An extremely silly question, buut...

[dmm]

And how about: Any ship that runs out of supplies AUTOMATICALLY becomes derelict, and runs a risk each turn of being salvaged by the Trade Federation! You'd have to have ships use a tiny bit of supplies each turn just sitting there in order to get maximum fun out of this rule, but the crippled survivors of big battles would also provide booty for the opportunistic TF scavengers. Engine killing weapons would be powerful once again. This would certainly make those Emergency Supply Pods and Solar Collectors more important! And would make it harder to sit on a warp point in the early game.

[dmm]

Originally posted by Batman:
The point is, you don't need to track this, but rather leave the ship intact until someone comes and actually looks inside; the Schroedinger's Ship paradox

Unless someone probed it with LongRangeSensors. At that point you'd have to run the damage subroutine and keep track of it.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by dmm:
Unless someone probed it with LongRangeSensors. At that point you'd have to run the damage subroutine and keep track of it.

Or you have a Trek-no-babble answer for that and say long range scanners detect what's inside a ship based off their energy emmisions, and a derelict hsip has no energy emmisions, so is immune to long range scanners.

[dmm]

I think that most of these Trade Federation ideas could be done in a no-AI game if it were set up correctly beforehand. One player plays the TF, whose role is to capture disabled ships, analyze their tech if valuable, buy tech, and sell ships and tech to anyone who can pay the price. TF ships and planets may not be attacked. (Exception: Intel can be used to recover your own ships.) TF never allies with anyone. TF cannot colonize or build any ships except boarding ships. TF starts with a tiny breathable planet in each system. TF starts with some advanced tech (e.g., LngRngSens, BrdngPrty, Rpr) but only sells tech that it has seized.

I don't know if TF should be allowed to use intel to get tech or ships. And I don't know what victory conditions TF could satisfy, if any. What do you all think?

[Lord Kodos]

the tf has to sel so much stuff that they buy out all the other empires kind of like the Corparations in the LotR mod(wow Legacy of the Ra'Shrakil and Lord of the Rings have same initials!)

[dmm]

Maybe TF also starts with a huge planet (or base or ringworld or sphereworld, depending on the galaxy size) which is actually an intergalactic colonizer and they need to fill it with organics and radioactives so they can traverse the intergalactic void.

Maybe TF could act as a bank too. Allow players to "gift" excess production which the TF would store (after taking a cut). They could give loans, with colonies as collateral. Hmmm, how could we set it up so players would deal with the TF? It wouldn't be any fun to play TF if everyone ignored you and all you got to do was an occasional scavenge. Maybe we should let them also build ships/units on contract?

[Gryphin]

Dmm,
Banking Excess Resources, Nice idea
If this could be hard coded such that you could earn interest instead of having to build storage.
Maybe there could be 2 or more FT’s competing for “High Score”
It would be a pre requisite that they not be attacked
The FT would only be allowed one system
I guess the FT could be Mercs and gift their ships to the Highest Bidder.

[Batman]

There isn't really much to stop this happening in a regular game when one player is

a) rich
b) successfully able to remain neutral.

It would be like being Switzerland! You'd also need to be trustworthy (i.e. people have to believe that you're going to give resources back to them if they bank with you)

In all likelihood, the temptation to take the money and run would prove quite great. (Especially if other players have a lot invested in you, then they might protect you to protect their money)

[dmm]

Originally posted by The High Gryphin:
Dmm,
Banking Excess Resources, Nice idea
If this could be hard coded such that you could earn interest instead of having to build storage.

I am pretty sure that there have been many times in history where not only did you not get interest but you had to pay the banker to keep your money safe. Since these are resources, that makes it more likely that you would need to pay the "banker" to store them for you.

A hard-coded Trade Federation (TF) would be nice, especially since then we could argue about it and demand changes. But I'm trying to think of how it could be done (in an interesting way) with role playing and house rules.

[Gryphin]

Guys, I'd volunteer to "Play Sweeden" is someone wants to run a game of it.
I think it would be fun.