It's already been pointed out how easy it is to destroy an opponent by camping and blasting their Starports and this is worse than in GC2.
I would like to see the planets retain some level of ship building capability, say only Tiny or Small hull types (and maybe medium at a higher cost.) Build the larger ships in space, but you'd still be able to build smaller ships (and constructors) on the planet.
The ability to only construct a single starship at a time at the starport/planet is/was a little lame. Consider adding the ability to have multiple build channels (kind of like naval shipyard slipways) and allow multiple smaller ships to be constructed at the same time (both planet and starport) with larger hulls requiring more of the "build channels" so that a starport might only be able to build a single capital ship at a time. Perhaps allow constructors to add/enhance build channels to a starport. You could then build a seriously large shipyard in a secure area to pump out ships.
An alternative way to accomplish this would be to allow a single planet to service multiple starports. Then I load up the planet with manufacturing capability and surround it with starports.
Probably too late at this point, but I think the Starport/shipbuilding capability could have been just a starbase option/module. This would allow adding weapons and defense to the ship building capability.
I'm not seeing a way to get rid of a starport that I don't want and the game insists that I attach it to a planet before I can continue the turn.
--David
Actually, as far as I remember it, DS9 did move its position in the pilot of the series. It started out next to Bajor and then moved closer to the wormhole once that was found. However, it's been a while since the last time I've seen DS9 (well over a decade), so I may be mis-remembering it.
What about the GalCiv-equivalent to the Death Star - the Terror Star? Granted, it won't be in the base game, but it is very likely to return in one of the expansions.
I tend to think about the role of the space station vs. the movement of the space station. It would have been pointless to make the deathstar and have it stationary.
Economic space stations, these are trade hubs for many private citizens. If these moved you run the risk of losing people in trying to find these stations again.
Mining stations. The freighters are probably automated and you don't want to move these stations too much, when the resources run out, they would then be decomissioned.
Military stations. Well here is a good one for debate on movement. I see these more as stationary military bases to supply military ships. A good stead point for your military not a mobile starbase, that is where carriers and support vessels come in (want something a lot more mobile than a starbase). I would image the Gal Civ version of these are HUGE.
Research stations. Also a good one for debate, but lab scientists are very much stationary creatures and like to have stability so probably not going to design this one to move, but then again, some movement capability might be good for better positioning.
Starports. Ship building. Well under the purpose of the job, I'd expect this to remain stationary. But I'm flexible on the movement capability of this port in seeing it as a mobile construction unit. But the mobility makes the UI easier for the game.
Yes! (actually Babylon 4 did - by tow) and Yes! (first season - once the wormhole was found they moved DS9 closer to mouth of the wormhole)
-David S.
Personally, I do not consider the Death Star to be a space station. Its intended purpose means that it had to have been intended from the start to be a mobile craft, and it wasn't exactly something meant to be left in one place very long; its very existence and its ability to reach a target in a relatively short time frame should have been a sufficient threat for the intended purpose without requiring it to be constantly orbiting a given trouble spot, and making it immobile would have defeated the purpose. Rather, I would consider it, and especially the second Death Star, to be a kind of super-heavy capital ship, or perhaps a mobile super-heavy siege weapon with significant self-defense capabilities, but not a space station despite it having been described as such within the movies.
Under a constant-acceleration model, the stargate's acceleration is only 7.755X10^-8 m/s/s, while under a constant-speed model the stargate's speed is 85,655 m/s (~0.00029c) for the Drengi-Toria journey. If the stargate's journey were representative of the capabilities of sublight drive at the time, then under the constant-speed model the 10 million mile trip takes a little over two days, while under the constant-acceleration model it takes a little over 3700 days (~10.2 years). While I'd expect that the actual travel time figures would be considerably closer to the lower bound than the upper bound, we simply do not have the information necessary to establish how close it is to either bound; the Earth-Arcea travel time is even less useful in establishing this since we don't know the distances involved or the path issues involved.
We can estimate the distances using the Drengi-Toria stargate travel time, which would put Earth ~114.3 light-years from Arcea by the constant-speed model or about 653 light-years from Arcea using the constant-acceleration model, if a probe had been launched from Arcea directly at Earth at the '400,000 years ago' mark in the timeline in the databanks and had exactly the same speed/acceleration as the stargate launched by the Drengin at Toria, but it's unlikely that the Arcean probe would have taken a direct route to Earth from Arcea and so Earth could be considerably closer than either estimate would indicate.
