Dom Pedro II
Modder For Life
There was a brief threadjacking that took place in danrell's latest reskin thread, and I decided it was a subject I wanted to continue.... I'm not so much interested in a critique of my suggestions (though that's welcome to) as I'm looking for additional suggestions or alternative suggestions. Let your mind wander a bit.
Plausible Future Units, Techs & Buildings:
It always seemed to me that the Alpha Centauri mission just arrived too soon... the reality is we're a long way off from it. Even if we'd dedicated most of our research focus and industrial development towards space as a continuation of the Apollo Program, we'd still be far from an Alpha Centauri mission. So I want to add additional techs, buildings, and units between the current last stage of development and what I would expect there to be in a world where an Alpha Centauri trip is feasible.
Now I know there's a lot of mods out there with fun things like Hover Tanks and giant Battle Mechs, etc. But I'm interested in things that are a bit more than speculation right now... I want things that are plausible but have some attainable technological goals that have to be met before they can become reality.
So I wanted some thoughts on the next (and possibly next after that) generation of units.
In the other thread, the subject of the obsolescence of Aircraft Carriers (and indeed all surface warships) came up, and I wanted some thoughts on this. What would be the next line of warships? I was reading in a magazine recently that the navy is developing dedicated drone carriers that will carry the predator drones the military is currently using and any future encarnations of it.
These drone carriers will be smaller with fewer crew required than the big aircraft carriers today. And as technology improves these drones, there may not be a need for manned aircraft and thus the drone carriers will have the same force projection capabilities as modern Carriers but with fewer risks and expenses.
Air units will probably be drones although I'm not sure what that will mean in Civ. New air units might also include hypersonic bombers capable of striking from anywhere in the world. They'd probably be fairly expensive though.
I've also heard that the US Marine Corps is looking into what we might call "drop ships" that will launch from friendly territory, reach sub-orbital altitudes, and then drop down into the desired region. It would effectively give the USA the ability to put ground troops anywhere on earth within hours of a situation arising without having to deal with issues like airspace, etc. Very good in Civ if you want to launch a nice blitzkrieg on an enemy on another continent... Drop like twenty units in their border in the first turn of the war
On the ground, I've read that there's work to create robots that will do on the ground what the Predator is already doing in the skies. We could even see a day when manned tanks will become obsolete and will instead be controlled by humans far from the field of battle. I'm not sure how that would translate in Civ to a better unit over the Modern Armor however. Again, it's a nice thing for a military that wants to reduce potential casualties, but for Civ it may not have a practical application unless we tie it into some improved weapon system mounted on those automated platforms.
Space Warfare
On a flight back from Chicago, I grappled with the difficult task of simulating space warfare in Civ4. The Satellites tech just gives you a full map of the earth without really providing any military benefits. Satellites, though, have been of crucial importance militarily and for communications. I thought about creating satellite projects to represent these extraordinary opportunities for both civilian and military use, but then I ran into the problem of how to represent space warfare. While waiting for the plane, I read an article about the potential and hazards of space warfare. This includes anti-satellite weapons used to destroy communications/spy satellites either from the ground or from orbit, or satellite-borne weapons to attack targets down below.
One would think that if you build a satellite network that it should be vulnerable to attack by the enemy. Also, should spy or weapons satellites be units? Or represented through some other game mechanic? If we made them into air units with unlimited range, for example, that would mean that they'd have to be based in a city... and if that city is captured, they'd be destroyed. That wouldn't make much sense. This also wouldn't help for communication satellite networks that might reduce maintenance or give yield/commerce bonuses in all your cities which really shouldn't be units.
And if we don't use units for satellites either for civilian or military purposes, how would we be able to attack a non-unit satellite network? You can really think outside the box here. Don't look to jury rig a solution. The SDK is flexible enough that a real solution could probably be provided.
Buildings
I can't really think of much in the way of buildings.
Projects
One of the things that I think should be changed is the Apollo Program. Every game of civ starts with a completely random map, and yet, that random map has always assumed a single moon to explore. I would like to have a random number of moons and planets to be generated at the start of a game, and then you will be capable of building projects that will first probe and then send manned missions to each. They wouldn't be represented graphically or have a location on the map, but when you get the technology to start exploring them, you'll see something like "Lunar Mission (Ganymede)" in the build menu or "Planetary Probe (Mars)", and there'll be one for each moon and planets(which will be randomly assigned names from a name bank). We could even make civ-specific names, so that if you're playing as the Chinese you'll see names from Chinese mythology, or if you play as the Aztecs, you'll see the name of Aztec gods, etc.
It will give your cities something to work on, and it could be used to give other bonuses as well (or resources?). The hammer cost would also be variable depending on the planet's stats. So a far out planet would require more hammers to explore than one closer by. And each of these missions could be used to increase the success rate for your big Alpha Centauri mission.
Other projects/wonders I'm considering:
Particle Accelerator: this would be a prerequisite for certain techs that couldn't be researched without it. You would be able to trade for these techs without building it however. I plan to do the same thing for the Manhattan Project (national project) as a prerequisite for Fission which can then be traded away to allow other civs to acquire nukes without having to build their own Manhattan Projects.
Space Station: prerequisite for Alpha Centauri since it'd probably be a lot easier to launch it from space than from the ground. This would allow for the Space Elevator (which then send up the space parts to the Space Station for considerably less than the cost of using rockets).
