Aladdin Lamp: Starbases/Anomalies - Minor Races - Tech Trading

Okay, I'll bite:

1. I wish starbases, or a certain type of starbase, could be built in orbit around a planet. Even if it's just a basic weapons platform, the lack of any planetary defenses other than regular ships causes me to frown.

2. I wish minor races would offer things above and beyond what your regular races could/would do. Give each minor race a mid-game tech only available only either through espionage, trade, or capturing their home planet.

3. I wish other races would place priorities on the techs they want, either to complete a particular ship design they want, or to fill a hole they need. I'd love to have to contact the military race to sell planet improvements to fill in their holes, while peace-loving civs will buy defenses and armor at a premium.

I'd like the ability to convert starbases. When an influence starbase is no longer needed I'd like to flip it to a military base. I'm sure it would be expensive, but worth the cost in a couple of games I've played.

- When you destroy your own star base, some "resources" are "beamed" to the nearest planet, like an asteroid field, to account for salvaging a little bit of the resources used to create the star base.

- I wish minor races were harder to manipulate for tech, money, wars, and wish they had a +50 defensive soldiering bonus to make them slightly less easy fodder once everyone gets their military rolling (and usually take out nearby minors for easily obtained uber worlds).

- I wish tech trading could be done so that it was within reason and not exploitable by players or amongst AIs.

Realistically the only thing I'm concerned with is tech trading, which has always been a problem in GC, as far as I'm concerned. It's never been balanced well.

It's cake to pump out tons of constructors (if you want to) and you can always limit yourself to intelligently placed and useful starbases, with the occasional purposeful military or influence base that you get good use out of and therefore don't need something back if you destroy it later - that's just greed. For example, a well placed influence base might flip one or more planets for you. Wanting to get something out of destroying it after it's no longer needed is kinda greedy when it got you a planet.

Minor races can benefit the player or the AIs - a lot of it depends on luck, and they can be disabled if you find them annoying/unbalanced. I don't think diplomacy with minors needs to be that robust - the minors are fodder - they're there to add flavor, not be serious factors in diplomacy. Why would you want to subjugate them diplomatically when easily taking the world via military is vastly more beneficial? Why put a minor world symbolically under your protection when you can easily take the world, develop and use it how you want, and protect it as part of your empire. Not all players want to win via military, true, but you pretty much have to develop military to not get wiped even if you go for a peaceful victory, and you're going to have to have enough military to threaten a minor to make them join you, so you might as well just take them out - it'd be way simpler. More diplo options amongst majors would be dev time better spent.

More put into ground invasions. Say you researched a new type of weapon for ground invasions and that was a tank then it would show up when invading a planet or when shock troops were learned then the color would change or something to show that shock troops are being used.

1. I wish starbases built on galactic resources had influence points of their own so a player would be able to win them over culturally, even if it required a lot of influence in the area to do so.

2. I wish minor races would recognise the closest powerful empire to them and pay tribute to the said empire for protection if the said empire is good, increase tourism income if the said empire is neutral, and lastly, increase production if said empire is evil.

3. I wish there was a slider for tech trading controlling how willing AIs are to trade techs.

For Starbases: I wish the AIs would build and upgrade influence starbases to counteract mine.

For minors: I wish the minors would not keep all of their ships in orbit sometimes (including freighters and constructors).

For tech trading: I wish the AI would rate techs (including for research) according to what they want to do, not "how much the tech is worth". Would be a big programming challenge, though.

1. Guardians for anomalies. I'm not sure whether this is possible, but it would be nice if you had to fight a sort of guardian (a la MOO) before exploring some anomalies, that automaticaly appeared in the sector. The guardian should be quite powerful (old Dread Lord sentinel,Arnorian Protector, Space Monster, whatever), but the reward should also be worthwhile (instant tech, a bundle of resources, a large plus in some ability, A powerful ship or relic, etc.). That might keep some anomalies unexplored until mid- or even late-game, and keep you on your toes- perhaps even more than the late grabbing of planets with new colony tech.

2. Sublugation and Protectorate! I totally stole that from the diplomacy concepts from ol' Space Empires 4. It might be unbalancing as a standard diplomacy option, but it would work well for relations with minor races, I think.
In Sublugation, A minor race agrees to be a thrall to the larger one, paying tribute from taxes, sharing tech, even offering ships and starbases.
In Protectorate, your grasp on the minor race is less firm; but you still get techs and trade in very favorable terms, gifts are more common and requests are much more likely to be accepted, and the race is a faithful ally "willing" to go into any war with you (and suffer the blows for you).
The downside could be that both treaties would not improve your relations with the races any more (sublugation might even worsen it, if only slowly). So, If you don't protect your sla.. your protegees enough, or you are too bossy and demanding as an overl... a "protector", they may decide to break loose from the treaty themselves, and even be hostile to you afterwards.

3. I got nothing.

Anomalies: Two things - Persistant wormholes and quest-oriented anomalies. The only thing that the wormhole anomalies currently do is jump our flagships out past their maximum range, and then the wormhole disapears. How about a wormhole that sticks around once discovered? If you are concerned that persistant wormholes are too powerful, either the number of transits or the ship/fleet size could be limited. Something would have to be done about ships jumping outside their maximum range, however.
Number two is quest-oriented anomalies. Say you discover a ship's log that contains clues to uncovering an ancient artifact or technology; this would lead you down a chain of events to the eventual prize. The events could be exploring a specific uninhabited system (that just happens to be currently out of reach), having a positive relationship with a minor race, or reaching a certain level of technology. Shoot, it could even be literally pieces of a puzzle that any race can find while exploring; are you willing to trade your most precious technology/ship/planet to get that final piece?

Minor races: Have the minor races provide some advantage, +10 Influence or Research or something. The major race that includes the minor race in its zone of control gets the advantage. This could provide a reason to keep a minor race around.

Tech trading: I don't have a good idea for this one - it's broke, fix it. I do think it would help if the trade screen would either list only the techs that the other race is willing to trade, or list the techs from most likely to least likely to be traded. The same could be applied to my techs - highlight the techs that the other race is particularly interested in.

1 I would like anomalies to randomly generate throughout the game so my survey ship doesn't end up becoming a glorified scout ship later on. Have less of them at the intial start of the game then have them appear here and there over time. And I like the idea of having some quests attached to some of them.

2 I would like minor races to have personalities that are more unique and in keeping with their role in the game. For instance, they should have no interest in trading any of the colonization techs, nor should they be building Influence Starbases that do absolutely nothing. Have them build Military bases near their planets instead, as well as more/better ships. It would make them more of a challenge when it comes time to conquer them. As it stands, they behave exactly like the major races do, even though their focus is completely different.

3 Races shouldn't be able to trade/steal/conquer techs that they don't already have the prerequisite techs for. No going for Lasers unless they already have Beam Theory. These more advanced techs shouldn't even come up in the trade screens. I think this would go a long way to fix the broken tech trading situation we now have. There wouldn't be as much of a need to go to the drastic measures this last patch has gone to in order to control it.

1) I would like to be able to beam resources from asteroids to a starbase so that I can then improve the starbase with a shipyard to build ships.

2) Minor races add some nice variation instead of just having empty planets but they really just turn into cannon fodder. I wish that good / neutral races would get some bonuses for not exterminating them (evil races could get the bonus also but would probably just wipe them out for the planet).

3) No comments.