I've got a lot of thoughts on this subject - it being a core component of a successful Star Control game - and one of the main failings of Star Control III. Please no outposts. I want to be a space cowboy, galloping down planetside, riding my trust flyer, zapping native creatures and slurping up resources like there's no tomorrow. It's at LEAST 1/3rd the fun!

I can promise you there is no outpost management in the game.  

WRT to an outpost, guys i think you slightly misunderstood, this is not an rts game and, please i don't want it to be one either, otherwise it won't be star control, i totally agree with that, i don't want to click and point, i want to steer my landers/rovers on the planet myself, what i'm saying is just
let there be a place where the landers can go to for repairs, so that you can explore even further on the planet, i want to feel the conditions on the planet, and the creatures/critters attacking it, the geological impacts and what it's doing to my rover/lander, and see it starting to smoke/spark/catch fire when it's armor has been badly damaged, knowing there is a point to go to for repairs, the rush to get there knowing that at any moment a quake or a lightning bolt can destroy it, but knowing there is a repair point just around the hill where you could drive to or get the caryall to take you if it's not been damaged itself makes for exciting resource gathering.

Just like a repair bay where the lander docks, and a refinery to store minerals, (to pay for the lander's repairs) and to launch the cargo to the mothersip.That's all, no full blown outpost controlled like an rts game. Having a caryall to fly through bad weather as a challenge to drop a harvester on the far side of a planet, flying the caryall on another planet, how awesome is that ! letting the caryall sit on the ground and wait for the harverster to finish, which you control, return to the caryall which you also control realtime, everything realtime controlling, no click and point, then flying the caryall back to the base where you land to offload the harvester, minerals, and finally all is sent up to the mothership via perhaps the refinery itself that converts into a cargo ship to dock with your mainship up in space.


I feel it is safe to say that anyone in life at some stage dreamed of flying another vehicle/plane on another planet, with this concept, you park the harvester which you control into the caryall, then you fly the caryall to far off dangerous locations, where you harvest, then go back into the caryall and fly the caryall to base,

The caryall could even convert into a ground harvester if you guys feel the two should not be separate, but i personally like the caryall and harvester as separate vehicles, but doesn't absolutely have to be 2 vehicles.

SC1's strategy mode was simple enough that I bet it could be added in via a mod.

What would also be cool is having certain upgrades for your ship, requiring certain combination of minerals.

Like, let say you want to add photon torpedoes weapon system upgrade to your ship as a crazy example.

And to do that, you needed Iron, Gold, Platinum & Mercury.

You would need a certain quantity of each mineral to make that happen. Not to mention the RU's cost for the upgrade.

And each weapon or ship upgrade could require different types of minerals as well.

just an off the wall idea.

Resource gathering was great, even with the constraints of the tiny primitive view screen, I loved it.

I'd like planets with very high risk & reward so that exploration is relevant in the end end game.

Active gathering of resources is an important part of the SC2 experience.  It was satisfying to finally find one of those molten planets filled with awesome metals, but also full of lava, lightning, and earthquakes.  Then having to decide if it was worth the risk, etc., etc.

It was also a very repetitive and time consuming process that had no business taking up that much playtime.  Seriously, it might have been the way I played, but it seemed like you couldn't do much of anything until you mined out a system or two and got some toys put on the precursor ship.  It was fun to a point, but when I went back in another playthrough, I wanted to get to the rest of the exploration and story part a bit sooner.

So, for me, the question is not whether it should be included, but just how it should be implemented.  A few ideas:

-Risk/Reward - This shouldn't necessarily be a sliding scale, but there should be a general correlation.  You want big deposits, it's going to be risky, even with a decked out lander.  Having the occasion "pot of gold" planet with easy access to tons of resources should happen every once in a while too, but will be rare.

-Mining competition - The same gathering mechanic doesn't have to exist for every single planet.  Maybe there is a gathering operation already in progress and you can trade for materials or maybe...away party with phasers and take it by force?  Races with other aliens as you both try to grab limited resources might be fun, etc.

