What if the game had trade routes? That these trade routes would generate profit for those who hold the greatest control.
The trade I would like the game to be based on would be from EUIV.
I never got the opportunity to play EUIV, but I looked over the wiki and even if we cut it down by half it still seems fantastically complex to build. Like, more complex than the entirety of Triton.
Still, if I were to build it, I would start with the following, and tweak it from there:
At mapgen, randomly nominate certain stars to be trade nodes. These stars would have a button added: “trade managment” Also, they need to be visually distinctive… howabout yellow light, instead of white?
Trade managment is restricted to two real options: “collect” or “link” Say that each node is worth one ‘good’ point. Every cycle, if the star is set to “collect” it will reward the player a certain amount, or if “linked”, to a trade node within hyperspace range it applies a multiplier to the number of goods the next node has. This multiplier scales with the number of goods, so in theory a chain of four, with the last star set to “collect”, would be worth more than two chains of two.
Of course, checks would need to be set up so that loops aren’t formed or anything like that. Or maybe loops are permissible, but behave differently if detected? Ugh, already too complex for Triton.
Anyway, probably a new tech would have to be introduced to increase the multiplier value, and maybe some thought given to adjust what the trade route can output. What if you can have a trade route that changes goods to RP or ships when collected instead of just money?
That’s as close as I can get to EUIV trade routes with what I understand of both games.
Triton is a very diplomatic game, though. I don’t know what it would like like, but I think it would be cool to see a global trade market that each empire can effect locally, and so that deals could be brokered to mutual benefit. Maybe second layer of trade ships that hop from planet to planet, and players have the option to harvest or direct? It could use the mechanic for naming carriers, and the farther from the origin star the more valuable it gets? Stars could randomly generate these trade carriers while owned, and players can send them to each other’s stars, eventually to be harvested when they’re far away.
Perhaps you can only harvest trade carriers if you do not own the star it’s named after. Bonus depending on home star’s natural resource level, including terraforming? That way we don’t even need a new tech, and terraforming becomes that much more powerful. I still like the idea of choosing what you reap though. “Do I want money, or should I turn this trade carrier into a pile of ships?” More things to worry about when trading with partners. “How can they use the trade carrier I just sent them to screw me over?”
Just stream-of-consciousness.
There is another idea, kind of similar, already on the todo list. Supply lines. Basically, stars need to be able to trace a rout back to your home worlds for economy, industry and science to work properly. I think it could open up a whole new dimension of tactical play where you can cut stars off making them useless.
I remember you mentioning this last spring.
If this idea was to be implemented, then it should change the game quite a lot. In addition, it would make the game more straight forward and priority lists would change for players.
Here is my tweak of the idea utilizing the JayKyburz’s supply chain idea. Basically, each star has a supply capacity. A star produces a small amount of supply relative to it’s industry size. However, a player can set the star’s industry to directly produce either supply or ships. If a star’s supply runs out, then it’s infrastructure will be useless. This is where supply line, banking, manufacturing, hyperspace, and warp gates come into place. The supply line transfers supplies to each star. The level of banking determines the capacity of supply. The level of Manufacturing determines how much supply a star consumes. Furthermore, producing ships consumes supplies. The level of hyperspace determines how far a supply line can reach(assuming its 1 X level range shorter than scanning range). Warp gates increases the range of supply lines from a star as its center to let’s say scanning range.
You know, there is a version of the game we could make where each star has a mining infrastructure as well, and you have to mine ore and perhaps even ship it around to starts to make ships. If we were going to do that I would probably have population as a resource as well and two types of carrier, war ships and cargoes ships.
Its not crazy because I think the management of logistics can be just as interesting as tactical combat.
I was watching a documentary on the weekend about the Messerschmitt Me 262. They were saying that its was a technically superior aircraft but the Germans just didn’t have the capacity to build them fast enough. They didn’t come online till late in the war.
It is not a bad idea, but it would be hard to manage for players who aren’t online all the time. In addition, I see mining type of games as quick full attention 5-30 minute games(Starcraft Perhaps?). This is because, I see 2 types of ships as too big of a change for me and its hard to predict what a player is going to next on a logistics scale(and possibly make the games even slower).
Oh by the way, your right about the german jet plane; however I’d would like to point the bigger picture. Nazi Germany failed to defend against D-Day and take down the Soviet Union. These 2 combined losses led Nazi Germany to redistribute their materials more heavily on ground forces.