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I originally was going to post this in this thread but it became so long and off-topic that I decided to make a thread here.
Launching a satellite into space should reveal the world map but the issue is that I see that is if I start from the Ancient Era, I already have the world map finished by the Industrial Age. Now, if satellites were a special sort of unit that floated around the map and offered benefits, that could be another benefit of the Space Race. As a matter of fact, it isn't out of line for the future-era to have a few satellite techs that allow the players to build satellites that allow the players to be able to remove the fog of war from a portion of the map it's hovering over at the moment.
It would also changed the way SDI worked. Instead of building an array of satellite automatically in space using the wonder, civilizations would have to build individual satellites that each have a small chance to a hit a nuke. (Having just one would give the nuke a 90-95% chance of hitting it's target. Two would only give it 80% and so on and so on). So, what's stopping a player from building just ten of these or more?
1. Expensive. Both production wise and maintenance wise.
2. Would require lasers, the space race to have gone on a bit, and the infrastructure to build SDI.
3. Isn't perfect.
For one, satellites shouldn't be untouchable targets. An ICBM could take out a satellite. However, SDI would stop a nuke, right? Just have ten SDI Sats and everything should be fine.
Unless there's a limit to how many ICBMs your satellites can engage at once. In which case, a swarm of ICBMs could be enough to take out an SDI network.
But then again, there's the option of orbiting death weapons as well which would come into two flavors, lasers and kinetic. These weapons would be future-era of course but have the added benefit of A.) Being deadly accurate and impossible intercept and B.) Useful as strategic weapons AND tactical weapons.
So what's the disadvantage? The Laser Sat would be weaker than an ICBM and kinetic sat and would require a recharge time. A Kinetic Sat is as devastating if not more so than an ICBM, but is also one shot and more expensive than an ICBM.
And of course, they can be hit by a nuke or anti-sat weapon.
Now, with all these weapons I'm thinking of, it would seem that there wouldn't be a commercial benefit to building them, but that would be naive. Building "civilian" satellites would give small cultural bonuses to all cities with a broadcast tower as well as give commercial bonuses to large cities.
Good idea? Bad? Needs tweak a bit?
Launching a satellite into space should reveal the world map but the issue is that I see that is if I start from the Ancient Era, I already have the world map finished by the Industrial Age. Now, if satellites were a special sort of unit that floated around the map and offered benefits, that could be another benefit of the Space Race. As a matter of fact, it isn't out of line for the future-era to have a few satellite techs that allow the players to build satellites that allow the players to be able to remove the fog of war from a portion of the map it's hovering over at the moment.
It would also changed the way SDI worked. Instead of building an array of satellite automatically in space using the wonder, civilizations would have to build individual satellites that each have a small chance to a hit a nuke. (Having just one would give the nuke a 90-95% chance of hitting it's target. Two would only give it 80% and so on and so on). So, what's stopping a player from building just ten of these or more?
1. Expensive. Both production wise and maintenance wise.
2. Would require lasers, the space race to have gone on a bit, and the infrastructure to build SDI.
3. Isn't perfect.
For one, satellites shouldn't be untouchable targets. An ICBM could take out a satellite. However, SDI would stop a nuke, right? Just have ten SDI Sats and everything should be fine.
Unless there's a limit to how many ICBMs your satellites can engage at once. In which case, a swarm of ICBMs could be enough to take out an SDI network.
But then again, there's the option of orbiting death weapons as well which would come into two flavors, lasers and kinetic. These weapons would be future-era of course but have the added benefit of A.) Being deadly accurate and impossible intercept and B.) Useful as strategic weapons AND tactical weapons.
So what's the disadvantage? The Laser Sat would be weaker than an ICBM and kinetic sat and would require a recharge time. A Kinetic Sat is as devastating if not more so than an ICBM, but is also one shot and more expensive than an ICBM.
And of course, they can be hit by a nuke or anti-sat weapon.
Now, with all these weapons I'm thinking of, it would seem that there wouldn't be a commercial benefit to building them, but that would be naive. Building "civilian" satellites would give small cultural bonuses to all cities with a broadcast tower as well as give commercial bonuses to large cities.
Good idea? Bad? Needs tweak a bit?
) that suggested that satellites could be built as units that could go on a space layer, and illuminate the tiles it is over. Thinking of it now, you could even have some sort of tech or building that jams satellites, or something. IMO, it would be a preferable idea to complicating the system of nukes.
