Motherships rather than Planets

[Sytn]

Let me just start by saying I realize there are a lot of bigger issues to be dealt with in the short and long term for Stellaris and I feel they need to be addressed first, but this is just an idea that floated by I wanted to raise in the one in a billion chance it leads to being made, maybe for an expansion. Now thats out of the way...

Rather than having planets a faction could construct motherships that behaved like a planet in that it provided tiles that could be worked to produce resources, but it was a spaceship, able to move and travel across the galaxy freely.

You could have multiple sizes (6, 12, 25 tiles) that would obviously provide no natural resources to be exploited, but would have the advantage of being able to move and defend itself (being both a planet and a space station).

From this point you could add in a whole bunch of potential features to make motherships stand out. I think a big one that would be needed to promote moving between systems rather than just staying in a single system with your motherships would be that could harvest worlds (maybe to pay off that massive energy debt such a mothership would have), draining its resources and eventually destroying the world (obviously no one wants a whole galaxy turned into a barren wasteland, this would be a very very slow process and have its own dangers and risks).

Hell it could even be a new endgame disaster where an Independence Day like race (no rewards for realizing I just finished watching the new movie) arrive in the galaxy moving from planet to planet consuming them.

Thats all really, wanted to throw the idea out. I feel like it would really add in a dynamic and fun to play/play against race that would work within the game fairly well.

 

[Jason262]

No thanks, personally I don't like this idea because you start play as a race that just found FTL travel and the construction of a ship with even one planet tile is beyond what I think such a race could achieve, this isn't to say I'm against such super-ships existing altogether, as a crisis event (extra galactic nomads that have strip mined there home galaxy clean) or as really late game tech (pre-ringworld tech) but as a player race's starting "planet" no way in hell, leave that to the modders.

To me questions like how did they build it with out planetary infrastructure? and How can they build more without a massive industrial base? are paramount when considering it and I like my sci-fi to not crush my suspension of disbelief because of the "rule of cool" that this idea seems to based upon

Maybe the player could start on their home world, but instead of researching colonisation they could start researching big "planet ships". At the beginning they start with small ships, maybe a little bigger than the colony ships. instead of researching colonisation for different planet types it could be replaced with tech for different sizes of planetary ships. That way you don't start the game with a super ship and you have to slowly research you way to get them. For construction of these ships i imagine that you could construct something like a borg unicomplex in you home system. With the tech you research it could also allow for the construction of bigger construction complexes. The big ships would also need a lot of resources and it would take a fairly long time to build. I feel that this would help with balancing and make it more believable.

 

[OneHeadedHydra]

That and the start of the game is not exactly set in stone. A race chased from their homeplanet with nothing more than a Capitalship (which can be upgraded?), a science ship, a construction ship and three corvette's would be just as powerful and, in my opinion, viable as the current start. All they'd need to change is a few lines in the initial pop-up and the story part of it is finished.

 

[Jason262]

That and the start of the game is not exactly set in stone. A race chased from their homeplanet with nothing more than a Capitalship (which can be upgraded?), a science ship, a construction ship and three corvette's would be just as powerful and, in my opinion, viable as the current start. All they'd need to change is a few lines in the initial pop-up and the story part of it is finished.

It could also be some sort of natural disaster on their home world, which is why they have chosen to live in space as they believe its the best way for them to survive and prevent being at the mercy of another disaster. They could possibly start with some sort of basic space station/ city complex orbiting a star. I think it could lead to a very interesting game/ story.

 

[OneHeadedHydra]

Another question would be, how would they deal with mining and research stations? Seeing as they're owned by influence.

 

[Jason262]

Another question would be, how would they deal with mining and research stations? Seeing as they're owned by influence.

I feel like mining would just be apart of the mother ship. They use the science ship to scan for the best mineral deposits and the mother ship will mine it and get a fairly large boost from it depending on how rich the deposit is. I think science would be mainly be the labs on the mother ship, maybe get a research bonus from the mother ship being in a science rich system? or maybe get a bonus in the labs.

 

[JesterHell]

Maybe the player could start on their home world, but instead of researching colonisation they could start researching big "planet ships". At the beginning they start with small ships, maybe a little bigger than the colony ships. instead of researching colonisation for different planet types it could be replaced with tech for different sizes of planetary ships. That way you don't start the game with a super ship and you have to slowly research you way to get them. For construction of these ships i imagine that you could construct something like a borg unicomplex in you home system. With the tech you research it could also allow for the construction of bigger construction complexes. The big ships would also need a lot of resources and it would take a fairly long time to build. I feel that this would help with balancing and make it more believable.

I don't see why a race that's just gotten FTL first action would be "lets build a planet ship", I mean given the availability of inhabitable worlds in this game its just not a economically viable strategy for any empire to under take unless they suffer from the Quarian biology problem and even then it'd make more sense to invest in terraforming then building planet ships.

