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Martin the Dane

Join Date 04/2004

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Move ship production into orbital space

A different aproach to ship-building

I'd like to se Starship production separated from planetary production. I think it was in a StarWars game I played eons ago, planets could only produce small space crafts, like sensor drones, star fighters etc. (in that game it was X-Wings, Y-Wings, Tie-Fighters etc.)

Each planet should be able to have a number of orbital ship-building facilities for building larger ships; these could either be shipped in or built on planet. Furthermore SBs should also be able to build ships. This would not create unlimited ship production, since each facility would require money, raw material, and possibly crew in order to operate. Whether raw material comes from planet-side or space-based mining doesn’t matter. This will also help alleviate the problem of having your ship-building and repair facilities located far from where you need it. Of cause you'd have to protect the supply-lines to the bases not in territory controlled by you or they might run out of raw material.

To get an idea of what I propose look at the way it's done in SpaceEmpires, each planet of a certain size has a free space yard, all other space yards are build on ships and star bases, either in orbit or deep space. Since building ships requires resources ship building capacity is not the only limiting factor for ship building.

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I agree with you in the general direction - having a big empire with tens if not hundreds of spaceship producing facilities is a...nightmare. For players, at least. (And even if it is not, just look at AI players. Every planet of theirs is building ships...

I do not understand why designers cannot escape from this planet-bound notion that ships must be built in or around a planet. This is probably like saying, every state has a car factory or a tank factory or an airplane factory.

Besides, what is this notion of a spaceship-building facility building one and only that one spaceship at any given time? Haven't people heard of assembly line? If a production facility is big enough, it is conceivable it can pump out several starships all at once.

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That would be a neat twist for a Space Sim (pardon me if it's been done, but I've never seen it) Planets can build up smaller craft, but larger craft must be built at space stations. Maybe have a ongoing production assignment like produce starship parts/weapons and the production points spent get split up among your starbase ship centers. I wouldn't have the player restricted to just one though, let them build them wherever they need them, however, they'd be good targets for destruction by enemies.

This would pair up well with my suggestion on space colonies, as opposed to just bases. I made it in the Ringworld/Dyson sphere thread, if you care to look

(They'd pretty much be construct your own planets, with few regions, and cost a lot to support)

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do not understand why designers cannot escape from this planet-bound notion that ships must be built in or around a planet. This is probably like saying, every state has a car factory or a tank factory or an airplane factory.

Not quite the same thing: you can travel in the various states without a car or without a plane. But to travel in space, you need ships. So for your planet beeing able to send material to other planets or in space, you need first to have facilities for space travel.
A bette analogy would be sailing at the timer of the discover of the new world: you need to have ports where to build ships to be able to explore/conquer or colonize overseas territories.
So you can't really escape building ships around a planet.

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You're thinking of Star Wars: Rebellion, the ONLY attempt to use the Star Wars License on a 4x title. It's one of my absolute favorite SW games there is, but not because it was an outstanding title. Rebellion was a perfect example of Lucas Arts inability to execute a decent game design. Rebellion was unfinished in so many areas. But it was 4x, and it was SW, so I played it and loved it.

The concept of building in one location and shipping to another is something I always liked about Rebellion. It made sense too. You could have an industrial center to your empire and have it supply your entire empire with ships and building materials. It worked much like modern industry does today. You have areas that tend to be big on production factories (china) that then ship finished goods to outside areas. This allows other places to focus more on residential or retail space... whatever they like since they don't have to be completely self-contained and produce everything they need.

For ships, this build here, deploy there idea could be established by implementing rally points. Lets say I have my industrial centers on Deneb I, II and IV but there is a conflict brewing along my border with the Yor. Instead of regearing all of my frontier colonies to be industrial centers, I could kick the shipyards of Deneb into high-gear and start sending out defense fleets.

Just a thought.

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GC1 had raley points, I never used them much. And they do not aleviate the problem of ships being hoplessly outdated by the time they reached the front-line.

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You still have to make a choice in GC2 wether or not a planet will have the ability to build ships, since the starport is a physical Planet Improvement that have to be built. This way you CAN have your outtermost planets focus on making ships, then use that extra planet tile on protected planets for research, banking, or something more passive.

We actually had StarPorts as orbital stations in the early Alpha's of GC2. The StarPort was a physical unit that sat on a tile right outside your planet. You would click on that to build ships, and it could be attacked and destroyed ot hamper your war effort.

However, it became confusing, both from a UI perspective, and from a cluttered map persepective. Now we'll jsut have a little icon on planets that can build ships. Simple, but we beleive just as effective

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Makes sense the starport would be in close orbit or on ground anyhow, where it would be closer for shipping to and from and easier to protect.

Question: Currently I see military production being spent on worlds whether or not a starport is present. Will this be changed for starportless worlds? If not, it seems to me the player will be forced to build starports everywhere to avoid sending money down the drain.

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If not, it seems to me the player will be forced to build starports everywhere to avoid sending money down the drain.

Unless unspent military BC go back to treasury.

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We've been told that unspent BC will go back to the treasury. Haven't checked the math to see if that is happening in the current build.

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You are right Peace, and this goes for Social production as well, but I feel it should not be listed or should be grayed out. Still I would prefer to be able to allocate spending rates for individual planets. But this has little to do with moving ship production off planet. What does have is the starport, though I dont like it I can accept the nesecity for some planetbound structure to coordinate shipbuilding, in orbital space, but then what about starbases being able to build ships?

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