Ressurecting a couple of old suggestions:
1. Precursor ships are not built with any of the 'advanced tech' available from ruins (compressed fuel tanks, advanced railguns, heavy lasers, etc.). I think they should be, so that those components have a chance of being discovered in their wrecks.
2. Precursors are a set to a similar level in every game, rather than given an amount of tech points relative to the player - which maybe should be the case.
3. As it stands, the political status modifier of populations exists in discrete, 20% chunks. A newly-conquered pop produces 20% of normal, until its political status upgrades to Occupied, at which point it suddenly doubles to 40%. It seems a shame to possess the computing power of a math co-processor and not use it.
I suggest changing the political status modifier and the way it is calculated. A newly Conquered population should begin at 0% production/trade/wealth, and each production cycle increase its modifier by a factor calculated from the amount by which the current Occupation Strength exceeds the required minimum. Perhaps cap the increase rate at some amount, so a small mining outpost doesn't immediately jump to full imperial citizenship. Then a simple derivative ( 1/2 * a * t^2 ) tells you the effective rate at which production occurred over the previous increment. (Where a is the rate for that increment, and t is the time in seconds.)
The political status of the colony would then be determined by the current modifier, rather than the other way around:
0% to 20% Conquered
>20% to 40% Occupied
etc.
I would expect the Trade & Wealth modifiers to increase more quickly than the Production modifier, maye double - after all, the government still makes money on rebuilding things. Tremendous profits came out of Europe in the late forties and fifties rebuilding after World War II.
4. Oh, and a minor thing. At the bottom of the left panel of the F2 'Population & Production' window is an option to display extra 'Summary Information' in the colony list. Could we please have production modifiers added as an option? And have Maintenance Facilities, Maintenance Supplies, and Fuel combined into one option (I'm not sure there's enough space to display all three, in which case I'd still like Supplies & Fuel combined in one entry).[/quote]