As for the borg I'm pretty sure that they assimilate entire systems including the planets which gives the the base infrastructure to build the unicomplex in the first place.

That and the start of the game is not exactly set in stone. A race chased from their homeplanet with nothing more than a Capitalship (which can be upgraded?), a science ship, a construction ship and three corvette's would be just as powerful and, in my opinion, viable as the current start. All they'd need to change is a few lines in the initial pop-up and the story part of it is finished.

How do you upgrade a capita ship without infrastructure to support the acquirement and refinement of resources? and if its possible for a race of nomads without a planet's resources or infrastructure of doing this then so is every other race that does have a planet except that with the benefit of even one planets worth of production it would be much easier to do.

Note: I hate racial techs that many 4x games have and I don't want to see them in stellaris so having the tech to do this only be available to the nomads is also a hell no from me.

Just for example let take the Quarians from mass effect as their the closest to what your suggesting, most of their resource are use to maintain what they have not expand, there no evidence that they've built more ships since their exile but there is evidence that most of their ship are salvaged from other races and despite having the biggest fleet they cant compete with any other race in economics or war power because a lot of that fleet are civilian and support ships.

Now the Eldar from war hammer 40k can manage it because the original craft world where built before the fall when they had a galactic empire and they "build" stuff by willing it into existence (Eldar build using wraithbone which is just solidified warp/psychic energy)

All thing considered it would just make more sense for such a race to colonize the first inhabitable planet and the Quarians inability/refusal to do this is why they so unimportant in the mass effect universe.

It could also be some sort of natural disaster on their home world, which is why they have chosen to live in space as they believe its the best way for them to survive and prevent being at the mercy of another disaster. They could possibly start with some sort of basic space station/ city complex orbiting a star. I think it could lead to a very interesting game/ story.

This is my problem, your just thinking this would be a cool story/roleplay and then making exception to whats logical because of the "rule of cool" and I say no thanks, I like my sci-fi to be internally consistent and to make this playable would require special exemptions to established rules for just this race (special racial techs are a no thanks from me) or else every race can do it and the ones that do both this and the normal colonize strategy win out in the long run.

 

[Lt Loco]

So, I would limit the size of these ships. You're essentially building a ringworld if it's size 25. Size 16 is a capital world; a ship with the surface area of Earth would be a large ship indeed. They also should have some limitations in what you can do on them, limited to what they are orbiting.

1. Orbiting a sun would allow/provide bonuses for energy, food, and science productions
2. Orbiting an asteroid belt would allow/provide bonuses for food, science, and mineral productions.
3. Orbiting a gas giant would allow/provide bonuses for energy, mineral, and science productions
4. Not orbiting anything should consume energy to produce food, and there's no reason you should be able to gather minerals from inside your spaceship home.

I would probably make them a tech offshoot from colony ships. Space life should have a separate habitability rating, and I'd probably like to see populated immobile space stations before this.

 

[OneHeadedHydra]

I don't see why a race that's just gotten FTL first action would be "lets build a planet ship", I mean given the availability of inhabitable worlds in this game its just not a economically viable strategy for any empire to under take unless they suffer from the Quarian biology problem and even then it'd make more sense to invest in terraforming then building planet ships.

As for the borg I'm pretty sure that they assimilate entire systems including the planets which gives the the base infrastructure to build the unicomplex in the first place.



How do you upgrade a capita ship without infrastructure to support the acquirement and refinement of resources? and if its possible for a race of nomads without a planet's resources or infrastructure of doing this then so is every other race that does have a planet except that with the benefit of even one planets worth of production it would be much easier to do.

Note: I hate racial techs that many 4x games have and I don't want to see them in stellaris so having the tech to do this only be available to the nomads is also a hell no from me.

Just for example let take the Quarians from mass effect as their the closest to what your suggesting, most of their resource are use to maintain what they have not expand, there no evidence that they've built more ships since their exile but there is evidence that most of their ship are salvaged from other races and despite having the biggest fleet they cant compete with any other race in economics or war power because a lot of that fleet are civilian and support ships.

Now the Eldar from war hammer 40k can manage it because the original craft world where built before the fall when they had a galactic empire and they "build" stuff by willing it into existence (Eldar build using wraithbone which is just solidified warp/psychic energy)

All thing considered it would just make more sense for such a race to colonize the first inhabitable planet and the Quarians inability/refusal to do this is why they so unimportant in the mass effect universe.



This is my problem, your just thinking this would be a cool story/roleplay and then making exception to whats logical because of the "rule of cool" and I say no thanks, I like my sci-fi to be internally consistent and to make this playable would require special exemptions to established rules for just this race (special racial techs are a no thanks from me) or else every race can do it and the ones that do both this and the normal colonize strategy win out in the long run.

