FreeOrion

So I was thinking that perhaps, higher up in the Bio tree, there could be a tech that allows you to breed space monsters and train them as fighters for use in space combat. They could have better weaponry, defense, and maneuverability than regular fighters, or have some kind of special effect on the enemy ship, to be determined after all the possible effects on enemy ships are worked out. I like the idea of them being much more powerful and versatile than regular fighters (effective against both enemy fighters and capital ships), but far more expensive, so that a ship full of these little guys would take a very long time to build, far more than your average carrier. They could also be more effective for bombing planets than regular fighters.

If there is an ability later in the game to breed full-sized space monsters and use them in combat, this could be a precursor/prerequisite to that ability.

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The general idea has been discussed before. I think it has potential.

An interesting twist is to require that the player controls a space monster X breeding ground or nest or something before the tech to control the monsters can be studied.

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Yes, I believe capturing/breeding/controlling space monsters in some way was brought up first in this thread and revisited in this thread as a possible use for lunar bodies. I think it might be a good idea for the player to have to capture a space monster in order to breed it, and perhaps use the breeding of large space monsters as a prerequisite for breeding smaller ones (I had it the other way around before, but in this case, I think biological miniaturization is cooler).

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One possible advantage of using Space monsters instead of warships is that space monsters may "self-build" ie you get a Breeding nest of space monsters and it has a "population" (That grows to a maximum)...and the population along with your tech determines how fast you get Monsters from it.

That makes them significantly different from a normal space ship in that they wouldn't require Industry [although Industry might be able to build additional breeding grounds in suitable locations].

So a empire that got a space monster ground (along with the tech to use them) could stop building ships and just get Space Monsters (after it built breeding grounds in the few available areas)

Talking about big space monsters is slightly OT in this thread, since it's primarily about their use as fighter-style LR weapons in space combat, but it's a brainstorming thread, so whatever...

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Well the issue could be the same... When you have a certain tech, you can generate the "baby" space monsters instead of the "big" ones and those would be a resource that you could put in your ships.... or perhaps you would build the "carrier" out of a "Breeder" ie one of the ship parts was 'space dragonwhelp breeder' which required a space monster.. meaning it could "replenish" the "fighters" outside of supply range.

Hmmm. I think that having separate ship components that need to be built before the ship itself is unKISS, if that's what you're saying. I believe that simply requiring the ships to be built at the same location as a breeding ground and making them very expensive does essentially the same thing.

So in essence, the breeding ground would be a building that:

-can only be build at a potential breeding ground site (preferably lunar bodies, IMO)
-allows ships being built at that location to be equipped with space monster weaponry/equipment, when the appropriate technology becomes available
-allows the building of the special ship class "space monster" when the appropriate technology becomes available


On the other hand, if you just meant that "space dragonwhelp breeder" is a ship part that can only be used on ships built at the location of a breeding ground, then we are in agreement. Overall adds a lot of fun I think, and is definitely KISS.

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Actually, I was thinking, assuming a particular type of space Monster "X Monster"

the X Monster breeding ground would be a building that:

-can only be built at a potential breeding ground site for X Monsters
-generates the Strategic resource X Monster that is required to build ships with X Monster Parts (or 'ship' with an X Monster Hull... ie a tame space monster)

So you build the Breeding ground, and Then you can start building ships with Monster parts at your shipyard...
Monster hulls may require a Breeding ground instead of shipyard (and would probably only include Monster parts)

So turn monsters into a strategic resource? That sounds good too, but only for the parts, not the hull types. I think you should only be able to build ships with X Monster hulls at the breeding ground, in other words, the breeding ground acts as a shipyard for ships with X Monster hulls as well as producing strategic resource X Monster. Ships made using that resource for their equipment can be built anywhere where you have an appropriate shipyard for that class of ship, but ships that are actually the monster cannot.

