Let's chase the colony ship! (Extreme AI behavior).

That colony ship had to die!   

Indeed it did! lol It is a bit extreme I admit but we tried less extreme solutions and couldn't prevent the problem we were having - extreme early game colonization rushing (which is even more of a problem in multiplayer). Incidently, that is also why we always guaratee there is a siege capable ship there (to bomb the planet if you do manage to get a colony ship through). As always, we are open to better solutions.

The idea that immediately pops up is to have a range check on the pirate AI, that specifies to only engage if the colony ship gets too close to them.

The colony ship is rather fragile in it's current state, it shouldn't take the pirates that long to blow it to bits should it dare to approach the fight and or planet.

I suppose that makes it two checks.

Check if it's near pirates and check if it's near the planet.

I think that the pirate siege frigates - so long as they actually do attack colonies they are 'guarding' - should be enough to handle drive by colonization. The colony ship prioritization is really hurting early AI efforts from what ive observed; it doesnt wait for a system to be cleared before sending in the frigate, and they arnt exactly cheap.

if theres still a problem you could have new colonies start with injured infrastructure...

The things is right now that can be used as an exploit since you can totally take the pressure of the main fleet. I have a few interesting experience in mind to what extend the expoit can be used, I will do it sometime tonight and tell you how it turns out.


The solution I have here is the same one that I offered in a similar topic, the one about double tactical point by colonize a planet with its orbital structure intact. Maybe Colonize should only be possible if all hostile presents in the system is removed, like I said I think it's something that makes sense

ooooh I like that, simple and elegant plus most of the time it's what happens anyway. At least when i play lets blow EVERYTHING up!

I like this solution. It's not like a colony springs fully formed from the bay of a colony ship. Make it spawn at some lower level of infrastucture and then slowly build up (repair) to full. In the meantime, your fleet needs to be able to screen the planet from any siege in the area.

I don't think it will work though, at least not 100% to the extend that I think the devs is trying to prevent. I'm under the impression Ironclad wants to prevent you set foot on the planet and ultilize it too quick in the beginning, and the damage infrastructure doesn't prevent that really.



You know that right now a moderate defense pirate fleet doesn't have a lot of Pillager (as oppose to the Marauder fleet), they do have quite a few Rogue and especially Corsairs, and group of Corsairs can take a considerable time to take on with your starting resource. Now the thing is as long as the colony ship is in space it's vulnerable to all, but once it's on the planet the only thing that can hurt it is pillager.


So instead of taking on the whole fleet you can just target the Pillagers, which right now is an extreme easy thing to do. The current AI will rush whatever ship it has to your ship as soon as it's in the system, including the Pillagers. So just use your flag's ability or concentrate fire on the couple of Pillagers there, you can jump out to another planet and slip your colony ship in. It doesn't matter if your colony starts out at 1 or at 1000 infrastructure points if there is nothing in orbit can bomb it.


Taking out a couple of Pillagers and taking out 6 Rogues, 4 Corsairs, 2 Pillagers is a huge difference, especially in rush term.

Although i think it is fairly realistic that the pirates prefer to attack an unarmed colony ship (with loads of stuff to grab) as soon as they saw som real opposition they should try to escape rather than fight a strong fleet.

As a solution to the early colony rush problem, what about the following ?

1) Make the construction of each colony ship reduce the population of the planet where it is built, since you are infact shipping a load of people off to another planet.

This will make it impossible to build to many colony ships early since you will run out of population and income.


2) Make colonization of unoccupied planets take longer time than re-colonizing conquered planets. Terraforming a planet and building a completely new infastructure probably would take a bit longer than shipping a load of containers full of politicians and pencil-pushers to size power over a newly conquered planet.

What do you think ?

Frog's first idea is what I was thinking about whilst reading this thread. I think it should slightly reduce the pop. Sure people can just reduce the first planet to nothing and still rush colonizers, but there will now be a strategical reason not too. This will increase if there is some kind of rate of pop change somewhere (either low pops take long to start or high pops take long to fill up).

Don't really agree with Frog's #2 now, seeing as conquering to my understanding meant nuking a planet.

Understand the colony rush problem, but I agree it is currently an easy exploit the will travel to multiplayer.

Whatever they do in multiplayer will result in Colony rushing , it's just going to happen but we can try to reduce it.

Some easier steps would be to simply make the colony ship be used up on colonizing so one has to build a new one for every planet they wish to colonize.

I also believe there's a dramatic decrease in money gain when your planets are far out, so that's already an incentive not to spread out too quickly.

Maybe make it so the larger the pop - the more things you can build around the planet? If you want to build a large trade empire you've got to get a decent number of people on the planet to make trading worthwhile?

