The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Yesterday, I was just reading back old pages of Schlock and came across one episode (I can't remember exactly which, and I can't find it again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif ) in which Petey speaks about the fact that a war with the Gatekeepers would inevitably cause the collapse of any and all galactic civilizations. This made me think.

Moreover, this made me mod.

The "End of Galactic Civilizations Mod" is currently very much under construction, but I'm posting already because I'd like to get some opinions and ideas to put into the mod.

General outline:

The mod (best started at Medium or High tech level, to represent its purpose better) places the player in control of an empire that has been traversing space for a long time already. At Medium start, most technologies are already researched, putting the player in a position of leader of an Empire which already has fairly highly advanced technology.

To emulate the "galactic civilization" thing, the player will be able to choose from a wide variety of options in various areas. To take an example, Bridges (All bridges have Self-Destruct ability and boarding defense):

-Civilian Bridge. Smallest and cheapest bridge but gives enormous penalties in combat. Best suited for civilian ships. Boarding defense bonus of 5.
-Military bridge. Like the stock bridge only +10 attack bonus, to reflect the fact that the crew has been trained. Boarding defense bonus of 20.
-Mercenary Warship Bridge. Largest and most expensive bridge. Gives 40% offense and 20% defense bonuses. Boarding defense bonus of 40.
-Deep Space Ship Bridge. Best suited for deep-space exploration ships. Contains a Crew Quarters and supply storage. Boarding defense bonus of 10.

These are just the bridges I already have.

There will be a lot of specialty components, including many types of weapon lockers for boarding defense - and offense. You'll have a lot of specialized weapons systems, and all ship sizes are useful throughout the game. You can field tiny, super-fast deepscout ships, larger, slower, long-ranged deep space exploration vessels, hit-and-run strike craft, massive merchant vessels and enormous, lumbering warships with weapons that can vaporize small ships in a single shot, shields or no shields.

Well? Opinions, suggestions, ideas? Please?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

er, maybe I missed something in your description, but how exactly does this mod simulate the end of galactic civilization?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Those are some dangerously large combat bonuses. I forsee noone ever selecting anything less than merc. bridge for all combat ships.

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Kevin: Forgot to put that in the post, and is not yet implemented (as I'm not working on weapons yet), but..... well, lemme explain this.

If you start at Medium or High tech (I recommend Medium), you already have a lot of powerful technology. You will have highly destructive weaponry, large warships which can actually hold multiple planet killer weapons, you have enormously powerful orbital bombs, etc.

This way, when a war breaks out, horrific technology can be deployed on both sides. Planets will be blown up like fireworks on the 4th of July, sunkillers will decimate population, fleets of warships duke it out in what will eventually (probably) become a mutual annihilation. Think of it as the nuclear stalemate between the US and the Soviet Union in the past half century. (Lovely to be able to say that.....) If any side were to openly attack the other, nukes would probably come into play at some point, at which point they would wage a war of mutual annihilation. Now, you can have small border conflicts (I'm talking about the mod), but once you're deploying large attack forces and start pushing into the enemy's territory, super-weapons will come into play. From both sides. And once the solar nukes start flyin', people'll start dyin'.

Oh, did I mention that it will be a roleplay mod?

Fyron: Compare.

-Civilian Bridge.
10kT, cost 200mins. Good for civilian vessels to cut cost and increase available hull size.

-Military Bridge.
50kT, cost 1Kmins, 200rads. Good for small to medium-sized warships.

-Mercenary Bridge.
150(!)kT, cost 3.5Kmins, 1Krads. Considering the fact that this is an extremely large bridge, it's mainly useful - nay, only useful - on large warships. I'm probably going to add penalties to this bridge too.

Oh, did I mention that it will be a roleplay mod?

edit: Btw, does negative "Resource Generation - Minerals" work?

edit2: Can I stick cargo bays on fighters?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

I believe negative resource generation does work, at least if you're talking about the new 1.91 abilities that produce resources out of thin air...

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

You could try, but they wouldn't have any effect. Units cannot carry cargo.

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

If you make Life Support Systems use supplies, does that mean that the supplies are subtracted from the total each turn?

What uses are there for a "support fighter" besides repair and supply transport?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Life support systems can't use supplies. It just doesn't work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
I think Captain Kwok or Atrocities tried something like that for the Star Trek Mod, and all it did was confuse people http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Soooo..... If I want a component to passively use supplies every turn without doing anything, what should I do? Is there an Ability that will work when its value is set to 0 or something?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Unfortunately, no http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
Well, you could always try a negative solar supply generation, but I can't guarantee that would work, and it would also depends on teh number of stars in the system...

