It wasn't just the finding friend part.
Using the pre-SM#2 ISF, with the slow population growth, often the only source for colonists was the homeworld, and once you have colonised those close by planets, the multi-turn colonisation convoys makes colonisation unrealistic. But, using the pre-SM#2 ISF, pretty soon you will find an alien race that will fall over itself to ally (and eventually amalgamate) with you - providing another source for colonisation (and income).
I'll readily admit that multi-turn non-habitable colonization is fairly unrealistic (and don't have a problem with this). But I'm not so sure that I'd say that that's so for habitables. They're worth the trouble. Of course, given ISF's overly friendly NPR's, perhaps that does contribute to thinking that multi-turn habitable colonization isn't worth the trouble or expense. But I'd think that if those NPR's were more hostile, one would have to re-assess the value of colonizing those empty habitables.
This changed in SM#2, both by the introduction of PTU/PU to "stage" the colonies growth (i.e. not needing to get the required H/Q onto the desired planet within a tight time frame using the IFN - instead being able to do it a couple of PTU per turn as you can afford to), by the increase in colony growth rate (allowing older colonies to start being sources for newer colonies), and by increasing the hostility of NPRs (making them less likely to become amalgamated with you).
I agree that a more incremental model of colonization has its merits. But I also have to admit though that I prefer the EVM macro style of economics to the PU micro style. I liked the fact that my GPV's weren't constantly changing month after month. it was nice to be able to concentrate on the part of the game I really cared about. Designing and building ships for The Fleet. Exploring. Finding new friends or new enemies. And so forth.
I'm not interested in being an accountant in the Imperial Colonization Bureau and having to track all those tiny little groups of colonists all over the empire. I liked the ISF all-at-once model of colonization. If I want an outpost or a colony, get the FT's in place, load'em up, send'em off to their new world. And then move on to the next thing. No worrying about managing and tracking any streams of penny packets of colonists to grow those new populations.
And you speak about growth rate, but it's that very growth rate that's the bane of the game. It's that population growth rate which is the absolute root cause of out of control economies in SM#2 (at least out of control GPV's). Slam that growth rate down HARD and you fix that vector of the overall problem.
As for more hostile NPR's, that works for me. Big time.
Where SM#2 fell down, was that they didn't make the NPR's big enough. By the middle of the game, you are large enough that if you run into a NPR, and the First Contact roll goes against you - as they are a single system empire, you can quickly conquor them.
What I would do, is to allow them to be multi-system, with a comparable economy. This would result in players less likely to go to war with them.
Of course, this also has the problem that it makes the game more susceptible to chance.....
I think that part of the assumption is that by you start reaching that point, you should be running into other player races, at least in multi-player games. But yes, if one is playing solo, it might be an issue. Of course, when I played solo, I wouldn't have only a single "player" race. I'd usually have 3 or 4.
Regardless, having the ability to include multi-system NPR's would be nice. Of course, it does tend to add to the rules mass.
(Sighs) There is a problem in reducing the population sizes in the belt. This is somewhat painful for me to point out (as I would prefer to remove them entirely) - but a cul de sac empire will need something to spend it's money on - and if O2/O1/AST colonisation is eliminated/reduced, an empire unable to expand (i.e. no WP's) is going to have nothing to spend it's money on.....
I've probably said this before, but in a spacemastered game, I'd have strongly suggested that the SM should make every effort to not let player races get stuck in cul de sacs, even if he'd have to quietly add a WP or 2 to a system that his sysgen die rolls said was an otherwise dead end system. And of course, if the game is a solo one, you could just do it for yourself.
As for Asteroid Belt colonization in particular, that's not a good enough reason to continue to allow it at the same level is in ISF. At least not to me.
Anyways, I've moved on from nothing but a bonus for moons and AB's in a more subtle direction to deal with the problem.
I believe it was three (HET) armed destroyers, and they destroyed ~40 F armed BB's.
Good grief. What did those DD's do? Use their 2 point speed advantage (and better turn mode) over the BB's to always try to sit at range 16, the max rage for HET lasers, but 1 outside the max range for Force beams? I don't see any other way for the DD's to do this. I'm just guessing, but it also sounds like the DDs' race probably had a TL advantage, since if they were about equal, the BB's race could have mounted Fc's instead of F's and that would have changed the outcome entirely. The DD's HETs would have probably run for it, as they'd have been out-ranged by 4 tac hexes.
And BTW, this incident probably also points to a weakness of the traditional movement model of Starfire. If pulsed movement had been used in this engagement (I assume it wasn't), it probably would have been very, very difficult for the DD's to always stay in the 1 tac hex range band (at 16 tH) where they could hit the BB's and the BB's couldn't hit back.