Anyone want to be my guinea pig for a bit of an RPing scenario?
Try to create a bunch of allied NPRs (preferably with different tolerances, so they can cover a wider amount of planets that the others can't) and ally them with each other, then let them grow extremely powerful in tech and branch out into other systems, then spawn your own civilization right in the middle of them and make them all hate you.
From there you have to attempt to escape the 3 of them, preferably by building a jump ship carrying the bare necessities for a colony, and build an empire far away, then come back and fight them.
Any suggestions or tweaks to make this more fun such as a good starting research point amount? Maybe a way to make the NPRs more aggressive in their search for you?
Once you set up a race as an npr you can not control it. This is important as your allies in this scenario are going to have to be done as player races. There is just no way for you to set all this up with the computer controlling it. You could however create a web of systems using SM mode and have a single race start in these systems. There is a control on the race info screen that lets you restrict the system number range that they can reach through exploring warp-points. Set the initial number of systems somewhat low (200-300) instead of the default 1000. explore using sm mode to get a bunch of systems with planets that the npr will like. Start the game and let it run for some time (20+ years). Then increase the range of systems to 1000, create a system that you link to their established systems and go from there. If all of the new systems warp points go through at least one of their systems it should get interesting when they expand out.
As far as what to do for the refugee race, I would suggest not putting a rp limit, rather reasearch the specific systems you want them to have. Given what they will be doing having a maxed out # of ships per jump, and jump efficiency is probably going to be important. Having a wide radius that they appear in is also likely to be important. You are going to want a bunch of different ship types. For civilian ships this will include colony and freight ships to move the basics of colonies around, terraformers to get the planets somewhat liveable fairly quickly, Sorium harvesters to keep you supplied with fuel. I would also plan on using automated mines and asteroid miners to supply you with the minerals you are going to need. A few smaller shipyards with one or two slips each to build replacement light combat ships. These are going to require a really big tug to get moving at any reasonable rate. I would actually suggest playing with the no overhauls option. This will keep you from having to worry about your big combatants falling apart after a few years. You are not going to be able to keep their maintenance levels up as you move, only when you stop and find resources. If you do decide to go with needing maintenance then having a few ships with enough maintenance modules between them to support the largest combat ship you have is going to be mandatory. Each time you stop for any reason, even just for a warp point survey have them form a colony (designate an asteroid as a colony will work) with the maintenance ships and all of the warships you can afford to put there. This will help keep the time on thier clocks down.
As far as your combat ships go, I would try to stay away from missiles as your primary weapons. They take a long time to build which will be a problem with moving constantly. They also require a seperate factory to build them. Instead push the cloak tech to max and you can have your gunboats armed with medium range mesons and have the signature of a missile. This will also help with enemy missile attacks against you. They will have to come into fairly close range to get a fire control lockup. While it wont be energy range, it might be close enough for gunboats to go out and intercept them. All of this assumes that you are faster than your enemies. If they are faster then you are dead anyway.
For your actual weapon setups. CIWS on all civilian ships, a couple at least. This is the only active defense you can mount on them, put a bunch of armour and they will not be quick kills at long range from missiles. Your warships are going to need to have a really good point defense set up that does not demand missile use in it's setup. If your tracking speed ends up significantly faster than the ship speeds then using light railguns might work well. Otherwise I would go with massed laser batteries of 15-20cm. In general the 15cm lasers will have about half the range of your fire control, 20cm lasers are up to about 85% and 25cm lasers will have the full range that you can fire. If you have the capaciter teck (C10) for firing the 20cm every 5 seconds I would go with those in turrets as my primary weapon. Use 15cm lasers on smaller ships if you want a greater fire rate.
I should probably note this is contrary to the advise I usually give to people where I prefer mesons and torpedos as an energy armament. The difference is that ALL of your weapons are going to have to do double duty as point defense given your probable lack of long range anti-missile missiles. You just are not going to be able to keep the ammo flowing for those ships. You might want a few along to start with though when you are most likely to meet bigger fleets. In that case do not try to stop each wave of missiles, instead go for thinning them out to let your energy weapons have an easier time of it.
One trick to consider is that grav survey vessels are military by definition. Put a survey instrument on a gunboat with cloak, but use a normal military engine. They will still be quite fast, and almost impossible to spot at any real range. If they do not turn active sensors on or use thier shields they will have no em emmisions, by using the thermal masking on their engine they will show up about the time a missile engine would show, and they will have the cross section of a missile to any active sensors that might pick them up. This will allow them to survey even inhabited systems fairly quickly and quitely.
Hope these ideas help. If I think of any more I will post them here.
Brian
