I've often wanted to be able to design tailored viruses, so that we can virus bomb unruly planets without destroying infrastructure. Perhaps it might come with a risk of some variety, like a mutation allowing it to spread to other species, reducing population or changing the colony cost of the world, something like the life-eater virus from Warhammer 40K would be cool too.
Pretty sure I read that excluding things like wiping out pop/army with virus or radiation bursts is game design decision to not be able to easily capture defended planets with intact infrastructure.
i do think as it stands Biology is the most easily ignored of the tech trees for sure, better than it was, but still.
Agreed. Here are some other things added biology techlines could impact:
- Lowered life support tonnage on ships
- Lowered life support tonnage on army units (a bit open to interpretation/implementation)
- Increased population growth (with or without genetic modification)
- Reduced % population needed for "Agriculture / Environmental" assisting mainly with colonizing higher Colony Cost worlds.
- Age / Health techline(s) increasing lifespan and reducing risk of diseases of commanders
- (In conjunction with "global warming" mechanics), a techline reducing CO2 creation by employed Manufacturing population down towards 0.
- Stronger versions of terrain specific capabilities unlocked for infantry by added genetic modification techs (say 3x chance to hit instead of 2x in Desert/Jungle/Mountain/Rift)
- Genetic Enhanced Intelligence giving +5% / +10% higher starting values for commander skills for any commander born after the tech was unlocked.
- Genetic Enhanced Management giving +1 / +2 admin starting "levels" for any commander born after the tech was unlocked.