I'm not even sure why you're bringing this up, as in this previous STGOD, that is exactly what happened. There was a set of defined properties that defined how FTL worked, and while people could get a little creative in describing the mechanism, unless they paid points into certain properties, it all worked functionally the same.Dahak wrote:I'd like also to offer the idea that we should all decide on a set (or general level) of available technologies, especially for the FTL drives.
There have been numerous occasions, and I'm not quite innocent myself here, were player A said "I'm doing XXX" and player B answered "Not possible because of property XXX of my FTL drive". If we all could decide on one drive with a fixed set of properties, it would make things easier.
As far as investing peacefully in one's own economy, um, yeah, that's going to be a detriment to the "reach out and grab resources" idea. If player A can sit on his ass and increase his own economy without risking his precious widdle fleet, why should he do anything but that? Next there will be people going "well why can't I make a shit-ton of worthless mining colonies", and then to counter that there will be a second resource and blah blah blah down to where the game ceases to be about a struggle to grab power and territory and a big old game of Supreme Commander where everyone micromanages their economy until they can field a fleet of super-units.
Now, I'm not saying we can't have some level of self-improvement available, but it should be extremely minor compared to the spoils of war. Going out and capturing worlds should be richly rewarded compared to people who want to be non-confrontational. That said, if there were a way for people to diplomatically "capture" territory, that might be interesting as well, but crafting that mechanic can be difficult to say the least.
As far as ship modules, I would like to clarify some misconceptions:
A. Cloak in the previous game was not simply a set module, there were 9 different levels of power for cloaking devices. It was NOT, in fact, free. The difference in the ten points between the power of the ship was the price of the cloak.
B. Cloak was, perhaps, the worst implemented of the modules because it was essentially an all or nothing module with the limits being poorly defined.
C. "Module" upgrades assume that ships do not normally have capacity X, Y, or Z. It's simpler to assume that all ships have a basic capability for something than to assume they don't. Yes, this means that I am implying that all ships should have a basic functionality for interdiction. This is to prevent hit and runs and the idiocy that is microjumping.
For my part, I'd rather cloaks were done away with entirely and the bonus replaced with a stealth function, which is countered by sensors. Any ship has a basic functionality for stealth, running cool, turning off all non-critical systems, etc. Additional stealth ratings make it harder to detect, allowing for covert missions, ambushes, etc. Stealth can run the gamut from allowing the military ship to mimic a civilian vessel (Q-Ship) to making it nearly invisible to sensors. Larger ships have to spend more on stealth for it to make it worthwhile, because larger ships kick out more heat and are harder to disguise as civilian vessels. As a quick out of my hat equation, the maximum amount of points one can spend on stealth is equal to all the other points the ship is constructed of combined, so a 10 point ship could have another 10 points spent on "stealth", resulting in an extremely stealthy ship. For a 100 point dreadnought to achieve the same level of stealth, it would have to spend another 100 points on stealth. As a counter to this, sensors would not need to scale.
I do think, however, that hard limits on the bonuses would not be a bad idea. Especially with the Imperial Relic aspect of the game, limiting bonuses for things players can build gives extra incentive to find Imperial Ships or even Imperial Shipyards or Ship Component Plants. As another quick number pulled from a hat, I'd say no more than 10 points (or equivalent, for stealth), can be spent on a given "aspect", like fire control, sensors, FTL, Interdiction, etc. Imperial ships, meanwhile, could have more. Capturing the Imperial Sensor plant, meanwhile, might grant you the ability to boost your existing ships with +20 Imperial Sensors after an appropriate refit.
As far as point allocation per turn, I say that every player starts with a certain number of points, which they can allocate between X number of systems, with Y being the minimum and Z being the maximum. With each system worth X resources, the specific rewards of conquest become much clearer. Allow military spending to be spent on "defense", on which there is a hard limit of 10 for each system (unless you capture some Imperial defense systems). Each point can "hold out" against, say, 100 points of enemy ships or so for enough time for reinforcements to arrive from neighboring systems, say a few hours to a day at most. After that, they fail, and troops can be dropped or continents can be glassed.
It should be noted that with the firepower you guys are setting for this game, Base Delta Zero is well within the means of any warfleet. Remember that fleets of 2,000-6,000 points are generally the norm for this style of game, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. If one ship has GT-level firepower, then a fleet of dozens of them can glass a planet in a reasonably amount of time, or simply murder every major city in very short order.