory via conquest is forbidden, and the only "victory" might as well be a loss state, then what?

I presume Alex has a "what" in mind. So time spent on yet-another bit of mechanical complexity for these systems is largely a waste of time. Develop the "what" or "whats". Then re-examine these questions.

hm

i mean yeah they don't *really* have any reason to exist much, they don't really provide some kind of real new gameplay, in my current campaign i wouldn't even have made one if it wasn't for some new quest stuff

on the other hand i don't really like colonies so idk if i even want a colonies to be really important bc i'm playing starsector more as a wanderer that just goes around and does stuff...

[Hansag]

...meanwhile I play Starsector more as a 4x.

Sadly I do not know how to make mods (the Ashes of The Domain has some interesting ideas with research), but a mechanic I have thought about that might relate to this is having "character skills" for your faction, combine that with something like Endless Space's government types.

Then sink all your Faction XP (generated from something) into "Pirate skills" to make your fleet better at pirating, but prevent you from building more than one raiding base station (IndEvo) that makes a mess in the core systems but brings back loot and booty in general.

There really should be a mechanic in the game to not fight pirates and just hand over supplies etc. to them (with insurance for loss of trade goods due to pirates).

Maybe I am digressing, but I end up using Nex and creating small confederations of somewhat large confederations (autonomous planets).

[Hansag]

*contemplates some more*

- Perhaps one of those paged like "Hostile Activity" or "Hyperspace Topography", but instead "Faction Traits" in part integrating the Admin Bonuses one gets in Nex (more colonies allows you to hire more administrators and operatives). Then certain Faction XP could be spent on certain buffs or whatnot depending on how many skill points the character has in Combat, Leadership, Technology and Industry (Similar to the Shadowrun skills giving new abilities depending on levels). Perhaps you can only have a raiding base if you spend all skill points into combat, while industry makes puts a cap on your colonies somehow (corruption eating away at all the profits, so you have to make up for it by flying)
- Battle Brothers also has a recognition system (renown?), so you have to have a certain level of recognition in order to take on certain missions.