What a coincidence, a perfect thread for this after being knocked off internet for the last week:-)

So, since I am bored and temporarily with no internet as I write this, and nearly homeless even though about two years ago I accidentally discovered the E=MC2-like fundamental basis of what would be some of the most futuristic technologies on this planet (which Steve Cole deserves half of the credit for)... and it's all so shockingly simple! Anyway, I thought I'd let Stardock know where I wound up taking the idea of “passives” in Star Control. Just because I am so hopelessly obsessed with games that I still can't help myself. I see two really good ways of using this idea realistically within what I understand SCO to be. It could work in a lot of different ways, but after thinking about it for a while I like these two for Star Control. I like the first one the best for how this particular game works, even though it doesn't work well for Supermelee and would only be for the full game. The second option could be made to work in Supermelee, but is not as good for the full game. Which version Stardock might think is better for the game they are making depends on decisions they have made, which I don't know, about other aspects of the game.

1) Not all ships would have a passive/support ability. Only the early, smaller, and weaker ships. The three or four smallest, weakest, and earliest ships can be modified by the humans on the mothership. Each ship on the mothership has a custom hangar bay space designed to support that ship. In the mid-late game the humans gain the ability to modify some of the smaller and more simple ships, and their hangar bay space, into support variants. This keeps these early ships relevant in the late game. Since you carry more ships than you are likely to need, this makes those “extra” ships useful to have around and keeps the earliest and weakest ships from becoming obsolete in the mid-late game. So the humans modify these earlier ships that would otherwise become useless and obsolete into “support variants”. It is the same ship, but the humans have replaced either the weapon or device with some type of “off-map support”. These support ships can be selected as an “off-map wingman” to provide a passive ability (or off-map support) to the ship the player is actually using in the fight. Four examples of things support ships might do in SCO are... “Targeting System Triangulation” (Offensive EW) provides a damage bonus, since SCO doesn't really have targeted weapons. Sensor Masking (Defensive EW) provides 2-4 additional hit points/crew, since SCO doesn't have stealth/ECM. Light Carrier (Fighter CAP) sends 2 fighters into the fight from the map edge at the beginning of the fight, or maybe when the ship in the fight takes damage for the first time. Missile Gunboat (Guided Missile Support) launches a missile from the map edge every 20-40 seconds or so, with a huge myopic zone (“safety arming range” in movie speak) to make this a nearly useless weapon on the map. The four weakest ships would be modified, with their hangar bay space also modified to operate them, to become support ships rather than front line warships, which prevents them from becoming useless later in the game. This would only be in the full “story mode” game, this would not exist in Supermelee. Of course, the support ships are almost useless if they are brought into the fight as the combat ship so you are giving up sheer numbers to have them... but they enhance the combat ships that you do carry. Some support ships won't be too helpful for some ships, for example adding 3 HP to a ship that has 6 HP is a big deal but almost irrelevant to a ship that has 30 HP. So to fully support whatever combat ships you are carrying would probably take at least 2 different support ships to cover them all with things that are actually relevant too them. Or, maybe you just want the Fighter CAP support ship because it makes beating the one ship that you hate to fight an easy thing to do.

In a struggle for survival the humans on the mothership are not going to just throw away older, smaller ships that have become obsolete in combat. They are going to convert them into being support ships of some kind. Most games, especially arcade games, “fudge” reality in a lot of ways to make for a better game. In Star Control's case a good example is the 1-on-1 “Champion Combat”. This is a fundamental aspect of what Star Control is, even though it makes no sense. It could be explained through pseudo-science as literally anything always can be, but doing so would mean that there could never be any type of fleet combat in the entire universe. If you, for example, said the physics of the situation meant three or more ships operating in the same area would cause all three reactors or drive systems to explode, that would make the Champion Combat make sense. But it would also prevent you from having any multi ship engagements in the story, or any invasions of homeworlds for example. So in Star Control's case this is a good place to “fudge” on this issue and just gloss over the aspects of this that don't make a lot of sense by simply never mentioning them. This leaves the freedom within the story telling to mention large fleet battles, or homeworld invasions by massive fleets, which can't really be portrayed in the game other than through cinematics. You are better off just “fudging” on an issue like this, and just glossing over it, than trying to come up with some silly explination for the Champion Combat that detracts from the story. Most people either don't notice, or barely notice and don't really care. They recognize that it is necessary because of how the game functions and accept that. For example, in my own top down space shooter I just gloss over the fact that the trip from the planet/colony to the Jump Gate would actually take 4-6 months. It's an arcade game, that trip would only take 4-6 minutes in the game. But everyone who realizes this is going to get that, it won't detract from the story or game at all... even though humans don't live long enough for this civil war to actually happen the way it is said too. Most people won't ever even notice this, most sci-fi games and stories (including Star Trek) have this same problem and you probably never noticed it before. It is the same thing here with the Champion Combat issue in SCO, just ignore that one thing (because you are stuck with it if you want to make Star Control) while still remaining “realistic” in all of the things that surround it. Emphasize what is realistic, and mask what is unrealistic as much as you can.

