3 - natural expansion - as civilians explorers and settlers and company concerns move into an uninhabited system, it slowly colonizes towards your empire at no cost to you. Eventually, they might have enough population to become formally represented. (MOO3 had this - species would naturally settle planets that were perfect for them, which allowed minor species in your empire to colonize worlds that your base species considered hellholes.)
Heh, actually that's what I planned originally but abandoned it later. Maybe I should go back to it...
The first thing is the colonization is not terribly important in that game (at least not as important as in other games). Planets can switch ownership quite frequent and it's not traumatic (no destruction of infrastructure, etc) at least if the planet was taken over by another civilized race. Also AI has an instant colonization (well, I could change that one if needed I suppose).
The important question is, should the player have an option to say "do not colonize this planet"?
How it could work:
- only planets neighbouring imperial planets can be colonized (otherwise progress is halted)
- there is a base 1% colonization progress per communication range rating (so the near capital planets with comm range 1 have 5% while the distant comm range 5 have 1%) OR make it 1% per neighbouring imperial planet (so if you have an uncolonized planet surrounded by your planets it should be colonized fairy quickly).
- you can spend money (just a button like the current "Colonize") to "encourage colonization" which gives +15% per turn (+25% if you selected 'colonization freighters' reform)
- once the planet is colonized (progress 100%) you get the claim to the planet.
Only change I would suggest is allowing the player to somehow control the research budget, ideally through events. Dump cash, get research points (or not, if the RNG doesn't favor the player). Most games use a dorky slider that most players just set to max, hence why events are better.
Yeah, I was thinking of some sort of "budget" mechanic (not only for research, but also to rectuit more stormtroopers, invest more into planetary defences and the like). I even implemented one but it was not so great and I removed it.
I hesitate about some "budget" audience event (once per 50 turns let's say) which basicly pops up you a budget page with sliders you can adjust (so you can't do it anytime, need to wait for next budget period to adjust it). I also have a slight problem what to do if you go into a negative treasury due to budget setttings.
Anyway, I'm looking for ideas for some sort of budget/investment mechanic.