Hi all,
This is an idea that I've been mulling over in my head for some time now, but I lack the artistic ability and skill at modding Starsector to actually pull it off, so I thought I'd present it to the community and see what happened. That idea is a faction mod of western-style dragons.
Now hear me out on this, please.
The basic concept is to have a Nexerelin-dependent dragon faction comprised of three 'classes' of dragons: Wyrmling (destroyer grade), Adult (cruiser grade), and Elder (Battleship grade). All would be organic 'ships' with no shields, but thick armor and high hull that both regenerate slowly during battle. Each class possess a number of onboard 'weapons' that cannot be changed but are slightly stronger than average, including a close-range claw attack (think the kind of melee weapons that Arma Armature mobile armors have), PD lightning (bit of Stellaris inspiration there), variable elemental weapon (see below with dragon elements), bite attack (medium-range kinetic attack effective v. armor), and a breath weapon (which could be changed between a couple of different options such as ball projectiles, energy stream, pulse blasts, et cetera. again like Arma Armature's built-in L-ARM/R-ARM weapons on their mobile armors).
Dragons could come in several traditional elements such as fire, frost, lightning, acid, et cet. each with different effects to their unique elemental weapon and breath weapon. For example, the elemental weapon of a fire dragon could be projecting a swarm of small homing firebolts that are good against small, agile fighters/frigates but less so against well armored or shielded ships, and the elemental weapon of a lightning dragon could be like an arc lightning type attack. Each element would have a slightly different secondary effect to both breath and elemental weapons, like increased effectiveness versus hull for acid or EMP for lightning, and so on. The 'standard' system I could see would be a sort of wing flap that acts similarly to a micro burn that can go forward or backwards, closing or building distance as needed. Additionally, as dragons can freely travel between space and land, they can assist in invasions and raids in much the same way some ships are able to.
From the faction side of things, these intelligent beasts could be the inspiration for Old Earth myths about dragons as we have in reality, having visited in the past. They exist out on the far rim of the Sector, basing out of an ancient Terran world but fully capable of surviving in space without the need for technology. They are as you would expect: proud, greedy, and generally look down on humans in a sort of 'look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power' manner. They generally don't involve themselves in Sector politics, but one could still seek them out if they wished. The player would need to build a relationship with the dragon faction to even get in the door, taking what amounts to grunt work missions and proving your worth to them.
Past a certain point, you can start asking to recruit a Wyrmling or Adult dragon for your fleet. Doing so doesn't take credits, but instead a new commodity item (precious metals, jewels, treasure, or similarly stereotypical dragon magnet item that you can either buy from colonies or stations at a premium or harvest yourself via a special mining industry). You would speak with a dragon in the comm menu and offer an amount of the commodity plus the promise of more if they come with you (perhaps including a story point option to reduce the amount you need up front). Once the deal is complete you gain both the dragon 'ship' and a dragon 'officer' that is assigned to the dragon unit and cannot be moved (functionally like an integrated AI core, perhaps) that can gain experience, level up, and grow relation with you as any other officer would. This both soft caps (commodity supply/demand) and hard caps (Officer limit) the number of dragons you can recruit.
Dragon 'ships' are more powerful than average for their class, but have a high supply upkeep in addition to needing to provide a certain amount of the commodity every month instead of a traditional officer's salary. If you mess up and don't have enough, the dragon will confront you about it and leave in anger (unless you use a story point option to buy time, but this could scale up in cost every time you fail to pay the dragon until it gets too high to be reasonable, reflecting the dragon's decreasing patience in the player's antics). Beyond this, a dragon in your fleet that is defeated in battle would always be recoverable, but they would not be pleased at the loss and will take injuries (D-mods) from the battle damage.
A secondary idea could be that if you take the time to befriend the dragon in your fleet (chat with them at your colony, deploy them in a large number of battles and don't let them get injured I.E. destroyed in battle, help mend their injuries (D-mods), pay them extra through a dialogue, or simply hold to your end of the agreement for a large number of cycles, et cet.) the amount of supplies they need and the commodity they ask for decreases over time until it's more in line with a normal ship, giving you a reason to keep them around and keep to your agreement in the long run. They could also possibly gain S-Mods as you gain their favor, reflecting their growing respect for and bond with the player.
Dragons take hundreds of cycles to grow, so a Wyrmling or Adult will never age into the next life stage in normal gameplay. Obtaining an Elder Dragon's help means actually seeking one out and getting on it's good side before you can make an offer to have it accompany you, and doing so would likely mean going through highly dangerous quests to prove you're worth it's time. Even after you've done so, keeping an Elder dragon's greed sated would be an herculean task that only a player with a huge source of income could meet. They are by far the most powerful however, capable of projecting their might across the entire battlefield.
Of course, you don't have to befriend the dragons at all. Instead, you can hunt dragons as you please at the risk of having your colonies raided later on by angry dragons, with each kill you make providing a measure of valuable loot and a rare chance to obtain special hullmods and weapon schematics (possibly also available as expensive purchases if you work with them instead) based off of the strengths of dragons themselves, both dependent on the number of and age of the dragons you kill. Taking over their homeworld (which would not be easy, defended by numerous normal dragons and a powerful 'grand elder' dragon station in space, and a huge ground defense force) would remove them from the game but provide a very valuable planet with vast ruins chock full of dragon treasures and secrets for the player to tech-mine.
I know there's a lot there, but it's an idea I just had to put to paper. I'd like to note that this would probably be very much a 'rule of cool' kind of mod that only makes vague sense in the lore of Starsector but would still be an amazing thing to see in play. I'm hopeful that someone might like this enough to at least bring the basics to life, but I guess we'll see!
Thanks for reading!
