Thoughts

from Stardock Forums
Has thought been put into "Inner System Devlopment"? For example mineing the uninhabitable planets in a system with freighter routes to the more plesent planets. Or like Jupiter, a massive gas ball, that can't be worked on it self but has a large number of moons that have large potential. Or asteroid belts in system that would have large mineral resources.

One thing I would realy like to see is a requirement to actualy send a ship into a system before the planets there can be classified. Yes I know that a lot of information can be found from telescopes and sensors at a distance, but sending in a survey ship would reviel if a planet was realy sutible for colinization.

On an eye candy note, zooming into the system when clicked on, either a static representation of the system or one showing the orbits of the planets. Would be nice.

On the same line of thinking, when an invasion transport is sent to a system it would only be able to attack one of the inhabited planets in a system. This I think would improve gameplay and it would allow the race on the recieving end to launch a counter attack from inside of the system.

One more system thing, when a planet is defended by a planitary defence network that planet only should have a shield to indicate that it is so defended and the attacker would have to be able to get past it before landing troops. The same thing would apply when there is a system wide defence.

There has been a lot of discussion about ship distance limits, I think it is a great idea, as long as two thoughts are kept in mind. 1) What level of propultion has been researched, and 2) has the ship returned to a ship yard or stardock to get retrofitted for the new drive system. ie it would be rather hard to do an inflight upgrade from an Impulse to Warp drive.

I think that this is allready planned but random artifacts that can't be duplicated that can only be found be going into a system or landing on a planet. For example "Ring World" or a derelict ship or a living ship. That would only show up in 1 in 50 games.

In the latest build I did notice that some of the trade ships were taking paths that went through worm holes and they did not get transported. I think that they should, if a worm hole pops up in front of them.

Well those are my thoughts for today.

Chris
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
For the two civs on system thing... if you think about it, if you were an inter-system government, would you permit a foreign race and civilization to colonize planets within your own sphere of territory? thats like saying the Indians, scuze me Native Americans, should have just let the settlers take over all of the land, or any other similar situation. That would be letting the enemy onto your own soil, would you really want a potential enemy colonizing Mars, just because we didn't want to yet?

Plus, the game does say somewhere, the help file maybe, that transports include air and ground combat support elements, which would mean that one transport could launch assualt shuttles filled with troops to all of the planets in the system no problem.

Plus, having multiple races in one system would confuse the sector control thing i believe, and how would you know from the star map, who had which systems? all of the different views orient around the stars, projecting circles of color representing the single civ on the star- there's no way those views could be changed to accomodate multiple civs on one star...

(I'm sorry to be shooting down all of your comments, btw, but this is just how i feel)

The planetary defense is good the way it is, because along the line of air assualt etc, the planetary defense add to the defense by shooting down incoming shuttles etc, increasing the odds, or it could mean merely that the people are trained to be members in this planetary defense network, and thus it would make no sense for ships to have to destroy it, because it might not even be structures per se, but more along the lines of planetary transit for military personnel or missile silos on the ground, etc.

For the trade ship thing, it makes perfect sense for them to be able to fly on by for a couple of reasons: one, they can't investigate anomalies, two, each square is the size of a Star System. That's a ton of space, a single freighter is a mere dust mote on something of that scale. A wormhole would most likely be something easily noticed from a distance, and thus easily evaded even while insystem- it can't the size of the sun, six planets, and all the volume inbetween, despite the size of the graphic. I had a three but i think it became part of two :)

The mining thing- i think if you were to try and mine a planet, you would need workers on the planet to do the mine, and then the workers would need things to do in their off-time, and maybe bring their families with them, and look! you've colonized the planet! its kinda superflous to wish to just mine a planet.

the asteroid belt thing, i believe was mentioned along the idea of the artifacts, "4) Related to above, various "resources" would exist in space. Mineral rich asteroid fields, nebulas, etc. These would allow additional thigns to be built in that sector by construction ships that would benefit the planets in that sector even more so." Check the Brain Storming with beta testers post of a day or two ago, by Frogboy

Well, thats my take on your ideas, sorry if i came across as a bit... arrogant? overbearing? my opinions sometimes get away from me :)
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
My point was that is a Transport Ship entered a system it should only be able to attack one planet at a shot. Think about it for a moment, as the game stands transports are just that, they do not have any real attack or defence ability and are fairly easy game for most combat ships. So I do not buy the argument that they are self contained strike packages. Number 2, there is a planetary defence system that can be built and a system defence system. Going by that line of thinking they serve different jobs.

As for a mining colony, that would only have a few thousand workers at most and not billions or even millions of workers. So it would have limited benifit from all of the building possibilities. Then to have an in system freighter makes alot of sense.

And as far as coming across as arrogant, every one is entitled to thier opinion, in the end though there is only one that counts and that is Brad's aka Frogboy.

Chris
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
While I'm thinking about it, you allready have atleast two different times when there are more than two races in a system at the same time, not to mention on the same planet. When you go to colonize a world and get the message that there are underwater cities or that there are villages allready on the planet and what do you want to do about it.

The main reasion that the entire thought about attacking individual planets crossed my mind is that there are many times that I come across a system that has more than one habitable planet to colonize. You can't use one colony ship to handle them both can you? No, you have to send 2 ships.

Just my thoughts

Chris
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Personally I like two kinds of colonization vessels: Intrasystem and intersystem. An intrasystem vessel should be much less expensive to produce, since it would not need the ability to leave the system.

Also, I think the point was made somewhere in Brad's many forms of documentaion, communications, and interviews that the code to manage more than one major race in one star system is more than he wants to take on. But beware, in the OS2 version individual planets could rebel, which resulted in two separate "factions" in a system. Could they be planning the same thing for this version?

Cheers,
Jack
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Ship distance limits would be a value to the game. In the OS/2 Version this did exist, only thru tech development could ranges be extended.

Or you could turn that feature off at the start of the game as in OS/2 version.