Mobile Habitat & Blink Drives

[Strager]

Now that we have habitats, one thing that would be awesome to see are "Mobile Habitats" - These would essentially be spaceships big enough to hold pops.

One way I think this could be done without breaking the entire balance of the game is to create a new type of FTL called the "Blink Drive" - using some rare element, only the captial habitat can make use of it - other ships can dock with it in order to "ride along" (and defend it) .

Once the Habitat lands in a system it takes 1+ years to cool down. Durring that time the ship builds a "Transportation gate" similar to the "Super gates" in the Stargate Mythos. - Only small ships (destroyer and smaller) can use them, but they provide instantaneous transportation between gates meaning all ships in all worlds with a gate can arrive at any gate in almost no time at all. The gates are also very difficult to destroy (and too valuable to want to do so since anyone can make use of them).


Invasions:
This technology is fantastic for defense but week on attacking. In order to allow for SOME kind of offensive manuvers there needs to be some kind of ship that can jump to opposing worlds and maybe throw down a temporary gate to allow attackers through.

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

The problem I see here is that Orbital Habitats aren't actually ships or stations- they're a special skin for a planet. And planet's can't actually "move".

 

[Strager]

The problem I see here is that Orbital Habitats aren't actually ships or stations- they're a special skin for a planet. And planet's can't actually "move".

It "docks" at a random planet if one is available otherwise it enters orbit around the star? I'm sure they could come up with something....

 

[aono]

Now that we have habitats, one thing that would be awesome to see are "Mobile Habitats" - These would essentially be spaceships big enough to hold pops.

I'm definitly heard an echo for somebody saying "GSV", and another one for "Craftworld". Oh yeah, and word "Atlantis"! So yeah, theoretically it would be great.
But as @BlackUmbrellas already said, problem is about habitats being actual planets. If you can create one, I believe, you can "move" them by event (to destroy in one place and reemerged on another one), but I believe it's too code-heavy. Especially in late-game, with a dozens of habitats around.
Also I can predict some issues with resourses and actual check for "is a planet active".

Durring that time the ship builds a "Transportation gate" similar to the "Super gates" in the Stargate Mythos. - Only small ships (destroyer and smaller) can use them, but they provide instantaneous transportation between gates meaning all ships in all worlds with a gate can arrive at any gate in almost no time at all.

If you have such things you don't actually need ships for transportation. I don't recall - do in Stargate spaceships actually used stargates for transportation? Or they used "conventional" engines?

 

[BlackUmbrellas]

But as @BlackUmbrellas already said, problem is about habitats being actual planets. If you can create one, I believe, you can "move" them by event (to destroy in one place and reemerged on another one), but I believe it's too code-heavy. Especially in late-game, with a dozens of habitats around.
Also I can predict some issues with resourses and actual check for "is a planet active".

The thing I see as a particular roadblock is that, to my knowledge, there's no way to record the tile/POP/etc arrangement of a planet- you can't actually "cheat" a move by saving that information, destroying the planet, and then spawning an identical world using that information somewhere else. This was something that Alexis Kennedy brought up in his own "developer journals" about writing the Horizon Signal DLC- the limitations of the engine that Paradox informed him of, and how one thing he couldn't do was move an entire planet.

 

[aono]

Ah. Yeah, that's a problem.
If I needed to push that around, I'd do it such way - engine firstly creates another habitat (it's possible), then resettles (it's possible again) old one to new one, then destroys old one. Isn't sure is it actually possible to relocate buildings, but, I believe, you can create building by event (right?), and destroy it as well, so it theoretically can be done with checks looking like "if there is power plant in cell 1 on old habitat, put power plant to cell 1 in new habitat" and so on for all 12 cells. With habitat it's actually simpler that with a planet, because every habitat is identical to a planet (until some event can add a modifier into habitat as to planet, but it can be solved same way as building).
Practically it's too clumsy.

UPD: Actually I recalling about Wiz said often enough that engine haven't a tech to destroy a planet, so last turn there may be impossible. But as I know how this engine works, I believe it's simple enough to add principial ability to destroy a planet.
Problems are, I believe, in all consequences this effort will bring. The last answer "why planetkillers are not there" will be refuted, and HARD rebalancing will came.