Actually, I was initially against the idea of making it a strategic resource when I first read your post, but then I realized the implications of being able to trade space monster resources.

So to summarize:

-Breeding ground can only be built at potential breeding ground sites (preferably moons, as I have already stated)
-Breeding grounds require strategic resource "Space Monster X" (and PP, obviously), where X is the name of a given space monster, to be built
-Breeding grounds made from strategic resource "Space Monster X" are "Space Monster X" breeding grounds, breeding grounds made from strategic resource "Space Monster Y" are "Space Monster Y" breeding grounds
-"Space Monster X" breeding grounds produce strategic resource "Space Monster X"
-Ships with "Space Monster X" type hulls can only be built at a colony with a "Space Monster X" breeding ground
-Ships that use parts of type "Space Monster X" require strategic resource "Space Monster X" to be built
-Building a "Space Monster X" breeding ground will take no more than the minimum amount of strategic resource "Space Monster X" than one would acquire through normal means, i.e. without trading for it or capturing it from other players
-Building ship parts of type "Space Monster X" will require significantly less of strategic resource "Space Monster X" than building a "Space Monster X" breeding ground.
-"Normal means" of acquiring strategic resource "Space Monster X" will involve capturing a space monster, which unlocks the related theory tech "Space Monster X Breeding", the applications of which will include "Space Monster X Breeding Ground" and various ship parts of type "Space Monster X".

That sounds good, without making it overly complicated. Obviously such buildings will be very rare strategic points that your enemy will want to capture/destroy, rather than being something commonplace. They should not be common enough that every game has somebody build a space monster breeding ground - they may want to use those moons for other secret facilities, such as Nova Bomb manufacturing, and there will not frequently be an opportunity to obtain samples of strategic resource "Space Monster X".

A player to build a fleet composed of all the types of space monster in the game would be a force to be reckoned with!

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One thing I would absolutely not like to see is players ordering spacemonsters around like there own ships, useing space monsters in your military should feel different to useing normal ships.

For example one breed of spacemonster might be controlled through the espionage screen, if you have access to eggs you can plant them somewhere, a few turns later a fully grown swarm has hatched, they are no longer under your control. They may go on a rampage or just try to occupy one system defending there "territory" from invaders.

I'd also like to see some very rare and very powerful unique spacemonsters, individual creatures with there own backstory that you can indirectly influence, for example might have a real issue with slavery, and randomly decide to an enslaved colony, if you've been proactive in freeing slaves it might randomly decide to join you in battle. (might be unfair on any Abbadonian players though)

Ah, excellent! I was getting tired of all this friendly agreement between Krikkitone and myself.I absolutely disagree with everything you've said.

A) I believe that ordering around a massive, uncustomizable beast with it's own unique abilities will be different enough from regular ships to give the player a sufficiently different feeling without drastically modifying how it is ordered around.

B) An interesting (and IMO far more fun and exciting) alternative to spreading space monsters through espionage is to simply not be able to identify the empire to which a space monster belongs unless there are accompanying ships present. To not make it incredibly obvious that the space monster that just emerged from Player 1's empire and began ravaging Player 2's colonies Actually belongs to Player 1, we could make it a fairly common attribute of roaming space monsters that they go through many systems before reaching their random destination and destroying it and moving on to the next random destination.

Then it becomes a test of Player 1's skill not to be too obvious by destroying only Player 2's strategic targets, and keeping his space monsters spaced far apart so that a single player won't be seeing five random space monsters roaming through his empire destroying stuff, and of Player 2's skill to identify the monster's battle tactics as those of something under intelligent control rather than a mindless beast. Also, there is an added risk that if Player 1's space monster is captured, Player two will have the strategic resources required to build a breeding ground of his own.

A lot of text, for a simple feature, but the bottom line is that the owner of space monsters should not be identifiable unless accompanying ships are present.

