New Combat weapons suggestion---exotic weapons and ships

How about a special combat feature where if you earn a gazzillion honor points you can earn the right to use special weapons in battle? you could call them in or deploy them on your ships or in the field for a price. also some new ideas for ships hulls.

1. Crystalline ships.
2. organic-type hulls.
3. ships that look like freaky space animals.
4. hollowed-out asteroid ships.
5. saucer ships.

also it would be a good idea to include race-specific weapons and components. as it is now all ships are really the same ship types with minor asthetic differences. really make them unique!

Deployable weapons starts down the same slippery slope as any other other control DURING combat imo.
I second the new exotic weapons and hulls. Hulls take some time to render, while weapons take time to balance.
Being the nerd that i am i can’t help but wonder where such cool sci-fi staples suc as the Railgun (MAC, etc.),
And fighters could probably use a bit more variation in modules

here is one very unique idea for a ship weapon. instead of firing missiles, an organic/wierd animal ship could fire swarms of critters that wear away at the hull.

not quite unique - you might want to read up on warhammer 40k Battlefleet Gothic tyranid swarms for other ideas…

Or the Night Brood (Silent Death), the Zerg (Starcraft), the Symbiots (Fading Suns)… I’m sure there are others.

Organic ships are fun, but they are no longer in any way original, even firing gene-tailored critters. Doesn’t make them any less of a nice idea though, I was expecting the Alliance to do something similar given their ship visuals, honestly.

But organic spaceships in the way that they regenerate health over time are still original.

I wonder would it be possible to create ships which have a hull bonus which regenerates hull health or armor health…

Perhaps give them a hull/armour penalty, but apply a bonus to the performance and capacity of repair modules.

Then they wouldn’t be organic anymore. They just have factors which boost those drones’ repairing powers and don’t regenerate health on their own without repair modules.

Rename “Nano Repair Module” to something suitably organic (uhhh “Immune System” or something.) The desired gameplay effect is ships that ‘heal’… This already exists in the game, no need to make big changes to get this effect… Just need to exagerate it / encourage it for this race. So, make their hulls gain more benefit from repair modules (and give them slightly less hp, so they need to make use of that powerful advantage to offset this weakness.)

Adding built in abilities to hulls of things that already exist as modules seems a little pointless - it just reduces choice (since obviously, if you give a hull an ability comparable to an existing module (in this case, nano repair,) then it follows you need to increase the hull’s price, it’s mass, and decrease the available module slots - otherwise you’re making the ship overpowered compared to everything already in the game.

Play some Space Empires IV when you get a chance…it’s much better than Space Empires V, and it has Organic ships that heal over time.

Of course, it’s not nearly as gratuitous as GSB is…there’s actually a Conquer the Universe story behind it.

This would suffice for an organic type hull

yes, yes. i was about to say that about that exact same ship.

It would be cool if there were the option for proximity and/or timing fuses on the missiles.

Or the Yuuzhan Vong (Star Wars universe), Species 8472 (Star Trek: Voyager), even the Lexx…

I agree that the originality that comes from organic ships is no longer the concept, but rather the execution. Are the ships giant snail shells, or hollow insects? Are there still “normal” weapons turrets, or does all fire get belched out of some slimy orifice? It’s the visuals that count.

And I agree that organic tech would be a cool addition to GSB. And that the Alliance look like they probably grow at least parts of their ships anyway.

And the shadows and Vorlons (Babylon 5)

They do indeed grow at least part of each hull, my friend. That was also a key plot-point in the Great Powers lore describing the frantic assembly and armoring of the first few, urgently-needed Alliance dreadnoughts.