2) The “wingman” version I mentioned earlier in the thread would also work well. With 3 ships per species in the full game the smallest ship of each race could have a support variant available in some way. There is a front line combat version of the small ships, but also some type of support variant for the small ship of each species that the smallest ship can be converted into during the mid-late game. Where the support ships in the first option work with any other ships, these support ships would only work for the species that they are and not be capable of supporting any other ships. Each would be different, and tailored to aid the other ships of their species. Most likely, they eliminate or mitigate a general weakness of that race's ships. This might be made to work in Supermelee in an interesting way in addition to being in the full game, and is a better option if you want the support ship concept to be present in Supermelee.

Either of these would work very well with what I understand SCO to be. Something like this can, obviously, work in a thousand different ways, but these both work well with the single-ship Champion Combat of SCO and are “realistic” from the perspective of people who know how this stuff works in the real world. Also, I am replacing something (usually the weapon) instead of having it be a “passive” ability for a reason. The idea of just adding a “passive” ability, instead of removing a weapon or device to add that passive ability, goes against the basic logic of ship design and engineering... “if it had the capacity for a third system/ability then why didn't the original model have a third ability”? Did it just have empty, unused space and unneeded weight before adding this third new ability? Why? This is what makes Defiant on DS9 a “stupid ship”. If that tiny little thing can carry weapons nearly equal to Enterprise, as it is said too, then why doesn't Enterprise have many times more weapons and systems than Defiant? Why would you build a combat ship that risks the lives of 1,000 people when a 12-man ship can be almost as powerful? Defiant can almost fit into Enterprise-D's shuttle bay! Why would they not transfer this breakthrough in technology up through the larger ships of the fleet? Defiant really is a disaster of ship design and engineering lore that makes no sense at all. You have to ignore Defiant or the pseudo-science of Star Trek makes no sense at all. You don't want a tiny little “stupid ship” like Defiant breaking the pseudo-science of your entire universe. That is why I am replacing either a weapon or device (most likely the weapon) to create these support variants, which also makes them nearly useless to actually bring into a fight and therefore serve as “wasted hangar space” from the perspective of how many combat ships that you have available too you (i.e. “loiter time” or “time on target” for the mothership, if you understand those concepts).

Just having “passives” is just... gamey. What actually happens with expensive, but obsolete, warships in a time when warships are needed is that they get converted into some type of support ship that is still useful to the fleet. So using the idea of “passives” in this way uses the actual reality of why no ship becomes truly useless during a war in the real world to solve that very same problem in your game. The ships that become obsolete in the mid-to-late game now get converted into a support ship around that time so that they never become useless and are always an option the player might consider right up to the very end of the game. “Represent Everything!!!”, you'd be surprised how often doing that winds up solving problems within the game all by itself. Reality bites;-)

In other words... you want Base Defense, 32-Player FFA, Rabbit Chase, and Space Hockey!  Space Hockey and Base Defense would be the "E-Sports" zones.

Both of those zones are really, really fun.

