What gets me is where does the planet get all of the resources needed to build the ships.
I think you missundertstood me here, i am sorry if i wasnt clear. I would like to have a merge that allows the shipyards to count as ships/components just like habs do while the habs get the option to expand much like shipyards can.
Well in the story it makes sense why they can keep building. The shipyards are well defended by PDCs that keep enemy ships quite a ways out and on top of that the crews in the shipyards know that their ability to pump out ships is the only thing keeping them from being destroyed as a race.
Orbital habitats can be boarded now because they're ships and for the most part operate by ship mechanics.
They also aren't always civilian. Especially if you're playing with maintaince failures turned off.
I like existing orbital hab mechanics and would be entirely against such a change. You're just taking things away from the player.
I think it could be worth it to unifie shipyards and orbital habitats. Both are orbital planetlinked constructions.
In my mind it would also make sense to increase the size of a Habitat like a Shipyard while a unification would give the Shipyard a chance to be boarded.
The sheer size of both constructs would make them civilian only ... i am not entriely sure though how to solve it database wise, since i dont know how the DB looks internally. Also Steve would have to tackle some size-related overflow bugs.
Complexities like these are why we have this dialog. Just because I think it would be a good idea doesn't mean it could or should happen. This is also why I think consideration for enemy fleet in orbit just halting production would be an option. No ownership of facilities changes hands. Construction factories can build armed PDCs to support a resistance. As soon as enemy fleet leaves orbit construction resumes. Just my idea on the concept.
Besides, boarding actions opens a bit of a potential can of worms; shipyards employ millions of people on the planet, there's certainly going to be alot of surface to space traffic, and transport capacity. So why couldn't a shipyard in orbit be defended - or attacked by - ground troops from the surface? And if so, how would that work? Yes, yes, 'if you control the orbitals you can (try to) shoot down any shuttles ferrying troops up'(maybe expose the troops to hostile point-defence fire for a short time?), but what if the boarder can't hold the orbitals? You could end up with an awkward situation where the enemy captured your shipyards before reinforcments drove them off, and if you don't have any surviving troop ships, you.. what? Have to build a whole new shipyard to build a troopship to board your own shipyard in orbit of your homeworld?
I understand. There is always a gameplay balance issue to maintain as well as ROI in programming effort. Your current campaign just seems to highlight a pretty large gap in strategy gaming logic.
It just seems illogical to me that something so monumental as building a 10000+ ton spacecraft can occur with an enemy staring at the assembly line and everyone just goes on about their business; having their management meetings, drinking a cup of coffee, maybe checking the Aurora forums instead of doing their reports?
