Supply Lines : Reprocess metal

posted on September 8th, 2009, 2:37 am

A rehash of the supply line idea.


Mining Colonies would have an upgrade (something like "Reprocess Dilithium/Trilithium") that would allow them to produce an NPC cargo ship that would travel between the Mining Colony and the nearest Starbase. Upon reaching the Starbase, the NPC ship would drop off (credit) an amount of dilithium or trilithium (and then cycle back, and repeat). The NPC cargo ship is targetable/destroyable. 

- Dilithium reprocessing/Trilithium reprocessing are separate upgrades to the Mining Colony
- Mining colonies would have to be upgraded individually.
- Mining colonies have the ability to produce multiple NPC cargo ships
- Reprocessing itself is something that would need to be researched, possibly having later game tech requirements.
- "Reprocessing" produces nothing if it is not being actively used for mining (mining ship had to drop off dilithium or trilithium since the last NPC cargo ship stopped by).
- "Reprocessing" will only produce dilithium at a mining colony that dilithium was delivered to. Likewise with trilithium.
- Captured NPC cargo ships gives a percentage of the dilithium or trilithium to the captor and then blow up.
-- The NPC cargo ship has a crew compliment/max of 1.

(the "reprocessing" is the reprocessing of the scraps from the earlier mining, lore-wise)

*Give this to only one or two (non-Borg) races to differentiate them from the rest.

posted on September 8th, 2009, 9:04 am

interessting ideas. in fact we are planing some changes to the supply system in future, to make them more interessting and individual for the different races. The Klingons will get their change even in the next patch, as they got a partial redo already to make them more attraktive as a multiplayer faction

posted on September 8th, 2009, 9:14 am

"Reprocess Ore"?

Interesting idea. Still you are talking about mining, not the "supplies" resource.

Still, assigning the ships to NPC makes the ship pathing slaved to the game AI. That means that if the shortest route goes through an enemy base, or that the AI thinks it can go through a wall (as sometimes it thinks it can) or... Well, you get the idea.

posted on September 8th, 2009, 1:08 pm

Still, assigning the ships to NPC makes the ship pathing slaved to the game AI. That means that if the shortest route goes through an enemy base, or that the AI thinks it can go through a wall (as sometimes it thinks it can) or... Well, you get the idea.

Possibly a problem, though that doesn't always happen. It isn't uncommon for an AI to take the long way around (well, the wall part, at least...)

posted on September 8th, 2009, 10:10 pm

Tell that to my scouts. They find walls fascinating.

posted on September 8th, 2009, 11:13 pm

I said it isn't uncommon for the AI to avoid it, not that it never flies into walls. I get the most annoying type; ships ignoring orders to stop while hitting the wall...