What scifi trope is left untapped?

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Societies where a mega-computer rules over a population of working organics, like Asimov's The Evitable Conflict or Friend Computer from Paranoia.

Going to the stars before uniting the planet, so that the US and USSR can take the cold war into the galaxy.

A world that has been populated by folk kidnapped from multiple worlds who battle for the entertainment of their mysterious captors.
 
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Mecha, tansformation mech and Songstress.

Basically I want Macross lol
Plus, transformation of the battleship to fire its main cannon.

You can shoot stuff out of a turret. Or you can shoot out of a spinal mount. But if you see a fortress ship transforming into humanoid form to fire its cannon, you know they don't mess around.
 
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But if you see a fortress ship transforming into humanoid form to fire its cannon, you know they don't mess around.
If I saw a fortress ship transforming into humanoid form to fire its cannon, I'd know it was built by idiots who wasted a huge amount of resources on flashy features that don't do anything to improve the ship's combat performance.
 
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What else is left to work as expansion material? The only thing I can think of is specific religion/cult.

Perhaps it's better to ask which SciFi trope they actually have addressed?

I can't play the Tampies from Timothy Zahn's Warhorse. Biological ships aren't available let alone tamed starfaring beasts.

I can't play the Quaddies from Free Falling by Lois McMaster Bujold who had four arms and burrow into asteroids with tiny space stations, unable to even work in normal or lunar gravity. Habitats can't even the touch asteroid belts they call home.

I can't play the people of Kensho with their "psionic" symbiosis with an extra dimensional entity, the Mu'shin and their ability to teleport from planet to planet at the end of the series. Dennis Schmidt's series is not available.

I can't send out a generation ship or a solar sail ship. You see references to these technologies but . . . you can't play with them at all. So all the science fiction related to them is simply off the table, not really addressed.

How about all the other FTL methods that were in the original game and got scrapped? We can't choose to play a game with them even one that limits the game to JUST one of them.

We sort of have robotic based life but it's not "tapped" you can't have totally space faring machines with robotic shipyards and no ability to settle planets, where the ships ARE the civilization. Droids and cyborgs just don't do it. The closest we come are the mining drones you sometimes have to fight.

And what about silicon based life? Why are they on terrestrial worlds? Earth started out as a C02 and methane planet like Venus. Without the great oxgenation and with silicon based or alternative biology why are we limited to worlds that are variations on the Earth? That is a huge Science Fiction trope we haven't touched. Ditto with gas giant eco-systems. I'd love to play species like we find in Allan Dean Foster's "Sentenced to Prism". But we can't!

Speaking of which what about genetically engineering humans to live on places like Mars or Titan? Why doesn't the Biological ascendancy add in the ability to live on more planet types though genetic engineering? That would make it compete a LOT better with the robots. lol

And

We have barely scratched the surface of . . . well most of my favorite science fiction novels. I get the feeling this game is produced by people who mostly focus on Warhammer, Star Wars and Star Trek . . . Not Asimov and hard science fiction. We certainly don't get the gravitic technology from James Hogan's Geneseis machine or the Gentle Giants of Ganymede series . . .

Nor do we see anything like the PARTNERSHIP between man and a computer network found in his "Two Faces of Tomorrow". I guess that book could become a rogue servitor situation, but when the story ends they are looking towards the stars together without the decadence. We don't get that.

It's like the guys developing the game never read Allan, Foster, Hogan, Asimov . . . and to add insult to injury they keep naming the patches after the great names of Science fiction. I'd love to see depth in anything. Give me an expansion (not a pack) that really goes into depth with biology and biological ships, warhorses, genetic engineering to settle all worlds . . . and really give us diversity there.

Then go and do the same with psionics, settling space and being nomadic, mineral based/silicon life forms, faster than life travel . . . There is so much they could do. They haven't scratched the surface yet.
 