It also doesn't make sense that a race invents FTL before it has even probed its moon. Suspension of disbelieve. And if it still bothers you, they could say they invented FTL after they invented the ship and just added a warp core/blackhole generator/hyperspace engine to it.

Also, the Quarian's are reported to have 17 million crewmembers and 50.000 ships. In Mass Effect 3 they leave the civillian ships with a token defense force and send every military capable ship to help. Which would be a lot more than 3 corvette's, I reckon, so I don't agree with them being irrelevant. The Quarian's also don't colonise any other planet because they "would have enough problems adjusting back to their original homeworld, let alone another ecosystem". Which, to me, is more than a valid excuse to warrant this.

If we just thought this would be a "rule of cool"-story we would have stopped after agree'ing with the first post instead of coming up with gameplay ideas the majority of this thread. So when it comes to that, I have to disagree with you. Besides, this is a game, accomplishing something cool is the main reason we play the games we play.

 

[Gretschory]

Do I smell Quarians?

 

[Cordane]

No, just no. (And I hate that I wasted my "first post" on this.)

There are so many things here that would result in massively OP or gimped play that it boggles the mind. It's not some sort of Homeworld choice, like "Continental, Ocean, Arctic, Planet Ship". Everything about how they play revolves around this issue.

The first thing is technology: Did they build this "planet ship" themselves? Then where did that technological knowledge go? Unless you're saying that this race would apparently be FAR more capable in ship design and construction at the start of the game than any of the other races. You might say that the race originally built the ships, but over the years, decades, centuries, millennia, etc., that they've spent drifting from system to system, they went full-on Axiom and regressed into a bunch of ignorant bloated lifeforms (relatively) that are now simply on par with the other starting races. Or they were somehow gifted their "savior ship" by some other entities, and they've just been dumbly floating along without learning anything about their home vessel?

Next is expansion of their population: Are they stuck on the ship, or are they able to colonize a planet just like any other race? If they're stuck on the ship, are they able to build more, either onto their original ship or as separate vessels (and back to the tech question)? Would they end up having to vassalize or enslave other races that themselves could operate on planets, but just like regular pops? If they can colonize on their own, do they face any extraordinary penalties for having lived so long aboard ship?

There are also problems with territory, stations, collecting resources, combat strength, etc., never mind making it a balanced multiplayer option. I could maybe see this as a fallen empire or crisis race, but never as a vanilla playable race.

 

[Squizzy77]

Question: How would boarders work?

 

[Simaris]

I think since you are nomadic there are no borders.

The idea sounds just like the Concept of the Vassari in SOASE. Motherships are the planets which provide resources and science and they can dismantle planets for more resources.

I think it is hard to balance since this has to be a very agressive Species which needs the tool to win early in the game. But if this tool is too efficient it will be the only species played in Multiplayer, or being banned. Useless or OP... both sides are not healthy.

 

[OneHeadedHydra]

I imagine that once the ship gets attacked it can no longer move, meaning its defenses can be bombed away and boarded for occupation, at which point it won't be able to move again until it's recaptured? Not sure what would happen if a species with a planet were to capture one, because it being destroyed seems a bit pricey.

 

[Jason262]

The ship would be very slow making it vulnerable to attack. Maybe the fleet would be limited to smaller fighter craft? as the ship would be fairly powerful. I think when it gets a certain amount of damage it should be vulnerable to boarding with assault armies and if captured it should probably be unable to move.

 

[Jason262]

To build them you would need some sort of space station complex. maybe that has its own boarder?

 

[Sytn]

No, just no. (And I hate that I wasted my "first post" on this.)

There are so many things here that would result in massively OP or gimped play that it boggles the mind. It's not some sort of Homeworld choice, like "Continental, Ocean, Arctic, Planet Ship". Everything about how they play revolves around this issue.

The first thing is technology: Did they build this "planet ship" themselves? Then where did that technological knowledge go? Unless you're saying that this race would apparently be FAR more capable in ship design and construction at the start of the game than any of the other races. You might say that the race originally built the ships, but over the years, decades, centuries, millennia, etc., that they've spent drifting from system to system, they went full-on Axiom and regressed into a bunch of ignorant bloated lifeforms (relatively) that are now simply on par with the other starting races. Or they were somehow gifted their "savior ship" by some other entities, and they've just been dumbly floating along without learning anything about their home vessel?

Next is expansion of their population: Are they stuck on the ship, or are they able to colonize a planet just like any other race? If they're stuck on the ship, are they able to build more, either onto their original ship or as separate vessels (and back to the tech question)? Would they end up having to vassalize or enslave other races that themselves could operate on planets, but just like regular pops? If they can colonize on their own, do they face any extraordinary penalties for having lived so long aboard ship?