Feel free to post your own thoughts! This is an opportunity for brainstorming!
Plausible Future Units, Techs & Buildings:
It always seemed to me that the Alpha Centauri mission just arrived too soon... the reality is we're a long way off from it. Even if we'd dedicated most of our research focus and industrial development towards space as a continuation of the Apollo Program, we'd still be far from an Alpha Centauri mission. So I want to add additional techs, buildings, and units between the current last stage of development and what I would expect there to be in a world where an Alpha Centauri trip is feasible.
Now I know there's a lot of mods out there with fun things like Hover Tanks and giant Battle Mechs, etc. But I'm interested in things that are a bit more than speculation right now... I want things that are plausible but have some attainable technological goals that have to be met before they can become reality.
So I wanted some thoughts on the next (and possibly next after that) generation of units.
In the other thread, the subject of the obsolescence of Aircraft Carriers (and indeed all surface warships) came up, and I wanted some thoughts on this. What would be the next line of warships? I was reading in a magazine recently that the navy is developing dedicated drone carriers that will carry the predator drones the military is currently using and any future encarnations of it.
These drone carriers will be smaller with fewer crew required than the big aircraft carriers today. And as technology improves these drones, there may not be a need for manned aircraft and thus the drone carriers will have the same force projection capabilities as modern Carriers but with fewer risks and expenses.
Air units will probably be drones although I'm not sure what that will mean in Civ. New air units might also include hypersonic bombers capable of striking from anywhere in the world. They'd probably be fairly expensive though.
I've also heard that the US Marine Corps is looking into what we might call "drop ships" that will launch from friendly territory, reach sub-orbital altitudes, and then drop down into the desired region. It would effectively give the USA the ability to put ground troops anywhere on earth within hours of a situation arising without having to deal with issues like airspace, etc. Very good in Civ if you want to launch a nice blitzkrieg on an enemy on another continent... Drop like twenty units in their border in the first turn of the war
On the ground, I've read that there's work to create robots that will do on the ground what the Predator is already doing in the skies. We could even see a day when manned tanks will become obsolete and will instead be controlled by humans far from the field of battle. I'm not sure how that would translate in Civ to a better unit over the Modern Armor however. Again, it's a nice thing for a military that wants to reduce potential casualties, but for Civ it may not have a practical application unless we tie it into some improved weapon system mounted on those automated platforms.
Space Warfare
On a flight back from Chicago, I grappled with the difficult task of simulating space warfare in Civ4. The Satellites tech just gives you a full map of the earth without really providing any military benefits. Satellites, though, have been of crucial importance militarily and for communications. I thought about creating satellite projects to represent these extraordinary opportunities for both civilian and military use, but then I ran into the problem of how to represent space warfare. While waiting for the plane, I read an article about the potential and hazards of space warfare. This includes anti-satellite weapons used to destroy communications/spy satellites either from the ground or from orbit, or satellite-borne weapons to attack targets down below.
One would think that if you build a satellite network that it should be vulnerable to attack by the enemy. Also, should spy or weapons satellites be units? Or represented through some other game mechanic? If we made them into air units with unlimited range, for example, that would mean that they'd have to be based in a city... and if that city is captured, they'd be destroyed. That wouldn't make much sense. This also wouldn't help for communication satellite networks that might reduce maintenance or give yield/commerce bonuses in all your cities which really shouldn't be units.
And if we don't use units for satellites either for civilian or military purposes, how would we be able to attack a non-unit satellite network? You can really think outside the box here. Don't look to jury rig a solution. The SDK is flexible enough that a real solution could probably be provided.
Buildings
I can't really think of much in the way of buildings.
Projects
One of the things that I think should be changed is the Apollo Program. Every game of civ starts with a completely random map, and yet, that random map has always assumed a single moon to explore. I would like to have a random number of moons and planets to be generated at the start of a game, and then you will be capable of building projects that will first probe and then send manned missions to each. They wouldn't be represented graphically or have a location on the map, but when you get the technology to start exploring them, you'll see something like "Lunar Mission (Ganymede)" in the build menu or "Planetary Probe (Mars)", and there'll be one for each moon and planets(which will be randomly assigned names from a name bank). We could even make civ-specific names, so that if you're playing as the Chinese you'll see names from Chinese mythology, or if you play as the Aztecs, you'll see the name of Aztec gods, etc.
It will give your cities something to work on, and it could be used to give other bonuses as well (or resources?). The hammer cost would also be variable depending on the planet's stats. So a far out planet would require more hammers to explore than one closer by. And each of these missions could be used to increase the success rate for your big Alpha Centauri mission.
Other projects/wonders I'm considering:
Particle Accelerator: this would be a prerequisite for certain techs that couldn't be researched without it. You would be able to trade for these techs without building it however. I plan to do the same thing for the Manhattan Project (national project) as a prerequisite for Fission which can then be traded away to allow other civs to acquire nukes without having to build their own Manhattan Projects.
Space Station: prerequisite for Alpha Centauri since it'd probably be a lot easier to launch it from space than from the ground. This would allow for the Space Elevator (which then send up the space parts to the Space Station for considerably less than the cost of using rockets).
Feel free to post your own thoughts! This is an opportunity for brainstorming!
