[Fyron]

tmce said:
Um. Why? Sure it makes sense from a realistic point of view, but not from a fun point of view. The tag that tells you there are ruins on a planet is a little flag that says 'Hey! Colonize this planet and something cool will happen!'
Whenever you colonize a ruins planet, you should get something. Sometimes something good (unique techs, etc), sometimes something bad (Oh no! Wrathful ancient race!), sometimes something you might not really need (Goody. Meson BLaster IIs. Those will fit nicely with my APBXIIs...)

But I think not getting anything from a Ruins planet is kinda kicking the player in the teeth.

Because it makes it more fun to have the chance to discover technology that leads nowhere... It adds more random chance and variety to the game. Why would all ruins be something good left behind? Maybe the ruins are just some partial houses with no useful technology to be gleaned... I believe you are the first person I have ever encountered that was utterly against this idea. Should we also make it so that there are no systems that are empty? It is kinda kicking the player in the teeth when he explores a new system and finds absolutely nothing of value...

mottlee said: Be maybe cool to have some "Bad" tech that starts you someplace then goes nowhere!

I agree. You can see such things in Adamant Mod.

Gandalf Parker said: Actually if I were to think about it I can see it being clues to research (research points in specific areas) more than I can see finding tech that can instantly be modified and mass duplicated for use in my ships. So if I were making a wild-change suggestion it would to changing the whole ruins system to be either research points (general or a specific area boost), or a piece of technology which you can add to ONE ship and jury-rig it to be useable. That could be an interesting change for strategic play. I could find a level 5 missile, or a level 5 shield, but I only get to add it to one ship. I can find a planetary shield but can only install it on one planet. Maybe I could find an actual ship and use it, or a dreadnought hull but only a couple of engines and a shield are intact so I have to get it to a shipyard and analyze it.
Im not sure if that would be a GOOD change though

While this would make gameplay interesting, having only one copy of a device available would be rather useless once you get more than a few dozen planets and ships. The devices found would have to be truly spectacular if that were the case. Perhaps a mobile War Shrine component, that boosts the chance to hit for all of your ships in a system or in a sector, would be the type of thing that it would be worth finding as a single useable component. Being able to find fully functional ships could be interesting, but only in the delay it takes to get the technology. It might be better to just have ruins give you a theoretical technology, then you have to do research to develop the device. This also somewhat covers the research boost idea, at least for unique techs, and is doable in SE4 mods (such as Proportions and Adamant, which already do this).