Interesting changes! Not sure if I should continue discussing here, or move to the change discussion thread, but since we're here...

Will we still be able to set colonies as source or destination or stable?

Also, would it be possible to set taxation on shipping to be negative i.e. to offer incentives to grow their fleet, particularly early on?

Lastly, the changes don't seem to address the balance between colony and cargo ships. Would it be possible to set that taxation on a per type basis? Or is there some other way that balance has/will be adjusted?

2. Allow the player to determine (on the wealth tab) how much to tax colonist ship tonnage and cargo ship tonnage (individually). This would give players the flexibility to encourage or discourage growth by giving the CSLs more or less income and hence driving growth (and/or contraction if idea 1 were implemented). This would only require adding two numeric fields on the wealth tab, so hopefully minimal programming work.

Check the update I just posted

There was a bit more work involved though than just adding the extra UI elements.

Shipping Line and Colony Changes

New Shipping Line Income
0.0001 per colonist per billion kilometres travelled
0.004 per passenger per billion kilometres travelled
0.25 per trade good per billion kilometres travelled
0.0001 per cargo point per billion kilometres travelled

Export payments are removed.
Dividends are removed.

Shipping Line Tax
Each race can set a tax rate for its shipping lines from 0 to 100%. This starts at zero and can be updated at any time on the Wealth tab of the Economics window. This tax will be deducted from the income of the shipping line and assigned to the race. With 100% tax, the shipping line does not generate any profit and cannot buy new ships. The tax will also be applied to income from player contracts, which means the player could effectively use shipping lines for free in an emergency, again with the downside of no new ships.

While in reality the shipping line would have overheads for fuel, etc. this is assumed to be included in the mechanics. Otherwise I would have a slightly higher income, maintenance charge, lower max tax rate and end up back in the same place with extra coding involved.

Trade Good Changes
The base production of Trade Goods is halved. In addition, the production is multiplied by the manufacturing percentage of the colony, so smaller colonies will generally produce more trade goods per capita. For a homeworld, trade good production is likely to be about 1/8th of the existing level (halved and then multiplied by 25%).

Colonization Pressure
An entirely new mechanic called Colonization Pressure has been added. This determines the percentage of any given population that is willing to pay for passage on shipping line colony ships or liners. This is calculated as follows:

• The base rate is 2%
• Colony Cost is added as a percentage, so a Colony Cost 2 world would add 2% to colonization pressure.
• Each 50 points of radiation adds 1% pressure
• Where a colony has insufficient infrastructure
  
  • Modified Colony Cost = Colony Cost * ((Required Inf - Actual Inf) / Required Inf). If Inf is required and zero is present, then MCC = CC
  • + 25% is added to pressure for each point of modified colony cost (so CC2 with no infrastructure adds 50%)
• If the population for a system body exceeds the max pop the added pressure = excess pop / total pop. So if a colony was on a planet with max pop 100m and actual pop 125m, 20% would be added to pressure.
  
• If a colony has insufficient protection (which only applies at 10m+), the added pressure is (1 - (Population PPV / Required Protection)) * 10. So completely unprotected will add 10%.

Ideal habitable worlds with no issues around security or radiation will generally have low rates - usually 2%. Colonies with high colony costs, or that are overcrowded or unprotected, or that have suffered recent bombardment, will have higher pressure.

New Colonists
Each construction phase, more colonists will become available at the rate of:
(Length of Construction Phase / Year) * Population * Colonization Pressure

For example, if colonization pressure was 5% and the population was 100m, then a 5-day construction phase would generate (5 / 365) * 100m * 5% = 68,493 colonists. A population of 1 billion with 2% pressure would generate 274,000 colonists every construction phase.

The max number of available colonists at any time will be equal to the annual amount generated. This 'production' of colonists has a side effect of breaking up the shipping line colony ships so they all don't move everywhere together. As shipping line colony ships load colonists they will be deducted from the available colonists total.

Shipping Line Restrictions
Shipping line colony ships will only select a colony as a source of colonists if the currently available number of colonists, minus the capacity of shipping line colony ships already en route to load colonists, is greater than or equal to the ship's capacity.

Shipping lines will not deliver colonists to a population with a pressure of 10 or greater. This simulates that potential colonists are unlikely to pay to move to a planet where a undesirable factors are causing a notable portion of the existing population to leave.

Government-owned Colony Ships.
None of the above affects player-controlled ships and player ships will not reduce available colonists. Essentially, people will go where the government tells them, but they won't pay to go anywhere undesirable.

Why Change?
These changes are to prevent shipping lines overwhelming the game by growing too large. They can end up with hundreds of huge ships, that strip planets of colonists or generate so much wealth as to make it irrelevant. Income based on distance, player taxes and a much smaller supply of colonists and goods should restrict their growth without any 'artificial' restrictions. Also they will no longer deliver colonists to unprotected colonies, which gives the player a new problem to solve.

I'm a bit at a loss understanding how I can easily find a commander (in the commander list) when checking a given ground unit or naval officer. The aim here is to check units or ships, find the ones with suboptimal commanders, and then, using the list to the right, find a better one. However, the middle list, when you hover over different units/ships, never updates the list of commanders to the left, so it's not possible to know who is in charge actually!

A very simple addition, if I'm not missing something, would be to list somewhere who is in command when you select an element in the middle list. But right now, you can't know!

For RP purposes, it would be great if a module for a ship could be designed to assign a Scientist and/or Administrator.

How about the ability of any misc component to "house" any type of commander?