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If I saw a fortress ship transforming into humanoid form to fire its cannon, I'd know it was built by idiots who wasted a huge amount of resources on flashy features that don't do anything to improve the ship's combat performance.
A very healthy mentality. Probably that officer won't underestimate the enemy and get killed.
 
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CRIME - Mega City One style troubles that require somethin like JUDGE DREDD - dealing with deviancy and unruliness is way too easy even on City-Worlds it hardly matters if you have dozens of diverent species enslaved/being worked to death, remoteness of colonies or empire sprawl isn't considered either.

STAR TREKing exploration/first contacts sending of cruiser sized vessels to meet/abduct/help other peoples. Umanned scout probes like the ones we see in Star Wars Episode V. There is also a lack of necessary caution once you've played a few games as you can immediately tell what's dangerous and what not - you can still RP but the game not enforcing it is a big downside (it even tells you what's hostile before you get shot at) having variance in the behaviour of all space dwellers would help a lot. More mysteries that unfold as the game progresses, less hey that's Zro it helps with psi-stuff (even though you have no idea about that) or all Fallen Empires just introducing themselves, knowing about Holy Worlds before you've met the Ones warshipping them etc. First Contacts right now end way to abrupt.

Politics & Civilians acting on their own. Unless you're authoritarian they should really do a lot more stuff on their own leading to new events.

The Vastness of Space - Having lot's of unclaimed/neutral space especially early on since it's difficult to control/protect it. Should be a game setup option for those that prefer the current approach.

Fluid Space/pocket universes - could work like the L-Cluster. You find your way into it or something might come to visit you.

Weapons/Ships:
Fortress Wonders, Death Stars (the deconstruction ship that's named Collosus doesn't count), super-carriers, drones, mine fields, energy weapons that go pew pew. Ship capture, ship scraping, space debries and it's salvage, reverse engineering tech from found/capture/salvage ships. Selling/gifting ships.
 
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I am missing reasons to not wipe out enemies and general interactions between different types of empires. Megacorp made a good start with branch offices (yes, we need an expansion planner for them), but there so many things left out for other types.

For me it would be cool if we were able to bond different types of empires together on a diplomatic scale with treaties. Growing trust opens more possibilities to interact with each other. For example:

- Befriending a hivemind grants bonuses to biological research, pop growth and food production for my empire. Later it could even be possible to grow their drones on my worlds to benefit from their simple needs.

- Befriending machine empires grants bonuses to assembling speed, increases output from robots and later helps to keeps synths away from revolting.

- A friendly monarchy can can help to train your leaders, materialists give production bonuses, egalitarians increase stability, xenophobes increase ethics attraction.

In short, every kind of empire can grant interesting benefits through treaties (like the curators do). This could even create dependencies, so i really want to keep that ally around. They bonuses can grow over time when empires get bigger. Bonding them into my federation or galactic empire, the bonuses will be shared through all members, so it will be much more interesting to keep heterogen alliances alive.
 
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They are just playing around :cool:

They are playing around with you :eek:
Well there is a lore reason why it happened. Macross didn't transform into humanoid just for being flashy.

Unless someone around is interested I'd rather not explain something that would be falling on deaf ears.
 
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CRIME - Mega City One style troubles that require somethin like JUDGE DREDD - dealing with deviancy and unruliness is way too easy even on City-Worlds it hardly matters if you have dozens of diverent species enslaved/being worked to death, remoteness of colonies or empire sprawl isn't considered either.

STAR TREKing exploration/first contacts sending of cruiser sized vessels to meet/abduct/help other peoples. Umanned scout probes like the ones we see in Star Wars Episode V. There is also a lack of necessary caution once you've played a few games as you can immediately tell what's dangerous and what not - you can still RP but the game not enforcing it is a big downside (it even tells you what's hostile before you get shot at) having variance in the behaviour of all space dwellers would help a lot. More mysteries that unfold as the game progresses, less hey that's Zro it helps with psi-stuff (even though you have no idea about that) or all Fallen Empires just introducing themselves, knowing about Holy Worlds before you've met the Ones warshipping them etc. First Contacts right now end way to abrupt.

