New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded

[ColdSteel]

I'd like to see drones implemented as "stand off" fire and forget planetary weapons (think cruise missiles) that target planets in other systems. This would be a new research area branch.

The drone is designed using the ship designer, is built in a planet weapons facility and, once completed, is targeted and fired from the planet surface. Targeting is done using the "attack" command button. The planet has to be in an system you have a map to and the drone cannot pass through unexplored systems to reach the target. In other words, the entire target path must be known in order to use the weapon. Once fired the drone cannot be controlled or recalled as it makes it's preprogrammed attack run.

At low tech levels:

- The drone would only be able to travel several systems to the target (lower supplies).

- The weapon would damage random facilities on the planet.

- Only one type of warhead and few components are available.

- Movement speed per turn starts at 8 and increases with each tech level, making them harder to intercept and destroy on the way in.

At higher levels:

- Increases in the targeting range (more supplies).

- At higher levels you could pick the target facility on the target planet. At even higher levels you could even target the troops on the planet or the population.

- Also at higher levels you could fit in more components (like scanners, ecm, targeting computers, cloaking and the like).


Maybe a counter, mirror technology that uses another type of drone as an intercept defensive weapon (think patriot missiles) could also be developed.

I've seen a lot of ideas floated for how to do drones in SE4. To me this idea would add quite a bit of fun and strategy to the game as well as introduce another interesting tech branch to research. You could even add in so other defensive measures and tech against these such as planetary shields. You could also scramble fighters to intercept if one is coming in (unless it is cloaked).

Part of the beauty of this idea is that the drone would be essentially just another hull design type and could use a lot of the existing game components. This could make it pretty easy to do.

I'm interested in some other people's thoughts on this idea.