Research: upgrades from your empire

posted on June 12th, 2013, 2:35 pm

I've been thinking about special weapons and upgrades research. It's always felt a little bit weird to me. For one, your science lab wouldn't be the only competent lab in your empire, secondly, any breakthroughs your lab makes will be shared with the rest of your empire (and vice versa)

To me it's a little rigid, the only way you ever get new tech is to get off your couch and make it yourself. With the new supply mechanism announced (e.g. trade dock for Feds) I've considered other ways your base would talk to its empire.

So I propose that occasionally your fleet benefits from research done by other labs that your empire operates. This perhaps wouldn't completely replace the current system.

Some ideas around this core concept:

- You need to build a science lab, now you have scientists who are naturally liaising with your empire's other scientists, your scientists learn about cutting edge new tech. what form this benefit takes is debatable. perhaps you also need a trade dock (or its equivalent for other races) for your base to be well known amongst the rest of your empire.

- Personally I'm wary of randomly granting special weapons for free. if it's random you could get a really good one with luck. if it's predictable then you go into the game knowing exactly when you're going to get a piece of tech and there's no sense of agency. I'd love to see suggestions on how to make this work.

- I'm more for upgrades being the benefit, perhaps after x minutes of your science lab being active your empire sends you data on how to upgrade your most numerous combat ship. grants a small bonus to something. e.g. 5% more DPS, 5% more shields, 5% more speed, grants a new passive. after the first upgrade, x would get longer, and the ship you get the upgrade for would have to change each time. e.g. you'd get upgrades at 3 min, 7 min, 12 min, 18 min, 25 min etc. the gap gets bigger and the bonuses get slightly better.

- Perhaps there could be a way to integrate more with the science club of your race. this could take the form of "upgrading" your lab, paying resources to increase the quantity and quality of research going on there, more/better scientists would perhaps get the info on new tech quicker. Perhaps building multiple labs could accomplish the same thing.

- Perhaps there could be a way to control what sort of tech you want. so you can toggle the area of research that your lab is routinely doing. eg if they are doing weapons research, you'll get weapons upgrades.

This would fit more with the timescales of starship construction.

posted on June 12th, 2013, 3:05 pm

This definitely makes sense. Small upgrades to the performance of ship types seems like the way to go with this. If it's possible I'd say when upgrades are received needs to be more random than this many minutes cause then people will count on it like you said Myles. Perhaps If it would happen between a set time, like 3-6min, it would make it less easy to rely upon and to the feel that you're getting outside info from the rest of your empire. After all you wouldn't exactly when another far away lab was gonna get a break through in weapons tech haha. This could be nicely adapted to accommodate Borg as well without feeling forced. The Collective is active in other areas, they assimilate, adapt, and rely the info to you. Great idea.

posted on June 13th, 2013, 12:46 am

interesting idea

i think that as long as you have a science station it could generate energy/points to spend on (separate from the standard upgrades)with this you can fuel it into research
shield/
weapons/
sensors/
hull/
life support
etc etc .

this means that by destroying the enemies science stations you are slowing or halting that extra improvements that can not be paid for. so it opens up another thing to raid and destroy other that miners.

it would have to be a slow collection and small improvements (but they can keep going and going) say 1 percent on a system every 2 mins. all systems have to be upgraded by 1 percent before you can go onto the next upgrade on a certain system.

or rather than choosing it could be random, but still having to get all to the same level before going on to the next level.


it would be good if this could be incorperated with something i sugested a while back where building science station next to map object/enviroment can beg you more tech to research/cost reductions or something. meaning it benefits to build station away from your main base and spread out.

as at the moment (most of the time) it only benefits to build station near moons or choke points

posted on June 13th, 2013, 12:27 pm

I would love to see a Sins of Solar type system where you could have different ways of upgrading your fleet and stations.

Some upgrades would be offensive such as a straight up boost to damage by ships or additional specials above and beyond the ones you get by default . Other upgrades would be defensive such as tougher turrets and starbases and of course economic ones that increase how fast you mine stuff and give a boost to your miners so they aren't destroyed so easily (if you are the Romulans that would be super useful)

If you make some of them dependant on picking previous ones sort of like trees then you can make it so that every gameplay is slightly different because it is very hard to get all of them in one playthrough.

posted on June 17th, 2013, 12:59 am

I've been thinking about special weapons and upgrades research. It's always felt a little bit weird to me. For one, your science lab wouldn't be the only competent lab in your empire, secondly, any breakthroughs your lab makes will be shared with the rest of your empire (and vice versa)

To me it's a little rigid, the only way you ever get new tech is to get off your couch and make it yourself. With the new supply mechanism announced (e.g. trade dock for Feds) I've considered other ways your base would talk to its empire.

I, too, thought that was a little dumb. For my mod, your getting authorization to use that tech rather then 'researching' it. It makes sense that you aren't allowed to use it at that base for the moment. Still, most of my tech is for custom starships, so...yeah.

posted on July 18th, 2013, 9:05 pm

Love this idea. It's so much better than the current system...
This made me think... Maybe the research is available, it's just not very accessible. maybe you have to cut a deal with your empire for a shipment of special weapons of a specific type, which would spawn somewhere in the vicinity of your lab, and you have to safely conduct it to the lab. Couples with the rest of what you're suggesting, it could provide a very nice system, as you get general upgrades and stuffs, but you can spend resources for specific tech, which would be tricky to get during a battle at your base. Just a thought.