Are you able to update this to 2.0?

@NordikaMan
This variant feels the best and I think AI is better with this variant rathen than with 40%/planet :) Sometimes research is too smooth and easy, but Alphamod+Expanded Spaceport Modules give more possibilities in boosting research. I can finally colonize average and even small planets :), so does AI! And we all know that AI doesn't care about a size of planets.

@aiidynmaster
I'm not sure, if I understand you in 100%. You think that new colonies should hinder research (this mod gives 20% penalty/planet), but not if fully developed - there is a small bonus per new pop. It's more about balance.

Or you mean the realistic side of this? Maybe you should think this way: New founded colony = research penalty, because scientists study the planet to help colonists survive, then this colony slowly develops = more scientists = more help = a little less penalty. Why is there still penalty with fully populated planet? Maybe... their minds are busy with new problems on the planet - overpopulation, diseases, etc. :D And why it affects planets? Well, it affects global research rather than local research output on the planets. Scientists are connected to the Internet and their planet-related jobs hinder researching new techs, unless they have psionic/synthetic abilities :)

@NordikaMan

The whole research penalty thing both bothers me and interests me. While I do think new colonies should hinder research, a fully developed planet should not. It's called Skype and the Internet guys. >_> The more minds you have on a subject, the better.

And why would planet D that was just founded hinder planets A, B, and C? What do scientists have to do with the process of colonization anyway?

Would a similar rebalancing for Unity be feasible?

yes this is amazing now i can have my huge empire taking up one fith of the galaxy ad still research stuff easily! where has this mod been all my empires space faring life.

@Zares No problem! Let me know what you think and feel free to tweak the numbers to your liking.

Yaaay! Thank you for this variant :) I'll finally be able to colonize average and small planets without thinking bad about penalties!

@WERWOLF-SS This doesnt affect AI directly.

@nDervish Have you found any balance that seems appropriate? Ultimately, like I mentioned in the original mod description, this concept will need a different implementation all together so that you can tie a colony size directly to the penalty, rather than a flat rate regardless of colony size... One day... Busy getting my own game up on Steam!

@NordikaMan: Based on your original version, I've been messing around with different settings over the last few days and, although I'd really prefer for a large, fully-developed world to provide a bonus rather than a penalty, you'd need to also rescale the tech costs to make higher-tier tech more expensive, otherwise research gets to be stupidly fast, because the vanilla tech costs rely on population-based research penalties to inflate their costs.

If it makes the ai actually invest in making planets better than yes.

@aidynmaster: I almost want to make this version such that a fully colonized planet will ultimately be a bonus, not a drawback. What do you think?