As far as frigates go, the ONLY one that would be worthwhile is the Vasari scout.  Think about it; as far as combat frigates go (scout, lf, lrf, and flak) you need to build them in bulk.  One illuminator isn't going to do anything useful if it doesn't have a small fleet of other illuminators backing it up.  Siege frigates don't vary dramatically between factions.  So the only frigate that really offers something worth pursuing with this technology is the Vasari scout.  I think it's highly inappropriate to create a technology that's only useful for procuring a specific unit from a specific faction, and will never be useful in any other circumstance.

I would never support this for capital ships.  These are the real unique figureheads of the fleet, where the racial diversity is at its best.  This takes away too much from the game, in my opinion.

Now, with a focus on cruisers, I think we can safely ignore heavy cruisers and most carriers for the reasons I detailed in the frigate section.  They really need to be built in bulk to have a big impact anyways.  Support cruisers, mine layers, and assault cruisers are the obvious ones that would be shared (Vasari lacks assault cruisers, TEC lacks mine layers).  Even presuming we find it acceptable to allow Vasari and TEC to "trade" units they don't normally have access to, I'm troubled by the sharing of support cruisers.  You only need a couple Hoshikos or Guardians to greatly increase the power of a fleet.  I think this has the potential to become a very major balance headache.  An obvious case would be Advent with hoshikos; you only need a couple to have a big effect.

The technologies are vastly different.

No one could use the Advent tech other than the advent - it's psionically operated.

Vasari tech is nanoteched out, for all we know operating Vasari tech requires a nano interface within the user that's incompatible with non Vasari minds (what better way to keep slaves from rebelling?).

TEC... well, ok, their shit could be used by just about anyone, but who'd want it?

Plus I just dont see technology sharing between races that are for the most part, at war (in today's world, any military technology we (USA) sell to our allies is usually a generation or three behind current - and in very limited quantities). Pinging the map the attack/defend seems like a good enough way to get allied ships fighting for you to me.

It's a cool idea, I just disagree with it. If you want enemy ships, you can bust out some Rapture battlecruisers with the Advent and steal your opponent's fleet with impunity .

-Itharus

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Guys. No one here is thinking instead of trading tech for the ships why not just get the ships from  your ally. What I am saying is if you have allince with a vas player and you realy need his egg. He can loan it to you. This would give you control over the ship but keep ship techs in each race's tech tree. Example, you have 100 ship slots open. Your ally could give you what ever he wants to fill those slots if you accept the ships. This would need a tech of course to do this. Just think of having a fleet of assailents with Illums and hohos.

That was more along the lines of what I was thinking, just didn't have the time to type it all out. The loan system where you keep your ships but your ally controls your ships would be great. Maybe you would need a cap that has a techable ablity to to give control over to your ally because who is going to be transalating all your vas allies commands? I think though if this is a in race loan you can just hand over control of the ships with a treaty.

I can do that already since I usually play with my roommate.

What I REALLY REALLY want is the combo i listed above. hoshis+guardian+subverter+overseer= best support combo ever. literally nothing will ever hurt you again. especially with any capitals backing you up. nothing. including a fully upgraded orky in a totally defensed up GW. not global warming, not aids, not oprah, nothing.

thats where there have to be limits and nerfing factors, it could be a back breaker, but it could also be a disaster/last ditch move.

lets say you have a smallish fleet, nothing too fancy, and youre out hitting neutrals for fun/exp/colonizing. your position is pretty secure and everything is going pretty well. all of a sudden your allys homeworld get attacked and he, for some reason, is weak as hell. you send your fleet in, and its juuuuust enough to beat them off. all structures are destroyed or the enemy is sending in reinforcements. you have like 10 ships remaining, basically holding the enemy at bay for your teammate while he rebuilds. well, because you have gotten yourself invovled over here, someone else is attacking you, and you are spread too thin. your ships arent going to make it back, and wouldnt make much of a difference anyways. you have a fleet back at home, but you need to pay attention to that, and not protecting your ally.

so you let him boss your guys around, maybe send them into an asterdoid with what hes built up so he can expand. because they are at half strength, youre really only there to be back up and bluff the enemy. which leaves his small fleet to go actually accomplish something. (say he could only get a colony ship out with your ships) if its just rebels, well even half strength ships can take them on while he colonize. maximum payoff, minimum investment. total last ditch effort to get yourself out of corner.

or because it lets the two of you sync up a bit better when phase jumping.

regardless i think it could a powerful ability. like domination for advent, but across the board and with a hit to DPS, or antmatter regen, or sheilds, accuracy, speed etc.

or allow them to be controlled as a "move to" but dont allow the other player to direct attack or use abilities. In any alliance battle group there are "supreme commanders" and then there are ally commanders. I reference NATO, there is a commander for all NATO forces in afghanistan, but each country has a CO, who takes cues and orders from NATO, but otherwise operates independently.

I think it would be a game changer, not a game ender.

@itharus:

Was it starcraft? I dont remember... ive played like a trillion games....

anyways. i agree that allowing a player to make an ally's ships is a stupid idea. and if thecnology is allowed to be traded, im almost convinced it should have some kind of disadvantage and im not sure how it work cross-species. i guess if the game get a hundred times more complicated and allowed us to customize weapons on ships then trading phase missle technology for the beam tech would make sense. but we cant, and most would say we shouldnt, personally i think this would be a MUST featrure in SOASE 5 . but the ability to control a finite number of ships with reach is a reasonable option. it would certainly make having a computer ally easier to deal with (if anyone ever did this, which they shouldnt)

perhaps make the tech tree for it optional in startup?

I think that some of this would be neat. NOT CAPITAL SHIPS. Caps and SBs (and SB constructors/construction frigs/Envoy Cruisers) are OFF LIMITS for this IMO.

I think that trading common techs would be interesting.

as livid as Itharus is, I have to agree with him. 

What is the point of choosing factions if they can all get the same techs?  It just waters down to every other lame RTS out there.

notice I put the feature in the 5th incarnation of this game.

In terms of my overly geekish/detail oriented fact finding mission: If you assume that these fleets actually capture ships, they can reverse engineer techs. assuming that they do not is silly. however one of the better parts of this game is that i dont have pay a ton of attention to research like Galciv. and once we get micromanaging an empire like those games SINS wont be as much fun. that being said, a liiiiiiitle more wouldnt hurt either.

k. ive lost my point: trading ships=dumb, borrowing limited ships with a nerf=neat!, caps or SBs=stupid. trading techs=good, but i would wait until a sequel where it could be integrated without being alpha centauri.

there are a billion awesome things we could request that the devs do, some of it will inevitably make the game more complicated, some will make it more frustrating, and some will make it exhaustingly comprehensive, and some will make it really homogenous. i prefer fun mixed with realism, but even that can be too much (do YOU want to fight a war over interstellar distances?, hellllo month long games)

but i mean, if you really think about it, the advent are already human, just... edited. if TEC go desperate enough they might try leaning something into that direction. Im sure vasari would be interested in ... well nothing really, we don't care about your piddling race and its piddling gauss platforms.

but in the future as the game grows up, maybe we wont be limited to only one specific tech, or three research trees. thats why we come on this forum, we love the game, we just want ... more to love lol.

While i agree that some tech sharing is a nice idea it will cause the rush to get the best design fleet out there i remember all the calculations that went into Stars! sheep and fleet design .

The only way you could implement tech sharing is to make the races have different benefits inherently (such as what worlds could be capitalised i.e. Advent couldn't colonise volcanic worlds but get a huge bonus for desert world types that allows their culture to spread at +50%)