Downsides for not supplying colony

From the videos that I have seen, there is little focus on the survival or growth of the colony that the "free market people" were sent out to cover. Are there any incentives other than increased growth potential from more resource demand, for example fines if at least basic supply isn't met. These fines could scale to the person's wealth or stock price.

Right now it feels like the colony is just a resource sink with no political power of its own at the whim of people that'd rather sell to earth than to them. I assume they were hired by the colony, so it could make some sense.

This is all of course without having played the game, so it could be that the suggestion would be really far fetched from actual gameplay.

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Reply #1 Top

If you dont supply the colony, prices rise. If prices get high, the colony stops growing... thus limiting the demand of other goods. If prices get REALLY high, the colony shrinks, severely limiting the demand of goods.  If the colony reaches zero pop, everyone loses.

Reply #2 Top

I'm not 100% sure because the colony mechanics are a little opaque but I don't think you directly supply the colony, meaning they do not suck resources out of your pockets throughout the game.  So, you can't cut them off directly.

However, as pbhead mentions, the size of the colony is heavily effected by the prices of commodities (particularly life support - Water, Food, Oxygen, Power(?)).  There is/was also a "jobs" element to it but it is unclear what drives the quantity of jobs.

It's difficult to tell currently how a big colony vs. a small colony effects the prices in the game.  For example,does a large colony drive up the price of Electronics?

Reply #3 Top

Not having played the game yet, so as a complete newb, I feel that it would be a nice goal to grow the colony as big as it can. Which probably would involve not winning as long as you possibly can, while not letting the other players win at the same time. Is this at all possible? Are there stats in which you can see the ultimate size of the colony?