-Less hauling time - Lugging back a full ship is just not that fun.  The goal of continuous exploration should be more important than trips to and from one central sale location.  Perhaps have lots of ore processing outposts through the galaxy that will buy your stuff.  They could have different prices for different metals just to spice things up.  Maybe have a hauler upgrade for the main ship.  When the cargo is full, it heads off to sell the ore for you leaving you with little, if any, remaining cargo space, but doesn't require you travelling back all the way to...wherever.

-More "Stuff" to do - Collecting biomass and collecting minerals was pretty much the end of the list in SC2.  How about more things when you interact with planets.  No reason not to make planet encounters more like Star Trek.  More types of planetary interaction could add a new dimension to the exploration aspect.

But @The_Think_Tank - why even land on a planet if it doesn't contain what you're looking for, then? Why land, if you can see from afar that they don't contain the resource you're searching for? That then nixes the need to actually EXPLORE. Because I'll tell you one thing - if we somehow develop the needed tech to actually make it to other systems, you had better bet that we'll be landing on every planet imaginable/feasible! Same should go as we're charting the stars in Star Control.

I'd get to a new system, especially when I needed credits, and even though the gray planets usually didn't contain too many resources, some of them would have yellows, some oranges, some would have bio and some would even have anomalies! You never KNEW what a planet would hold until you landed on it. You never KNEW it was a good one or a bad one until you did the scan. You never KNEW if you'd be rich or poor or dead or intrigued... until you landed. So that made you be more thorough, made you be more curious and made you be more excited to planet-hop in each system you came to!

Letting people scan from afar or even be turned-off to a planet just by its color... I don't know. I'm not on board, really. The mystery and intrigue of exploring the stars, up close and personal, was so fun for me. I felt like an *actual* explorer. I don't want to see that taken away.

I for one liked how Starscape handled harvesting.  It is a game that was heavily influenced by Star Control II and where you have your mother ship which your must protect and you pilot a ship built by your mother ship (which can be of 3 different sizes) and can have different modules on it.

You acquire different tech from friendly aliens to improve your ship as you progress in the game. 

You get resources by breaking apart meteorites and enemy ships.   Something like this would be a nice feature for players who prefer an arcade style of play versus strategy.   People who prefer a strategy type of game could harvest resources differently such as by founding colonies or sending a miner like in SC2.


I think it would be a nice feature to be able learn new technology from abandoned space hulks or ships not completely destroyed in the fight.  For example if you can get the crew before they can set off self destruct or if on rare occasions the self destruct fails to destroy the whole enemy ship.  One species obsolete space garbage dump can be another one's treasure trove.  As sometimes a species may need a key technological element to make a huge bound in technology.  Something the species that provided this key element may have missed.

When civilizations have vanished from a planet such as the Androsynth, the Taalo or the Burvixe it should be possible to leave a science team for a while to salvage what technology or space exploration knowledge (star maps) they can from the vanished civilization. 

I would rather the harvesting of resources be upgraded to a new game play idea. The whole lander thing got tedious in later parts of the game.

I would prefer a system where we send down a lander with X amount of crew to extract the mineral resources we needed. It is real time gathering, every X amount of seconds the crew will extract Y amount of mineral resources. Certain rarer resources may require more time or skill or both. As we upgrade our crew skills for extracting they get more resources per extraction or reduce the amount of time required.

While this is happening there is a chance that each crew member may die due to the planet's hostility from dangerous predators, environmental disasters or some planetary anomaly. We as the star ship captain must decide when to pull our people out with what ever resources they have collected so far. If we push it, we may lose everyone PLUS the lander and what ever resources they had collected.

We can also upgrade our ship to carry more landers, or we can upgrade our landers to carry more crew members and finally the landers can carry X amount of resources per trip. If it is ever filled too capacity it auto returns with the Crew anyway.

Each planet from the start of the game has X amount of each type of mineral resources (Common, Corrosive, Base Metal, etc.) which do not replenish. So players cannot simply keep returning to the same ZERO hostility planets and fill their landers to capacity. They can in the very beginning of the game but those "safe" worlds have already had most of their resources mined out many years ago so you will quickly deplete them if you do.