Trade was one of the reasons I thought about transports, actually; I just wasn't sure exactly how much commerce might play into your vision for the game overall. If you wanted to get complex with the whole thing, some considerations might include things like:

• Trade routes, agreements, and or partnerships
• From a strategic perspective, you might also consider embargos and/or blockades (to curtail an enemies supply chains and/or development/repair times)
• And what about smugglers and pirates?
  
  • Would smugglers and pirates necessitate another class or two of ships or would they fall into existing proposed classes?

Again, I may be getting out in the weeds with some of this but, in the end, it's just kind of stream of consciousness brainstorming, at the moment.

Not at all into the weeds... these are precisely the sorts of discussions I want!

Here is how I had trade working in my head:

1) Build a trade port in your system to bring in income - perhaps a structure that can be upgraded?
2) Make trade agreements with other players.  Doing so means automatic income every turn from taxation on civilian trade.
3) Rather than attack a system outright, you absolutely could blockade it.  Doing so reduces trade income to zero in that system.

I have mused a bit on pirates.  If you wanted to make them "feel" right, fringe territories would be especially vulnerable to raids... would make it worth your while to keep some defenses in a given system.  Maybe even have a "patrol" order available to a fleet, where they fly back and forth to keep an eye out for pirates.

I could see pirates using corsair type ships - same class as a frigate, faster and lighter armored.  Perhaps the odd slower ship?

What do you think?

Sounds as if we're on the same page where trade goes. I definitely like the idea of a trade port being an upgradeable structure, as well. As it's upgraded, perhaps, it becomes able to facilitate more (or even farther reaching) trade partners?

I also like the thoughts on pirates/smugglers and their ships. "Fringe systems" would definitely be prime targets for pirates, I think, and given that we're looking at blockades, I also believe that we might find a use for them (in more of a smuggler capacity) in others. That said, would we want to give consideration to making pirates/smugglers their own faction(s)? I don't know that they'd necessarily have control of their own systems, per se, but I could envision them setting up bases of operation somewhere... Asteroid fields or space stations of some sort, maybe?

I love the idea of pirates being an NPC faction of sorts.  And it does make sense for them to have actual bases.

Upgraded structures would definitely give more income, have more traffic, etc. 

I'm not thinking that we want to actually construct and manage the trade ships themselves - I see that as a civilian function that our empires tax.  But I'm open to discussion!

Let's talk structures.

First off, you certainly need structures for fleet production - i.e. shipyards or the like.  I'm feeling like these need to be upgradeable, that you need significant upgrades/resource investment to be able to produce capital ships.  Obviosly, then, you'll want to defend these...

As mentioned, I see trade ports as a big item. 

How about orbital defenses?  A fighter station, defense cannons, that sort of thing?

Perhaps a mining structure or the like for uninhabitable planets/asteroids?

Do upgrades to planets make sense?

What else?

You've touched on the big ones, I believe.

• Shipyards
• Trade/Spaceports
• Mining/Resource Production facilites
  
  • How about refineries? (convert raw resources into useable/upgraded materials)
  • And, since we're thinking about uninhabitable planets/asteroids; what about terraforming facilities? (leads into "upgrading planets," I would think)
    
    • I would also think that terraforming structures would require a pretty decent tech level to build, of course, not to mention copious resources
• Definitely orbital defenses of some sort
  
  • Fighter stations
  • Satellite defense platforms
  • Planetary shield generator networks?

Also, as touched on above, planetary upgrades definitely make sense to me (even if we set aside the thought of terraforming). Things like infrastructure and agriculture come to mind. You can go from "land-based" transportation (i.e internal combustion engines and paved roadways) to more advanced systems (i.e. hover-vehicles, mag-lev trains, etc) that have less "environmental impact" therby improving the overall "health" and efficiency of a planet/system... Maybe, as you proceed you see production facilities like shipyards and such go from terrestrial facilities to orbital ones, again, minimizing impact on atmosphere/environment?... Then, you get into agriculture as, I imagine, feeding your systems populations and mainatining their overall health/well-being would be a consideration (moving from "samll, simple farms" to more efficient production and distribution facilities)... some sort of medical structures, perhaps, now that I've brought up health and well being?

I'm feeling you for sure.

By the way - ANYONE else, feel free to jump in at any point!

So, we've touched on another big item - terraforming. 

I feel like this is a great option to have. 

Also, one ship type I didn't mention would be akin to a trnasport - a colony ship.  Slow, no armament, needs escorts.  Can it also terrform, or does it just carry colonists and materials?

I'm thinking that the number of truly habitable planets is pretty low.  Yes, you can drop a colony on a planet that isn't too unbelievably hot or too crushing in gravity... but you'd need terraforming for it to be much more than small domes or whatever. 

But terraforming should still on'y be an option on certain types of worlds, IMO.  To me, this makes scout ships and probes incredibly vital - the ability to find habitable worlds, or at least those that qualify for terraforming, makes all the difference in truly growing your empire.  I'm thinking that certain structures/upgrade levels are only available in systems that have enough population and such to support them.

thoughts?

I'm a glutton for detail. As I outlined previously, I like my fingers in the whole mix, or ally players taking on different roles in the empire, etc. So, trade makes for an opportunity to negotiate between players and non-empire systems. I also like the idea that if you don't land troops, you really can't take the planet. A blockade in space can keep a people from galactic trade but not from thriving planetside.

