Would the research cost get randomized every tick? or would it just be randomized when the current level of tech is finished and the next level of that tech gets random?
If you want it to be easy for new players does that mean you are going to not hide players stars when not scanned?
You could do a lot with the Intel thing… I only pointed out a few things that could be made possible with it.
You could expand on scanning even further and say that everything 1ly out of the radius of your scanning range could have all movements revealed however not perfectly revealed… you would not be able to see where the carrier is exactly, or how many ships, or who owns the carrier, or how long it will take to get where its going.
All you would see is a black line with grey outline, kind of following the stealthed out colour theme of the neutral stars, which would indicate there is movement either leaving that star or going to that star when the star is 1ly out of your scanning range.
If the star happens to already be in your scanning range, you would get an early warning that your being attacked from a fair distance away before the carrier actually arrives in your scanning range, however if carriers can make jumps far enough to completely evade that +1ly movement detection its likely scanning could already see that far anyway, due to scanning will likely be more than hyperspace level for everyone.
So I would not see any major balance changes, it would give new players an early warning at the start of these proteus games if they dont know how to plan which stars they can expand to safely. Because, scanning level 3 naturally scans 1ly less than hyperspace 3 can jump to if I am right?? so there’s always that possibility that you can jump to a star that is not scanned even if you have the same scanning level as your hyperspace.
So it would fill that gap with this movement detection, if the star is +1ly out of your scanning if you have the same hyperspace range as scanning the chance is you can jump to that star, but you would see a stealthed out waypoint indication someone is nearby and already travelling there. The only way you could determine exactly where carriers are from that earlier than normal, is if you already had the star for awhile and you check every hour for these way points to appear, then you know the carrier is exactly 1 tick through the jump of the two indicated stars, you still would not know leaving or going to.
It might take a few reads of that to fully understand what I am trying to describe lol
It would also make the galaxy feel less “lonely” because you would see things happening around you but you would have to constantly work out what is going on. And, it adds a little mystery to what you are getting your self into.
For the role players maybe hyperspace jumps have a dramatic ripple effect on space that can be detected but not precisely identify where carriers are, you just know that a jump has been made to that star 1ly out of your scanning range or a jump has been made from that star 1ly out of your scanning range.
This is why I love complex games, there is so many ways you can play it, and many ideas you can just throw in
If you liked that idea and wanted to try it you might get to a point where you consider even more exiting things, like adding a new stealth tech which can hide your carriers from this ripple effect, which would follow the theme of this hiding stars and the new scanning.
It would also be nice for some indication of where battles are across the entire galaxy, but not know who was involved.
Maybe large battles could become “famous” and everyone gets to know about it ;p this would also be realistic in real life, and adds some more interaction to a galaxy you cant see.
The game would probably have to check the largest fleet someone has and decide if it is a big battle or not.