I've seen an occasional post about resource requirements, perhaps having special planet tiles that have a 'resource' on them, and to get that resource you have to build a special improvement to mine that resource. These would allow what you mentioned above, being able to then add certain components that require that resource to ships, or allow starbase modules. Of course, if you lose that planet, and thus the resource, those ships and starbases also lose their abilities.

Perfectly said... So basically, the Snathi are hoarding the U.S. Congress. You know, I bet Stardock will take minors to the next level. Perhaps add a race of flamingos or pelicans, maybe some beavers, and donkeys. Maybe even a Sarah Palin minor and a Nancy Pelosi minor.

You know, when I first started playing GC2, I actually thought there was a way to make starbases in orbit, from the text of some of the tech's, such as orbital replicators... then I finally figured out I had to build about 10 constructors to make the dang thing.

Good idea, perhaps only a military orbital starbase would increase the 'ships in orbit cap'. Also having orbital starbases could be prone to attack, so if you are fending off an invasion force, your orbital starbases could get destroyed if the invasion is successful in wiping out your defensive ships. But then, how much firepower would/should these orbital starbases have?

Well, the question is, how would orbital starbases be built? Constructors couldn't do the job, since they will just go into orbit on a planet.... Hmmm... unless after you build a constructor and launch it, then when you bring it back into orbit, you get a prompt: Either enter orbit, or build orbital starbase.

If they are auto fully built-up, perhaps the max being 1 of each would suffice (a military, economic, influence), or it could become way too powerful. But if they are fully built up, they would have to be specal constructors and would have to cost ALOT (prob the cost of 10-15 constructor modules, all combined into 1 module).

Speaking of things that orbit, to be honest, tiny and small hulled ships are fine being built on a planet and taking off... but medium hull and larger, no way. Having a 1400 meter long Huge Hull ship take off from Houston is going a bit overboard.
"Holy Crap! This is Houston, and we have a massive liftoff!"
Maybe when you research Medium Hull, you have to build an Orbital Shipyard, or Drydock, or something of the sort, so medium and larger hulled ships would be built there.

Maybe have a type of hull (I want 3 to go beyond just Tiny/Small/Medium/Large/Huge) that cannot orbit a planet after it is launched: a sort of "deep space only" limit.

Instead of either extreme (Hull size is unimportant/ hull size kills all), I for one think that it would be a good idea to have a battle system that factors in attack, defense, and HP equally. A small ship with top-notch weapons or defenses would be able to duke it out with a worse-armed huge ship. Of course, larger hull means abuility to fit on more stuff, so there would be no such thing as a worse-armed huge ship unless the opponent is way behind on his research. So, I would propose to seperate the HP factor from the capacity factor: instead of selecting hulls, choose model of hull and composition. They would be on seperate branches of the tree, one would regulate capacity, and one would regulate HP. Hull model would factor into your "class" system (maybe even BE a class system!), and the game would be more balanced w/o completely destroying the incentive to research new hulls.

I'd like to see us be able to get map data when we have very high intelligence levels for a distant civ. I'm working on an Immense map, and the Drengin are in the far corner from me. I just got Advanced intel, and it suddenly struck me as very silly that I can have all that detailed info about them but still have no idea about the map in their area.

I also got a corrollary bump because I finally noticed that you can place passive spies without knowing wehere a *single* planet in the other civ is. That also seems a bit off.

So your saying... Hull size would just allow one to add more modules onto it? and hitpoints would be uneffected by hull-size. Whereas you would gain increasing amounts of hitpoints for all ships through research. So all ships would essentially have the same amount of hitpoints?

In that case, larger hulls would still cost more since they would have the ability to stack more weapons/defense and modules on them, but would have no more hitpoints than a tiny or small hull.

It depends on how the dev's view hitpoints. If hitpoints are viewed as the hull's strength, this wouldn't make sense. But if they viewed hitpoints just as an overall 'health factor', it might make sense. After all, in space, a bigger ship would actually have more problems (or be just as prone to destruction) as a smaller ship. In reality 1 blast to almost any part of a ship that causes a breach, would in essence destroy the whole ship (unless force fields block the breach, as Star Trek does).

So, if 2 civ's have equal tech, and a tiny hull (20 hp's) goes against a huge hull (20 hp's), the huge hull should still win just because it can pack on way more defense and weapons, whereas the tiny hull can only fit a few. This would make tiny hulls MUCH MORE VALUABLE though. Depends on what the cost of the units are really.

And then, hitpoint modules would probably be likely to be used on large ships, out of fear of having them destroyed by smaller, much cheaper ships.

