How about an upgrade option for the CoGC to boost a second industry? There are many reasonable combinations e.g. Agriculture+Food Production; Resource Extraction+Metallurgy; Metallurgy+Construction …
The benefit could be that more players, producer and consumer, gathering at a given planet and with that reducing the need for shipping raw materials. It could bring the players closer together and raise the interaction with each other (e.g LM ads, private contracts). And it also could change this mono-industry-planet-meta and diversify the galaxy by making the most of the planets.
I guess it is mostly beneficial to New and Early Game Players, because it reduces the need to found a new base for every industry needed. Old Players will partially stick with mono-industry-planets for min-maxing reasons (depends on math).
For Late Game/Old players hauling I want to restate an idea i wrote in another thread:
An easy solution to reduce the number of hauling flights could be the ability to build ships with up to 4 cargo holds, so we could have ships with 8k/8k, 12k/4k or 4k/12k max capacity. It only needs an additional line in the blueprint creator for choosing the amount of cargo holds.
With a combination of different cargo holds the capacity could be even more customized, but probably the implementation is more tricky.
I could see the first one - or let the planet have two COGC, but individual players select one or the other - this would really increase interaction because a planet could be great at Resource Extraction and Chemistry - but each base could only do one - so for MinMax, you want one player to extract, and the other player to do Chemistry (example is YI-705c, very high HAL, but COGC is Chem to make HAL → CL)
In terms of your second idea - that might not help as many as you think - I know I work on a weekly cycle, so larger ships would actually not interest me much (oh, I might buy 2 to service Cebedil and my H planet) but in general it won’t make my life any easier. I think some of the ideas around the “AI” module that would automate a certain amount of shipping would be the best approach.
Hi! I noticed your idea to have up to 4 cargo bays per ship, and someone else already suggested this idea to me. I added that idea into my post, called “Solutions to late-game problems - from the perspective of an early-game player”. I hope you like it.
Upgrading an existing CoGC or building a second one is probably more an implementation/UI design issue.
I would prefer the possibility to select one (with the current 25% bonus) or two industries (with reduced bonus of ?15%? for each). That way we are able to diversify our own production on a planet e.g if you have surplus materials and unused area. I think there are many individual case scenarios that could make use of it.
And you got the purpose of the second idea about multiple cargo holds on a ship absolutely right (I would need only 3 or 4 of them too). It´s all about to make the shipping of High-mass/volume cargo (ores, minerals, metals, gases …) easier, especially on a galactic scale. Those materials are essential for the whole economy, but shipping them is arduous.
For reference: a 3k/1k cargo hold can take only 508 FEO or 381 FE. To feed 12 SME for 7 1/2 days (max cycle) you need 1440 FEO, that is 8496t, almost three full cargo holds. Output is 960 FE, 7560t, or 2 1/2 cargo holds. And you can build a base with 5 STO and 18 SME.
And imagine this: a cargo hold with 3000m³ is a cube of only 30x10x10m. Not much for an ore hauling spaceship in my imagination.
I really like the idea of making combinations of CoGCs, because it enables more variety in the planets, and unlocks more interesting bases. The “right” way to play the current PRUN is often to have just a single building on each planet, tied to the COGC, then each step of a production chain happens on a different planet.
There are 9 COGCs, so you’ve got 9 “types” of planets. If they had two COGCs, you’ve got 72 possible combinations, and that makes it interesting for some planets to be:
Farming + Incinerators (agri + res ext)
vs. Incinerators + PE production (res ext + manuf)
vs. EPO production + rfab production (chemistry + construction)
So you’ve got a lot more flexibility and more distinct planets.
Even three CoGCs seem reasonable. To keep that example: Resource Extraction > Metallurgy > Construction. That combination alone would cover so many different production lines and could gather many players on a single planet to combine their efforts. It would reduce many annoying tasks and grant a smoother game experience.
However it would also mean a big shake up of all settled planets and some would get obsolete. But it could be an opportunity to organize and build a foundation for a common development of the galaxy.
I do believe duel COGC’s would be a very good addition, it would also indirectly expand the game for free players since instead of having to have 5 planets for one production chain you could cut it down to only needing 2 or 3 planets thus allowing them to do more with the same number of permits as well as simplifying logistics for them. Instead of having to juggle 5-6 bases with 2 ships, you could only have to deal with 3 bases doing the exact same production thus making managing them with 2 ships much easier.
With the news that the new Warpgates will have upgrades to increase certain stats I believe adding such features to COGC would fit nicely, you can either upgrade it to increase a single industry by 50% or upgrade it to give 2 industries a 12.5% increase. While having both would then allow for 2 industries to have the 25% bonus. This would balance it by having duel planets be rarer since it would be a big money sink, but also allows for many populated/starter planets to have such benefit. It also makes single industry worlds stronger