Politics & Civilians acting on their own. Unless you're authoritarian they should really do a lot more stuff on their own leading to new events.

The Vastness of Space - Having lot's of unclaimed/neutral space especially early on since it's difficult to control/protect it. Should be a game setup option for those that prefer the current approach.

Fluid Space/pocket universes - could work like the L-Cluster. You find your way into it or something might come to visit you.

Weapons/Ships:
Fortress Wonders, Death Stars (the deconstruction ship that's named Collosus doesn't count), super-carriers, drones, mine fields, energy weapons that go pew pew. Ship capture, ship scraping, space debries and it's salvage, reverse engineering tech from found/capture/salvage ships. Selling/gifting ships.
About pocket universe, I think it isn't much of a trope problem but a limitation of the general design of Stellaris. The map is flat and we must put all the stars on one single plane with hyperlanes connecting nodes. And the nodes are more-or-less in some "equal footings" instead of in a hierarchical structure. Even the 4-arms galaxy we get interconnections between arms.

Just for the game design issue, if we have some Systems that are a singular branch and its children don't connect with the outside, and then present it on the Galaxy Map with a layer or something, then we will essentially get a bunch of quasi-l-cluster.

Hmm... I think the game may benefit with different hierarchies of nodes and different levels of hyperlanes. For example say hyperlanes all have a level requirement of your FTL drive, then say a cluster has all level 1, then you'll get good clusters.

But I guess this is not really a trope problem.
 
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Hidden Bases. The Contingency does it, but I'm thinking something we can set up behind enemy lines with enough preparation. Some ideas on it:
 
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I want to play an empire that is like the Tyranids/Zerg. Everything is organic including buildings and "ships", assimilate traits from enemies (something like xeno-compatibility, but accomplished through processing enemy pops perhaps?), assimilating, etc.

The possibility of pre-sapients appearing on your homeworld would be cool, including possibly chimps or dolphins on Earth. Of course, dolphins might present something of a problem seeing as they are aquatic. Aquatic species are a whole other can of worms.

A greater variety of planet types might be nice. I have thought about (nominally) habitable barren planets, planetary habitats to enable you to colonize planets you otherwise would not be able to, death worlds, water worlds (even more water than ocean worlds), and various worlds that are a challenge to colonize.
 
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I'm thinking something we can set up behind enemy lines with enough preparation.
Like covert sabotage, guerrilla warfare generally fails to provide fun gameplay to the guerrilleros' opponents.
 
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I want to play an empire that is like the Tyranids/Zerg. Everything is organic including buildings and "ships", assimilate traits from enemies (something like xeno-compatibility, but accomplished through processing enemy pops perhaps?), assimilating, etc.

The possibility of pre-sapients appearing on your homeworld would be cool, including possibly chimps or dolphins on Earth. Of course, dolphins might present something of a problem seeing as they are aquatic. Aquatic species are a whole other can of worms.

A greater variety of planet types might be nice. I have thought about (nominally) habitable barren planets, planetary habitats to enable you to colonize planets you otherwise would not be able to, death worlds, water worlds (even more water than ocean worlds), and various worlds that are a challenge to colonize.

Becoming something like the Prethoryn would fit the Zerg theme and be a matching Bio Ascension extension/Become the Crisis theme for Devouring Swarms.
Generally more empire transitions like creating the Borg or becoming beings of Energy would tie really well into better fleshing out Ascensions and be the natural extension of the Crisis theme.

As for barren world Luna City is a missing theme for sure, same for firing your apprentice on a molten world it's kinda sad that such massive undertakings are all simply represented by a simple station in orbit. Sure you can replace it with a habitat but habitat spam isn't much fun either. Also planetary/station defenses ion canons/missiles/strike craft etc.

