Should spaceships be the only way to travel between planets.

[utilae]

Ok, so I have been watching Stargate lately and it got me thinking. Should spaceships be the only way to travel between planets.

Stargates are obious alternatives, but there could be many types of methods of travelling between worlds in the tech tree.
eg
-Super long range transporters - obiously very advanced in the tech tree, but instead of only being used in space combat these transporters are able to transport in measurements of parsecs/lightyears (whatever we use). Maybe these transporters are not that advanced in the tech tree, but just require a very advanced power supply.
-Stargates - Like on stargate on tv, although these were on Moo2, but were probably in space and used for any size ship. We could do a similar thing to Moo2 where we have an instant stargate to another planet, however instead of building them all at once, we build them one by one, basically we build the link between two planets/systems. We could also have a variation of stargate that is ground based, like in the tv show, so only ground troops can travel through it.
-Rail Launch - Basically you take a ship that can hold some people, it has no propulsion of its own and it is launched on a rail super fast from one planet to another planet. It lands on the planet with little impact (some how) and is always moving, so it is difficult to intercept for battle.

[Ran Taro]

I think ground based stargates are an excellent idea as a tool to decrease micromanagement.

Intrasystem (only between planets in that same system) stargates should come about around the time you start to get:

a) terraforming tech that starts to allow 'useless & and uninhabitable' planets in each system to become useful

b) too many planets to enjoyably micromanage individually

Note that a) should partially cause b) so this should happen fairly close together.

Stargates between planets in a system could effectively cause the star system to become the primary admistrative division of an empire - rather than the individual colony - since suddenly resources and population can be easily moved between planets. So you start managing your possessions primarily from the system level, rather than the planet level, upping the scale, and therefore lessening the micromanagement.

Stargates with (limited) intersystem range developed later in the game could dovetail fairly seemlessly with the 'sectors' idea proposed in another thread some time ago to, at some stage in the game, make sectors take over from systems as the primary administrative division of an empire.

[Carbon Copy Man]

What would be the benefit of having non-spaceship travel? Besides ground forces, aren't spaceships basically the only things that have any real reason to travel between stars?

Or is it meant to act like freighter fleets in MoO2?

[utilae]

It would be different, an alternative. Why do I need to build a spaceship to travel to planet X? What if my race knows nothings about creating spaceships that can travel at FTL speeds, but they know how to create stable wormholes between two points. It would give your race a unique feel based on the technology they possess.

Imagine fighting an AI player who does not have spaceships but instead can create a stable wormhole to your planets and send ground troops straight through. You'd have to increase your groundforces, although your ships can attack his worlds from space.

[guiguibaah]

Hmmm. That could be quite an interesting way to play the game...

Question: How would you colonise new planets in a system without exploring it? Would you gain immediate knowledge of neigboring systems or something?


This could be an interesting idea to hold on to... Having one race that can move from planet to planet, without ships, could signify a big change in strategy. (In moo2, all you needed to worry about was ship combat. Once you maintained space superiority, you could just bombard to death any planet, irregardless of the number of troops stationed there).

You would still be at the mercy of ship bombardments, so you would have to invest in a lot of planetary defences.

Perhaps mid to late game all other races get this ability as well - teleport troops to adjacent planets in a starlane.

[utilae]

Question: How would you colonise new planets in a system without exploring it? Would you gain immediate knowledge of neigboring systems or something?

For the stable wormhole idea, I think it could work like this. A rocket is fired that heads to the target planet. It can go superfast because there are no onboard people (no lifesupport, g effects that would kill crew, etc). It would land on the planet and deploy a stargate. You would already have one stargate at home, so you just create a wormhole between the two. Send some troops through to explore it. Sends some colonists.

Perhaps mid to late game all other races get this ability as well - teleport troops to adjacent planets in a starlane.

Yes

[Kharagh]

Great idea, I like it a lot.

It will add a great deal of fun and diversity to the game and will enable the player to try totally new strategies.

We could even add a planet special named "Derelict Stargate". It would be an old Stargate left over by an advanced race. You would then have the chance to research it and uncover the addresses of other gates of that race, which would be randomly destributed througout the universe. Perhaps a 50% chance to discover one address, 25% to discover a second and 10% to discover a third might be good.
You could reach distant planets relatively early in the game. However, your enemies might find another gate and attack you through it. So you would have to decide, to close it up (using an iris or a shield ) or leave it open.

Ground troops will be much more important all of a sudden.

[Pasi]

I think it's a good idea too

I also like the rail launcher thingy... could also be used to sling a huge balls of minerals at high speed at enemy planets ... just like in Stars! ...

[Carbon Copy Man]

Wow. It's actually starting to sound like a good idea. ^_^

I think there could be a racial pick that allows your units to use certain alternate means of interplanetary transport.

Then they'd have to do additional research to be able to refine it.

[Dreamer]

Just to note something: a race having this tech is inmune to planetary blockades.

[utilae]

Yeah, but if some of your planets don't have stargates then you can't trade with them. You can trade with the ones that do have a stargate.

[Dreamer]

I wouldn't even bother with that. Nothing prevents yo to send stuff to the one planett with stargates and from them to the rest of the empire. Make them inmune seems easier and more realistic. At most use a tax to represent textra trading dificulties.

[utilae]

Ok, that would make sense.

[Impaler]

Another way to have a "no ship" race would be to make it a Unique racial ability due to the aliens being "Trans-Dimentional" or some such tthing. This wouldnt realy prevent them from building ships but it would basicaly remove the need.

Another interesting idea could be a race that plays the game with nothing BUT ships, I imagine the game could start with their Sun going Nova and their whole civilization escaping in a fleet of ships, one of which is a Huge "Mother Ship" ala HomeWorld/BattleStar Galactica. They go system to system mining asteroids. If they get strong enough they try to concour enemy systems much like the aliens in "Independence Day".

[Magus]

A spacefaring race would be awesome, though making sure they were not more or less powerful than their planetbound neighbors would be difficult. Likewise with the natural dimension-striders. Obviously, if they are not a playable race, but something to encounter (Bentusi!) that doesn't have to apply.

Another thing that could be used for non-conventional galactic travel would be to have a race that can't travel faster than light, but can maintain wormholes that transit instantaneously. So they would have to drag those wormholes out on STL ships, but then have a rapid transit network throughout the empire. Finding wormholes like that would also be a good system special.