Another good support ship for SCO would be "Power Transfer" (Offensive EW) that enhances energy recharge rate.  You could also have "strategic support" ships like a Hospital Ship.  These kinds of support ships would provide additional options to the player in the adventure/strategic side of the game.  If you have the Hospital Ship, for example, there would be better and more rewarding options available too you in quests/encounters where that strategic support ship was relevant.  Other strategic support ships might be a ship that carries a diplomat, a science ship, or a strategic reconnaissance ship that provides greater sight range on the map in addition to quest/encounter options.

You probably only have 4 or 5 early ships that become obsolete in the mid-late game, and most players that use support ships will probably only want 1-3 of them.

OK, I am having too much fun working out my version of the mothership for SCO. So here is the rest of it.

There are probably only 4 or 5 ships that become obsolete in the in the mid-late game. So I am going with six examples. Many modern games make the mistake of not having enough options available to the player, and it is easy to “have everything”. This is one of the biggest mistakes that you can make in a game. One of the things that makes the best games so good is that you never have enough of what you need, and it is obvious that you can't even contemplate ever having anything even close to everything in one game. This is one hallmark of almost any “great game”. You have to pick and choose what you want based on your style, tastes, and strategy. In the terms of the modern gaming worlds... “a wide-variety of builds are possible” (I'm a generational translator!)

So this does that with the SCO mothership. There are two different variants for each of the small “obsolete” ships. A strategic variant and a tactical variant. The strategic variant is available as soon as the base hull (combat variant) becomes available. The tactical variants become a conversion option around the time that the base hull becomes an obsolete choice. Hangar Bays are specific to a ship and variant, but are automatically converted to a variant with the ship (this is purely lore and doesn't necessarily have to have any effect in-game).

Strategic Variants. Hospital, Science, Diplomatic, Logistics, Marine Landing Force, Strategic Reconnaissance/intelligence

Tactical Variants. Target System Triangulation, Target System Jamming, Sensor Masking, Power Transfer, Fighter CAP, Missile Support.

The new tactical variant “Target System Jamming” (Offensive EW) is directed at the enemy ship's targeting system and reduces damage done by it's primary weapon by the same number of HP as Sensor Masking adds.

So there are two variants for each of the smallest and weakest ships that would otherwise become obsolete later in the game. Then match these concepts with size, for example the largest of these ships should be the one that converts to the Hospital/Light Carrier ship. The next largest is the Marine Force/Missile support ship, etc. There are also way too many choices available to ever hope to have everything. It is obvious too the player right away that they will need to choose a “build” and play towards that build, they can't ever possibly have everything. And then there is the balance between “loiter time/time on target” (or “endurance”... it's that generational translator thing again, haha!) and support ships. You want as many support ships as you can get, due to the strategic support ships and their impact on the adventure/strategic game, but you need to return to base to replace the best combat ships when you start to run out of them.

The “Logistics” strategic support ship allows you to buy fuel without returning to base (like an Air Force tanker), but the need to return to a location where you can replace the “good ships” creates and endurance issue for the mothership. There could be two types of hangar bays. Hangar bays for the earlier, weaker, ships might be capable of just building replacements while the hangar bays for bigger and better ships just service them and you have to return to base for replacements of those ships. The ones you rely on to win fights.

Combined with the previous posts on this, this is the “short-hand” version of how I see the mothership working in SCO.

EDIT: This can all also still be combined with the earlier idea I had mentioned about having the build for the mothership itself working on a kind of sliding scale between "battleship/hybrid carrier/pure carrier".  This all makes the pure carrier the most attractive option now, where before it was the "hard mode" build.  

A little more about the strategic support ships...

Generally, the strategic support ships “support” the story and strategy side of the game, and the tactical support ships “support” the arcade side of the game. The uses of the tactical support ships is obvious. You can do a lot, anything you can imagine and that you have the resources to do, with the strategic support ships. They can be used within the story, or within the tactical game.

Maybe the Strategic Recon ship has broken down and is dead in space. When you arrive an enemy ship is trying to capture it, the Recon ship is at the center of the map instead of a planet. You either need to save it from being destroyed by the enemy ship, or both ships might have auto-activating tractor beams in this scenario where they pull the Recon ship whenever they are close enough too it and whichever side can drag it off the map edge first (or simply destroy the enemy ship) wins and keeps the ship.

