Summary:Let player fleets create/harvest all commodities under certain conditions and/or terrains, using skills/hullmods/campaign abilities, at a cost of other commodities as ingredients. This provides fun ways to solve resource shortfalls while exploring or doing procurement missions, and more interaction with planets and terrains. No new commodities required.
Observations from 0.8:- Exploration is fun
- Terrain is fun
- Using commodities for stuff is fun-- e.g. the Neutrino detector, heavy machinery for salvage; it adds new resource management challenges.
- Players get into pickles and run out of things in deep space
- Sometimes we want a few goods for a procurement mission but can't find them.
The suggestion:A mix of skills, hullmods, and campaign abilities for creating all commodities at a cost of other commodities as ingredients, sometimes in specific conditions and terrains. Crew and heavy machinery would sometimes be required (as with salvage). Time is also required, since your fleet can do other stuff and use normal campaign abilities while this is happening.
Why:-Entirely optional
-Adds new puzzles of resource management/crafting to get things you need
-Provides new ways to interact with terrains and planets you find.
-It's fun when the game provides multiple solutions to a problem
-Is a nifty star trek dilemma solving style, instead of just using distress signal or scuttling ships if you run into trouble.
FOUR MAIN AREAS:
Mining:Requires: Mining Skill (somewhere in industry; unlocks campaign abilities), crew + heavy machinery; couple weeks (2-5 mins realtime- your fleet flies off and does something else)
Procedure: Leave heavy machinery and crew in pods for a month over either a planet (organics, ores), an asteroid (ores), or a ring system (volatiles). Planet type/conditions determine which commodity you get (tectonically active for metals, indigenous life or methane atmo for organics, etc). Chance of accidents or someone stealing your cargo pods.
Matter/Antimatter Scoop:Requires: Hullmod/'weapon' (maybe unlocked in tech skills) that occupies a medium slot; time/distance.
Procedures: Harvests volatiles from nebulae depending on distance traversed, or from gas giant's orbit (much faster).
Also harvests Fuel from black holes, neutron stars, and magnetic fields, if you have volatiles and organics as supplementary ingredients. Based on time spent in terrain. The more ships with this hullmod, the more you get.
Manufacturing/Refining: Requires: Manufacturing skill (industry skill, unlocks campaign abilities), Crew, heavy machinery; few days
Procedure: Use extra crew and machinery for a few days to make more heavy machinery, domestics, hand weapons, luxury goods, metals, rare metals, or supplies. Requires expenditure of various mixes of metals, volatiles, organics, ore, food, etc depending on what you're trying to make
Science Laboratory:Requires: Tech skill unlocks? Science laboratory hullmod, which only fits cruiser/capitol (increases crew requirements, decreases cargo space); heavy machinery sometimes; days/weeks/months (depending)
Procedure: Unlocks campaign abilities to clone crew, breed lobsters, harvest organs, make drugs, and grow food by expending various other commodities.
(In a pinch could also spend volatiles to synthesize metals/organics by spending few days in high radiation environments like neutron pulses, black holes, and coronas)
About IngredientsEach commodity would use other existing commodities as ingredients. Rationale for ingredients follows from this:
Volatiles stand in for various low atomic number elements (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, water, etc)
Organics stand in for carbon based, plastics, hydrocarbons, petroleum etc.
Drugs stand in for all medicines
Rare metals = precious metals & high atomic number stuff
etc
In general we have raw materials, such as ore, volatiles, organics, refined materials (food, metals) and value-added materials (supplies, domestic goods, luxury goods, drugs, etc). Probably its best to not have any value-added material require another value added material to produce. It's just too much crafting to get what you want. The most important commodities are usually crew, supplies, and fuel. To get those things, you'd first have to manufacture or find their raw/refined materials and (for fuel) go to the right terrain type.
A FEW EXAMPLES (No I haven't thought about balance details):
Crew: You need science lab, plus some organs, food, and drugs to produce crew after a few weeks
Harvested organs: You need science lab, crew, and drugs. It only takes a day, and you get organs -- however you also get fleedwide CR reduction (bad morale) and a chance of accidents (hint: the accidents are mutinies)
Volatiles: You have the matter/antimatter scoop, and the longer you fly over nebula or or gas giants, you get more volatiles.
Fuel: You need the matter/antimatter scoop. The lore says fuel is fullerenes (carbon, aka organics), hydrogen isotopes (volatiles) and antimatter. Wikipedia sort of implies you can find antimatter in magnetic fields, black holes, and neutron stars, so you'd need to have some organics and volatiles and be in one of those terrains to use this ability.
Food: You need a few days, plus science lab, and be in a system with a sun. The nearer you are to the sun the faster the food grows, but you need ore and volatiles as ingredients (for soil, water, & fertilizer).
Supplies: Manufacturing skill + heavy machinery + excess crew. Since these are a catch all for things like clothes, rations, and ammo, you'd need food, metal, and organics as ingredients.
