From what I remember from reading Steve's diplomacy change-log for C#, when NPCs consider your claim to a system, they weigh whether they've seen you have a large colony in that system, what tonnage of military ships they've seen there (or around in general), etc. Assuming they don't automatically "know" about your colonies in a system for the purpose of that check, could we get an option to "announce" the location of a colony to neutral/friendly NPCs, the same way we do for ships by activating the ship's transponder? That way you could say "Hey, I have this giant colony here that you haven't noticed because you never come to this side of the system, so respect my claim please."
NPRs do indeed have preternatural awareness of player colonies for this purpose (and, I think, only this purpose):
The NPR will base this on actual populations, not currently detected populations, as it is assumed you will provide the necessary evidence to back up your demand.
Essentially the system works as you suggest, "Hey, here's our colony, it's about yea big, go away please kthxbai."
I was thinking, I am very methodic, I like play slow and starting building big capital ships since the beginning of the game (even at conventional start) and then bigger and bigger which at some point takes time to have these ships ready (and this reflects the reality so all good), but, what could be added is the possibility to speed up the process in exchange of a good amount of money (lets be honest guys, we all have a lot of money at some point of the game) which simulate the war effort.
Let's say you are constructing a ship which would be completed in 2 years, we could think a button where in exchange of 10000 wealth, the completition is reduced of 5%. (These numbers are just an example).
The process could be used once or twice, depends of the length of construction or the ship size.
Smaller ships would benefit of one possibility only, while let's say, 60000t would be 3.
Also the cost could be different, with second, third and so on possibility to be much expensive then previous one to simulate the increasing wealth, need and possibility of the state.
We can already model this in practical terms by pre-building components with planetary industry, which works very well to simulate a "war economy" as we are diverting factory production away from long-term economic growth and towards short-term military buildup.
The problem with using wealth for this is that, IMO, wealth is an easy resource to have too much of, so this just becomes nearly-free fast building. IMO the current system works very well for this.
