Should ship customization extend to the fleet?

Good evening all!

In SCII, customization of the Precursor ship was a major factor in the success, or failure, of the player. It is possible to win the game without utilizing any of the Melnorme ship upgrades; but it does add a degree of difficulty.

The Mass Effect series did a wonderful job lifting ideas directly from SCII (ship customization, evil galaxy-threatening giant squid, blue space babe love interest, floating fish/jellyfish who's speech doesn't quite make sense...the list is long, but distinguished), and customization of the ship had a significant effect on the overall narrative. Personally, I would like to see ship upgrades expanded in scope beyond those contained in SCII and/or Mass Effect, so that different play styles can be tried based on the "build" of the player ship.

Some upgrades should be universally useful, such as speed/turning rate enhancements or fuel tanks. Others should be for defense-minded players, like the point defense laser system, armor upgrades, or a shield system. For aggressive players, traditional weaponry upgrades, aim upgrades, and a secondary fire mode.

For tactically minded players, upgrades that allows the player ship to take on a special ability based on the technology of peaceful races or ships within the fleet would add another layer of choice to combat. These abilities would have to be carefully balanced, so as to not mitigate each race's existing special weapon, but would give the player ship a unique feature that is identifiable as species-like. Also, in the interest of balance, make it a one-off, usable only once per hyper-melee, or give the ability a significant cool down. Also, not all species abilities necessarily need to relate to combat; they could be passive, and aid in exploration and/or interaction with other species. Off the top of my head, the following are examples that would make racial sense, with a few specifics:

Psionic Races: Syreen, Pkunk, Dynarri, Taalo (immune to psi), Utwig, Exquivan, Clairconticlair, (immune to psi), Chenjesu (how else do they communicate?) - Expanded/different dialogue options (adventure/RPG mode).

Mechanically Inclined Races: Mrrmhrrm, Daktaklakpak, Doog - Enhanced mineral resource collection, reduced repair cost/time (adventure/RPG mode).

Biologically Inclined Races: Umgah, Supox, Mycon, Androsynth, Xchgagger, Lk - Enhanced biological resource collection, enhanced crew healing (adventure/RPG mode).

Economically Inclined Races: Druuge, Melnorme, Ploxis - Cost reduction at stores (adventure/RPG mode).

Militarily Inclined Races: Ur-Quan, K'Tang, Illwrath, Vux, Harika-Yorn, Yheat, Shofixti, Earthlings, Viro-ingo

Other-Space Races: Arilou, Orz, Owa, Slylandro - ...I've got nothing. Ideas?

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Ultimately, I think that's a good idea for the story as a whole - to have limited technological advancement available to the player. I think that keying it to races would be good.

The biggest thing that I think needs to be present is some sort of cap or limit on this, so that upgrades don't make the game totally unbalanced. Whether that's having an upgrade 'slot' or having there be a resource cap on stardocks for ship creation, it is important that the game not get too crazy with this.

That said, though, upgrades to ships like that were a feature of the FIRST Star Control game - you could discover caches of Precursor technology that would allow you to make occasionally incredibly useful boosts. According to GameFAQs, there are four: Crew Pods, Fuel Pods, Thrusters, and Control Jets. These basically are the same four that you wind up being able to attach to the Flagship at the beginning of Star Control 2.

The other thing is, we want to allow there to be competitive multiplayer, probably... an effective melee or scenario module. Balancing upgrades in multiplayer might be impossible - the game might have to go the way of StarCraft and only allow upgrades in single player / campaign mode.

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In all honesty, it depends how your fleet is composed.

Will it be comprised of factory produced ships you really feel no attachment for (like in SC2 and SC1)? If so, the upgrades should be minimal (wouldn't oppose some, however). And it should cover all new versions of that ship made.

Or will they be story driven/character based? If so, I would gladly see major updates/modifications to your companion ships.

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Frankly you've got to be very careful with it. If a Human Cruiser gets a speed boost it's a very different animal than an off the shelf Cruiser.

I do like how SC1 handled upgrades... where sometimes you'd find one and have to attach it to one of your ships and you're unable to re-distribute it.

All in all, if they go down that route they'll have to be really cautious.

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