Well, at least there's substantial agreement on improvements being needed to the four technologies mentioned in the original post.  The focus on early builds, because of the peculiar emphasis on 5v5s, might otherwise lead to economic techs being ignored.  We may also need a complementary military tech thread, (or perhaps a revival of an old one?), to highlight other useless techs, in this phase, before the final version of the game is fixed. 

However I wouldn't agree that trade ship techs fall easily into a military tech improvement thread, they are part of the civilian tech tree, and clearly impact finances rather than the balance of power.  All economic techs are somewhat strategic...?  A wave upgrade is to a weapon...?

Trade ships currently have a speed of 300, to cut them down to 100 makes them very slow indeed, so perhaps 150, though I'd also consider a health reduction.  What makes trade warfare very difficult is that trade ships are rebuilt in only 12s(!)- compared to 30s for constructors, or 300s in a contested gravwell, as it almost always is when a constructor has been destroyed...  So I'd want the rebuild time increased to 300 as well, to make the trade ships have some economic value other than a small bounty. 

Its seems an especially good time to upgrade Resource Focus, while Advent are briefly unpopular.. but we haven't touched on the Vasari returning fleets yet, which is closer to a military tech, though it is more properly an economic one.

Returning Armada is actually quite good, the only problem is that it's so high up the tech tree and has such massive prerequisites.  You need 8 labs AND an existing phase stabilizer network.  That is REALLY late game stuff.  When it finally does come into play it's very useful, but the problem is that games almost never get that far.

A complementary military thread would be a good idea.

Even if you manage to sneak a light force into the enemy trade system, with the current version the payoff is mixed.  A bonus of 100 credits per trade destroyed seems great- if you can destroy one every 15s, that is the equivalent of over 6 credits a second, very useful.  However, is this bonus still working, can someone else check and confirm it?

The other aspect of trade warfare is very discouraging.  If you could destroy an enemy's trade ships then he would have multiple slots locked up to no purpose, a tempting prospect.  However, this is extremely difficult with light forces.  Consider a trade route between two planets with four trade ports and two trade ports, eighteen trade ships.  To have any lasting effect at all you will need to destroy the trade ships faster than they can be replaced.  With 6 trade ports, as it is in the current version, this requires you to destroy a trade ship every 2 seconds... However, if the trade ships were rebuilt in the same time as the constructors are, you would only have to destroy one every 50 seconds to gradually blockade an enemy... Another question, how does the building of constructors work..?  As mentioned above, they would only ever be destroyed in a contested system, so having a rebuild time for an uncontested system seems peculiar? 

This rebuild time change would reward skill, and produce an effective counter to trade spam.  I consider it to be an almost purely financial system that is as in need of major help as the others mentioned, and if the bonus isn't being produced it might even be bugged.  It certainly isn't logical that a trade ship can be made in 12 seconds when a constructor takes 300 seconds!    

The returning fleets question has to be somewhat undecided, until someone does a bean counting analysis of how it works after the revision/nerf...Darvin?  It is clear that it is a financial tech that requires some supply to be left unused to work, some element of a random fleet and some element of scattered production.  Also, it requires continual investment even after the initial massive investment to have any return at all, and combines elements of the financial and military paths.  If you can afford level eight tech the advantage of not having to research level three ships is somewhat dubious, unless you have had to sacrifice your other options to get quickly to level eight civilian tech.  It is not currently popular as a multiplayer fast-tech option, which is presumably the purpose of having it at all, if it works properly...? 

I would first revise the returning fleets tech again, so that it was free to have the fleets, but reduce the fleet size by the cost that is levied in the current version.  All that the original version needed to be rebalanced was fewer ships, first requiring a sizeable economy to get further economic advantage is missing the point.

This game needs more options for strategy, not simplification to the extraordinary depths of 'is my capital carrier better than yours?'.. There we might consider whether we need two further complementary threads, one for the new relations victory and one for culture.  If Vasari might have their fleet beacon option restored, shouldn't Advent have a culture option that isn't viable at the moment- isn't that what they were supposed to be about, fast culture, holy warfare?          

