Heighliners (The Dune Idea!)

[ToxicSlurpee]

OK, so I've been reading Dune books again (I'm a nerd...so what?) and I got to thinking about how to do Heighliners in SEIV, and I think I've figured it out. I don't really intend on using the idea, so I'm just posting it here.

Essentially, Heighliners are ginormous ships that cart around ridiculous amounts of other ships through "foldspace." They are capable of very quick movement about space and really only go planet to planet. They have a Navigator on it (he's mutated from taking too much melange) that is capable of mentally guiding the ship from place to place.

Anyhoo...you'd need to make Heighliners and Colony Ships the only ship types. Depending on how you want specifics, you could vary, but Heighliners should be at least 3000kT or so. Multiple sizes would be nice. Limit the engines per ship to keep their movement relatively slow (QnP might work), and make their engines somewhat large. Then, make an Emergency Propulsion pod called a Navigator that adds a LOT of movement to the ship (10/20/30 or so, more so for more advanced Versions). It should be mid-sized for a component to represent the Navigator's Tank and the Foldspace components themselves (I'd say like 60 kT).

Heighliners would also need like 60% cargo and/or fighter bays, depending on what you prefer. They're not designed to hold weapons, and would be somewhat easy to hit. You could put a hideous amount of armor/shields on them, however. Heighliners should also get a disgusting amout of Supply and should have better access to infinite supply.

This way, Heighliners can move very swiftly from planet to planet, but are sluggish when away from planets. Colony ships should be more or less like standard ships, but would be smaller than the Heighliners themselves, and would have an entirely seperate set of components. Foldspace should NOT be available to colony ships. The specifics of colony ships would vary depending on whether you use standard colony rules or Proportions-like stuff.

Anyhoo...ALL other ships would be fighters. QnP could be better applied here, as this would be a different scale than the Heighliners. These smaller ships would have limited supply and would NOT have access to infinite supply (with the exception of bigger ones, I guess). Fighter-type ships would be as small as before (15/20/30 kT), with larger ships being 150 kT to 800 kT in size. This way, ALL military ships would be cargo and need a Heighliner to carry them around. They can be fast, but should only be able to survive outside of a Heighliner or planet for a short amount of time.

Drones can be the troop carriers, and could represent dropping troops from orbit in disposable pods.

[Alneyan]

It seems like the Highliner mod is what you have in mind. It can be downloaded at Spaceempires.net, and behaves almost as you describe (a few ship hulls for transport, and big fighters for everything else).

[ToxicSlurpee]

...it's already been done?

Curses!

[Arkcon]

The idea of a Dune mod comes up from time to time. Check out this entry from the Encyclopedia Malfadorica

[Alneyan]

The game mechanisms you mention have already been used in a mod; the actual Dune universe has not been used in a finished mod (yet?).

[ToxicSlurpee]

Alneyan said:
The game mechanisms you mention have already been used in a mod; the actual Dune universe has not been used in a finished mod (yet?).

I've thought about doing it, but it poses a few, well...problems.

For one - Every inhabitable planet in the Dune universe is controlled by SOMEBODY even as far back as the Butlerian Jihad. It's easy enough to have everybody control a house, but the political climate wouldn't do well for the computer. Really, the only thing the computer would be good for was simulating pre-Jihad times, when the Evermind controlled everything. It would have to be a MASSIVELY multiplayer game.

For two - Melange. I thought about setting ALL planets to 0 Radioactives with the exception of Dune and having Heighliners take Radioactives to build, fly, and maintain. Problem is, that restricts EVERYTHING to minerals and organics. And because SEIV doesn't have a "money" thing, that complicates things even more. Though, I'd also be tempted to make Organics the "money," and have Minerals be just generic materials. The storage for Organics would thus be nearly infinite.

For three - Kanly, the Emperor, laws, and such. The game can't implement them Last I checked, but players could agree to it ahead of time. Problem is, there will always be SOMEBODY that glasses a plent with atomics and then whines when everybody else declares war on them. 'course, that could also lead to interesting things as the people that follow the laws all side against the people that don't. Of course, the Emperor would get tribute and such, and would have a mega amount of resources, but should never be powerful enough to take on EVERYBODY.

