Re: Strategic Full Thrust

Michael Sandy wrote:
> 
> 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.

Every planet conquered, will have to be guarded.  Such worlds would
produce less than they would free...

> 
> There is very little provision for colonizing and
> populating a system by oneself.  The big problem is
> that the size and cost of a colony ship capable of
> transporting a significant fraction of a planet's
> population (> 0.1%) is HUGE under most estimations
> of ship size.

Or just use a HORD! of small (ie: in the normal ship building ranges)
colony ships.
> 
> 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.
> 
> More realistic would be for colonies to have production
> less than 1/1000 of the home planet, but that makes
> the establishment of distant colonies a much less
> attractive proposition.
> 
> Think about it, if the colony can justify its cost
> in X years that means 1000X worth of ships have been
> built at the home system in that time!  If a colony
> ship is the cost of a large Capital ship, that is the
> equivalent of 1000 Capital ships!  A huge bookkeeping
> exercise!
> 
> If the colony _can't_ justify its cost during the
> lifetime of the campaign, it won't get built.
> 
> Unless colonies can somehow rapidly increase their
> production and population a lot faster than on the
> homeworld, what is the point?
> 
> If the initial production is negligible for the first
> 100 or 200 years then a 100-fold or 1000-fold increase
> in population could justify the colonies expense.
> That is a much greater timespan than most campaigns!
> 
> On the other hand, such a timespan would involve ships
> hundreds of years old somehow avoiding complete
> obsolescence...
> 
> Michael Sandy

As to production rates...

  No world, regardless of society, would devote 100% of GNP (Gross
National Product) to military spending.  It is simply easyer to assume
that the cash a world produces is the "Military Spending Budget".  This
greatly simplifies the budget rules of any strategic game.

  Of course during a war, the military spending level would go up...So
long as the populous continued to believe and support the war.	Large
losses, long stalemates, ect. would reduce this amount.

Just my $0.02....

Donald Hosford