Just skimmed through Konstantine's post on Ships. Got a question I didn't see answered there. How many Support Ships are needed: one per colony, per system, or just one, period?
A support ship provides bonuses to all colonies in the system they are stationed. Their bonuses stack. So, the more you have in a given system the more benefits the colonies in that system will get.
The correct answer is as many as possible. I like to have at least one poised to help out my new colonies. I didn't use them much as first, as they are a relatively new concept, but they are actually quite valuable.
You get a free one when you research the tech, very valuable that, there is also an event that can give you one. As @aReclusiveMind mind stated They are great at accelerating development of new colonies, just be careful, they consume SSPs
Support ships is one of the many mechanics I really enjoy in the game. It really helps with building up new colonies, especially in the mid to late game.
OP in what way? Without them building up a new colony can be very slow for certain races. They also take a long time to build aside from the first one you get for researching the tech.
Dumb question Nr. 268,434: What is OP? Over Powered? Over Priced? But just to continue the thread, I managed to build 2 last game, but honestly, I don't know how much impact they had on their systems. Of course I didn't look at my planet/system summary either. Which brings up another thought: this game has a LOT of good stuff in it, but it's not always apparent what it is or what it does, or what it results in, etc., etc. That's an observation, not a complaint. I'm fairly sure the devs will deal with that aspect eventually. I hope.
Yest, that is what I meant. In my opinion they give you a huge boost at the begining and then you can snowball with them. Also they give you boost for entire system, so if you have 5 planets in the system you got 5 times more production out of one ship What I mean by snowball? I mean, that one ship makes easier to construct another one, then you can use these two to construct third and so on...
@Joe3 you just need to hoover your mouse over certain elements in the game and you will get an explanation. For example, if you produced a support ship and it is orbiting around your system, then you can go to a planet on this system, hoover mouse over production and you will see how much you are gaining from support ship.
I agree with this, especially now where you get a free one by researching the tech, and can also get another one by event choice. Then of course there is this I take advantage of this too much, though my own "house rules" mean that I limit myself to a maximum of two such ships. Perhaps, altering them to give a small flat boost, to a single colony rather than an entire system, would offer better balance?
Where are you finding 5 suitable planets for colonization in a single system? I rarely find more than 1 decent planet in a system on the hardcore difficulty. I wouldn't mind the difference being to a single colony rather than the entire system as this is how I am using them anyway. I also typically only use the initial one that is provided for free. It sounds like the issue than is that something needs to be done to deter this behavior. What if each subsequent support ship cost double the SSP to maintain? The first costs 2 as-is. The second would cost 4 SSP, the third 8, fourth 16, and so on? I can't say I'm on board with dramatically reducing the benefits they provide. If that happens I am afraid they will return to the state they were in during earlier versions of the game where they weren't used at all. They also make terraforming and eco-engineering much more attractive.
Excellent! I know this wasn't for me, and 5 planets is an exaggeration , two however in the same system happens often enough, and three is not un-heard of... however, if something were done as you suggest about SSPs to maintain these ships, Then I think it would balance very nicely.
For me all these planets are decent I took Resilient Settlers perk and I intend to colonize all of them! I don't care if they will suffer from bad conditions, my race must prevail at all costs!!! Yes, that is why I wanted to propose as well. Player could pick what planet he would like to boost and if no choice has been made, a planet with smallest production capability could be picked automatically. That is not a bad idea either, although it complicates math a little, might be hard to grasp when you look at your summary of SSP usage. Of course, they are great idea which just need a little balancing, that is all.
Saying that I never exaggerate would be an exaggeration but I tend to weight my words carefully, see the screenshot above For me, these are good planets, already colonized two
Funny enough, after I posted this, I too ran into a system with 2 ideal and three tolerable worlds in it. In that case, allow me to re-phrase your honor 5 planets is rare... but not inconceivable.
I could try to mock up some ways to display this to the player in an easily digestible way. I have thought about other alternatives, for instance setting a hard limit of 1 support ship per system. The upside to escalating their SSP usage instead of a hard limit is it allows a large empire more flexibility to really escalate a colony's growth if they need to. The upside of a hard limit of 1 support ship per system is that it is simpler to understand. That part of my suggestion is related to fixing the snowballing/stacking of Support Ships being an issue. I believe system wide vs. colony wide benefits is a separate issue. I am not opposed to also limiting the ships to a single colony, but it does present a need to assign and track what they are assigned to. This could also be cumbersome to do, but existing UI elements could be used to do it. Perhaps if we implement a solution to the snowball we don't need to also limit colony vs. system.
The idea for Support Ships is that they can be crucial to boost underdeveloped offworld colonies production and terraforming efforts but would not make a big difference in the late game on already developed colonies since their bonuses are not percentages but absolute values. So, even if you have several support ships in the same system accumulating benefits their bonuses should not be as significant in developed colonies as they would in underdeveloped ones. If this is not the case then we can revise the numbers a bit. In the past, support ships consumed 3 SSP. That was lowered to 2 during Pre-Alpha 9 because they were found to be too expensive to maintain so people wouldn't bother researching and building them. However, and since now the Offworld Support tech grants you one, we could think in revising the SSPs to 3 back again. What do you think?
