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GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2008.06.28 20:10:00 -
[1]
Definitely agree that the importance of planets in each system is greatly below where it should be, and that they should be far more significant than just acting as a warpable celestial object as they are currently.
Allowing inhabited worlds to be developed in order to generate POS components, strontium, jump drive fuel and other necessary consumables for the sovereign alliance would allow for interesting developments, and this could additionally provide a target for small gang logistics disruption. For example NPC hauler spawns could automatically deliver fuel to control towers but be vulnerable to hostiles intercepting and popping them, or planetary industrial centres could be hacked or targeted to shut them down for a given period.
Such a move could see the development of whole new specialisations. For example, an alliance could grant players the planetary governor role (which would require a new set of administrative skills to be trained, something which could boost the value of the currently neglected Charisma statline) and give them control over a particular planet to go and Sim-City it up, managing its output and needs to produce goods as the alliance required. This would reduce the need for NPC sell orders and the market distortions they sometimes create, as well as allowing space-holding player alliances to loosen if not cut the umbilical cord of NPC Empire dependency and function more like sovereign powers in their own right.
It would be great if we saw the introduction of spaceports on the planetary surface which functioned as cheap mini-outposts (with fewer station services and perhaps limited hangar space) to make neglected areas of space habitable without having to plonk down 30b or so for an outpost - and who wouldn't want to build their very own Mos Eisley, perhaps complete with cantina band? Ultimately though, inhabited planets should also be the key to system sovereignty. Look at the recent background writing on the capture of New Caldari. We didn't get fiction about stront timing or station ping-pong. The Caldari showed up around the planet with a load of dropships and deployed troops to the planetary surface to capture it, and frankly that's a far cooler method of taking a system than playing 'who can anchor the most giant space needles'. |