Too easy colonisation

[Kastuk]

It's too easy to build colony fast, when you just land on rocket and place an Airport. Even if it not finished, you already can teleport all needful materials instantly from the developed planet. This one removing problem of transporting goods almost completelly from the start. Such problem of costly transportation is what prevent us to colonise our Earth's Moon.

Also, presence of coal and oil on the moonrock removing second need of carbon and fuel to develop industry (especially steel making).

All of that ruining a lot of space pioneering romantic of first days struggling for life with just local materials using and feel of distance to home, when people isolated on an island and waiting for next ship from the mainland.
Want a need to bring building cargo by crates inside rocket for some time.

Why not at least make in-system material autotransfering limited by amount per time, the same like broker?

[Deantwo]

If you just don't build an airport in your home city until after you have built one on the moon, you can relive the old days.

The fact the building material costs depends on the building blueprint, means that you can just build a tiny tiny airport. So no matter how you look at it, the old way of doing moon colonies is gone.

[Oggal]

Doing it just to relive the old days is one thing. The issue is all challenge of building a moon colony has been removed.

Non-Habital worlds should require workers before auto importing goods, or airports should at least require completion.

While I love than a space rocket flown by a simi-skilled pilot could colonize an entire star system without a starship, the fact of the matter is colonization is too easy too early. The ease of building a second colony means many players will have no experience loading a colonizing ship to start a new star system by the time they depart from their home system. While not an overly large issue on it's own, add in many player depart with only a P worm hole drive and you quickly find players stranded in a system they are not equip to colonize.

The challenge of building a lunar colony not only increases the depth of the game, it trains new players to be ready for colonizing more distant planets.

Again, I propose that the airport require being finished before it will begin to import goods and workers from system colonies. This is a simpler challenge than the old, needing a broker, airport, and power while still giving players a chance to learn about the requirements of building on remote uninhabited celestial bodies.

[Norm49]

It would be nice if we can have junior officer on planet that can command intra system unarmed cargo ship and that how stuff would be move to other planet in the same system,no more magic interplanetary ware teleportation. It would fit your problem and open new game play. It would now be possible to blockade a planet. New type of warfare, wars of attrition trying to force a planet to surrender (morale drop so the city rebel an become a city form a NPC pirate empire).

[Oggal]

[...] It would now be possible to blockade a planet. New type of warfare, wars of attrition trying to force a planet to surrender (morale drop so the city rebel an become a city form a NPC pirate empire).

This, blockading planets, is a lovely idea that should be discussed further in a separate thread. (I'll link to it here if I make such a post later today)

However, discussing a "Junior Officer" or perhaps "Trade Commissioner" on planet that commands trade ships in system. There are a number of questions brought by such an idea. Firstly, where would one find such officer? Perhaps just as a menu at an airport or broker? How does the game determine where a valid location to send these cargo ships to is? Would it use any and all airports and delivery locations? It seems like it justs adds an extra step of returning to the home world after completing an airport on the moon. this could complicate setting up large systems and add server load checking the officers orders that would be better used via just requiring an air port be finished.
I would like to hear the idea explained more in depth though.

I do like the idea of a Trade Commissioner, or Research Lead NPC guiding players in some form of story tutorial setting up their first truely distant colony, but that too is an idea for a separate thread.

[Deantwo]

I propose that the airport require being finished before it will begin to import goods and workers from system colonies. This is a simpler challenge than the old, needing a broker, airport, and power while still giving players a chance to learn about the requirements of building on remote uninhabited celestial bodies.

Brokers aren't involved in city trade anymore. Brokers only trade with spacecraft and send shipments to other solar systems. Instead buildings simply fetch whatever they need from other buildings they are connected to.

Power plant was not required in order to start trade in the old days. With the large amount of materials needed to construct a power plant in the current system, it would be a nightmare to force a player to manually ferry the needed construction materials for it. Unless you want to make the good old space rocket totally obsolete and force players to build a rocket-drive spacecraft.

It is not far fetched (pun intended?) that civilian cargo ships can land at an airport that is under construction. All civilian trade and commodity transportation is invisible to the players, so it doesn't matter much anyway.

As it is right now, there isn't even a difference between the different trade connection link types. A building can always fetch materials from another building at the same speed rather it is connected by road or space. This might be changed some day, but who knows.
As it is right now, intra solar system colonization is not hard. But what purpose is there to make the most basic action hard to do once?

This, blockading planets, is a lovely idea that should be discussed further in a separate thread. (I'll link to it here if I make such a post later today)

Blockading worlds does indeed sound somewhat interesting. Also block (or even plunder) shipments that are sent from or received by the solar system.
But yes, it is off-topic and likely better to discuss it in a separate thread.