C) IMO, the role of powerful forces interfering in the galaxy is filled nicely by the precursors (who need a lot of work, IMO, but have potential). Furthermore, this adds an unnecessary element of randomness that could punish/reward certain strategies (i.e. slavery-hating/loving monster shows up and the slave masters are screwed/have an advantage). There's no need for space monsters to be anything more than mindless beasts who can be captured to your own advantage.

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I do like the idea of Space Monsters as unidentifiable (ie Pirate units)... of course that would depend... if you are known to have space monsters with your fleets/ your Breeding ground is identified by espionage or other means, then any attacks of that Space Monster type would reflect on you. Even if it wasn't actualy your fault. The 'blame' would get split if others also had space monsters. But in any case the 'blame' would be at least somewhat less.

The other thing that would be good with Space monsters is the "living off the land", ie they self repair damage+reload ammo any turn not in combat, regardless of supply chains or shipyard.

They could probably also travel without fuel/refuel when not in combat

That's part of the fun, and the risk associated with using space monsters.

Yes, I meant to mention that. All space monsters should have infinite fuel and be able to repair damage without a shipyard to the same extent as a wild space monster. Otherwise, the long-range pirating techniques imitating a regular space monster's movements would not be feasible.

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I'm not sure that's much of a distinction.

A) Amounts to a few cosmetic differences, with some different abilities and the drawback of being non-customisable. What if we have a race that produces bio-ships instead of normal mechanical ones? That's one difference gone.
Granted, the special abilities might be unique and unlike anything else your ships could do, but other than this and the inability to customise/refit the monster, it's just another ship. It forms fleets, takes orders and moves just like any other ship.

B) Making the monsters 'unmarked' would be a fair way to add interest, but then again if you can do that with monsters, why not make it possible for 'normal' ships too? I think it could be an interesting gameplay addition, that if limited to monsters needlessly prevents many empires from another interesting and enjoyable possible strategy.
plus see below for more discussion of this

C) I appreciate what you're saying about not having too many 'giants in the playground', but I don't think space monsters are forced to be as powerful as the precursors. In fact they might be a valuable source of intermediate opposition, which could be interesting for the early game, when the empires are more concerned with expanding and have yet to encounter or provide a threat to each other.

I don't think this point is a means of distinguishing space monsters from regular ships, rather an argument against having powerful individual space monsters with agendas. That said I agree it would be bad to have a game strategy (such as slavery) backfire horribly on you, simple because this game you were unfortunate enough to draw the 'all-powerful anti-slavery activist space dragon of Zendrox IV'...


I like the idea of space monsters being unique characters with personality!

As an alternative, more subtle way for the monsters to interact, how about having space monsters as a hidden reserve? Perhaps they might offer to intervene in a battle on the player's side for a price (or perhaps for nothing) and be invisible to the unsuspecting attacker. Again, I would hope that the space monster not be so powerful as to decide the battle all by itself. Instead it should merely be just an influence.

Thoughts on unmarked ships
I think being able to field unmarked ships would be interesting in it's own right. They could be used in raids, with a lower chance of starting a war. Of course, since your government disowns all responsibility to these, then you wouldn't be able to complain if they were attacked and destroyed themselves. Espionage could be used to reveal (and prove) the owner of the unmarked ships, and it might be nice if they could be bribed.

If an empire were suffering too many attacks from unmarked ships, but had suspicions of who was behind them, it should be able to declare war on the suspected empire anyway. (presumably at a diplomatic penalty, due to the weak casus belli)

The biggest difference between a space monster and a normal fleet is that the space monsters are created at a continuous rate from the Breeding ground. Your PP production has only a minimal effect on your space monster "production".. its primarily your # of breeding grounds and technology.

And I'm not sure they would necessarily be totally uncustomizable... increased techs could give 'tougher' versions of the monsters. that you could build

As for unmarked ships... the problem with them is the problem of explaining where they came from... Some empire sent them, its just a question of who.

Space Monsters could just "Be there".. no one is to blame.