Had this cool idea for a mod Last night - it's sort of based on pirates and nomads but with a very specific twist. The idea needs refinement but you could make some awesome scenarios out of it:
The symbiosis mod.
The idea is that no race can expand or defend without trade from an equal and opposite partner.
You'd have a number of racial traits, each with something disabled - for example one race can produce minerals, but not organics and radioactives. Another race would have the opposite - radioactive / organic production but no minerals.
Even with no facilities, every race gets a small default amount of each resource every turn, so each race might be able to build and maintain a few ships, but not enough to be a major power. In order to build a fleet, they would have to trade with a race of the other kind, building up a symbiotic relationship.
Stockpiling resources would be critical, and cheap / efficient ship design would be crucial.
Not just resources either. Imagine if one race could build ships, but couldn't produce resources. Anothr race can produce rsources but can't build shipyards.
How about pairing off the weapons? One race can build fighters, but not fighter bays.
Maybe one race would be unable to build point defence weapons, so they'd need to find an ally to buy PD ships from. The possibilitis are endless, and I'm sure a mod could be made which would allow you to build up some very clever multiplayer scenarios.
You'd get some interesting situations. You might get two type A races competing to trade with a single type B race. Mayb you could have trade triangles - race A has to trade with race B in order to get something to giv to race C. What happens if the two halves of a symbiosis have an argument? Go to war? Imagine if the only way to defend yourself against your enemy was to buy ships from him - and he needed to sell you those ships to get the resources to fund the attack fleet heading for your homeworld. That would make for a really interesting 2 player game.
Games under this mod could only really be played without AIs and after extensive scenario creation. You'd probably have to set rules (ie you can't just trade a shipyard planet for a resource generating planet) which would have to be enforced by a "referee" race, as discussed in another thread somewhere: the referee would have uber- powerful fleets, cloaked sensors in every system and a non-interference policy until the rules are broken.
Scenarios might team up symbiotic pairs from the start, or let players decide for themselves who will trade with who. In some scenarios, the winner(s) of the game would be the race / symbiotic pair of races who overcome their restrictions and enemies and become strong enough to challenge and defeat the referee.
The EEE and the EEEvil would be ideal race styles to use when building up these scenarios.
Sounds pretty good, huh? Ideas and suggestions to...
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Symbiosis
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