The strategic support ships might also be commanded by bridge officers/star characters from the mothership. Do you have a doctor or scientist character on the mothership? They could also command the Hospital and Science ships, so these star characters now have their own personal ships to be used within the story. Maybe you need to send the doctor to help with a plague on some planet, and your Hospital ship is gone for a while while the doctor is doing this for you. So you have this other quest going on in the back ground that the doctor and the hospital ship are doing at the same time you are doing whatever you are doing in the mothership.

The strategic ships would generally have two abilities, unless you thought of other relevant things for them to do within the game you are making. The first is that they all provide “best result/highest reward” quest/dialog options when they are relevant to the situation. Like the blue choices in Faster Than Light for having the right crew or equipment. Then they would each also provide some type of benefit to the mothership, fleet, or lander. Something like...

Hospital/Doctor – Restores 2 crew units to any ship that returns alive from a fight.

Science/Scientist-Engineer – Speeds any type of research or development, or provides a price break on technologies and equipment.

Diplomatic/Ambassador – Increases reputation/relations with encounters if that mechanic exists in SCO.

Logistics/Quartermaster – Refuel, and possibly also bring crew, without returning to base.

Marine Landing Force/Major – Adds 4 crew units to lander.

Strategic Reconnaissance/Intelligence – Increases mothership sight range on strategic map.

So this makes the player want to have as many strategic support ships as they can carry, but the number of combat ships you carry determines how often you need to return to base. Early in the game you probably can't even carry six ships, and later you'll want enough combat ships to stay out for a long time without have to come back to a place where you can replace combat ships. So you can't have all of them at once, although you might use all of them over the course of the game. All of this really turns the mothership into a kind of RPG character that is comprised of different types of ships instead of armor, shield, rings, and a weapon. That is what this really is, an RPG character portrayed in a different way. The strategic support ships are your armor, the tactical support ships are your spells, and the combat ships are your weapons;-)

There's Kang's Crickets again...  This is the only way I know when people like something I've done.  When there is total silence, you know it must be good!  Just like the PDU story, nobody will say a single word about it... so it must be pretty good;-)

I've started calling this effect "Kang's Crickets", total silence is the best response that can be hoped for in today's world!

You inspired me into writing a haiku.

Kang's Crickets? That's WRONG!

It already has a name:

To Long, Did Not Read

(PS: The misusage of TO was for CB.)

Yeah, I have to admit, your posts are really interesting if I bother reading all through them, Kang, but to be entirely honest they're SO long and often rambly that I find myself glossing over them for the most part (sorry!)

Ok... Could do a lot for this game.  Oh well...

It does not matter that you have great ideas because you fail in communicating them to others.

Learn to say more with less. Your last message was a good start.

"Don't listen to the gaming goobers, they don't even know what they want." - John Olsen

That refers to the majority of gamers who are not capable of envisioning how a game will function, and are therefore not qualified to be giving advice about making them.  You clearly fall into this category.  Maybe you are useful as a fiction guy, like Josh Spencer, but you've proven too me now that you are one of John's gaming goobers and aren't capable of understanding how things will work unless the game exists for you to play and see for yourself.  I did not fail to communicate it, you are clearly a gaming goober who can't see it until after you play it.

This was not rambling, or overly wordy.  I repeated a very key aspect of what I was saying several times in the first post on purpose.  This was all very simple stuff, and well written in terms of conveying it (I rarely do grammar and composition "well" and I am the first to say that).  You can't see it unless you play it, which makes you next to useless in a situation like this.  There is a LOT too this that would impact the game in almost all areas.  The mothership is the heart and focus of SCII/SCO and this was based on our 40 years of knowledge of this stuff.  And you can't even see this.  This is not Rube, this is VERY simple stuff.  You should be able to understand it, and you don't.

You simply aren't qualified to be giving advice about games.  You are a gaming goober.

EDIT: And, BTW, SVC understood Rube with two short paragraphs of description.  It's not that I am not capable of describing Rube, it's that there are only a few dozen people on the planet with a frame of reference that allows them to understand it.  It only took two paragraphs to explain Rube to SVC.  You just don't have the slightest clue about what you are talking about, I've been writing design docs and successfully conveying game design ideas my entire life.  Only you seem to have a big problem understanding what I say.