From the other thread, the Civilian Ship Safety Act would be a better option if the trade and refineries ships moved more slowly, at most half as slowly, so that it didn't take a fair-sized fleet to destroy them quickly enough.  Has anyone been able to confirm that the bounty on trade ships is functional? 

Communal Labour is another one of those technologies where you don't want to have to pay twice- as it already requires more than one constructor at the build planet, and both have to work on the one project, I wouldn't make it cost any more, and the boost rate should be appreciable- more than twice as quickly?  I haven't used it though, it never sounded valuable enough.  It seems to divert credits away from both finance and military, so it might only be a niche technology for rapid choke defences even when buffed.

I'd suggest a different route with communal labour.  Make it so that you don't need two constructors, it simply becomes an togglable option all constructors have to greatly reduced build time for slightly increased cost.  With Illums finally under control, the weak Advent economy needs help and this would be a good place to start.

I'm honestly not sure if anything can be done to make Civilian Safety Act worthwhile.  Reworking all trade ships just to make one unimportant research useful doesn't make sense.  Just have it give a huge buff or something so that TEC trade ships become nearly invincible with this researched.

What can be done is to limit the ammount of trade ships each trade port spawns. I think in un modded SINS they each spawn ~5. And each of those could be going to a seperate trade port, allies or yours. Mid-End game there are hundredes of these bad boys flying around. And yeah you can pop them each with some SC but the problem is b/c there are SOOO many it has no affect on the trade at all.

If you reduced the number to say 2 per trade port. While increasing their 'worth' so that each is worth 2.5, instead of 5 at 1.0. You get better fewer targets, which are 'worth' more. So your raiding attempts are worth it. You can further increase the replacement time so they spawn less after each one is killed.

We reduced trade ships down to 1 in the Distant Stars and uped their spawn time. We did it to reduce lag. But it does make for nice targets if they happend to be flying around your fleet. This maybe a direction yall might wanna thing about.

The trade and refinery ships aren't difficult to rework, its just altering a couple of numerical values- I've done it myself.  All they need is a speed reduction, so that when attacked they can be killed before they jump out, making trade raids more feasible.  And having them rebuild in 12 seconds when constructors take 300 is silly, so their rebuild rate should be 300. 

There's three trade ships per port, not a huge amount.  The bounty level seems okay once they are slowed down and become more destructible.      

Yeah, that's a simple solution to communal labour, and simple solutions are best... loses some of the 'communal' element, but I suppose that the drones don't do all of the work themselves, they only build the structure.  Perhaps they spend less time on the interior decoration when its done communally, or something? 

The financial improvements are often overshadowed by more glamorous debates over capital ships, but I consider that they are equally important to the game.  It would be good to have more options than trade, and more uses for culture other than a basic network to cover your planets.  Perhaps the planetary shield upgrade could also give further population boosts in hostile environments?  How about allowing each refinery, or resource focused trade port, to also reduce supply costs slightly- they make resource use more efficient, after all- then they would scale as much as trade ports?  Something like 0.5% per refinery? 

Another separate issue is whether the last expansion should have added one or more new types of gravwell.  Venus, a planet in our own solar system, can't readily be simulated in the game as it is.  A planetary type that required a higher level of tech to colonise might mean that players had more motive to move further up the civilian tech tree. 

*drools at possibilities of Gas Giant colonization* FINALLY!! My dream of controlling a flying city-ship can come true!

I think Venus roughly fits the "volcanic" stereotype.  It's Mercury that has a problem; it's a barren rock, bigger than Pluto, but certainly not an asteroid.

Mercury is easy...its a Barren planet

Barren Planets don't exist in unmodded Sins, which is the point.

I know, I know...but I couldnt help myself.

