Capital Ships - Station Functionality Only When Docked?

[Edymnion]

Okay, so I've been watching Voltron: Legendary Defender on Netflix (its pretty good, actually), and it has something very interesting I think we could borrow from.

This is the Castle of Lions as we first saw it in the series:

What we find out fairly early on (so hey, spoilers for a show from last year) that it isn't actually JUST a castle, its a ship:

Made me think, maybe thats the way to go for capital ships.

As in, this thing was a castle when it was on the ground, so what about capital ships that become bases when docked (say to a planet or to another station)?

Build shipyards and factories on the capital ship, but they're inactive while its flying under it's own power. It can't activate it's "station only" features until it docks to something.

So we could have multiple stations spread across our territory, space and planet, and then move our capital ship around between them.

Its a ship normally, and can be attacked/destroyed like a ship. But when it docks, it gains homebase invulnerability and grants that invulnerability to whatever it is docked to. So we could have either an invincible homebase, OR a capital ship.

Invincible homebase is as we have now, and the capital ship would balance out the ability to be moved by the fact that it is vulnerable while being moved.

 

[jayman38]

I guess so... But it doesn't seem to add a lot to gameplay. Plus, I don't see a lot of players eager to build a ton of unprotected bases. More likely, the player who wants station-blocks working on ships wants a portable base, with fewer stations to tie them down.

After all, you could take it all with you, then create a micro-homebase out of a block or three, but that kind of makes things ridiculous. Instead of using station blocks to keep stations interesting, the game would start requiring players to build temporary homebases as a space anchor to allow their "capital station" systems to operate. It's a viable game mechanic, but I think it sounds awkward and onerous.

Is there something else that temporary anchor-bases can do to make them more interesting and fun, such as an automatic passive credit income and increased faction reputation with nearby factions, to simulate trade, or maybe decreased hostile activity to simulate a "defensive posture"?

Schine likes to make multiple improvements and create changes that alter multiple things at once, so I think more detail/more options on this suggestion would improve support.

 

[Edymnion]

True, what if it goes both ways?

We've talked about passive resource acquisition before, gas giants and all that. What if we combined the two? The capital ship has systems that only function when it is docked to something, but how about if that something has systems that can only function when a capital ship is docked to it?

For lack of a better terminology, lets keep using Gas Giant as our hypothetical passive resource generator (although it could end up being a system bonus, or stellar mining, or whatever else). Build systems that allow for that generation to occur, but requires the presence of a capital ship before it "turns on".

Then you would need not only to have multiple systems under your control in order to collect multiple types of resources, but you'd have to move your capital ship (and hence main faction home) between systems, leaving you vulnerable during the transition.

Would give reason to spread out, and would be an active counter to turtling. You could sit in one spot forever, but you'd lose out on important resources.

 

[TheGT]

Perhaps just an anchor system could be added to ships in order to let them use station things. Idk how this would work though. Perhaps it could be like a more effective defensive stop that would let factories and stuff run. It could also just make the ship really sticky, and if it were rammed (hopefully by the time our physics engines run on quantum computing chips) all of the station services would stop.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I like this idea.
As TheGT mentions, you could just make it allow station based technology to run on the capital ship as a station and not as a ship.

There is the whole jump drive vs chain drive discussion in various threads, wanting to provide some alternative. Perhaps integrate this as a reason or bonus for docking.

You could make a new jump technology that requires draining a planet or star to fuel it. And the only way to do that is anchor it as a station to activate some kind of collector or array of collectors. This recharging process could be a lengthly one that runs even while the player is offline like shipyards.

The new drive could perhaps give the ship a one time 30 or 30+ sector jump and from that point on it would have to rely on using the standard jump drive.
[doublepost=1485308208,1485308121][/doublepost]And to recharge for another 30+ jump it needs to set down and dock with a planet or station.