Hidden Bases. The Contingency does it, but I'm thinking something we can set up behind enemy lines with enough preparation. Some ideas on it:

As for hidden bases actually being able to find them later on would be great too, especially if you invest into a megastructure whose very purpose is spotting things - would also be a really great plan b in case triggers don't work (Zroni !) - you don't manage the event chain for whatever reason, all cool if your tech catches up to the challenge eventually.

Also falls in the vain of more enigmatic fallen empires who shun all contact, where all ships and probes sent in simply disappear, or super isolationist empire where the first contact progresses incredibly slowly. Speaking of FE it's rather weird that we see rather little of their struggles compare too the Precursors.

On a lower tech scale it could be used to represent pirates & rebels making empire sprawl more meaningful and actually requiring patrols but considering how micro intense the game gets even on small galaxies I'm not sure I want that.
 
An expansion to the army/ground force side would be appreciated instead of the current "my numbers are bigger than yours" approach.
Planet type and soldier type could play a role - and better developed planets could be harder to conquer than colonies with only 1-3 districts
And: Depending on government type losses of soldiers/civilians should have an impact on morale and war weariness
 
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Hidden Bases. The Contingency does it, but I'm thinking something we can set up behind enemy lines with enough preparation. Some ideas on it:

For me hidden bases could be a part of some DLC which adds in general much more ways to settle the galaxy. Military bases could be one field, another could be an expandable infrastructure. Use influence for:

- Upgrade mining/resarch stations with alloys to yield more from them.
- Let me build automated foundries/fabricators in space.
- Let me build advanced infrastruture around planets to get more or other districts.
- Let me setup bases/stations on moons or planets, depending on what is orbiting what.
- Let me build some solar system wide infrastructure, for faster fleet travel, more trade value, more migration and on and on...

This would be a nice step to get the game in a "tall" playstyle direction. Use influence to grab more territory or to exploit what you already have. This would also ensure that not every aspect of the empire production is dependand on pops.

Immersion-wise planets could become nice and stable living hoods, the production goes into space while science, bureaucracy, entertainment and culture stays on planets.
 
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For me hidden bases could be a part of some DLC which adds in general much more ways to settle the galaxy. Military bases could be one field, another could be an expandable infrastructure. Use influence for:

- Upgrade mining/resarch stations with alloys to yield more from them.
- Let me build automated foundries/fabricators in space.
- Let me build advanced infrastruture around planets to get more or other districts.
- Let me setup bases/stations on moons or planets, depending on what is orbiting what.
- Let me build some solar system wide infrastructure, for faster fleet travel, more trade value, more migration and on and on...

This would be a nice step to get the game in a "tall" playstyle direction. Use influence to grab more territory or to exploit what you already have. This would also ensure that not every aspect of the empire production is dependand on pops.

Immersion-wise planets could become nice and stable living hoods, the production goes into space while science, bureaucracy, entertainment and culture stays on planets.
So much this, and empire sprawl should have in actual impact on how many resources you get out of your stations. If you focus on a system building up the infrastructure and having bureaucrats manage everything properly you should get more from it. The same goes for building specialized infrastructure. Big space stations, transit hubs, bases for automated mining drones or for workers who go out and actually work on asteroids or in domes on the planets.

How we exploit a system should be so much deeper than just building a few satellites and a single space station to "claim" it. If you go wide you are getting your benefit from harvesting the easy to get stuff in BULK, but if you go tall then you should be getting your resources from exploiting star systems in DEPTH with lots of big construction projects and tons of technology to research.

Edit - And if a wide empire conquers a tall one they should find that those big structures are really vulnerable to sprawl penalties and don't produce well without proper oversight. Too often in these games wide players get the MOST benefit out of conquering land that somebody else developed. Doing that in Stellaris should be a trap. Better to make them a vassal and not integrate them than to ruin lands they aren't set up to properly manage.
 
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