We alternatively know that it took the Drengin approximately 250,000 years for one of their probes to visit a star within 20 lightyears of their own; if we assume that the probes sent out by the Drengin and Arceans are capable of the same performance and that this is the time taken for the probes to completely survey a sphere centered on the homeworld with a radius of 20 lightyears, then the probes are capable of surveying about 0.1 cubic light-years of space per year; if this rate of exploration continues until Earth is found, then Earth is within about 23.4 light-years of Arcea. Using this last estimation model, we can also predict that Arcea and Drengi are separated by about 14.7 light-years. This last estimation model is of course somewhat lacking, as in all likelihood the Drengin and Arcean nations had determined a set of stars which they considered to be more worthy of investigation than others, or, better, a set of parameters allowing the probes to prioritize visiting certain types of stars before others, based on their theories of planetary formation and their expectations of the probability of life emerging on such worlds, rather than the blind exploration assumed by the model, and, as with present-day astronomy, the Arcean and Drengin astronomers may have identified stars where worlds were known to exist prior to sending out any probes whatsoever. It is nevertheless a more reasonable distance estimate than either the constant-acceleration or the constant-speed model for determining the distance between Earth and Arcea (unless you're trying to establish the total distance traveled by the Arcean probe which first reached Earth, which could perhaps have traveled the roughly 115 light-years estimated by the constant-speed model if it had been bouncing around from star to star on its journey, though the constant-speed model has its own issues, such as not necessarily accurately reflecting the average speed of the Arcean probes; certainly the probes are unlikely to follow the constant-acceleration model developed from the known performance of the stargate's journey).
I would also point out that there are some indications in the Databank Timeline that it takes a Drengin probe roughly 25,000 years to take a direct flight from Drengi to Arcea. If we assume that the probes are capable of an average speed twice that of the stargate for their travels, then this indicates that Drengi and Arcea are roughly two-thirds as far apart as Drengi and Toria are, which fits reasonably well with the distance estimated by the volumetric exploration rate model. While this by no means entirely validates the volumetric exploration rate model, it does indicate a reasonable degree of consistency between the model and the available data. I would therefore be willing to hazard a guess that the average speed of the Drengin probes is roughly 170 km/s (~twice the average speed of the stargate) and that the separation between Arcea and Drengi is 14 to 15 light-years while the separation between Earth and Arcea is about 24 light-years.
The end result of this is that my personal estimation of the Earth-Arcea stargate travel route would indicate that a 6-month journey would be required to travel 1 light-year. If my estimate of the average speed of the unmanned probes is indicative of the speed of manned spacecraft operating at sublight speeds, then the 10 million mile journey would take about 1 day of travel time; if the stargate's average speed is indicative of the speed of manned spacecraft operating at sublight speeds, then the 10 million mile journey would take about 2 days to complete, while if the speed of manned spacecraft operating at sublight speeds is similar to the average speed of the Apollo spacecraft on the way to the Moon (~3 days, 240,000 miles), then the expected time required to complete a 10 million mile journey is about 4 months. So, overall, I do believe that the 10 million mile journey is the one of shorter duration; however, this does not remove the possibility that it is longer. It's always possible that there are economic reasons why the sublight drives used in the Galactic Civilizations universe would be slower than the drives used to send the Apollo missions to the moon, and it's entirely possible that the average speed that I estimated for the Earth-Arcea stargate route is inaccurate, possibly significantly so.
Grand Moff Tarkin called it a "fully functional battle station." IIRC.
DARCA.
That would be the Emperor, in Return of the Jedi referring to the second Death Star; I don't recall Tarkin describing the first as a 'fully armed and operational battle station,' though he did describe the Death Star as a station. Regardless, as for the degree to which I care about it being described as such within the movies, may I refer you to this sentence from my preceding post?
I think it comes down to terminology. I can go with that the death star is an oversized capital ship. But what does one mean by space station. I tend to think of them as stationary (from the term station). Since the death star moves it is not stationary, but then again it stations a very large number of people. So, I think the term space station needs some defining when we are arguing semantics.
The term starbase in Gal Civ 3, is very much a stationary object in the game (although it probably does move if the game managed a rotational movement around stars for planets). But at the moment, starbase by Gal Civ 3 terms is a stationary object.
The starport on the other hand... is it a starbase or is it's own entity. I tend to go for the latter, and so the starport is not so well defined in Gal Civ 3. I can support either direction with the starport, but I do like the fact that the starports can move. Although in game, I probably won't move them much anyway. I also think that one can probably mod the game to prevent any movement of starports, but I don't think having them move at their slow speed detracts from the game.
One can simply imagine that the port is being towed without the graphical visualization. These towing ships just stay with the port to help ferry supplies back and forth to them.
Look it up for me, um sleepy.
Really.
Quick suggest:
there needs to be a UI tab on the right that shows starports, what's being built in them and how long it takes.
Hi,
I didn't really see a topic for my question, but since it has to do with ship building:
During a Dev Stream a while ago, they mentioned that the ship part textures were going to be able to scale.
So if you stretch a wing to twice its size, the little textures on it would scale back to keep the detail.
Now when i installed the Beta, this isn't the case yet. Is this still going to be implemented?
Or did i perhaps misunderstand something?
Regards,
Eric
It looks like maybe someone liked my idea of giving starbases and starports basic defensive capabilities because it seems they have it now!
This is a good suggestion and if I may add an alternative it could be linked to the Logistic values in the same way they set limits to fleet ship counts !!!
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