I have been doing some brainstorming on how crew could halt a growing meta which I believe is harmful for the game, while also encouraging warfare and expansion between factions without allowing factions to grow too rapidly.
This suggestion has three main pillars.
1. Every Ship Needs A Pilot
The first pillar is how we prevent extreme entity spam, of mass drone and turret spam. Every ship needs a pilot to function, no matter how small. Spamming 4 dozen AI microdrones every battle quickly becomes impractical when this means you lose 4 dozen NPC pilots every battle, which take time and resources to replace. Having a huge number of turrets on a disproportionately small ship is impractical because it will make the ship need a huge amount of room dedicated to interior.
Larger ships also need additional crew besides their pilot and turret operators to keep their systems running effectively. This should probably increase linearly.
2. Planets Produce Pilots
The second pillar is how you get pilots.
Terran planets can be cheaply colonized with simple buildings and farms. Farms need NPCs to maintain them, and will constantly produce food. Any surplus is stored, and if there is enough surplus being produced, new NPCs will appear on the planet if there is available housing for them. You can recruit these NPCs to crew your ships and control your turrets, as well as colonize new planets. The limited speed at which new NPCs can be recruited puts a limit on how quickly a faction can expand and control its territory.
Other more hostile or alien planet types can also be farming colonies by setting up more expensive habitation and farm units compared to the simplicity of setting up on a terran world, but perhaps these would be better suited as mining colonies via the often suggested mantle extractors.
3. Pilots Need Room, Pay, And Food
The third pillar is how NPCs effect your ship and your overall faction economy.
NPCs require a place to sleep, a place to eat, and a place to work, at minimum. NPCs need to be payed for their work or they won't do it. And NPCs need food to stay alive, or they'll eventually starve to death. Pay and food should be mainly automated after figuring out initial set up. Colonies automatically produce food which is automatically transferred where it is needed where it is automatically consumed. Credits are automatically given to your crew for payment.
Unless you are running a negative, you can maintain your fleet and the NPCs running it indefinitely.
But it does limit how big your fleet can be based on how much territory you control, which forces you to expand if you want to have a larger fleet, whether that is of traders and manufacturing or for combat.
This suggestion has three main pillars.
1. Every Ship Needs A Pilot
The first pillar is how we prevent extreme entity spam, of mass drone and turret spam. Every ship needs a pilot to function, no matter how small. Spamming 4 dozen AI microdrones every battle quickly becomes impractical when this means you lose 4 dozen NPC pilots every battle, which take time and resources to replace. Having a huge number of turrets on a disproportionately small ship is impractical because it will make the ship need a huge amount of room dedicated to interior.
Larger ships also need additional crew besides their pilot and turret operators to keep their systems running effectively. This should probably increase linearly.
2. Planets Produce Pilots
The second pillar is how you get pilots.
Terran planets can be cheaply colonized with simple buildings and farms. Farms need NPCs to maintain them, and will constantly produce food. Any surplus is stored, and if there is enough surplus being produced, new NPCs will appear on the planet if there is available housing for them. You can recruit these NPCs to crew your ships and control your turrets, as well as colonize new planets. The limited speed at which new NPCs can be recruited puts a limit on how quickly a faction can expand and control its territory.
Other more hostile or alien planet types can also be farming colonies by setting up more expensive habitation and farm units compared to the simplicity of setting up on a terran world, but perhaps these would be better suited as mining colonies via the often suggested mantle extractors.
3. Pilots Need Room, Pay, And Food
The third pillar is how NPCs effect your ship and your overall faction economy.
NPCs require a place to sleep, a place to eat, and a place to work, at minimum. NPCs need to be payed for their work or they won't do it. And NPCs need food to stay alive, or they'll eventually starve to death. Pay and food should be mainly automated after figuring out initial set up. Colonies automatically produce food which is automatically transferred where it is needed where it is automatically consumed. Credits are automatically given to your crew for payment.
Unless you are running a negative, you can maintain your fleet and the NPCs running it indefinitely.
But it does limit how big your fleet can be based on how much territory you control, which forces you to expand if you want to have a larger fleet, whether that is of traders and manufacturing or for combat.