There are also problems with territory, stations, collecting resources, combat strength, etc., never mind making it a balanced multiplayer option. I could maybe see this as a fallen empire or crisis race, but never as a vanilla playable race.

Just addressing the gameplay points you raised simplistically (because otherwise ill be here for years);

1. Population/Habitat
You would gain population like any other faction, starting with 6 (I think that's the base amount?) on a 16 tile Mothership. In terms of Habitats;
i. they could have no habitats, only being able to use their own form of Motherships which you start on and then later construct more of.
ii. They could have a habitat which that Mothership emulates, and researching other habitates lets you build new Motherships with that habitat so you can take on other races and build motherships appropriate to their homeworld.

2. Building more Motherships
You would start with a single Mothership, same tile amount as anyone else. The biggest downside would be you have no natural resources and would have to rely on buildings. But this can be offset by exploiting resources from a planet itself when orbiting and harvesting it. You would construct more Motherships like you would a defense station, picking a spot in space to start construction and spending resources until its complete. It would be a slow and expensive affair, it should cost as much and be as difficult as taking a whole new planet.

3. Vassalize/Enslavement
No reason why you cant do either, if a population migrates (or if you steal a population, could be a fun mechanic) onto your Mothership, or if you Vassalize another race. You obviously will not be able to absorb a Vassal into your empire if they are not a Mothership race though.

4. Colonization
I dont think a Mothership race should have planet colonization, but no real issues here either if it was added in. You pick a habitat in the beginning your race likes and you can land your Mothership like a Colony ship to start living on that planet.

5. Territory
They could have no territory at all. Open borders lets you cross systems freely after all after the last update. Or they could project a very small sphere of territory, just enough to temporary claim any system one of your Motherships is in. Could even give the option to turn off that sphere of control so you dont infringe on other races when you travel through their territory, or have some Motherships that do project territory ownership and smaller ones that dont.

6. Stations
They would have to be mobile, I think rather than having a construction ship you would have a worker ship, that harvest resources directly from a point in space and can jump with your Mothership.

7. Planet Resources
On a planet I think you could have multiple harvest methods, but at the very least you would be able to let your Mothership orbit a planet and 'work' the tiles natural resources to gain them with drones or something similar.

8. Combat Strength
Not an issue, could be easily balanced ingame.


At the end of the day, yes, there will be issues Paradox will have to figure out. But I dont think this is an insurmountable task in the slightest, in fact I think the base game lends itself fairly well to the whole Mothership idea as is.

In terms of MP worries; just have an option to turn them off if you think it would ruin it like we do with Warp choices. This would be DLC, no one is forcing you to use it. But I imagine if Paradox put some heart into it they could make it a fantastic addition to the game.

 

[OneHeadedHydra]

Regarding the habitality; Taking a little inspiration from XCOM 2, the first ship could start with debris or radiation leaks in several spots that need to be cleared out for additional tiles.

 

[ShichiNoBushi]

There are already AI Nomads. What if I wan't to be a nomadic empire? That could also be an end result to still sort of play if all your planets have been wiped out.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

I think the way I'd actually do it is to have the mothership's tiles actually be determined by the planet that it is in orbit around. While the ship is in transit you still gain the befits of the buildings, but not the resource tiles. The main advantage that the mothership offers is the ability to freely move what tiles have which resources (one of the tiles has 2 energy, you can freely move that two energy around like you would a POP). The downside is that a mothership generally has a smaller size than planets (I think the absolute max size they should be capable of is 16) can have and after being in orbit around a world for a period of time, say 5-10 years, the planet gets a negative resource modifier for two or three times that time.

 

[Rip Off Productions]

while I would like the option to play as a nomad fleet from the beginning, but I understand why the balance might not work out that well.

********

Being able to make a literal Capital Ship would be a cool option once you have the right tech, however I think it should require at least one of the fallowing:

1) has nomadic species trait

2) is Fanatic Militant Ethos(sees the benefit of mobile command centers, and the big guns you can carry in the superstructure)

3) is Fanatic Materialist Ethos(shows off scientific knowledge and martial wealth)

4) is Fanatic Spiritualist(honoring the god(s)/spirits/ancestors, and letting worlds remain closer to their natural form)

5) is Fanatic Xenophobe(controlled environment to stay away from and keep out Xeno scum)

6) is Fanatic Xenophile(explore the universe to see the sights up close with open arms! look at the beautiful everything everywhere!)

But everyone else can still have an "emergency evacuation" option to create a significantly weaker fleet of smaller ships that could eventually be upgraded if you lose your capital/home world in a war, so long as you have the right techs, a space station of the right level, and the right techs researched.