But currently, you cannot colony rush. You don't have the production capacity! You have to build up your factory base. I don't think that is going to be changed...

You do get faster at building colony ships as the game progresses, but you are also going to be running a smaller colony ship then the standard one. Cheaper, faster. But at the cost of carrying less people.

It is quite possible in GC2, currently, to not be able to fill up a 2 pod colony ship from your smaller or newer worlds. Not enough people.

A few things to keep in mind. GC2 doesn't have the mad every 2 turns off launches another colony ship start.

Yes, there is a high expense for the purchase of a starport, in order to then buy another colony ship. Buying these two items (as opposed to building them) will cost so much that it is too expensive to do that every time. It could be useful in emergency situations, where there is a race to a specific important land-grab. For instance, you might need Pluto as a refueling station in order to reach Ceti-Alpha-6. Or maybe that PQ-20 planet is dangerously close to enemy territory and the race is on. But the expense would make it too much to do as a Standard Operating Procedure, because many more colonizers and starports could be built than purchased.

Adding a "Basic Infrastructure" building stage before you can get your planet producing useful stuff slows down the game needlessly. There is no fun added by introducing a delay between colonizing and production. The colony rush isn't really a possibility as the game stands since you need a starport, then a large factory base to build quickly. At current values, you're easly 100 turns in before you have your second colony ship produced (you start the game with one).

Also, the idea is that they use the colony ship to make their base of operations on the colony.  The colony ships are like flying cities that then find permanent homes on their new worlds.

CariElf said:

Also, the idea is that they use the colony ship to make their base of operations on the colony. The colony ships are like flying cities that then find permanent homes on their new worlds.

If colony ships are flying cities, can't I get taxes from those citizens?

According to CariElf, there are people living on that ship. All you need are people. People have revenue. People generate revenue. Tax them.

If a colony ship really is a flying city, then that means there is an economy happening on that ship. That means there are things being produced, bartered, and sold. Therefore, every colony ship should generate revenue.

Of course, there is a question of if the ship generates its own food, or has to have that supplied. If it has to have it supplied, that means colony ships should cost. And if it needs raw resources to produce material goods, those have to be supplied as well. All that should make a colony ship very costly on maintainence. And you'd have to keep an eye on their morale, or they could rebel and go rogue/independant or even join your enemies.

Now, I've always seen GC1 colony ships as more sleeper ships. Small crew runs the ship. A few modules of colony starting equipment (some robotics and small self contained factories which will be used to create larger facilities once on planet). And then... modules after module full of sleeper tubes (some form of hybernation or statis tubes). If all those billions on a ship are nothing but cargo, that would explain why they don't pay taxes, and don't need anything. And why they never rebel. And why you could sell them to the other civs in GC1.

I was really just pulling CariElf's leg. There's no way a colony ship could be anything but a sleeper or cloner ship. Otherwise, all civs would reorganize their worlds along the same lines of their colony ships, and take advantage of the civil peace/security that grants, while gaining the bennies of on site resources.

Here's my last word considering the situation, and anything done will fit me.

I never played Acsendancy (looks like I should give a look), but I am not worried about miracle start-ups anymore as it seems solved anyway. And I'm now half-convinced on the rest (as I saw ships as minimalist: a bunch of tents with food production and shovels). It is then more an issue of a weak(er) colony which is building itself in the beginning, like colonies up to now.

I will state my case basing on the best example I have (Constantinople), just to show that up to now it was not easy EVEN when everything was paid to pressure-colonize. But after, I guess that everyone will do as he wishes and I could consider that as in GalCiv most of the economy is not player-driven (so let's say that colony ships produce starports and houses all at once). But here goes, and make your own opinion of what makes sense (and works):

One can easily look at the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul). Constantine just decided that he wanted some kind of "new capital" there where there was basically nothing (!!). A "New Christian Capital"? Yay! It got its own production extremely fast for a new city (Constantine paid BIG bills, the money flew, Roman Eastern cities were plundered), and the housing was crap because it was built too accommodate so much people so fast. But it took a while before it had its INTRINSIC production. And this is in the case of someone paying for EVERYTHING like mad (yep... try to propose to build Neo-Washington on Mars in 10 years or something......crazy).

This is what I look at here, and when I see Constantinople I know that you can hardly find exemples more extreme of "everything is paid, all ressources (of the ROMAN WORLD!!) goes to it". Even in such a case... But as I mentioned, I now see Cari's point and even if I appreciate the consequences of "oh, my colony is FORMING", we can still consider that people build basic infrastructures (housing / industry / commerce) at the same time as part of the... "colony ships' basic housing-industrial-commercial infrastructure"

Colonists are FROZEN. No production is taking place, no labor is being performed, everything is packed away in crates; there is nothing to tax.

I just can't see a colony ship as a capitalistic entity. There is no way for them to engage in commerce with other societies. It has always looked more like a commune to me, with everyone working to produce the basic needs of their community (food, clothing, water purification and recycling, health, etc. etc. etc.) each to his/her needs and by their abilities until they reach their destination. There is no commerce in that kind of life. It is a pure swap of work for survival. No commerce, no revenue, no income. Even when they reach their destination, there are still startup costs (which are really so skimmed over in GC1) that could cause a drain on the empire until the colony becomes self sufficient.

I just can't see a colony ship, or any new colony, as a productive contributer to any empire. It simply defies reason. Instead, I see them as an expense to the empire that the empire is willing to finance to garner the returns it should get after the colony becomes a productive partner of the empire.

I would also like to add that there are a plethora of examples in our history to support my arguement and no historical examples to support any colonising expedition as a taxable entity until (and unless) the colony that was eventually establised became productive enough to be revenue producers.

That last comment brings up a point. Aren't their people on those Starbases? Should'nt Starbases have their own population. When you launch a constructor it should be carrying ,say, a million people. a small drain on population, but still, it's there. As the base has limited life support, exsess people are shifted to nearby planets. That could be coded as a pop growth bonus. Every new module would bring and allow another mil of dudes. This would be cool, because it might allow you to use boarding vessels to take the Starbase. Now that would be cool.

also one more thing realted to the Basic infastructre thing im sorry it cannot hapen to easily...however the colony ship can "Deploy" itself into a Intial Colony tile where YOU Should pick it...rather than random Now i do belive some sort of Inital Colony rush Limit would make the game better If it is people freezer The Size needed for pplz is less and can hold more if it is a living city it actually is a bit higher (Pop) when it gets there And they can make 'nough money to help their maintance fees that they do themselfs NOW they are far from productive.(They make food for themslefs and are based on that until they get to a planet) Anyways fill in the holes plz!

Why do you care which tile your colony hub is in?

Unless SD has set precautions, I suppose it is possible for it to land on a very nice bonus tile (which you would have wanted to put the appropriate improvement in instead). But I've never seen this happen yet, so I would think that either the bonuses are generated post-colonization or the colony does not land on one with a bonus. In either case that problem is nonexistant, so there is no need for manual landing.