RNG is RNG. Some games you get a bunch of great planets right around you, and sometimes you get nothing. I'd be absolutely stunned if it was tuned toward giving the AI an advantage. Stardock afaik has never been one to increase difficulty through AI "cheating" like so many other companies are wont to do in 4x games.
[quote who="Echelion" reply="22" id="3488157"] No,No,No,A million times No! it wasnt in GC1 or GC2 so why the hell would it be in GC3! You've been told by Brad of all people and if you crave TC that much SD also developed Sins so go play that instead! *walks off into the distance muttering to himself* [/quote] I don't support TC. That said, "it wasn't in GC1 or GC2" is probably absolutely the worst reason to
Agreed, 6 parsecs really isn't far enough, it's not really practical atm to tie multiple planets to a shipyard. Perhaps they could introduce some technologies to extend the range, or tie it to something like logistics. The only modifier I've seen so far is the "Efficiency" upgrade in the pragmatism tree.
Didn't see anything on shipyard sponsorship distance efficiency so I did a little experimentation and figured out that up to 6 hexes away gives no penalty to production, beyond 6 hexes seems to give ~10% penalty (90%@7,80%@6 etc) so at 16 hexes or further you only get 1 production from a planet regardless of it's actual output. Haven't taken a real close look at tech trees or anything to see if there are any technologies that affect this. If anyone has
Perhaps a building that applies a percentage of a planets approval from wealth to the empire would be a good idea so that it's more conceivable to build planets that specialize in production.