Why? By designing the Scanning Facility as a building with a certain cost this thing isn't intended to be buildable at a remote outpost outside your supply range. IMO the Scanning Facility in its current form has to go or be revised drastically anway, because right now it's a "build everywhere" building, something we specifically do not want.Ophiuchus wrote:Following design questions need to be answered by solutions regardless of supply ships/supply group ships/remote supply buildings:
On functional level
a. Mechanism to build scanning facilities at outposts (e.g. special ship part which creates the building there)
And it's definitely not meant to be put on far away, disconnected outpost, especially at the current price that's totally overpowered.
But that aside, assuming we want to enable the player to set up something that can monitor the surroundings of a far remote system that's in a strategic key location, why bother with a ship part that creates a Scanning Facility on an outpost? Just let the ship part take over the function of the Scanning Facility (essentially a scanner part with enhanced range), make it sufficiently expensive (maybe even a core part), and instead of a ship creating a building, the ship does what the building was supposed to do. Simpler
Well, here we're getting closer to the heart of the matter. PP produced at disconnected supply groups are supposed to be very difficult or even impossible to preserve (of course you can always enqueue something at that system that has been cut off you might want to build there anyway at some point), and part of why you might want to cut enemy supply lines - to make them loose/waste PP.Mechanism to use PP produced at disconnected supply groups (e.g. put them in a local stockpile until the area is supply connected)
Any mechanic/feature that enables the player to circumvent/counter that problem should not be easy to get, it should have a high price and severe limitations/drawbacks.
Basically the same as above: If there is a disconnected part of your empire, building there is supposed to be slower and more difficult. Cutting off a part of an enemy empire to disrupt production there needs to stay a viable strategy.Mechanism to build faster at disconnected planets/supply groups (e.g. construction ship using PP from different planet)
Being able to counter this should come at a respective cost, and with respective limitations/drawbacks.
Well, why having a resource that's stockpileable and "location-dependent" (because only distributable along supply connections) isn't a good idea has already been covered.Optional: Mechanism to make use of excessive PP (e.g. stockpile them)
If: oh yes, definitely! If an enemy can't cut your supply lines because you can distribute your PP e.g. through something like a stargate-like supply network, we need to provide some means by which that can be disrupted/blocked/countered.Decision how and if an enemy should be able to disrupt this
How: some ideas off the top of my head: "Stockpile Siphon": a tech that enables you to somehow "hack" into the supply network of an enemy that constitutes the global stockpile and siphon PP from there to your own stockpile. "Virus Injector": a tech that allows you to inject a deadly virus into the supply network of an enemy, which spreads to their colonies and kills off population.
I'm sure you now probably got some nasty ideas of your own...
If: again, definitely yes! Like stargate travel remains the special case even once you get that tech, distributing PP among disconnected supply groups should stay the special case, it should extend, not replace the usual way, and that's best done by making it costly. I'd start with a 1:10 ratio, where you have to put 10 PP into the stockpile to get 1 out of it. Or at least 1:5. Being able to increase efficiency via research is definitely a very good idea, but the cap should be a 1:2 ratio (at maxed out tech).Decision if and by how much this way of production is more expensive than the usual way
Definitely yes again. As I said above, the usual way should remain, even once you got the tech for the "enhanced" way. Otherwise the thing becomes far too overpowered.Decision if supply groups are actually necessary for PP distribution (or if a imperial pool suffices)
Requiring a sufficiently expensive building to connect a supply group to the global stockpile is a must have IMO. The player should have to invest to be able to do that, and the mechanic shouldn't enable the player to connect a lone outpost, like stargates, the disconnected supply group should have to be large enough to sustain production of the building.
Connecting far remote outposts or even lone colonies should be particularly difficult (albeit not impossible). E.g. a very high-end late-game tech that gives you a very expensive core ship part, like a ship based mini-stargate, which has a tight limit on how much PP it can retrieve from the global pool per turn.
Yep, that's important.Check that player decisions how to allocate PP to projects need to be made by just manipulating the queue.