Good, good... let the discussion flow!

"Also, one ship type I didn't mention would be akin to a trnasport - a colony ship.  Slow, no armament, needs escorts.  Can it also terrform, or does it just carry colonists and materials?"

In my mind, I'm not seeing a colony ship that can terraform on it's own (at least, not at first... perhaps an upgrade, at some point?). I'm thinking that, to begin with, these ships simply carry colonists and materials. Maybe something along the lines of when the ship makes landfall it burrows itself into the terrain and establishes a "biodome" of sorts around itself, facilitating the colonists in setting up and beginning the terraforming process.

Thoughts?

Regarding cooperative play: Bromern, I see the appeal of this.  But from a practical perspective, exeprience says that you often have trouble with players dropping off.  If the guy in charge of an empire quits, it ruins the game for those on his team. 

I'm looking at a game that - at least in the first form - is for, say, 4-8 players.  It would be a simply thing to generate larger maps and allow more players (or a longer game), but I don't see it as feasible on a larger scale to hope to recruit multiple people to work together on one empire, each handling X tasks.  I could absolutely be wrong, but this is what I'm looking at.

Eol - I had not considered the colony ship being consumed like you desribe... and I LOVE the idea.  That makes so much sense from a game mechanic standpoint, it makes sense from a game lore standpoint. 

I'm thinking that, as long as a planet has survivable conditions - gravity isn't crushing, temperature isn't too hot, you can put a colony on it.  The colony might be restricted to the initial dome (or to upgraded domes down the line), but it can at least survive.  Planets that have more optiimal conditions (breathable atmosphere, at least some surface water, reasonable gravity, reasonable termperature range) would allow much more population growth, etc. 

Which would in turn make thse world more valuable, you'd think.  A barren ball of rock with a dome on it isn't going to produce much for your empire, after all. 

Going down this road, it makes sense that you'd need dedicated vessels for terraforming.  If we do a tech tree, this would have to be fartehr down the list than colonization.  If it's just building based, then maybe the same facility is used for colony ships and terraforming vessels, but it has to be upgraded a couple of times to get to terraforming vessel capability?

This is feeling more and more right.

...and I think you pretty much nailed it where the tech-tree portion of colony ship>terraforming is concerned.

After doing homework on this, I have begin to realize why so many sci-fi games use the Star Trek style lingo when it comes to planetary classification.... real astronomy SUCKS at this. 

I did some digging into the subject, found that Trek canon is incomplete at best.  Was preparing to do my own stuff, when I stumbled across an incredible resourcve - the planetary classification page at Star Trek: the Final Frontier.

The author there is incredibly friendly, and has offered all of his material (even including the images) for free use in any sort of project - all he asks for is a credit, which I am more than happy to give.

I can see using almost all of this stuff as is, save perhaps class Y (whcih is really a direct Trek thing). 

I do need to write a routine to figure out the percentages/frequencies of various planets, though.  Because one major point I feel strongly about is that no two games should play the same - the map needs to always be randomly generated, which means a lot of worlds to populate from the goodness of math. 

Okay, I have put together a full list of planet classes, borrowing heavily from the resource I linked. 

You'll see tons of gas giants (class J mostly, a few class S and the rare class U), with your cold zones often also containing class I (ice giant), C, or D planets (basically dead balls of rock).

Your hot zone is mostly A and B (molten planets, or extremes like Mercury), C, D planets, with the super odd class U (ultra gas giant) or X (dead gas giant).  Note that in these latter two types of systems, there should be almost no chance of a habitable system, as it tells the tale of an ultra giant that crashed into the hot zone and ejected other planets from that system in the process.

Note that a few of these are technically colonizable via pressure domes, but these planets will yield little.

What we really care about is the ecosphere (aka the "Goldilocks" zone).  You'll find the class C and D here as well, as well as your class N (reducing - like Venus), E and F (developing molten worlds), and G (not quite ready for life, though you could put domes on it or terraform it extensively). 

What you are really looking for are your colonizable planets.  Ideally, you'll find class M world like Earth, but you'll also find planets like class K (Mars), class L (almost ready for colonies, need minor terraforming), or variants like class H (desert), class O (Pelagic - think water world with tiny islands), or class P (glaciated, frozen worlds).  All of these can support colonies to various levels, assuming domes and/or terraforming. 

Gas giants are crazy common.  Life-bearing worlds are not as uncommon as I was originally thinking... maybe a third of the systems you see will have some sort of life bearing world (maybe not class M, but something you can colonize).  The rest are your various balls of rock, magma, poisonous gasses, ice, and so on. 

Any thoughts?

... and I think the planetary classifications are pretty great as presented. The proliferation of gas giants, ice giants, and such makes sense, as well. I am rather surprised by the frequency of life-bearing worlds, though. Not that it doesn't make sense (especially for a sci-fi type game) but one of every three systems possibly containing a planet or two of this type made me do a "double take." I wouldn't have expected them to be that common.

Good stuff, though, and I believe it'll make for decent gameplay options/strategies. I've got more thoughts in that vein but, at the moment, I have to disappear into the tedium of a meeting at work.