You can do this to some degree. You can put your resources on the market at a reduced cost and mess with the Black Market. I do it a lot to the AI and am able to buy cheaper resources later down the road.

1. Crowd controll weepons

2. Crowd controll weepons

3. Make micro matter again as it use to.=less lag

4. less spamming , bigger penalty for massing same type of ships

5. Autodownloaded  maps and mods,  improved chat system

no diplomatic crap, just keep the goodies that make the entrenchment aspects better, keep envoys, definitely some upgrading non-capitals if only through research to L2 or L3.  Atm, to the best of my knowledge (which is limited), only "FrigateSpawnedByAbility" can be upgradable.

Deathmatch mode with set starting tech and maximum attainable tech levels, custom credit/metal/crystal setting, etc... like damn near any game should have.

A quick battle game to quickly setup a skirmish ala Gratuitous Space Battles.

Spy ships like Haegemonia but not as over powered. (not able to blow up space stations or capital ships)

Here is my humble list of things i want to see in Rebillion as a full expansion.

1.  Limited Resource Game Mode option, with maybe some realistic resource production life cycle curves

2.  More gameplay and strategic relavance for planets & gravity wells other than resources and build space if you know what i mean.

3.  Some Mines should be made invisable again, except to ships with sensors

4.  Ability to "Gift" or "Sell" assets like ships or space stations to other players for diplomacy or strategy reasons

5.  Improve the diplomacy aspect of the game like Civilizations! 

I've asked the very same question in the past, apperently some avid players believe that docking your S/C can help you speed up your cap ship movements when leaving gravity wells, conserve anti matter.  But I agree with you, there should be more useful reasons for docking S/C! 

I very frequently dock and re-launch strike craft. If all of my strike craft are damaged or their squads are dead I often order all my ships to dock them, so that they'll be able to build up their squads without them being instantly destroyed again by whatever hostile force there is. In particular, I do this a whole lot when my capital ship has a fighter squadron and the neutral militia I'm fighting has a lot of flak.

I then re-launch when the squads are healthy enough or when I've warped to a gravity well with no enemy flak.

Similarly, if I warp into a battle and find that the enemy has a whole lot of flak and no bombers, unless my strike craft builders have tons of antimatter to spare (or are capital ships which regen AM for free), I often tell my fighters to dock until they'll be more useful. (otherwise they'll just be shredded by flak while being generally useless)

Similarly with bombers. If I warp in with squadrons of bombers and find the enemy has a lot of fighters but has no very juicy targets for my bombers, frequently I'll tell my bombers to dock. Often I'll tell my bombers to dock anyway if there are a number of enemy fighters, so that their fighters will attack my fleet and my flak will shred them - and only then will I release my bombers.

I don't think that docking strike craft has any effects on ship speed or warp-out speed, though.

it does delay ships on phase travel seeing that they wait for SC to dock, but this usually overlaps with the time it takes to angle themselves properly at the edge of the grav well. Not a major deal.

I don't think so. Ships with strike-craft warp out regardless of where their owned fighters and bombers are. Very frequently I position my capital ships and carriers on the edge of a gravity well, and tell them to warp out when their owned SC are halfway across the well. Of course there isn't enough time for the squadrons to dock, but the ship warps out successfully anyway, with no delays.

You might think of it as a design oversight, but I'm fine with it.

If you tell a carrier to warp out when it has to travel a bit before aligning with the edge of the gravity well, the SC will automatically attempt to dock coincident with when the carrier starts warping out - but the docking of SC isn't essential for the ship to warp out (and when the carrier arrives at the next gravity well it'll have all the squads it owned in the previous gravity well).

even if I'm wrong, it's still not a big deal. The docking only really matters when it comes to getting squads chewed apart for no reason.

In other words, docking SC can be useful. It doesn't necessarily happen often, but it can be quite helpful in saving your SC when it does happen.

Definitely not a big deal overall though.

I never argued it can't be useful. Of course, I prefer a more intimate setup like Homeworld had.

well i wish men could dock there ballz but my wish never came true and we are sill the victims of a crotch attack. 

I would like to see the Z-Axis exploit fixed.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/413478

I would say increased repair rates & reduced AM for SC creation. No change in move speed for carrier though, if anything, logically it would move slower with the extra mass onboard unless there was a mechanism to plug the SC power supply into the carrier and increase engine power. I know I know, I am WAY over thinking it but its fun to take ideas to their logical conclusion.

Agree.

2. New upgrade(s) on each of 4 already existing  tech trees of every race (including deadlier tech)

7. Maps/Mods autodownload [including forge-made maps]

11. Way of relocating TEC/Advent Starbase in gravity well 

15. Improved role of neutral systems and pirates

17. Naming fleets and longer ships/planets names 

What do you think about just giving the TEC/Advent SBs some sort of buff for their current relative disadvantage, just one that doesn't make them similar to the Orkulus? I think the buffs should be something keeping in line with their faction, rather than something that just copies (or comes close to copying) the Orkulus.

