Re: Strategic Full Thrust

}Having discussed how FT campaigns are run it seems
}the most popular way to increase production is to
}conquer NPC planets and set them to producing for
}your empire.
}
} ...
}
}And yet, when a colony is established, its production
}is somehow within only a few orders of magnitude of the
}home system, even those its size in many orders
}smaller.

Some of this can be explained away by the simple fact that the whole
population of the home planet is not dedicated to the production of
war materials.	If you do as Scott Adams suggests for businesses today
and remove all the people who are not _directly_ involved with the
construction of new ships, it may end up that only 0.1%, 0.01% or even
0.001% of the planetary population is involved in building starships.
The rest of the people are producing consumer goods to keep the rest
happy, wasting time in government, conducting tours of museums, engaging
in other research, &c...

What needs to be examined is what the limiting factor to ship
construction is in any particular scenario.  It could be having enough
trained crew, it could be the materials for some necessary part of the
ship (like the jump engines in B5).  If those factors can be overcome by
having alternate ship building sites, then opening colonies may be wise.

} ...
}Unless colonies can somehow rapidly increase their
}production and population a lot faster than on the
}homeworld, what is the point?

The presence of colonies could be used as resupply and repair
bases only, rather than spending extra weeks or months transiting back
to the highly efficient docks of the home world.  And possibly FTL
sensors can detect fleets heading towards the homeplanet, allowing them
to be intercepted.

Michael Smit
mcsmit@tiny.net