I don't know. The whole hull size thing always bothered me.

Look at how unit construction worked in Alpha Centauri. Each "hull" (chassis) was a specific type of movement mode. And each hull conferred special powers onto the unit. The purpose of this being that (in theory at least) newer hulls don't make older hulls obsolete; they simply give you more tactical options.

What good is that? If that's the case, if one is not at least situationally better than the other, then clearly you don't need one of these. And since the capital ship cost the person who researched it tech points, you basically screwed over the person who bothered to research new hulls.

Like I said: the best way to make units interesting is to allow them to be special and interesting. Maybe the earliest hull is best for defensive ships, perhaps even provides an added bonus for being in orbit, but offsets this with a movement penalty. Maybe later hulls are more effective in quick strikes: they get lots of movement points, but they can only attack once per turn. Other hulls might be slower, but can attack multiple times per turn. Things like that.

So about orbital starbases....

I was thinking (once again) along the lines of Star Wars Empire At War. I loved how the starbases were just these massive obstacles for an enemy invasion force, that just kept on spawning suppourt ships and fighters, which constantly harrassed you until you destroyed certain hardpoints (such as the hangers), in which case it would blow up.

It doesn't have to be the same way in GalCiv3, I was just basing my idea on the one mentioned above. So what orbital starbases would work like would be as follows.......

They could have a certain amount of attack/defense points (of course since they are in orbit, they would be weaker than Deep Space Starbases), to help out any defensive force in the area. If the combat value of small and tiny hulls gets hiked up in GalCiv3, they should also add hangers onto those starbases. For each starbase you had, you would be able to launch a certain amount of tiny and small hulled fighters to help in the defense (just imagine having 7 Orbital Starbases launching 7-10 fighters each, it might be a bit overwhelming, but once again, it would all come down to how effective Tiny and Small hulled fighters will be). But if Tiny and Small hulls remain as crappy as they are now, each of those orbital starbases might as well be launching 500 Tiny fighters against a fleet of 5 Capital Ships (which would probablly pwn all of those Tiny Fighters eitherway). But if the combat system gets changed around, Stardock should try incorporating hangers onto starbases (if not onto the orbital ones, then at least put them on the deep space ones we have now in GalCiv2).

And I agree whole-heartedly with Doom, orbital starbases should be expensive. You wouldn't really have to buy a constructor to build one, it would be sortof like a social project. Within the Planet Screen (the one that shows you all the pretty little buildings that you have built) there should be a tab that takes you to another screen which shows you the available number of starbases that you can build on a planet. Let's say that the maximum is 10. At the beginning, you would have ten blank slots aranged in two rows of five, and on the left hand side, you will find a scroll-down list of all the available starbases that you can build (there will obviously be some restrictions to the amount, and type of starbases that you are allowed to build per planet, such as number of moons, this can for example be good or bad).

There should be an economic starbase (acts like a stock market for that planet, also increases the value of trade routes attached to that planet), manufacturing starbase (acts like a factory), orbital shipyard (increases the number of ships you are allowed to build at a time, maximum of 2 of these starbases per planet), propaganda array (acts like a morale booster), orbital shopping mall (helps spread your influence at discout prices, LOL), orbital gun platform (sortof like a massive hulled ship, only it can fit more weaponry and defenses), orbital greenhouse (increases food production, just thought I'd throw this one in here).

And the list goes on, you guys will probablly be able to come up with others.

Getting back to the paragraph before this last one......

So for example, you decide to queue up 5 economic, 2 orbital greenhouse, and 3 propaganda array starbases. I thinks you would build this on an economic planet. You could (maybe) be able to rush buy these, but prepare to shell out alot of moolah. The price of each consecutive starbase should increase by a 25-50% margin. So let's say you had to pay 1000 BC for the first one, you will have to pay 1250-1500 BC for the second one (and so on and so forth). These would of course only have direct effects on any thing related to that one planet in specific (such as production, income, trade routes, etc.).

I think I missed a point or two back there. If so, please remind me, I'll comment on it as soon as possible.

And then, there is the micromanagement problem of Deep Space Starbases. These shouldn't be totally jetisoned from the game, they should just be upgraded. Such as the ability to build their own modules. This of course is somewhat stupid. You shouldn't remove the reliance on additional constructors, Stardock just needs to find a better way of getting those constructors there with less management. I was thinking something along the lines of a trade route. I know what you are thinking, how the hell do trade routes have anything to do with starbases?! I will elaborate......

