Lego My Ships

[witold-cyrek]

This is just an idea I worked on for a generic SMR-like game, the idea of modular ship customization.

Currently we have one kind of ship customization, swaping ships. You get a generic, pre-designated ship that replaces the ship you are in. This is decent.

I played another SMR like game that allowed you to "park" ships in hangers on planet, so that you could have multiple ships you could swap on said planet. This was fun also. You could have a ship for planet stocking, one for trading, and one for fighting, etc. of course this makes you a master of all domains, removing certain tactical/strategic aspects of gameplay.

Then I had an idea of customizable ships, ones built with a hull structure, onto which you add lego parts, each with it's own stats. Of course you cannot add ship parts infinately, there would be upper limit, probably based on the original hull strucutre. The parts would be different, with different races/factions offering their own take on the parts. The ship you create woudl represent your ideas of what you wanted, moreso than what is pigeonholed by the game. This is cool, exciting, possibly imbalanced, and fun.

I also expanded this idea, allowing for "Modular Fleets." In such a setting, you do not control a single ship, but rather a fleet of ships. Your main craft would just be like an Admiral's Yacht, which is a tiny thing. And the overall stats of your fleet would depend on ships added to it. The limit of the fleet would be based on your Command Rating, which could be set per game, per race, or possibly increased as you level, making it a bit nonstatic. With certain specialized admirals getting discounts on Command Rating of certain types of individual ships that amke up their fleet, allowing for specialization.

In this scenario you could be a Human admiral who fights off pirates and raids enemy ports, your fleet could be a mix of Human Destroyers and Boarder Cruisers, along with a Jewel of the fleet, a retrofitted Ik'Thorne Mothership you got during the peace accords with Ik'Thorne. Of course the arnamanet of individual ships would be beyond the scope of Abstraction, and each ship would do set amount of variable damage, disregarding individual weapons,