Jae Kaenash

Join Date 03/2003

My idea: Add Labs/missions to Capital Ships

Starflight/Star Control style

As a "Good" race, I sometimes think that when most of my ships are armed to the teeth with weapons, that it would be nice if I could have stuck a Labs deck on there.

Imagine a module that adds Research to a ship. It may even be higher when its outside of your territory by 10% (Assuming it is exploring the galaxy). To me, this is kind of the reason Trek Federation Ships are armed but have an exploration/lab mission.

Additionally, I would like to see modules that let me carry "Away Teams" and generate them not unlike espionage agents. I can then place them by first travelling to a planet (even a level 0 planet) and select certain missions. "Explore Ruins", "First Contact".

These missions could randomly provide technology, influence and in some ways act like surveys except instead of spacial anamolies all races could access them on nuetral planets and on minor race planets.

This is probably more because I like to "Role play" my race, and generally when playing Good I tend to get bored mid-game and want to just conquer things. Giving me something else to do with my capital ships would be nice.

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It's a good idea, and I'm suprised no one has thought of it sooner.

I like the away team idea. Whenever a Colony Ship lands on a planet, they scout the planet, right? How? With an Away Team. That sounds a lot like the Planetary Colonization ethical decisions, except that those are only a one-shot deal.

A starship equipped with the 'Away Team module' could be able to produce Away Teams. The time it took to do this would depend on the module. Similar to how weapons get smaller as you research more, the module would become a faster production unit. You'd need a new tech branch, though.

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To look at the suggestion a different way... what about ships that can deploy spies within a short radius? Using them would require keeping out of sight or not hanging around longer than necessary (ie, only deploying the spy while passing through) because the spy could be traced to you.

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How is that better then regular espionage?

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I like your idea Jae.

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How is that better then regular espionage?

It isn't. It can be traced to you and it requires an equipped ship nearby. But it'd be cheaper to field those than it would to field normal spies... those things get CRAZY expensive after a while.

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smartie0

Join Date 02/2006

Its a great idea..
There are 2 things in this game that I dont like so much.. you get some bonus without a good reason.
1st is the space anomalies.. just put some spots on the map and send survey ships to explore them and you get a random bonus..
2nd the bonus resources.. military, morale, research and economic. Built starbases and you increase them..
What Jae suggests is a much better idea instead space anomalies.
Lets say we forget the idea space anomalies and instead we have some real ones but very rare that can appear anytime even like a mega event, like black holes, supernovas and other space exotic stuff.
And most common for survey ships or ships equiped with a lab they can scan solar systems, the sun, the planets their orbits. And depended on their sensor technology they can find more or less.
Using just the sensors of the ship or even send an away team to investigate a planet. Sometimes we will be unable to investigate before we advance on sensor technologies or we research a special technology. And here we could have a mega event like a virus that spreads all over the galaxy or an artifact that advances our civilization.

On the 2nd the bonus resources would be much better to scrap them. Yes they help they are good.. but.. morale, military points? You extract something and people get happier and soldiers better? Its no sense..
I say then again when the survey ships scan the planets they can find ancient scripts or devices that can help to find ways to improve our morale and military. Additionaly on some planets colonizable or not we can built bases to extract minerals that they help the economy or bases to study something on the planet that gives us a research bonus. (when the study is over the base closes)

Sorry for the exteded text..

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It's been explained that the Resources are left over from the Precursors. I happen to like the idea of them. I like the anomalies too, they were left from the Precursors. I think I read a post somewhere that the galaxy is littered with devices and resources left over from Precursor time. So it makes total sense, in my mind, to have resources and anomalies.

In the manual, it explains what each resource is. The 'something' is a fluid that makes people live longer, as a result, it increases their happiness and eventually morale.

The base idea is interesting. But maybe they should only be buildable on Uninhabitable worlds.

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Hello. I have been always a bit disappointed by the survey system. You explore all the anomalies in the first weeks then you have nothing to do for the rest of the game, except waiting to upgrade your survey vessels into strong warships. In a way you lose interest in exploration and, if you (role)play a good race like jae kaenash was saying, you easily get bored during the midgame unless you start conquer or declare war to evil races.

I think a solution could be to connect the exploration of anomalies to your actual technological level. When you start the game you are very poor technologically and it's a nonsense that you can understand everything in the galaxy. So i believe if your understanding of anomalies would depend on your advancing in the xeno research branch, you will have some anomalies that you can explore in the very beginning when you have only the knowledge of xeno research and others for which you'll have to wait until the discovery sphere. Note that in this case, not only you will have anomalies in the galaxy until the end of the game, but it would make sense also that law about exploring anomalies only in your territory.

I would also like to see stable warmholes and dangerous anomalies which can destroy your survey ship or bring problems to your empire.

About the away teams, i don't have a clear idea but it seems to me a very good one.

richard

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What ever happened to the great ideas from this thread?

I definitely like that it inspired a few thoughts. Away Teams, Labs, Tech level requirements to survey. Surveying planets.

I used to love Starflight for that reason.

From the Planet: "This is Lt Jensen, we've found something down here..."

The player then delegates or prompts them to do something else. Not always good, nuetral or evil, sometimes its just gray.

Putting lab modules on ships though, thats an idea by itself.

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COOL thread - love all the ideas in here!

Chr*s

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With so many good ideas it would seem that GC will be around for a long time as the developers implement some of them into the game and/or somebody does their own mod using the guidelines expressed. My opinion not withstanding it makes a lot of sense regarding stable wormholes that are usable by any ship and a few larger ones that will allow a fleet to utilize. My own imput would be along the lines of a Carrier type ship that is capable of hauling smaller size ships. IE a large or huge hull fitted out to carry X amount of tiny or small ships as fighters/bombers/explorers etc. Still GC is the best game around as it stands and just keeps getting better.

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You know what else would be cool, since you are on the topic of carriers (and then you can get into assault fighters, bombers, etc), is if some one just made Masters of Orion II playable on Vista with a map editor and a few tiny + tweaks.

That would rock too.

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It would be interesting to see, either as a random event to be discovered or something perhaps to be created, Dyson Spheres around a star. If its a random event, and you managed to take control of one, it could be an extremely high class planetoid, perhaps even higher than 30, simply because of its huge internal surface.

Or if you were to create one for the same benefit, perhaps you would be required to harvest some enormous amount of raw material just to make one.

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An interesting scenario

"To touch the sky".

The player can not build colony ships.

You get a size 30 planetoid and you travel 1 square across the map per turn. You must reach the opposite side of the map.

Your people are an ancient race that is fleeing some galactic tyranny.

You can build other ships though and conquer other planets that way if you want or just use the ships to defend your planetoid.

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