Starbases

[Bigjoe5]

Please be warned that I'm using an experimental format for this post. Hopefully it's helpful rather than terribly annoying...

Galactic Civilization II, which I've been playing occasionally for the past month or so, has a few good features that FO may be able to incorporate into its gameplay (and a lot of problems such as the buggy/unintuitive user interface, terrible AI, unbalanced gameplay, unprofessional tech descriptions, over-linear tech tree, etc, that we want to avoid).

One thing that particularly caught my attention was the ability to use starbases to enhance your military and economic strength within a certain range (a simple radius around the starbase). I suspect that such a system could add a lot to FO's gameplay as well, if it were to be adapted our game mechanics.

Starbase Categories

GalCiv II had 4 types of starbase: Mining, which could only be constructed on random resources that were found floating in space; economic, which could improve the social, military and research production on all worlds within its range as well as increase the revenue obtained from freighters within its range; military, which gave great bonuses to friendly ships within its range, and penalties to enemy ships; and influence, which spread your civilization's cultural influence everywhere within its range. All the aforementioned abilities are obtained by adding modules to the starbases, with different modules available for different types of starbase. Other modules included scanning modules and defense modules which increased the scanning range and military strength of the starbases.

In terms of FO, mining obviously goes right out the window, because we don't have random resources floating around in space.

Something corresponding to the economic starbase though, could easily find a place in FO. In GalCiv II, starbases didn't specifically increase either military, social or resource production - rather, there were modules that increased all three indiscriminately. In FO, it most likely makes more sense to have modules that increase only production of a particular resource. So an economic starbase would have certain modules available for it that would increase only trade production, only resource production, only industrial production, etc. As far as I can tell, the trade enhancing functionality of the economic starbase has no obvious corollary in FO, and is not useable.

The military starbase is also obviously transferrable. Modules could be installed to increase weapons, defense, shields, stealth, detection, system speed, starlane speed, etc, of friendly ships and planets, or possibly decrease certain corresponding statistics in enemy ships and planets (most likely, the range of options for decreasing enemy ship stats would be more limited).

The influence starbase is less obviously applicable to FO, but I suspect some sort of social starbase would be useable. Modules for increasing max population, health, happiness, security, and whatever other social meters we may end up having could be attached to these starbases.

Other possibilities include, but are presumably not limited to espionage starbases to increase the effectiveness and ability to deploy spies (merge with social starbase?), superproject starbases that permit special yet-to-be-determined projects to be carried out (spawning space monsters or somesuch) and industrial projection starbases which permit the construction of buildings that would normally require the presence of a colony or outpost.


Location

GalCiv II's starbases can be built wherever you can get your ships, which, because the map is completely open, is wherever. Obviously FO's starbases will only be buildable at star systems. The question is, should they be buildable at any system to which you can get a whatever-you-use-to-build-starbases, or should they have more restricted location parameters?


Logistics/Limitations

GalCiv II had a hard limit on the number of starbases that could be placed in one quadrant (four per empire) and a soft limit on how many starbases each empire could own (a specific number could be built for free, determined by the empire's logistics ability, then each starbase after that would cost an increasing amount of money to construct). Generally, empires would end up with lots of expendable starbases (with the exception of mining starbases, which were very valuable in that they gave the owner control of the rare resource on which it was constructed).

Given the scale of GalCiv II, it was somewhat reasonable for starbases to be abundant, and each one to be expendable. In the scale of FO however, starbases can only be rare, extremely valuable assets. A hard limit on either the total number of starbases that can be constructed, or on the number of starbases of each type that can be constructed seems appropriate. Technology that improves these values should be very significant (like all technology), and as such, the initial limit on the number of starbases that can be constructed should be very low (one, perhaps?).


Area of Effect

As mentioned, GalCiv II's starbases operated within a circular area of effect. This is obviously terrible for FO, since direct line distance often fails to reflect the actual geography of the galaxy created by starlanes. Instead, the range of effect should be measured in starlane jumps.

Rather than having each module have a specific range associated with its effect (which would be really annoying in that the player would have to keep track of which modules are affecting which systems), it's more reasonable for all the starbase modules have the same range, which can be increased by a range enhancement module, the number of such modules available starting at zero and increasing when the appropriate technology is researched. Like tech that increases the number of starbases, the tech that increases the range of starbases should be rare and valuable. The unaided range of starbases should be very low, perhaps zero or one starlane jump.


Other Modules

Like GalCiv II's scanning and defense modules, FO's starbases could perhaps be enhanced with more general fortification modules which increase its weaponry, defenses, stealth, detection, structure, and other applicable stats. Given the rarity of starbases in FO, it doesn't seem unreasonable to give the player a more detailed level of control over the defenses of his starbases than he gets over the defenses of his planets, for example.


Summary and Points for Discussion

* Starbases - yes or no?

** What categories of starbase should be available?
*** Economic
**** What modules should be available for economic starbases?
*** Military
**** What modules should be available for military starbases?
*** Social
**** What modules should be available for social starbases?
*** Espionage
**** What modules should be available for espionage starbases?
**** Should the functionality of the espionage starbase be merged with that of the social starbase?
*** Superproject
**** What modules should be available for superproject starbases?
*** Industrial Projection
**** What modules should be available for industrial projection starbases?
**** Should the functionality of the industrial projection starbase be merged with that of the superproject starbase?
*** [edit]Should starbases be generic, with only the installed modules determining their functionality?[/edit]

** Location
*** Should starbases be required to be constructed within a certain range of a friendly colony?

** Limitations
*** What sort of limitations and restrictions should be present regarding the construction of starbases?
**** How should these restrictions be relaxed as the game progresses?

** Area of Effect
*** How should the range of a starbase's effect be determined?
*** How can the range of a starbases effect be increased?
**** How does an empire's ability to increase the range of his starbases increase as the game progresses?

