Obscure Technology Ideas

[Redaxe]

I suppose this thread doesn't belong in the tech design threads becuase its just brainstorming either way I can't help typing down some ideas


Heres a couple Technologies or perhaps mini technologies - that dont have a huge effect on game play but may enhance combat strategy and tactics.

Torpedo Resistant Hull

For a small cost of space but a lot of finanial cost you can design ships which have a high-tensile alloys which are stronger than standard armour and reduce the damage that torpedoes do to a ships armor and hull

Torpedo damage against armor could be reduced by 25%
Torpedo damage against the hull could be reduced by 35%

Other damage could be reduced by 10% against hull and armour just to be fair

This tech would be mainly used for increasing the survivability of large expensive cap ships


Stealth Design

This tech would give the smallest radar cross section possible for a ship of X size allowing it to remain undetected more easily. The downside of this design is that the hull strength is reduced by 15% and tonnage by 10%.

This design may allow each ship size to have the same visibility as the next size down ship. So a battleship has the same 'sensor visibility' as a cruiser; cruiser as a destroyer......

Following from MoO2 ships are detected correponding to their size and I'm modelling this idea off that but the dev team may have a different way of incorporating sensors into freeorion

Only exception is for ships larger than battleships which are simply too large for this design to be practicle

Employing the tech would also give a bonus to a ships velocity making the design a must for assault groups and/or solo raiders.



Advanced Miniaturization/Compartment Design

This design makes use of your empires best engineers and ship designers who employ the most advanced technology and theories to miniaturize ship components and minimize the complexity of ship structure and systems. The end result is to increase a ships tonnage by for eg 15% and reduce component size by 20%.

Advanced Miniaturization combined with Stealth design would make a dangerous combination for large ships which can move around more stealthily and yet have the same payload as a standard ship of that size.

I'll leave that there for now. Feedback most welcome

[Skaro]

Automated repair system:
A system that repairs a damaged ship, this technology is however obsolete on organic ships. This system can be upgraded with various AI and extension to become more efficient.


Neutron shielding:
This shielding protects the crew from neutron based weapons. This shielding is added to the armor, in effect it raises the cost of armor.


Anti neutron shield upgrade:
this is cheaper than neutron shielding. This upgrade is tied into a normal shield generator. However, it's protective function will cease once the shields are down.


Minesystem:
A ship fitted with this system can deploy mines with little effort.

- Mine cloacking device:
This system makes mines expensive, but the enemy would quite literally never know what hit them. A ship with good sensors can pick these mines up.


Drone deployer:
A ship with this system can launch a number of unmanned drones to fight against any opposing forces. The drones themselves aren't all that strong.

- Attack drones: These drones attack hostile vessels.

- Repair drones: These drones can repair any friendly damaged ships.


Gravity well generator:
This generator can trap multiple fighters, drones or missiles in a certain radius around the generator. Capital ships are unaffected.


EMP pulse:
This attack will damage various subsystems on a targetted ship while the hull and crew are unaffected. This weapon would need a long time recharce though. Organic ships are unaffected.


EMP torpedo:
The same as a EMP pulse: Only this weapon does some damage in addition.


Just some thoughts.

[utilae]

Fuel Scoop
-For ships that have propulsion requiring fuel. Refill fuel at planets for one turn. Fuel could be anything eg humans for Wraith, hydrogen from
Star, Gas from planet.

Cloaked Planets
-Advanced cloaking technology allows an entire planet to be cloaked. A ship may travel along a starlane to the empty area. They cannot attack/blocade or interact with the planet unless they have sufficient sensor technology.

[Skaro]

Boarding pods:
There's two types of boarding pods that can be lauched from a ship

- Marine pods: These pods can carry a armed squad to a airlock or thin piece of hull. The Marines then start to conquer the ship. These pods can be upgraded to have shield piercing capabilities.

- Stealth pod: This pod can deliver 1 infiltrator to a enemy ship. The pod itself is very hard to detect and can be upgraded with cloacking technology.


Swarm subsystems:
Drones or unmanned fighters can be upgraded to increase their efficiency as a group. The group can get some distinct bonusses, but this effect can be disrupt by strong ECM or EMP technology.


