Science Labs/Ships

[Bremen (OP)]

I suspect most people do exploration like I do, sending cheap unarmed survey ships out to explore new jump point branches and accepting a few of them getting blown up by hostiles as the cost of doing business. This is efficient and low effort, but I've always felt it was a bit lacking in dramatic narrative (and from an RP perspective, very ruthless).

That made me think, though, what if there were benefits to putting more effort into exploration? An obvious inspiration would be the various Star Treks. The Enterprise and similar ships are always conducting science between the space crystal and Klingon encounters, not just finding the jump points (well, admittedly Trek doesn't have these) and mineral deposits. I think this might be a nice feature for Aurora. Maybe that jump point has a spatial anomaly that gives your scientists insights into shields, or the minerals on a planet feature a rare alloy that would be useful in your construction factories.

So my suggestion is a Science Lab module. Something relatively big and expensive, maybe 50 or 100 HS. If a ship with a science lab surveys jump points or planets, it has a chance of generating research points for a random tech you have available to research, like salvaging ships does. I see no reason it couldn't use the same mechanic; so when it returns to a system with a research lab it automatically downloads the data.

This both makes for larger, more expensive survey ships (If you choose to utilize them; I do think it should be an option), and means that if some space monster eats your survey ship you lose any research it was carrying. So I think a side effect of this change would be to encourage either pre-sweeping systems or escorting your science ships with a small task force, which could lead to some tactically interesting battles as well.

[Theodidactus]

I put a lot of effort into designing and RPing my science ships. Usually to accommodate the "science lab" aspect I strap on a luxury crew module. this simulates the extra space required for non-space trained experts to grow alien plants or pour chemicals or stuff....but of course this doesn't do anything in game.

I would like to see this as well just because the research aspect of the game is my favorite part, and I initially got into aurora because the game simulated scientists and their specialized research areas and stuff.

[swarm_sadist]

There are no science vessels because all information is displayed once the system is entered, minus two: geological and gravitational. Ways to fix this?

1. Make it so that geological survey teams require a colony or science vessel in orbit to do geological surveys. Same with xeno teams. And components and CO skill rating affects survey speed. (which I advocate)

2. Make it so colony rating, atmosphere and planetary information is not seen until scanned by a science vessel (which I don't advocate).

3. Make it so that anomalies on planets, jump points and stars can be accessed via colonies, PDCs or science vessels

[Shipright]

I really like this idea as long as the cost of construction is similar to that of a normal research center.

Of course you need to make some sort of advantage to having an easily destroyable research center located on a ship that will eventually be obsolete instead of a safe and perpetually available planet side.

Perhaps have the component collect points by visiting new or specific types of bodies and being able to one time dump them into an active research project active on a planet it is located at.

As an idea, add a new resource called "science potential" or some such that this component basically mines and returns to normal research centers to be refined into research points. This will percent using the same sites perpetually and push you into the far reaches of the galaxy.

I think this in conjunction with the new anomalies to make remote permanent research bases desirable would add a lot of flavor. And importantly, non military flavor!

[joeclark77]

As an idea, add a new resource called "science potential" or some such that this component basically mines and returns to normal research centers to be refined into research points. This will percent using the same sites perpetually and push you into the far reaches of the galaxy.

Maybe there could be a sort of "scavenger hunt" mechanic here, where there are lots of little curiosities to be discovered around the universe, but each can only be "captured" (converted into RP) once for each player.  This would create an incentive to build science ships and to explore more of the galaxy than you perhaps would be comfortable with otherwise.

[alex_brunius]

I think this should work together with the research "anomalies" feature in some way.

You could add space-borne anomalies that can only be studied by science vessels, including perhaps to start with: naturally stable wormholes, some star, rare comets and certain spoiler remains.

Around a body the ships would function like any other ship modules with facility properties does, producing research points based on the body. This means you can go visit a body based anomalies easier on demand, without having to haul a huge permanent research base there.


The trick with science ships is how to promote using them very far from home? Perhaps they get a 10% increase in research efficiency for every jump from home? Perhaps something else?

[Theodidactus]

It's simply the case that anomalies are rare and exhaust relatively quickly...so research vessels have to wander far from home to exploit new ones.

[Bremen (OP)]

I suppose you could do it with anomalies, but I was more thinking they'd take the same role as existing survey ships, and have a chance of collecting research points as they processed geological and gravitational survey points. Wormholes and stellar anomalies are good and all, but there's probably all sorts of scientifically interesting stuff at new planets and gravitational survey points as well.

Combined with having them amass research data in a similar way to salvage ships, I was thinking this would be relatively easy to code and hopefully wouldn't require a major effort.

[alex_brunius]

I suppose you could do it with anomalies, but I was more thinking they'd take the same role as existing survey ships, and have a chance of collecting research points as they processed geological and gravitational survey points. Wormholes and stellar anomalies are good and all, but there's probably all sorts of scientifically interesting stuff at new planets and gravitational survey points as well.

Combined with having them amass research data in a similar way to salvage ships, I was thinking this would be relatively easy to code and hopefully wouldn't require a major effort.

I see your point. Why not actually have science ship get a small chance of revealing the anomalies recently added in the game when conducting scans on geological bodies and survey points?
And a bigger chance to gain some small amount of interesting data that on a random tech that can be downloaded once they get home?

I simply dislike having many parallel mechanics in a game doing almost the same thing, it's much easier conceptually and neater for consistency if they work together or you can find a unified system taking care of both. Scientific exploration and anomalies are very closely related so for consistency their game mechanics should be as well IMHO.

This is especially important for a gradual development like Auroras, otherwise you risk the end result being a real mess of a game.