Some background:
In the current order of events, combat takes place at a star before that star makes new ships. This means a couple of things:
- Unlike the +1 weapons bonus, this mechanic advantages the attacker. In other words, if the attacker is 8 ticks away, the star will only make 7 ticks worth of ships before combat happens.
- The winner will immediately get more ships. This may make planning to take or take back a star somewhat difficult or confusing.
Further, a star keeps track of a decimal number < 1 representing a partially constructed ship. Because you build an even number of ships every production cycle, but get new ships every tick, there is usually some left-over remainder that will be added to the next tick’s production.
As far as I know that number never resets, which means attackers that take your stars get parts of ships you built!
While I think it would make sense to change it so that ships are built before combat, this might affect the balance of the game too much (I don’t know though).
What I think definitely makes sense is for a tick of “unrest” when a star is captured. Basically combat could still happen first, but either way until the tick after combat+capture the star produces no ships and meanwhile it’s partial ships are zeroed out. I mean somebody just overthrew the government of an entire solar system, I think the shipbuilders union is going to be a little upset.
What do you think?