Infector:
This wonderful weapon can infect a crew and/or organic ship with a agressive virus or parasite. This will cause the victim(s) to slowly die. Robotic creatures are unaffected.


Nanotech defenses:
This technology allows a ship and its crew to combat any infector weapons or diseases. This technology can also be used against boarding parties.


Hivemind systems:
This system allows the crew to directly interface with their spacecraft to increase its efficiency.

[utilae]

I like the stealth pod.

Particle Attraction Device
-Fires a beam of energy at the target creating a reaction that causes the target matter to be redirected back through the beam into the particle attraction device. The matter is converted to energy and replenishes energy based systems such as shields.

Laser Net
-Fitted onto many ships, the laser net is more effective if more ships are fitted with laser emitter/receiver units. Each ship equiped with a laser net is connected by a laser beam. Many ships will create between them a net of laser beams. Anything passing through the laser beams takes major internal damage.

[Skaro]

Hyperspace inhibitor:
A subsystem that can be placed on either a ship or a orbital. Enemy ships cannot use their FTL drives to escape until the hyperspace inhibitors are destroyed or captured.


Detection grid systems:
This grid allows various ships/orbitals/planets to set up a web that decloacks any cloacked ships. This technology can be improved with good sensors. However cloacked ships with superior technology can evade this detection method.

[utilae]

Tractor Field
-Any enemy ship within the field is automatically slowed depending on the enemy ships engine strength vs tractor field strength.

Shockwave Missile
-A missile that creates a powerful exapanding shockwave on impact. All ships in range are affected, unless they have shock abosrbant technology. Affected ships take structural damage and are knocked back by the shockwave.

Sensor Mask
-Your own ships signature is copied and given to enemy ships in range. All enemy missiles now see their own ships as targets.

[Skaro]

High detail scanning system:

This system allows a ship to scan the interiors of other ships (provided their shields are down). It allows researchers to research various weapons and equipment almost as fast as reverse engineering a captured ship. The high detail scanning system can't be combined with a active cloack.

[utilae]

AI Virus Cannon
-This AI Virus Cannon locks onto a target ship, infecting its systems with an AI virus. The target ship is now under the control of the player who controls the ship with the AI Virus Cannon. The AI Virus Cannon cannot target another ship without first releasing the previous ship. As a result, the previous ship will no longer be infected and controlled. The success of controlling an enemy ship depends on your computer tech vs theirs. The range of this weapon is based on your communication technology. Note that if you move the target ship beyond your communication range, the target ship is no longer under your control.

[haravikk]

Dimensional Shielding
+100% shields (ie twice whatever the second best shielding is)
These shields effectively work by temporarily shifting the ship in and out of hyperspace (or some other alternate dimension depending on whether this would fit into hyperspace theory as per this game) rendering it completely undamageable for brief periods of time as required.
The downside to these incredibly powerful shields is that the damage absorbed reduces the amount of damage that can be fired in return, perhaps to a minimum of half.
These shields would also come back, fast, so would be advisable as a final level shielding. Basically I don't like simple shields =)

Drone Pods (better name needed perhaps as drone is kinda common)
This is a net of small automated drones that are deployed to surround the ship, protecting it from harm with their own shields. They are self-replicating energy 'blobs' and can be generated by the pods themselves to replace lost drones.
Essentially a second layer to your armour, this armour is replenished over time but only after your normal armour, and is slower (so shields would likely be up well before) drones' shielding effect reduces the damage to the main armour depending upon the number of drones remaining, several drone pods could theoretically give 100% coverage and thus block several hits entirely before gaps open up.
More advanced types of drones may also boost point defences by intercepting missiles/fighters ahead of time (thus lowering their numbers slightly but allowing none of the damage from these weapons to pass through).
A further development also allows them attack nearby ships as a close-range weapon (or even long range if you can somehow choose to fire them in the interface), again depleting their numbers as required but potentially causing crippling damage as very few forms of shields are able to stop them (they pass straight through). Those shields that can stop them will suffer a lot of damage as the drones attach themselves to the shields and attempt to absorb its energy or replicate in order to break through, this can be represented by culmulative damage to the shields with the 'older' drones causing less and less damage until they are destroyed or break through to deliver what energy remains to them.