For four - You just KNOW somebody would be unhappy with a universe where only humans existed. Either allow other races and throw off the whole idea of Dune, or say "HUMANS ONLY." 'course, we could allow modifiers for different houses (Ix would have that nifty research bonus, Harkonnen would be uber-sneaky).

For five - What do you do with the Bene Gesserit, Spacing Guild, and so forth?

[jeffel]

ToxicSlurpee said:


For three - Kanly, the Emperor, laws, and such. The game can't implement them Last I checked, but players could agree to it ahead of time. Problem is, there will always be SOMEBODY that glasses a plent with atomics and then whines when everybody else declares war on them. 'course, that could also lead to interesting things as the people that follow the laws all side against the people that don't. Of course, the Emperor would get tribute and such, and would have a mega amount of resources, but should never be powerful enough to take on EVERYBODY.

This doesn't sound that bad. As long as everyone who signed up was up for a highly political game, this would be just fine.

ToxicSlurpee said:
For four - You just KNOW somebody would be unhappy with a universe where only humans existed. Either allow other races and throw off the whole idea of Dune, or say "HUMANS ONLY." 'course, we could allow modifiers for different houses (Ix would have that nifty research bonus, Harkonnen would be uber-sneaky).

For five - What do you do with the Bene Gesserit, Spacing Guild, and so forth?

Actually, I would think that you would want to implement the Bene Gesserit, Fremen, etc as separate races. Each race would be "human", but with different races. In fact you could go the whole way and implement each house as a different race.
Fremen - Combat bonuses (especially ground)
Harkonen - Espionage bonuses
Atredies - Commerce and possible production bonuses
Corrino - Depending on the era you want, give them Shardukar (represented as combat bonuses)

The Space Guild could be represented by having massive "organics/cash" costs for building the highliners AND a massive upkeep cost for Highliners. Make the maintenence cost high enough and you could force the houses to disband or mothball them as soon as they perform their missions.

[ToxicSlurpee]

jeffel said:
The Space Guild could be represented by having massive "organics/cash" costs for building the highliners AND a massive upkeep cost for Highliners. Make the maintenence cost high enough and you could force the houses to disband or mothball them as soon as they perform their missions.

Actually, that's an interesting idea, though I'm thinking about taking it one step further...

There could be two options for heighliners: Buying them at a high Organics cost, or BUILDING them for a somewhat lower cost of minerals and radioactives (melange). The problem would be getting the melange.

Of course, that would make Dune itself a highly contested world (just like in the books!) and melange very valuable.

To represent the vastness of the universe, I'm thinking that at least two or three empty sectors between any sectors with worlds would be more or less necessary. That way, Heighliners with their "emergency propulsion" Navigator components could easily get from place to place, while slower, less supplied house ships don't get particularly far.

The Sardaukar could be easily implemented, I think, as a troop type that you get from a Corrino-specific piece of technology. They would get a ridiculous bonus to hit and get missed, and probably some horribly powerful weapons to boot. Then, the ol' Emperor could throw them to whoever he wanted to help out. Or just rent them out, whichever.

As for the Bene Gesserit, they could be a seperate race, yes, but which only ONE player would get to control a copy of, and which would have only ONE (nearly impossible to invade) planet. They wouldn't have a lot of access to ships, but would have a few tricks and goodies to trade with other players. Either that, or make them neutral and just sort of there, with other players having access to a few (melange using) things they can build to represent Bene Gesserit hanging around.

I'd like to have this pre Kwisatz-Haterach, around the time that Paul was growing up and Shaddam was having his own brand of fun.

As for the Fremen, they pose a unique problem - They lived on Dune, but never had nominal control of it (as far as the Landsraad was concerned) until later on. They had control of it pre-Butler, but that's a different story entirely. Anyhoo...I imagine they would have a ridiculous combat bonus to match the Sardaukar (perhaps even be better?) but I don't see how they could be a race themselves. Of course, considering that they didn't leave Dune and didn't work for any outside influences (save Kynes and good ol' Mr. Atreides), we could just ignore them for most eras.