Like many I think a smarter production queue would be a good idea. Try this suggestion: a Production Scheduling Office building. Takes between 2 and 5 area and 5 workers max. It allows you to place a ‘scheduled production’ item in the queue and whenever the production building becomes idle, that ‘item’ will decide what is built next based on what you’ve pre-programmed. The ‘item’ will remain in the queue indefinitely despite the building taking a production order. This allows you to place priority projects ahead of it in the queue (we still need the ability to re-order our existing queues) and add low priority items after it so they are only built when the production schedule has nothing to build. For each building type you can then:
Set an infinite queue/constantly make the same thing,
Set it to build thing X whenever there are less than Y of it in stock,
Build a certain thing whenever there are more than Y inputs in stock,
Build a number of things in a ration of X:Y (or X:Y:Z:…),
Skip queued items with no inputs and make the next item in the queue (the skipped item stays in the queue in case there are enough resources next time the building is idle and so on),
Build to a ‘shopping list’ of items (e.g. I want 3 BBH 2 BTA and a ham sandwich…).
I read the idea that starter/CX planets should have smaller base areas. I’d rather see an effective system for removal of bases of inactive players, perhaps liquidating their assets into currency so should the player return one day they can restart with the fruits of their labour, just not hog CX planet area. This might as well be a 3 month inactivity timeout as that’s the degradation limit?
The problem with resource experts is they advantage established players with large scale, mono-industry bases the most, pushing others further out of markets. Efficiencies of scale should be just that: the scale brings efficiency. I wonder if some of the following ideas might go some way to helping: Have experts capped by player not base. This way their advantage is spread thinner the more bases you have. The cap could be soft/scaling like the cap is 6 when you have 1 base, 11 at 2, 15 at 3, 19 at 4 and so on or something like that. Having them per player would allow transfer of experts between bases - ‘following the work’. They could still be generated in a similar way to at present, just across your entire operation, so transfers don’t get around that.
Another thought is to have experts give a flat increase equivalent to adding 1 (or 2 – they are experts) to the workforce of a specialty/type of building. (I thought unit of workforce because a flat % to a BMP with 100 workers gives more benefit than that same % to an incinerator with 10. I can see this isn’t perfect as some buildings, like orchards, have fewer staff for a larger footprint so would benefit more. The only work around would be to have the flat rate increase equivalent to that building being 5-10 area bigger. That would then standardise itself with the limit on base area). With this idea you always get the benefit of experts but new players or those with small, self sufficient bases get more of an initial boost at the start as long as they need and can effectively sell their wares on the market – entrepreneurial outfits attract experts… They could then compete on price with the big boys while not challenging their market share.
Also experts are sent in to solve problems like bottlenecks: a construction expert could be assigned to construction generally, or specifically to PP1s, WELs etc. to help that stage in your operation, or simply to get that one item built faster. This would mitigate issues with one building outputting an amount too high or low for the input of the next building in your operation.
If experts are per player, then that may open up a new possibility: Shipping experts. They could generally increase the ships stats or specialise in Ship Handling (reduce STL travel time)/Fuel Handling (reduce fuel use)/Cargo handling (squeeze more in)/engineering (reduce FTL travel time). This raises the question of should there be a shipping specialty/starter package? Some buildings that serve/advantage your fleet may need inventing: dock, goods handling, long range coms tower, fuel containers, repair bays, EM launch assist…
I do worry that having a cap on base and ship entities will force ships bigger and bigger as no one wants a small, fast ship instead of a base. The obvious response is to have the cap based on formula of ship capacity/value and base area, but that would be complicated. Perhaps instead we’d need a dock/resupply facility/landing pad/… building so ships ‘take up’ base area in proportion to their size, so bringing them into the max base calculation by depriving you of base area. In much the same way ships are registered under ‘flags of convenience’ rather than where they’re used, this may lead to shipping players finding useless backwater planets to fill up with their dead space buildings, while having the advantageous buildings, docks and landing assist etc, on their CX planet ‘headquarters’.
I hear ships will be endlessly customisable. Despite this I predict ship designs will standardise for one simple reason: LMs. LMs require adverts of a set size of things and if you turn up with a ship of 350 capacity empty, there won’t be many contracts you can take, and a ship of 450 capacity will often waste that effort in making it 50 bigger. This reminds me of Panamax and Suezmax descriptions in real life shipping: if your ship is designed to be as big as possible but still fit through the Panama Canal lock gates, then its a Panamax. Same with Suezmax.
Perhaps the game can apply class descriptions to ships of slightly different designs based on capacity, speed, whether they can use FTL engines, whether their cargo capacity is for everything, for bulk goods or for gases (See my previous thought about bulk, gas and general capacities with different ratios of weight to volume). I hope ship designs can be saved and shared, ideally through a kind of text string for copy/pasting.
Naming planets, and systems, could have its pitfalls: knee-jerk or even drunk choices, unpopular choices, regrettable choices etc. in the face of all players for eternity. This could be mitigated by having a choice/proposal announced to all players, anyone can make a comment, or counter suggestion, and then at the end of 1-4 weeks players vote (as at COGC) or if a player is using naming rights to propose a name they make a final decision, which could be to not use up their naming rights and leave the planet unnamed. Voting could be based on influence of those on planet, but all players have a minimum influence. Voting for a name would require an administration center and governor.
I wonder if you could add a way of saving a screen layout to a code/text string (with easy replacement of all planet/system/company codes etc.), this way we could share, and copy and paste, well set up screens. With this the ability to lock a screen setup would be handy.