So theres 5 starbases. Military, Economics, Influence, Mining x2 (Resources + Asteroids). Fine, great. I can remember in DL, before I got it upgraded, I always hated scouts. They were totally useless, they only revealed thin little swaths of space, and with the auto-explore mode they wasted a lot of time just streaking to random places rather than revealing distinct areas. I still built them anyways because the map needed to get revealed somehow, and the AI always built them, so they must be useful right? Then, a light bulb went on in my head. Instead of some dinky tiny scout, what if I loaded a cargo ship with a buttload of sensor modules and a decent compliment of engines so they could actually move? Presto! With 4 ships, I had an unparalleled view of the entire, gigantic galaxy. I saw the AI's 3-speed warships from all the way across the galaxy, I could run my weak but fast ships in and out of their ships and pick off all their troop transports. Sure, my comp attempted to kill itself many times because of the amount of processing I was giving it, but hey, I had the greatest tactical advantage there is, foresight. I thought I was a genius. Then, I discovered that I could download patches off of this website. Gleefully, I downloaded the latest patch, and it was sweet. I started a new game everything was going great, and then I encountered a bug. For some reason my uber sensor ships weren't functioning properly. And slowly, I began to realize: this was no bug. This was a deliberate sensor cap, of a measly 15. I was crushed. How could this happen to me?! My best idea since pointing my gun AWAY from myself, stripped from me. Oh, Stardock, why, WHY?!
But that was last month. I am a much wiser, more mature man now (besides I’m more preoccupied with learning DA). I no longer need this advantage to crush my enemies (at least, not at Tough). Still though, I would like to see this come back, in some form. Which leads me to my idea, an "Observer type starbase" (hence the title). Besides providing the basic starbase functions (range, influence) and having weapons, these are some of the ideas I had.
A/ Extend the sensor range. This would be the only thing that can go beyond the 15 space sensor cap. Adding sensor modules would increase sensor range (duh), and go up to around 50 spaces max. This, as I said, would give a major strategic advantage to those who can see enemies from this distance.
B/ Remotely survey anomalies. This starbase could study stellar phenomena from a distance, provided they were in range. While survey ships can instantly study anomalies, these starbases would take several weeks to completely study an anomaly, directly proportional to the distance between the anomaly and the starbase.
C/ Espionage. First of all, I don’t like the way espionage was handled in DA. I’m not 100% sure how it works, but this is what I have gathered: You buy agents, send them to other worlds, where they sabotage buildings and build your "knowledge level" of that race, which eventually builds up to low, medium, high, and advanced. While the sabotaging of buildings is a good idea, it never seems to work because they always just neutralize your agent. Sure, I could just keep sending agents, but that is so damn annoying, and espionage builds really slowly, particularly when it keeps going in little jumps because of this. So I think that the observer starbase could function as a spying outpost. There are two ways that I think this could function. 1, you just build up knowledge about any civilization that’s in range. However this way doesn’t really make sense to me because I don’t think you could learn everything about a civilization just by looking at a few of their fringe planets. I think a better way for this would to be 4 spy modules, each one corresponding to a different "knowledge level" (constructed in order of course), and you could access that level of knowledge for anything within the starbases range, of any race. There wouldn’t be any general knowledge for each race. This could work alongside saboteur agents, perhaps they are sent out to planets within the starbases range.
Obviously, option C would require a huge overhaul to the espionage system. In fact it is basically an entirely new system, and as such has almost no chance of making to DL, maybe GCIII. Without the capacity of C, maybe this type of starbase wouldn’t be worth the money for A and B, so the whole starbase might not make it. But in any case, what are your thoughts? Yay or nay?