[marhawkman]

AI Virus Cannon
-This AI Virus Cannon locks onto a target ship, infecting its systems with an AI virus. The target ship is now under the control of the player who controls the ship with the AI Virus Cannon. The AI Virus Cannon cannot target another ship without first releasing the previous ship. As a result, the previous ship will no longer be infected and controlled. The success of controlling an enemy ship depends on your computer tech vs theirs. The range of this weapon is based on your communication technology. Note that if you move the target ship beyond your communication range, the target ship is no longer under your control.

Hmmm.... New way to force them to hold still while you board them... Neat I guess.

[Dreamer]

AI Virus Cannon
-This AI Virus Cannon locks onto a target ship, infecting its systems with an AI virus. The target ship is now under the control of the player who controls the ship with the AI Virus Cannon. The AI Virus Cannon cannot target another ship without first releasing the previous ship. As a result, the previous ship will no longer be infected and controlled. The success of controlling an enemy ship depends on your computer tech vs theirs. The range of this weapon is based on your communication technology. Note that if you move the target ship beyond your communication range, the target ship is no longer under your control.

Hmmm.... New way to force them to hold still while you board them... Neat I guess.

Urggg, I know this is a realism objection, but an AI cannon! This is even worst that the movie independence day, where the alien mothership was plug and play and running win95. As one of the programers here... that is just not doable. In the best case a missile that penetrates the hull and release a infiltration robot to hack the AI of a ship, that will have low chance of success but at least it's convincing.

[marhawkman]

AI Virus Cannon
-This AI Virus Cannon locks onto a target ship, infecting its systems with an AI virus. The target ship is now under the control of the player who controls the ship with the AI Virus Cannon. The AI Virus Cannon cannot target another ship without first releasing the previous ship. As a result, the previous ship will no longer be infected and controlled. The success of controlling an enemy ship depends on your computer tech vs theirs. The range of this weapon is based on your communication technology. Note that if you move the target ship beyond your communication range, the target ship is no longer under your control.

Hmmm.... New way to force them to hold still while you board them... Neat I guess.

Urggg, I know this is a realism objection, but an AI cannon! This is even worst that the movie independence day, where the alien mothership was plug and play and running win95. As one of the programers here... that is just not doable. In the best case a missile that penetrates the hull and release a infiltration robot to hack the AI of a ship, that will have low chance of success but at least it's convincing.

This would assume that you've seen enough of their tech already to know how to hack into their systems. If you've been having encounters with a race for 90+ years you'd probably have the knowledge required.

[utilae]

Urggg, I know this is a realism objection, but an AI cannon! This is even worst that the movie independence day, where the alien mothership was plug and play and running win95. As one of the programers here... that is just not doable. In the best case a missile that penetrates the hull and release a infiltration robot to hack the AI of a ship, that will have low chance of success but at least it's convincing.

It does not sound that bad. The AI Virus Cannon hacks the target in the following way. If the target has a computer system, a backdoor AI is dropped into the system. The crew on your ship can then control the target as long as the backdoor AI is still communicating with your ship. The communication method could be anything of course. A way to transport information, eg radio waves, laser beam.


More tech:

Counteractive Ship Evasion System
-A ship equiped with this system must have some target coordinates chosen. The system enables the ship to teleport itself to any point in space, however this can only be used once. The system takes 5 days to recharge. In order to be used effectively, this system must be activated in response to an offensive action. Eg '50 missiles closing in, 1 minute til impact'. Activate Counteractive Ship Evasion System <your ship teleports far out of range of missile sensors>.

Dimensional Locking Mines
-These mines can be activated at anytime. On activation, an area of space around the mines (in all dimensions) is locked. This means that no object can exist within that space, resulting in an impassible obstacle. Only advanced subspace and interdimensional technology can ignore these effects.

[marhawkman]

Counteractive Ship Evasion System
-A ship equiped with this system must have some target coordinates chosen. The system enables the ship to teleport itself to any point in space, however this can only be used once. The system takes 5 days to recharge. In order to be used effectively, this system must be activated in response to an offensive action. Eg '50 missiles closing in, 1 minute til impact'. Activate Counteractive Ship Evasion System <your ship teleports far out of range of missile sensors>.

This sounds a lot like the subspace transporter item in MoO2. It would allow you to transport your ship a considerable distance instantly. But unlike this device it would do it once per turn.