** Other modules
*** What sort of modules should be generally available for construction on all types of starbases?

* Was the colour/typeface-coded format of this post useful, or just an eyesore?

[Yeeha]

hmm... I dont recall there ever being a thread about stationary system defences only about whether to have system ships.
But i think stationary defences like starbase should be in because it would help against early rush with few ships. And it brings interesting tactical choice whether to fortify chokepoints or invest in movable army. Dmn my memory is bad but there was event in I or II worldwar when someone built fortresses along the border but germans simply got past it by invading other nation first... I simply cant recall which nations those were, strange...

[Cmd. Marko]

Maybe let the players design their own Starbases with the modules acting as "ship parts". Were you can also have star base hull types [space station, starbase, space hub, ...] with ever increasing space for different modules let's you tailor the right star base for a particular spot in your empire. When the time comes and your empire expands you can refit your old star bases with newer designs that reflect their new position within your imperial border.

[Bigjoe5]

Dmn my memory is bad but there was event in I or II worldwar when someone built fortresses along the border but germans simply got past it by invading other nation first... I simply cant recall which nations those were, strange...

That would be France, with the Maginot Line.

Also, I just had another thought - instead of having a number of categories of starbase, perhaps instead there could just be generic starbases, with their functionality being determined solely by the installed modules. This is probably a simpler solution, which permits greater strategic freedom and fewer arbitrary restrictions.

[Geoff the Medio]

This might already be answered, but regardless: what's the essential difference between the proposed "starbase" and the existing buildings in FreeOrion? Buildings can already represent orbital facilities, like shipyards, and can work together to allow more functionality than a single building would provide.

One difference might be that buildings require a player to have colonized a planet to be built at that planet. If this is the main distinction, then I don't think we need a separate game concept for "starbases"; instead there could be an effect that grants an empire the ability to produce buildings in a system, or on a planet, even if the system / planet aren't colonized by that empire. I've been hoping to add something like a "constructor ship" which would act like a mobile production centre, allowing production of certain buildings (likely orbital ones only) or ships away from colonized planets.

[pd]

I've been hoping to add something like a "constructor ship" which would act like a mobile production centre, allowing production of certain buildings (likely orbital ones only) or ships away from colonized planets.

I love this idea.

[Geoff the Medio]

I've been hoping to add something like a "constructor ship" which would act like a mobile production centre, allowing production of certain buildings (likely orbital ones only) or ships away from colonized planets.

I love this idea.

Ideally, it would be possible to have an empire without any permanent settlements, roving the galaxy, strip-mining planets and systems of all usable resources, or just grazing and moving on every few turns without leaving a trace and giving the previous systems time to recover / regrow until the fleet returns to it.

[aphenine]

I like the idea of the roving construction ship too.

One thing I was thinking about was that, in the early days of sea trade on the Earth's oceans (and even now with Somalia), piracy and navigational hazards were a big problem and caused the loss of many ships, which affected the amount of trade and the communication that neighbouring regions had with each other. With space being as large and empty as it is, there's a lot of potential for things to go wrong on trade routes, and great potential for pirates to hide bases in uninhabited systems from which to raid shipping. Starbases are the logical solution to this, and would be the lighthouses and coastguards of the space regions, as well as the police and military patrols of their regions against piracy. So there are many logical modules to put on starbases dealing with trade in this regard.

Also, I'm not entirely sure how starlanes are supposed to work, but if they're like wormholes, then they'll need navigational systems to prevent ships from materialising at the same time (messy). There's a good system in David Weber's Honoverse books, which has a civilian Astro-Control Service IIRC, which handles the ships traffic through the wormhole junctions and stops irritable ship captains from killing themselves, their crew and a lot of other people in transiting the wormholes.

Starbases would also be useful at the intersection of trade routes, as that would be a logical place to have a market and ship over goods, as well as have transient quarters for passengers who can't get a direct connection.

[aphenine]

On a completely different point, I'd love to see science modules for research around strange galactic phenomena, particularly black holes and neutron stars. If you could go to these places, you'd totally place a load of excited scientists in orbit so they could throw stuff in and study what happens. It's be a useful place for high-gravity and general relativity research, and there'd never be any habitable planets in these systems.

[PL_Andrev]

In this model of game the base creation 'anywhere' has no sense because players use only starlanes to jump between stars. But this idea can be useful to build bases inside a starsystem to improve power of fleet, decrease power of enemy (attacking) fleet, as supply system or improve planetary production with research, resources, minerals or food.
Effect of starbase (or starbases) can apply to ships/planets only in this star system.

So, generally good idea.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Considering the difficulty we humans have so far had in reaching/exploring/colonizing our own star system, from our own relatively low-gravity planet, it's not entirely unfeasable that "starbases" may in the future become the foundation upon which the main infrastructure of spacegoing nations are built, rather than home planets.

Starbases can be custom-built, and because of their manufactured status, wouldn't have to deal with such hurdles as the weather, earthquakes, tsunamis, deserts, etc. while allowing efficiency of form and function that are several degrees of magnitude beyond what a natural planet's surface could hope to offer.

Because they're built, literally, from the ground, up (or the ground in, in the case of hollow spheres), they could also afford their inhabitants a much safer, more secure environment, not only from military attack actions and sabotage (which they could far more easily fend off, conveniently misplaced exhaust ports notwithstanding...) but from all manner of stellar catastrophy, while offering vastly more living and storage room, relative to overall mass, and a more comfortable, more easily traversible, far more regulated, atmosphere and environment (or several environments, in the case of matryoschka brains), above and beyond the removal of many, if not all, climatological threats.

[Animastudio]

Starbases are cool near the planets would be useful things for fight against invaders or boost economy,science or something like that.