The custom ship designer really brings back my building block/lego crafting glory days of so long ago
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Particularly brilliant , i think, is the shift from emphasising quantity of colonies/cities to the quality of colonies via the number of buildings they are allowed and the abilit y to specialize in the types of output (economic, industrial, research, etc) from a given colony - as opposed to just building every profitable improvement available with your current technologies. Then there are the synergistic buildings that build upon the 'flat' integer bonuses of other buildings, usually with a percentage.
For example: Take the mineral refining center, with it's 20% bonus to industry for the colony on which it is built. Then consider 1 class 28planet ( allowing 27 buildings max + the colony itself) and 4 class 7 planets (allowing 6 buildings each + their 4 central colonies) . Now with the class 28 planet, let's say we build 13 factories + 14 refining centers. We build an extra refinery because the central colony itself is like a starter factory. 14 refineries= 280% extra industry. Now let's say we colonize those 4 other planets. we build 3 refineries each and 3 factories + 1 colony each . 12 refineries With the first planet's 380% total industry vs. the 160% of the 4 other planets the class 28 planet easily produces 2x the amount of the 4 other planets combined.
So, maybe class 28 planets are extremely rare and with 27 improvements that colony can't build much else. Nevermind all that !
What all this basicly means is that higher quality planets are exponentially better than lower ones. This goes a long way to fixing the 'infinite city sprawl' tactic that made other empire building games very bland indeed.