To do this, all that you would really need, would be 2 constructors. The first one to build the initial foundation of the starbase. The second one, to establish a supply route that would send that one constructor back and forth between the nearest planet to resupply it's module building equipment. It would sortof look like a trade route, only it would have a constructor instead of a freighter. So the moment that the second constructor comes in contact with the starbase, it will be able to build one module, and then, immediately after that, it would start heading to the nearest planet to resupply. There could be momvement restrictions on it, but I think that would be unwise. So let's say it has a speed of 30. It starts it's turn of by building a module on a starbase (-1 movement), it then heads to a planet 4 parsecs away (-5 movement points), it then heads back (-9 movement points) builds another module (-10 movement points), and so on until it runs out of movement points. So in essence, that one constructor can build 4 modules on a starbase before the next turn (according to my example). And this would go on until no more modules can be built, in which case, you still have that constructor with which you can build the "skeleton" of another starbase, starting the process all over again.

There should also be different kinds of deep space starbases such as.......

Resupply Depot (sortof like a gas station for your ships, it would only be able to service a certain amount of ships per turn, renewing their movement points), Deep Space Research Platform (a research building in space, somewhat expensive, but it generates more RP's than a regular research building on a planet, you can only have one per sector), Fortress Platform (sortof like an orbital gun platform, only it can launch larger ships, namley anything between Tiny and Medium, it can also fire upon any ship that enters it's area of influence, providing that it's an enemy). And once again, the list goes on.

Please throw your own ideas for starbase classes in here too (I'll give them specific functions, you just give me the names).

There are definately some things that I overlooked in this post (it's 2 in the morning, so I must have missed something). So if I did miss anything, and the post seems incomplete or confusing without it, please let me know, I'll clear it up in my next reply.

See everyone in about 12 hours (at the earliest).

Y-Y-Y-Yaaaaawwwwn..............

Larger hulls would have to have a significant larger amount of logistics points to make them more powerful than smaller hulls, if they all have the same number of hitpoints.. otherwise it would create smaller hulls being overused. Also, if the AI does not appropriately research and put on defenses to counter your weapons, it would unbalance the game to an extreme (you could then simply use small hulls to destroy their larger hulls with ease).

BUT, fighter fleets cost logistics, and you have to research up THERE to have viable fighters, so the balence still applies. Of course, then they would be TOO equal, and a player would simply choose at random. Thus, I created the GC3 weapons triangle: Instead of just fighters and capital ships, add a new class: frigates. Fighter fleets have an enherent advantage over capital ships (this is not created by the weapons, defenses, hull sizes or other modifiables: the fighter class automatically gains a % boost just because they are the fighter class and the other guy is a capital ship class), frigates have the same advantage over fighters, and capital ships have the same advantage over frigates. Hull size does not effect class, but if you assign fighter class to a huge hull or capital ship class to a small tiny hull, you will get a hefty penalty. Class also effects what types of module you can put on the ships: capital ship modules are powerful, but take up a lot of capacity, fighter modules are small and weak, and frigates are somewhere in between. Using this system, you wouldn't even have to IMPLIMENT my hp-seperatio idea- the game would work fine as is.

I'd also highly recommend this "concept" to become an alternate system such as what is possible with Espionage. Only this time, you'd have a pool of engineers (or Repair-Crews) which must fix any buildings damaged by a twarted enemy's invasion. Same process for your own failed attempts at AI planets.

Even, a targeting popup where you could choose which specific buildings your troops should concentrate attack "points"... the actual Invasion screen, btw, shows us a bunch of flashing mini Flags anyway as a sort of indirect teaser on what is being shot at.

Resolving the issue of loosing a costly Transport to a defeat and make it worth sending if only to simply sabotage a few strategic planets. Any victory results could also show Damaged assets instead of the usual destroyed improvements, a battle has occured which certainly wrecked havoc on surfaces.

This is not far from the "suggested principles" i introduced in X-Worlds 05-F and which are trying to go a little deeper in 06-A through tricky stuff found in the new Enhanced Espionage tech paths.

It IS a complex function to implement, that's a given -- but i'd rather send Ships with true Sabotage modules (Aqua & Land Tanks, in fact) on it, than waste a bunch of highly populated Transports continually twarted & that simply disappear from the Galactic radars. Defeat is one thing, draining resources without having any sort of reference to some reality (even if simulated) another.

Reusable Transports once we meet certain battle conditions or results, later.

While we're at it, asteroid mining bases need to have more effect, do more than provide industrial units (original idea involved research mining bases as well-check your DA files, they're commented out IIRC, but may have been removed as early as DA 1.7), and build faster.