organic ships

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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pd
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Re: organic ships

#46 Post by pd »

I think that organic and crystal ships should be available right from the beginning, but only to certain races.

Ships are the main element in identifying your enemy. They are basicly all you're gonna see of your opponents and that's why I think they should convey, what race is behind those. So an insect race has insect or cocoon ships, a plant race has tree ships, a crystaline race has crystal ships. This has to do with how those races produce and construct artifacts. Most of them don't have hands, which can be used to construct things, as we are used to. Instead many races might develop a way to grow ships.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: organic ships

#47 Post by Bigjoe5 »

But would these type of ships actually have different properties, or would it just be a graphical difference? If it actually affects the stats of the ship, there should still be a way to make all ship types available to all races by the time the endgame rolls around. Even so, that would make it easier to find a way to exploit the system by finding the "best" race. Anyway, If the differences are only graphical, then it might as well be left out, because it doesn't really add to gameplay. However, there might be a way to make more organic oriented races get to the organic ship technology faster....
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Re: organic ships

#48 Post by Rho »

Finding the best race should be impossible if each require a different strategy. Ideally, it's a rock-scissors, paper game, where equal forces result in rock beating scissors, and when rock outnumbers paper, rock wins.

So back to weird ships. Civs basing their technology on other branches of science than what we humans have is a good idea, see Big Joe's other recent post for some other thoughts on that idea. Yet if tree people build tree ships, bug people build bug ships, how come human people don't build human ships? Because it's ridiculous.

Organic ships would likely be along the lines of space coral covering more active structures. Crystal ships would similarily have shielding structuires on the outside and structures of other function inside. The humans' (us, at least so I assume) metallic ships aren't based on metallic humans, and the ships' insides are different than their outsides.

I yield the mid-game organic ship development, but maintain that civs basing their technology on what Earth humans have would have to wait half the game before building organic ships. If our technology already revolved around growing things to suit our purposes (beyond medicinal and nutritional), building organic ships wouldn't be as difficult as it is for Earth humans.

Similarily, a race/species basing their civilization on crystal technology wouldn't have a problem building crystal ships. We might also expect rock-based ships, ships made almost entirely of energy shields... And each kind of ship could be built on different smaller parts, giving us both original-, space-coral-, and space-dragon-based bioships, ships made of nanorobots, crystal plated ships and ships grown from a single crystal, and whatever else we can think of.

But it works better, I think, if each civ (note: not each race/species) is based on different materials and sciences.
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Re: organic ships

#49 Post by pd »

BigJoe wrote:Anyway, If the differences are only graphical, then it might as well be left out, because it doesn't really add to gameplay. However, there might be a way to make more organic oriented races get to the organic ship technology faster....
I don't know whether the ships will have different properties. I guess it would make sense, but would be a pain in the ass to balance. Anyway, this is not my business. I'm proposing this because I want to create those ships and I want them to visualize the race behind them.
Rho wrote:So back to weird ships. Civs basing their technology on other branches of science than what we humans have is a good idea, see Big Joe's other recent post for some other thoughts on that idea. Yet if tree people build tree ships, bug people build bug ships, how come human people don't build human ships? Because it's ridiculous.
I explained this. It has to do with how we are able to construct things. Other races might not be able to do this, so they might grow their ships or do whatever we can't imagine.

As it is now, there won't be different technologies for different races by the way.

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Re: organic ships

#50 Post by Bigjoe5 »

pd wrote: I don't know whether the ships will have different properties. I guess it would make sense, but would be a pain in the ass to balance.
Which is exactly why it should be a tech instead of an automatic racial thing. If my idea in my other thread is implemented, the different types of ships will usually be built by a certain type of race, so you could still look forward to creating ships that will represent the race within them.
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Re: organic ships

#51 Post by Pasi »

Just an idea ... not so organic, but a liquid ship?

for all those fish people?

it has a huge gravity engine in the middle pulling the liquid (water?) to the center and moving the ship.

basicly it would just look like a big ball of .... water... Causing corrosion for metal ships and Cholera for organic ships :p
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Re: organic ships

#52 Post by utilae »

Pasi wrote:Just an idea ... not so organic, but a liquid ship?

for all those fish people?

it has a huge gravity engine in the middle pulling the liquid (water?) to the center and moving the ship.

basicly it would just look like a big ball of .... water... Causing corrosion for metal ships and Cholera for organic ships :p
There was such a thing in Season 5 of Star Trek Voyager. It was a sphere of water in the middle of space, held together by a containment field (a device at the centre) and there was a race who had made the 'planet' there home.

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Re: organic ships

#53 Post by Pasi »

:oops: :oops:

I've got the copyright cops chasing me now :evil:

Never been a fan of Voyager series (seen only about half of the first season and got bored).

Anyway, if it's in Star Trek it must be realistic that some race can build such a watery device, and thus must be implemented in FO ! :wink:
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Re: organic ships

#54 Post by Bigjoe5 »

We could manage having race specific techs without having totally different tech trees. Maybe each race has one hyper advanced tech beyond all the others that only they can research? For some water races, it could be water ships that are almost impossible to hit, but are damaged by tractor beams. :)
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Re: organic ships

#55 Post by marhawkman »

Someday I'll either develop facial muscles that don't cramp as easily, or figure out how to avoid the issue entirely. :lol:

I like what PD said. The type of ship a race uses should be part of what the race is. I'd make researching a different construction type something that costs such a ridiculous amount that it's not practical in the early game. And prohibitively expensive in the late game.
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Re: organic ships

#56 Post by Pasi »

But if they were made "too" expensive, then it would take away the reason for anyone ever building or researching them if there wasnt some huge bonus for doing so... thus there would be little or no reason to even implement such a research in the game.
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Re: organic ships

#57 Post by marhawkman »

Pasi wrote:But if they were made "too" expensive, then it would take away the reason for anyone ever building or researching them if there wasnt some huge bonus for doing so... thus there would be little or no reason to even implement such a research in the game.
the idea here is to make it so that while you could (in theory at least) research all the construction types, it'd be impractical to attempt it early game, thus making the decision of what construction type to start with actually meaningful.
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Re: organic ships

#58 Post by Pasi »

well yes... when you but it that way it would make sense...

but I still think there should be some kind of "carrot (for the donkey)" to research other types in later game... like having some special tech you can only implement to a certain type of ship ... not anything that would shake the balance of the game, but something :?:
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Re: organic ships

#59 Post by utilae »

I think while you could research all construction types, each type would have its own unique techs and techs that can be used with all, but work better with certain types.

Also, depending on your race design, your inital construction type will be very low in the tech tree, but the rest will be far higher in the tree.

Lastly the idea of using a component of construction type A with a ship of construction type B could also be considered, but naturally the most benefit will be gained through specialisation as in most RPG style games.

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