I consider Mercury to be much closer to being a desert planet than Venus is to being a volcanic.  If the difference is based on what sort of structures you can build on the surface, then ice would be frozen liquid, desert rock and volcanic molten rock, where it's impossible to build directly onto the surface.  However it isn't the surface of Venus that is the problem, it's the atmosphere.  You could perhaps inhabit the sub-surface regions, which isn't similar to a volcanic at all?  

The main point is whether there should be more difficult planets to colonise than tier 2 though, what effect it would have on the gameplay?  I suppose Venus could be considered volcanic in the abstract respect of difficulty.   I imagine that there could be far more hostile terrestrial-type planets to colonise.     

If you want to see how different planets with higher tech requirements affect gameplay try Distant Stars.

Gas Giants, Military, and Urban require tier 5.

I'm more and more convinced that there should be an adjustment to trade ports and refineries so that the ships are slowed to half their current speed and that they rebuild at the constructor rate of 300s- whether it is at the quicker rate of 30s in an uncontested well or not, I'd leave up to how easy it is to implement.  There is just no reason to have trade ships rebuild far faster than constructors, and it makes the implementation of sensible pirates very difficult when they are always chasing trade ships that they often fail to focus fire.

I'm also still concerned that the bonus isn't being properly awarded for destroyed trade ships, can someone else test this? 

One or more new gravwell types would really make Trinity distinctive for multiplayer games, as well as single player, and the work involved doesn't seem much for what it might add to the gameplay.  Some maps might have to be added, but higher tier colonisation wouldn't really be relevant to the fast rush maps that constitute the bulk of the set maps. 

I've always wanted a thread on the set maps, I consider designed maps to offer much more than the constant single player random maps which is the staple mutliplayer fare.  However, there are a few of them, perhaps I might limit it to my favourites first.

I find it a bit funny that economic research don't really pay themself of before 10 - 15 minutes. In starcraft and other games with some balance doing early economical "rushs" are a valid tactic. In Sins if i go early civilian i end up roasted by a gang of LRF.

I like a lot of what's said in this thread. Colony pods should be free, you allready pay with using slots and research. Free Colony pods would make building Starbases only for the trade route link a better option as they dont need a lot of military equipment.

Refineries are kinda useless in their current state. Also they don't even feel like refineries.

What I find cause for concern about Resource Focus and refineries is that I suspect that the parameters for these were established when the game still had limited resources, and have never been altered subsequently.  Resource Focus doesn't make much sense as it is, but if prices were being driven up as players needed to buy all their resources, then the technology would become substantially more valuable.

That's quite possible.  With resource focus, at very least, it's clear that the ability has been neglected since it's extremely useless in its current form.

Not really, the conversion rate I used in my analysis above was 4.5:1, which is a bit above black market average.  Even presuming black market highs of 5:1 ratio, that wouldn't change the results enough to put resource focus into the "useful" range.

well, there was a point, if you look at the change logs, when the black market went alot lower than 200 (and i assume higher than 600)...

thing were certainly different then, but havent really changed much as far as refinaries/tradeports.

That's another subject where I haven't seen a thorough investigation posted.  As it is, the option to sell to other players using the black market is rarely taken and may be too time-consuming for the limited reward.

But suppose the black market could be shifted from its simple cyclical model to something more responsive to player transactions and the state of the game?  Even without limited resources, prices should perhaps begin to rise overall once trade brings more credits into the game?  That change might help refineries?   

The reason it works right now is because very few players use this feature, so you have virtually no competition on the market and can simply charge at 100%.  If more people used this feature, you'd be correct, but because very few (even amongst experienced players) use it, the feature works quite well.

I recommended this long ago, but the problem is basically if the map randomizes with very little metal or crystal, such  that everyone buys it.  This will simply have the effect of supercharging the price of one resource and could exascerbate what's already a very poor map layout.

Unlike a return to limited resources, the black market seems fairly easy to change if we wanted to play around with it.  Which version altered it from the original values?