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

so kind of a cold war theme... intersting, has anyone ever tried making a mod like this before? It could be a lot of fun for roleplaying and those who like diplomacy/politics

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Why not nuke your opponent before they can nuke you?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

you would have to mod some way of assuring mutually assured destruction... perhaps making star destroyers rather cheap and getting rid of system shield facilities. It would be interesting to have a greater emphasis on intelligence, too - could you disable offensive intelligence operations and have players focus more on actual info-gathering missions?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Actually, I'm thinking about implementing leaky intel. I.E. Removing all defense projects, and having people run Intel sabotage projects whenever they suspect another empire is using intel on them. It's implemented in another mod too, though I can't remember which.

NA: Well, just take a look at the Cold War. And indeed, I'm going to make superweapons more affordable. Some are even capable of firing at other ships (like the Death Star's superlaser in EpVI), vaporizing smaller ships with a single shot. It might be a good tactic (and certainly a good roleplaying maneuver!) to build up rather large fleets of super-weapon-equipped ships spread out over many systems, and mothball them. Once the enemy knows you're doing that, he's more than likely to do the same thing. Arms race, anyone?

That way, especially if you remember to spread out the super-weapon ships over your entire empire, you've got a Cold War situation. As soon as the enemy launches even just one solar nuke at you, you can send in your own ones to blow up his systems, resulting in him sending his solar nukes etc. etc. etc. This way, a truly large-scale war will be a war of mutual annihilation. Sure, you can engage in small border conflicts between patrol gunboat groups whose courses intersect, but once the really big guns - i.e. the truly massive warships - arrive on the scene, it's bound to devolve into either a cold war-like arms race, or a massive war of solar nukes.

Oh, did I mention it will be a roleplaying mod?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Some stalemate-breakers might be nice. Cloaked 'nukes', speedy and well-armored planet killers...

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Uh-uh. Sure, I can add them (and I probably will, now that you mention it), but they won't be stalemate-breakers.

Say, you and your enemy have got a combined arsenal large enough to destroy the entire sector three times over. What then? You build fast, well-armored planetkillers instead of solar nukes. You send a few to the enemy. He then proceeds to build his own planetkillers, and builds a few more than you did. Then, you build even more planetkillers, which elicits a response from the enemy, which is building even more planetkillers etc. Repeat until you've got a combined planetkiller arsenal large enough to destroy the entire sector ten times over.

Wars are to be regulated. Certain rules must be drawn up at the start of a war, and both sides must agree. You can agree to fight only with your border patrols, or only with carrier strike groups.

Also, in PBW games, there could/should be a "game master" player, sitting in an isolated system in a corner of the map. He has a map of the entire sector (i.e. Ancient Race) - make sure you've got omnipresent view on - and he can regulate stuff like wars, treaties, aggressive expansion and so forth. All players answer to him, he's like a Galactic Council. Mostly, he just sits passively in his own little system, watching as Galactic events unfold, but when he sees fit he may intervene to give advice, steer a player away from certain actions, or even give direct orders to a player. Such a Game Master can start and end wars, regulate multilateral alliances, etc.

Oh, did I mention that it will be a roleplay mod? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Munchkining and role-playing in the same mod?

*Checks outside*

And not a single flying pig, either. Huh.

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

"Munchkining"? Please, I know you want to explain what that is so deeply.....

Also, I'm changing resources. (Best way of putting it.)
Minerals are now Raw Materials.
Radioactives is now Energy.
And finally, Organics are now..... credits.
Raw Materials are necessary for pretty much anything, Energy is required for complex systems, reactors and such, and Credits..... well, that's a different story altogether.

Credits are Galactic currency. The only way to gain Credits is by building Cities (whose inhabitants pay taxes) and various forms of Banks.

At the moment, there are two types of bank:
-Interest Banks, with a very large bonus to Credit production and some Credit storage.
-Savings banks, with a smaller (but still large) bonus to Credit production and quite a lot more Credit storage.
There are also Vaults which only store Credits and do not provide any bonus. They store far more than both types of bank put together, but do not increase Credit income and therefore are not classified as Banks.

Credits are used to pay for certain things. Large, expensive projects require an ample amount of Credits. Mercenary ships (i.e. ships with a Mercenary Bridge) cost 5 kilocreds (5000 Credits) per turn. Credits can freely be exchanged between players in exchange for other items and resources, or with the Game Master for resources.

I'm going to work out exchange rates soon.

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

Why don't you use maintenence costs for the costs?

Re: The End of Galactic Civilization..... Mod!
 

I did that too. However, mercs need a base payment, thus covered by the 5 kilocred per turn cost.

There was this really good reason for changing the resources just like 15 minutes ago or so, but I forgot what it was.