Combat Cycle Ref:
>But even skipping the uplifting to orbit, total transport capacity from Mars to
>Earth for EU is about 20000 tonnes a turn, so about 1 RMU, while, as said, if we
>asume a minning potential of 10 for the Asteroid Belt, we can take about 87 RMUs
>from there to earth in a turn (and without the need to tie off eny ship).
Is there a question or a problem here? You seem to have described what the rules do.
From the player POV no problem, even glad that the space ressearch and developement might bring profits quite earlier than I expected, but from the logical POV, my mind refuses to accept that we can bring from the Asteroid Belt quite more materials than the space shipping capacity we have (you don't even need any space shipping capacity to transport those 1500000+ tonnes...)
Combat Cycle Ref:
>>The only way we can represent ‘more road’ is by requiring more Road facilities.
>may really even be simplier: to make costs for those facilities world size dependent.
..as well as making mass, power consumption, labour needed, etc, etc be world size dependent.
Maybe my wording was por here, whne I said "this may even be simplier" i was refering to your proposal, just pointing that it was not the only solution, even while agreeing it can well be the best one.
Combat Cycle Ref:
>I also believe that Asteroid Belts should be colonizable,
No. H&E does not generate usable maps for size 0 or R worlds, this makes it impossible to meaningfully place facilities or military units. It does not matter if it is unrealistic to not allow size 0 worlds to be colonized, we are limited by our gaming resources, if realism or the rules do not match what our gaming resources can do then realism or the rules **must be bent to match the resource**. We do not have to like that, but we do have to accept that.
Sure rules **must be bent to match the resource**, but they can be bent in several ways, and one of them would be to treat them more abstractly, as we do with the "orbital hex" in every satellite.
You explicited S sized planets are colonizable, and in the Astroid Belt you included 3 of them (I guess there could be more, but, as you said, we must limit the number of satellites if we want the game playable).
We can guess (or assume) any planetoid/asteroid belt will have such S sized bodies, and so allow them to be colonized (even if counting each of them as a single hex, for simplicity) and make that a must to exploit it.
In fact, this would be to make Asteroid Belts colonizable as S sized planets (assuming the colony is in one of those bodies) and only allow the Asteroid Mining to be used on them, instead of magically teleport over 1 AU all those ressources we have no shipping to transport.
Combat Cycle Ref:
>>PApoints cost is doubled, but so is effectiveness.
>Even one PA in current rules is often an overkill, doubling it will doublé the overkill,
The cost is doubled but so is price. The power per $ is unchanged; and then there is the removal of the price reduction for Prestige which effectively reduces this ‘overkill’.
It does not reduce the overkill. Your reasoning here seems to me as saying "exchanging the rifles to bazookas will not be an overkill against a single soldier, because even if the destructive power of the round is greater, so is its cost".
Going for more than a 5:1 in any PA action is a waste of ressources. Now we already find some of our actoins to be at higher ranges, and now we're told we must even double them, in force and cost (in fact, more than double in cost, as the average cost for 2 PAs was about $80, variable according to prestige, while now the cost of the equivalent 1 PA would be $100).
Combat Cycle Ref:
>It makes PAs rarer
>At $100 per PA, some countries can hardly afford them,
That would be the prime reason what I did it. Nothing takes more of the GM’s time then handling PAs; currently we are at around 100 separate actions per turn, I shudder to think what it will be once we get to larger empires.
>and less able to be "dispersed".
Not at all
The only way not to reduce the dispersal capacity is to allow PAs to be usedon several countries at once, and that would avoid the reducing on actions you're advocating for.
If before I wanted to use a PA on Somalia and one on Kuwaint, I could do and each was a separate action (and each an overkill, as if the dificulty multiplier was 1 the ratio was over 12:1) and cost was about $80. Now I must either use a $100 PA on each of them ($200 and 24:1 ratios, and that's what I call doubling the overkill) or one to affect both. If I do the latter, no actions are reduced, unless it is treated as a single action (and so a single roll), but I find quite illogical that so separate actions are solved as a single one...
And remember there are some uses for PAs that were not population related, so doubling the power of the PAs has no real meaning (as making some space actions), while doubling the cost has.
And don't worry about those larger empires. As rules for space settlement are becoming, they will never exist.
Combat Cycle Ref:
>so efectively nearly removing them as player countries…
We NEVER promised that player countries were equal. If a player has a problem with his nation being unable to afford PApoints then he never should have agreed to play that nation to begin with.
Off course they aren't equal, and not only in this sense, but when they agreed the conditions were not those, as the country could be able to afford some PAs (fortunatley, most of those nations are now NPCs or the same player plays also more playable ones).
Combat Cycle Ref:
>>Remade Authoritarian score to be from 0 to 20 to keep it consistent with other metrics.
>I'm afraid this messes things too much as game has been developing to now…
That would be the prime reason for making the change. The game has been developing in the direction of trying to account for small changes to the society of the player nations. A game of this scale has no business trying to account for such small changes to Authoritarian Score.
First of all forgive me to say (just for humor relief) that your wording seems to mean that messing it was the prime reason for making the change.
Now serously, it was yourself that said that would like to have much grater AM variability among the countries...
And beware the law of unintended consequences, as this change can have effects in formulas that we don't realize until the most inconvenient moment...
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>If so, to deploy an Enclave, you need 1.5 power (as the outpost must be kept) and 2 "slots" of OT capacity…
No, the Outpost is not kept, an Enclave is a Settlement.
Then the outspost simply disappears absorbed by the Enclavement? If so, I'd suggest to reduce the enclavement cost and mass to represent it, unless your intent is (again) to make more expensive and difficult to set it up.
Combat Cycle Ref:
>Then no light industry exists?
There has not been any ‘light industry’ facility for quite some time.
When I told about light industry I meand not heavy one, I though it would be clear. What I menat is that no RMUs may be used in the colony itself until you set up Heavy Industry there?
Combat Cycle Ref:
>So, any RMUs are only for exporting unless you have Heavy Industry (or to support orbital industry)?
Correct
That means no colony may produce its own supplies until heavy industry is set up (again difficulting settlement of planets). Not too consistent with 2300AD setting, where more than one colony has this non-heavy industry while lacking heavy one.