Where are the Civilians?

[Noble713]

quote:

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Originally posted by ZeroAdunn:
When ever you build a spaceport on a planet it should create a line similar to the lines used in a ships path- maybe of a different color between the new spaceport world and the nearest spaceport world. These would be shipping lanes. When you want to transfere population or cargo between worlds simply hit the transfere button and then in the transfere cargo window there should be an off world option and then you could select any other spaceport world. Then after you have sent whatever you want to send a transport will magicly appear (each planet would have a different number of transport ships depending on it's population at minimun maybe 1 and at max maybe 5 or 10) and begin transporting to wherever you sent cargo. Then it would make the journey to wherever the cargo was headed unload it and make the return journey. It would continue to make trips till all the cargo selected has been moved.

You could also move fighters, satelites, mines, etc in this same way.

Trade between empires would be handled in much the same way. When you enacted a treaty a transport lane would be drawn between the two empires closest spaceport planets. Then every turn a fleet of a certain size (depending on the number of resources being trated) would travel between the two worlds. Every turn another fleet would be sent out.

Ships in orbit around a spaceport world could be given the order "Protect shippping lanes" or something and whenever a transport ship was sent out it would escort it to and from wherever it was going.

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I like this. It's a bit like the trade routes system in Call to Power. When a route is created, a line is between the two cities, and you can pirate the route by moving a ship onto it and hitting the right command. This destroys the route entirely and gives you money.

I think the idea of individual ships/convoys moving along the route is better than the CtP system as you can raid it indefinately or have ships provide escort. There is no real way to defend against piracy in CtP.

I also don't think this would be *TOO* hard to implement. It would at least require:

-adding a list of spaceports to the cargo transfer window
-adding code to assign the correct number of transports to move the desired cargo
-creating the freighter fleet in the game screen and giving it automatic Move to X,Y and Drop Cargo orders. You should be able to add other ships to this fleet as escorts
-limiting the convoy's movement to shipping lane sectors
-restrict the player from altering convoy orders (even if the fleet is attacked, it should stay on the shipping lane and continue moving next turn)

How would the freighters be designed? Maybe we could use the transport ship hulls, and add a new freighter component (max of 1 per transport, not allowed on any other hull), which would decrease the maintenance cost considerably as well as marking the design as a freighter and therefore making it available to the spaceports. These ships would not have a build time, as we can assume that many of them are already in service and that the government is just contracting a few to move something.

I have no problem with using this to move fighters/mines/etc. because:

-You can only ship them to planets with spaceports. You have to use military transports (what we have now) to get them to the remote planets and bases.
-Since the shipping lanes are so visible (a yellow line that all players can see), anybody can come along and blow up your convoy carrying your expensive fighters off to the front. They could even hide in nearby storms and wait for a convoy to show up. This would actually give storms a reason to exist, as they just kinda sit there and get ignored now.

This whole system would make deep penetration raids MUCH more interesting and useful. Right now all you can do is send a cloaked ship in to bLast some colony ships, or at best equip it with Smart Bombs and bomb planets. So many planets have weapon platforms that this will hardly ever work, and you don't know which ones have spaceports anyway.