also don't you always keep a spare colony ship around to race toward juicy planets?
a colony ship has a very high upkeep cost. depending on the stage of the game, a spare colony ship can be quite costly.
EIGHT FUCKING ENERGY WHY
eh the cost of finding a colony and arriving second is much more than that, especially when borders with unclaimed space are in flux at the beginning. it's also nice to snatch a planet out an empire zone by stubbornly refusing researching the alien contact - for as long as they don't establish contact, you can colonize away wherever you like.
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I understand the balance side of things, it's just obnoxious that you have to tank your economy to found a single colony for however many weeks/months it takes the ship to get there and create the colony-and that's if you micromanage to the point where the colony ships are sent out the second they finish, instead of one of the poor fools who make them and forget about them.
What I honestly think it should be is that the energy cost should be borne during the colony founding period instead-so after the ship lands you pay a big chunk of energy to establish it permanently. That both makes more sense logistically and fills the same role in game balance of forcing players to weigh the costs instead of colonizing everything ever.
Incidentally, that's why I actually like the way having more pops (and soon, more colonies) increases research times, both from a balance perspective and lorewise--presumably because your scientists and engineers have to figure out how to implement the new techs into practice across your entire empire, which is easier for a handful of worlds than several dozen. It also means that lategame isn't just you researching a new tech every week until you've filled the tree.