Now that combat is working pretty well (while still needing some fixes of course), we should probably concentrate on making the rest of the game more interesting in MP games. I'd suggest the following:

- a (fast) research rate option

- a system morale penalty for starvation

- a global morale penalty for negative credits

- morale affecting shipbuilding output

In addition, as a temporary measure to make minors usable in MP, instead of having them join automatically, require the empire to pay a certain amount of credits to "buy" them. The code already contemplates a formula for calculating the value of a colony, though I think it might need to be tweaked.

good suggestions, especially round about credits: morale penalty for negative credits + credits used for buying minors.

By the way: I like the method to make prices more and more expensive, depending on numbers of turn or on average techlevel, or just double it.

so first empire might have to pay 1000 credits, 2nd 2000 credits and so on. Normally there might be also a corruptibility value for each minor or minor kind(*) and normally minor needs firstly to be bribed before minor changes to another empire. If morale of a minor goes down they could also break away from the empire.

(*) some minor kinds could be:
Financial
Warlike
Agrarian
Industrial
Secret
Scientific
Producer
Pacifist
Sneaky
SOLOING
HOSTILE
RELIGIOUS

I think I`ll concentrate next on fixing some more combat issues.
Then get into the morale system.
Could probably fiddle a research factor rather easily.
And then there`s Diplomacy and Agents...

So much stuff to do....

I agree, core first, then fancy stuff.

Ghost ships, hmm... making fleet composition an unreliable reading (count and type, your Q ships comment), sure, but creating fleets where there are none... I'm not even sure that'd be feasible UI-wise.

About Intel, we could probably have Buildings that generate it instead of PFs, I guess. Or the empires that do not have Intel Buildings (Federation and Klingons) could rely on minors with intel special Buildings to get it. And Agents of course.

I was just providing an alternative to adding PFs back - which I think we should, like you said.
There are already intel producing Buildings, for the Romulans, Cardassians and Dominion. And the Klingons have internal security, instead of intel, and the Federation can also easily have intsec. Playing without minors, you could always rely on Agents.
But again, just an alternative. Adding PFs back might take some time, code-wise. Some of the code was kept, but a large chunk was removed I think. In terms of data, it's very easy to reinstate intel, I left everything commented out just in case

Surely going to be some work (code-wise) to re-add thats for sure.
Oh well, sucks to be me i guess

We should probably disallow any shipbuilding for bankrupt empires? And automatically set all systems' construction queues to Trade Goods - since they're not implemented yet, also disallow any construction?

I completely agree for colony builds, that's how BOTF did it also. Shipyards have their independent build outputs so might argue that they shouldn't be affected. But then again, gameplay wise, it would make sense to slap the player in the face for not taking care of its treasury!

+1

In that same light, not sure if shipyard output should be affected by morale (automated output), like mentioned in the OT, but the same slap in the face argument could be used.

I'd say as long as we can argue that people are required to make shipyards work then yes, they should be hit by morale. If they were fully automated, then I'd say no.