[DarkHeart]

Just to add an extra dimension, and give those lazy dc's I hear so much about an extra headache, it might be interesting to have a secondary function for each ship.

Basic Premise

Terran -

Kill / Steal (as secondary)

Cath -

Primary freezer's kill (as secondary)
Primary killer's freeze (as secondary)

Xan -

Cloaked / Non cloaked (as secondary)

Zik -

Primary stealer's kill as secondary
Primary killer's steal as secondary

Etd

As above relevant to ship type.

Pods

Primary - Roids
Secondary - Resources

for example

The current Thief ship, it kills fighters. With a secondary function it could steal fighters.

How this would work....

New Research - Ship Modification (as final research in the hulls branch) Cost: 15000 research points

Provides access to advanced multi weaponry design

New Research Branch - Advanced Multi Weaponry Design Schematics

New Research - Light Duty Multi Weaponry Schematics, Cost:4000 research points

Provides schematics for modification of Figher and Corvette class ships. Enables construction of Light Weapons Engineering Bay

New Research - Medium Duty Multi Weaponry Schematics, Cost: 8000 research points

Provides schematics for modification of Frigate and Destroyer class ships. Enables construction of Medium Weapons Engineering Bay


New Research - Heavy Duty Multi Weaponry Schematics, Cost: 12000 research points

Provides schematics for modification of Cruiser and Battleship class ships. Enables construction of Heavy Weapons Engineering Bay


New Building Type - Light Weapons Engineering Bay

Allows you to modify your Fighters and Corvettes to either Mk I (primary function) or Mk II (secondary function)

New Building Type - Medium Weapons Engineering Bay

Allows you to modify your Frigates and Destroyers to either Mk I (primary function) or Mk II (secondary function)

New Building Type - Heavy Weapons Engineering Bay

Allows you to modify your Cruisers and Battleships to either Mk I (primary function) or Mk II (secondary function)

The principle of it

You would not be allowed to build MkII ships. You would have to build MkI ships, then put your produced ships through the relevant engineering bay, which would take X amount of ticks (based on current standard production formula) before the MkII ships were available to use.

There would be no limits to engineering. You could reverse engineer, and change MkII ships back into MkI ships.

Engineering your ships into MkII would cost half of what the total production costs of those ships was (as additional to the inital production costs). You would also have to pay these costs AGAIN if reverse engineering back into MkI


There would also need to be the following research

(At end of Waves research Branch)

New Research - Fleet Engineering Analysis Scan, Cost 12000 research points (would work just as current fleet analysis, but would show ships as MkI or Mk2)

What I'm vaguely aware of but haven't really given much thought to -

Should the stats of a MKII ship be as powerful as its MKI stats?

In the case of Xan, you would have to make the MkII stats better, to negate the loss of cloak