The current system employs a rather rigid if not common idea that ships get bigger and stronger as technology advances. I would like to see a more Darwinian approach by at least one faction. One of the mods I made for GalCiv2 had a really nice progression of the hive mentality. It would be nice to see a faction that starts out with an extremely large size ship called a Mothership or some such name. In place of corvettes, cruisers, destroyers, battleships and dreadnoughts, it would be cool to see different drone specializations. You wouldn't just be developing a better ship class, you would be creating a new appendage of the hive. My model pretty much functioned in the same way the hives did in Ender's Game. I would love to see that sort of mindset in a battle.



Basically it is the same as the standard ship progression, except that you would start with the huge class and tiny class and then learn new designs in place of new ships. I would especially like to see the mother be a fairly weak entity, but confer significant bonuses to the fleet. Drones would of course be able to scout and colonize alone, but all serious battles would need to include a Mothership. This might even connect well into the current hero system.



The strategies would be much different if this was implemented. New drone types would be more like specializations in a specific strategy more than merely superior ship designs. This is something that would make battle interactions much more enjoyable, especially if we are eventually able to set priorities for targets during battles.



Now, if that doesn't fit into the current design scheme, that is fine. I just thought I would offer it for consideration before I modded it in myself.

This is a really good idea imo! I love it

Pretty interesting idea! I really like ideas that move away from the the "more tech = bigger hulls" approach myself and this is a neat take on a different option.

I'm not sure how that would work out. If it was large (had a large tonnage) it would undoubtedly be very expensive, it would also be a pain in balancing to have a race that doesn't share the same ship/fleet designs.

It would take some different balancing, but as I mentioned, I have done it before with great success. One thing I would do is have the Mothership also act as the colony ship and always take population from where it is born. It wouldn't need to cost alot of production. Perhaps 3/4 of what a dreadnought costs. Instead of loading it up with weapons, it would have unique modules that increase the power of its drones. Each new drones would be more powerful in some way, but not in the standard ideas about more space and tougher hulls. Instead they might get a bonus to defense or be specialized to use a particular weapon type. It's pretty easy to balance if the devs are using a simple excel chart to look at values. Especially since the overall system uses a power rating for ships. Once each item is given a power value, balance becomes rather simple.