Other things like making it take longer, make it require more resources and the colony ship to be more expensive are all pretty easy to implant - but it depends what the devs want.

using up a colony ship per time will be fine, but there is the akkan to consider, maybe that should have a really long cooldown per use?

I think that the stuff that the colony ships send in should be damageable in flight, and if too much stuff gets destroyed, the colony doesnt appear. Pirates should therefore stick closer to the planet instead of immediately rushing towards the edge of the gravity well: The job of the Marauders is to play offence and the job of the regular pirates is to play defense kind of thing. I also think it would help if the pirates started with a really low colonization of the planet/asteroid. Make it low enough so that your flagship can take it out relatively quickly, yet high enough that you risk some damage to your ship if you simply rush in and start blasting away at the planet.

The main problem i have with this is that i can just include around three colony ships and a few robotics cruisers along with my fleet, and the AI runs through my fighters,bombers, frigates, cruisers, and capital ships just to target my colony ships that are having their shields restored and their hulls repaired.

Well, rather than trying any of these AI-warping solutions you could just do what Civilization IV did - include a slowly rising infrastructure cost for each additional colony you have, while also increasing the number of economy increasing upgrades possible for colonies. Therefore, while a modest colony rush can be helpful, more colonies past a certain point will result in a net drain on your economy, leaving you behind on research. A smaller, more focussed empire with better tech will then come in and beat the crap out of you, thanking you for the population and facilities you've left behind.

Of course, you can sprawl AND try to rapidly develop the economy generating structures in your new colonies so you don't get behind on tech, but then your military is underpowered. You then have a nice risk/reward tradeoff which players can argue endlessly about.

They already have that introduced with the diminishing returns for every jump away from your home planet.

Reading this thread, it feels like we're trying to read too much into this thing. Charon is right. It's going to happen no matter what we do or don't do. And I think we've already hit upon a really good answer here. It just seems really weird to me that in theory, an infinate number of colonies that can spawn from this one ship without it having to stop and resupply the colonize modules. Then there's also the fact that this freshly built fledgling colony starts so well off. The game's kind of on the right track with having to spend time and resources to get the planet capeable of supporting a larger population, but I really think that both the colony ship should be used up and the fledgling colony should start out at less than optimal level. I'd give it a little something (like 25% infastructure and 10% pop), then it would have to build itself up from there.

I guess, for now the easiest fix would be to have additional "Starting" levels on the civics logistics. Starting level could be that initial starting level you'd actually have if it was your small band of colinists and the ship you came in for parts, then research it higher to bring it to where it starts out now, etc.

Another thought would be if the infastructure regen was actually based off the current population level. Now that would be something.

We could make colony ships just drop colonization supplies, and then have it set up so that there are automated transports bring in people...

Has anyone tried just attacking colony ships and then sending in the main fleet? I mean like 2-6 Colony ships with or before you send in your main fleet. They kill one they go after the other, all this time you could have built your colony while they are chasing the other 5 frigates, Im not sure if by that time they go and attack the colony, but if they continue attacking the colony ships then by the time all the colonys hips are gone you shouldve damaged most of their fleet and your colony should be at a higher health.

I like the idea of getting rid of all hostile forces first

Diminishing returns =/ infrastructure cost. If you have an undeveloped second city in Civ IV, you will have less money than if you only had a single city. This makes it a disincentive rather than a diminishing incentive.

Why not have colonization take longer. It starts with a really low population and people must breed and it gets exponential until it reaches full growth. This would allow easy bombardment of the colonies in the initial growth period. I mean the colonies get going pretty fast. You could also prevent colonization if there are enemy ships in the gravity well.

I like the idea of colony ships being used up when ever they colonize a new planet. So for each new planet, you will need a new colony ship.

Be sure to keep the colony ship's top speed and jump prep time relatively low so it can't outrun pirates or other enemies.

Also, to minimize the colony rush, the colony ship could take a few moments while it disassembles itself in orbit around the target planet in preparation for colonization. During this process, have the colony ship lose shields and reduce its hit points by 3/4 so enemies can more easily prevent any successful colonization.

A new colony should COST you. The infrastructure that is built should be a real draw on your resources so that you simply can't afford to have three colonies being in development if you only have two developed planets.

A new planet should only be able to start making profit and building ships when it is quite developed and this should take some time.

Perhaps trade ships can mitigate said cost, allowing one planet to be less of a drain on a larger empire than one with only a few planets. But yes, I agree with this answer/implementation.

Sure, any additional income should help you in supporting the colonies... Some planets could also have some special goods and would be self-supporting faster because of bigger trade.

maby u could have the colony ship not be able to jup into a system with bad guys in it that way there can be no rush or after they do thier job they have to go back to a terran planet (highest pop) and refill it self with new colanists but dont forget it requires 100 antimater to jump and colonise so it still takes time waiteing for it to re charge