Docking Facility for Motherships

[Eternal Usul]

I had an interesting idea today...why not have mothership Docking Facilities? They show up in spy logs...so why not have them do something ingame?


What it does

For a specific cost in turns, you can put your mothership in a "dry-dock", effectively preventing it from taking damage during an attack, the drawback being that it cannot be used by you unless you un-dock it.

This means that if you put it in dock...it will not be damaged when you are attacked, but if you attack someone else it will not participate in the battle. Meaning that your mothership will not offer support to your troops, nor will it hurt any enemy mothership.

How it works

A new tech will be offered in the technology page,

When you purchase the tech you get a button in your command center titled "Dock Mothership"

You press the button and you sacrifice turns to dock your mothership, protecting it from damage, but preventing it from participating in battles.

The button now says "Un-dock Mothership", you again spend turns to un-dock your mothership so it may go about normal duties.

Suggested Costs and Limitations

Suggested cost for the tech - 1 billion naquadah, as it would be difficult to secure a truely safe dock for your mothership

Cost in turns to dock/un-dock your mothership - 50 turns, this is due to the fact that docking and undocking is a laborious, complex process. It also makes it expensive to abuse the docking ability.

Limitations - once docked your mothership must stay docked for a minimum of 30 minutes and once un-docked it cannot be docked again for the same amount of time. Again this reflects the laboriousness of docking a mothership and prevents abuse of the ability.



Why?

This serves a triple purpose.

For one it will add a strategic element to the defense of your realm. You can protect your mothership, but at the cost of losing it's support on offense and defense...this is aimed towards making the massing of a mothership more...interesting...as well as making it harder to "sit" on an account.

Another use will be for raiders...send mothership away on planetary exploration for free, but lose it for 24 hours...or dock it for a cost of 50 turns and remove it at will for another 50 turns after 30 minutes has passed? It is, again, a strategic choice.

Finally, for newbie players, this will allow them to build up on their mothership, without worrying that it will be destroyed by a stronger player farming them...

And the fun part...

Names for the tech are unique to each race...though they all do the same thing...

Asgard - Fleet Defended Docks

Ancient - ZPM Shielded Landing Pad

Goa'uld - Cloaked Docking Facility

System Lord - Secret Dock Planet

Replicator - Armored Space Dock

NanoTi Master - Mobile Space Dock







So...what do you all think?

[hfown]

"MOBILE" space dock?!?

i just send ms away or keep it if i need it for some reason.

[Eternal Usul]

"MOBILE" space dock?!?

i just send ms away or keep it if i need it for some reason.

I had some trouble with names...lol


and you could send it away...but this offers another option other than losing it for 24 hours...


Also...your mothership returns after 24 hours right? So what if you're not around to send it back out? This way it stays docked until you need it...

[Zeratul]

we likes... though names could need improvement...

[Eternal Usul]

I'd love to hear other ideas for names...mine were just off the top of my head...

[Zeratul]

hmm... will try to think something up...

Asgard - Protected planet
the asgard to have that treaty, so why not store MS on one of those planets?

Ancient - Alteran outpost
by this we mean the sort like the one in antarctica, which has both shield, drone launcher, and a chair platform (and ZPM-powered)... kind of like what atlantis once stood upon...

another option could be something like Merlin's cloak, the one that makes things move over into another dimension... (dont have good name yet)

System Lord - Lunar docking station
kind of like the planet/moon anubis had the cull warrior base on...

Replicator - replicator block hole
kind of a hole covered with blocks, and large enough to stuff a ship into...
and surface is even, so nothing hints at a ship being there

NanoTi Master - black hole location...
replicators and such are capable of leaving the proximity of a black hole, even when they shouldnt be able to do so... and ships are extremely hard to destroy when close to black holes...

Goa'uld -
got no idea here...

[Eternal Usul]

Good ideas...


As for Goa'uld...I like mine...Cloaked Docking Facility

[Zeratul]

might be good... but were the goa'uld ever that much into cloaking?

[Eternal Usul]

They had cloaked scout ships...which only ancients have shown the ability to have up to this point in the show...


But in all reality...it is a bit of a stretch to imagine a cloaked docking facility...

[Zeratul]

all of the four great races have strong cloaking... the furlings hid a moon, the asgard have some personal invisibility device, nox hide almost anything (cities, stargates, persons, defensive weapon installations...), and the ancients have puddle jumpers, we believe they also had cloak on some battlecruisers, and they also have things like merlin's cloak, and so forth...

[TacticalCommander]

They cloaked Atlantis in the show, so maybe cloaking should be for Ancients...

Anyway, Great idea, about the only thing I see is the 30 min time, because people can let it out, mass, and bring it back in.

100 turns to do that isn't that much anymore since people make 144 turns a day.

So maybe a turn increase too.

Theres my 2cents

[Zeratul]

atlantis wasnt really designed for being cloaked... they just used a jumper cloak and plugged it into the atlantis shield...

what sort of turn increase?

[Eternal Usul]

Turns shouldn't be increased too much I think...this was aimed at helping newbs....partially...

[lord_of_darkness.]

Sounds like a great idea.

[Edweirdo]

Would you be able to put your ship in docking immediately after stealing a planet? One of the few ways a smaller guy can take on a bigger group is by stealing there planets. Having to train/untrain fleets can get quite expensive. I think this would even the playing field a little bit

Also, would you be able to build on your mothership while docked. It seems like it would be silly NOT to allow improvements.

WIth the above in mind, I love the idea!