I actually just posted a proposal for this sort of thing: perhaps an Advent starbase could by default broadcast culture at a rate 2x or 3x of a normal culture station, while the TEC starbase could continually repair all friendly ships in the gravity well at a rate of 7.5 hull/sec or something.

Neutral systems? What do you mean? Fighting over neutral extractors can very easily decide the game, at least in relatively cramped maps. I can count dozens of games where me and my opponent were basically by ourselves in a 5v5 where the winner was decided by who controlled the neutral extractors in the neutral wells around our territories.

A neutral extractor gives about as much income as a trade port, except is in resources (which are more useful). Even two or three of them can completely turn the battle around in a cramped map.

I like that idea, but I don't think it'd work completely. Can you link the post you mentioned? If you want to bring the other unupgraded SBs up to the level of the Orkulus (I am assuming that is the intention): The Advent would have to research culture, then research SB before they could do anything with a SB. So, that wouldnt work. For TEC, while they wouldnt have to research additional tech first, I don't think repair rate compares to the Orkulus' movement.

Besides, I think the motivation behind that post was "I don't like where I placed my starbase and want to move it to a new, permanent location". And I think that is a good idea. Not just for SBs, either. For instance, now that you have a repair bay and a starbase, you'd like to move the research station so that it's better protected. Maybe provide a way of doing that without forcing someone to wait on deconstruction, spend lots of money, wait on reconstruction to simply move the structure. Constructor ships should be able work like a tug and slowly move structures. They're not always in use, so this is something more they can be doing.

My idea is that by default the TEC and Advent starbases will have those abilities, without extra research or upgrades, just like the Orkulus has the ability to move without any special upgrades.

Link:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/413494

(reply #14)

The idea is not to bring the other starbases up to the level of the Orkulus - the Orkulus is a strong, very key tool of the Vasari. My intent is to make the other starbases viable to be used in games against decent opponents, but not to make them key.

Meh. If you place a structure you'd better be sure that's where you want it to remain until you scuttle it. If you accidentally place it in a location where it doesn't help you, I think that's your problem, rather than something that needs an extra feature just in case the player makes a mistake.

Basically, Wrath wants to upgrade the default stats of the Advent and TEC starbases by adding a new feature to it so they are more balanced compared with the Vasari Orkulus. He does not deem it nessessary to make the starbases able to move...

That is, if I understood correct.

Indeed.

I'm fairly certain that is what you are aiming for. Making all the starbases fairly equal in initial strength, but through different implementations?

As for the ideas, you really want someone spreading culture without having any research in culture? Why would you bother with the research? Heck, without research, you might have no culture spreadrate/influence, idk. TEC idea is kind of the opposite; building a starbase for repair is a waste of money when you can, at a much lower tech level, grab repair bays. But, then if it is such a good repair, why would you build regular repair bays after you get to the point where you could make SBs.

I'm not trying to be insulting or anything here. As I said, I like your ideas. It's definately a possible direction to go with this issue. However, there are a few kinks, in my opinion, that indicate a few refinements are necessary.

As for the 'tug' option, I don't understand... theres the option to deconstruct things you dont need anymore, how does this stack up with your "you broke it, you bought it" mentality? The system doesnt always place the structure exactly where you expect it to, and things change over time. Where I put the repair bay at the begining of the game might be completely out of whack compared to where I want/need it at the end of the game.

Not exactly, I want the other starbases to be viable, but not necessarily as strong as the Orkulus. The Orkulus, after all, is probably the main weapon of the Vasari, and can be extremely strong both offensively and defensively. For instance, good use of Orkys by an experienced player can allow the Vasari player to stay just at 250 fleet supply or less, which is an incredible strength in some games (especially in 1v1, and in eco slot 5v5).

It's a significant strength, which is what the Advent starbase needs, and is especially something like what the Advent needs overall for balance purposes. It could be a real help when trying to culture out someone who's heavily entrenched.

Well, starbases are expensive. If you already have the civic slots and just want a culture center near your homeworld to increase income by a bit I'd go for the culture structure instead of the starbase.

But even so, if circumstances were that a starbase would be a better investment, that's fine too. Culture stations could be useful for providing an additional boost to culture if needed.

The point is that an Argonev would provide extra repair, fleet-wide, which is not dependent on antimatter. The repair amount, while significant over the whole fleet (especially in a prolonged battle), isn't very much for each individual ship, which is why you would also want Hoshikos and repair structures to allow +60 hull repair, especially on more important targets (on top of the relatively small 7.5?hull/sec repaired by the starbase). The Argonev, the Hoshiko, and the repair bay would still all have very important purposes.

Meh. I guess I'm just familiar with the "feel" of how static defenses are now.

If constructors can "tug" them I guess it's not bad though.

But in my battles, at least, I find that I'm almost always fighting one enemy from one direction, and so place my tactical structures accordingly so they'll be best for defending from that direction - that rarely changes, and if it does, usually my enemy has either won and has taken control of the gravity well, or I've won and pushed the enemy back another planet, either way rendering my tactical structures now mostly useless.

The "tug" feature could be interesting and could be useful in a few circumstances but I wouldn't ask the developers to put it in.