szurkey wrote:Colonization costs in Classic are a lot more money.
Initial colonization costs, yes. But like every other version of Starfire, there are no on-going costs. That's why every version of Starfire has problems with run-away incomes.
szurkey wrote:The goal is to better model reality and to increase the cost of colonization.
I've been working on house rule where the CFN charges a percentage based on distance, end infrastructure, and node infrastructure.
If you're trying to better model reality, then the up-front cost of colonization is not going to fix it for you.
In reality, the problem with colonizing further from your empire's infrastructure is going to be that trade is going to cost more (shipping is more expensive so what you need will cost more and what you can get from trade is reduced, probably making some of your trade goods worthless), regular shared functions of infrastructure will cost more and be the sole burden of your distant colony, certain industries won't exist (like tourism), etc.
In reality, what this means is that your far-flung colony is going to
cost more to maintain. And that's assuming perfection with no corruption, deadweight losses from economic choices, etc. But no version of Starfire has these maintenance costs. And we don't force the user to pay for all those underlying shipping costs either (they'd be subsumed into maintenance).
That was why I brought up the proposal to reduce income based on distance from infrastructure. Instead we can model increased maintenance as "lost income" instead. This makes it so you can't just put a colony anywhere without penalty. And if you add some sort of "node limit" you can easily model overloading your infrastructure without improvements to that infrastructure, resulting in lost income from a colonies associated with that node.
The point being, of course, that unlimited expansion will eventually put you in a position where additional colonies provide no net income, or depending upon how you model it, are a net loss of income to the empire.
THIS will force players to consider colony emplacement and to build infrastructure.
Remember, I'm playing on an open strategic map with a few wormholes, most similar to Honor Harrington.
Functionally, the difference is mode of travel. The rest should be the same as far as the rules are concerned...