Just to try and improve the mood here, we are celebrating over here because WZJB-FM has asked my brother for permission to begin playing one of his songs on their radio station!  I guess that makes They Killed Fritz an actual band now!  

This is the song they will be playing... I don't even know what state this radio station is in, haha!

https://resurrect.myspace.com/milehighimprov/music/song/clayton-bigsby-aint-eleanor-rigby-80349496-88495720

It really was.

Dude, I'm not trying to start a fight with you or insult you. YOU posted a message about crickets wondering why nobody was responding and I told you (as gently as I could) why. IBN followed up with a similar comment. Rather than insulting us in return, try to take on-board what we said. You have good and interesting ideas, but instead of taking the time to think about them and then structure them, you write in a stream-of-consciousness style than rambles and takes a long time to get the point across, and it's wearying to read through which is why you don't get a lot of responses.

I'm not trying to have a go at you, I'm explaining to you why there isn't as much engagement on your posts as you would like, which you were obviously wondering about. Hopefully you can take that ball and run with it.

I've been writing game design documents my whole life.  I was repetitive on purpose in this because my experience told me that if I wasn't that point would not get across.  This wasn't written as a specific design specifically because it doesn't go over well to present specific game rules in a discussion like this, it is left open to interpretation on purpose otherwise you come off as seeming to say "it must be done exactly this way", which is not the case.  This was intentionally vague.  It did come in three different posts, and I wasn't planning on taking it this far at first or I would have organized it all better into a single post.  It is not rambling, or incoherent, and it's repetition was intentional and for a reason.  There is no doubt in my mind that everyone, except IBN, completely understands what I am saying.  Part of the reason for that is, in fact, the way that it is written.  Where it is repetitive it is repetitive on purpose.  That is part of the reason that everyone understands it without needing to ask questions about it.  I really do know a lot of tricks to dealing with the gaming audience, and that is one of them.

This was very, very short to convey what it conveys.  The exact opposite of IBN's never ending propaganda about how I "mindlessly ramble on" about things.  To do this right, for a game design document, would be at least twice as many pages as it is here.  I wrote it that way on purpose, and it works.

The "crickets" comment was not just about this post, that's become a new catchphrase I used often lately.  That has happened several times over the last year, the best time was definitely when I revealed the land combat system for Territories on GameDev.Net.  Not a single word from a group of people looking for any ammunition they could find to attack me with.  It just totally shut them up, it was great!  I knew I could count on Territories!  People these days are looking for ammunition to attack with, complete silence says a whole lot in today's world.  It really does.

I am writing this way on purpose to describe game ideas in a way that preemptively answers the questions that would otherwise be asked and drives key aspects of it into the reader's mind through repetition.  Read the stuff on my blog, especially Armageddon Chess and Pirate Dawn.  It's not done that way there, where I am being complete.  Here, being intentionally vague, that repetition and "rambling" is what actually makes it possible to be so brief.  What you are perceiving as "rambling" is actually just decades of experience going into saying these things in the shortest space possible and with the least discussion needed for everyone to understand it.

Y'all need to start by stopping the Insults.

Kavik - You are suggesting a whole new set of strategic mechanics to the single player game, with ramifications to quests and story content. it all really belongs to a thread with a topic to match. It would make it easier for anyone (including the devs) to relate to it.

for this thread i'd ask if you could extract an excerpt from your posts that is dedicated to the "Super Melee Passives" ?

That's because the idea of "passives" is what led me to this.  "Super Melee Passives" could be similar too this, or race specific where each species has a variant of their smallest ship that eliminates or mitigates a racial weakness of their ships.  I don't really like the "gamey" idea of "passives".  What "passives" actually are within a fleet of ships are the support variants.

The fact that this design for the mothership reaches into almost every aspect of Star Control is the whole point of this.  The mothership is your character, or avatar, in the game.   It is always with you.  Whether you are encountering an NPC/story, using the lander, or fighting in space, it always begins and ends with the mothership.  The mothership is always there, it is effectively "you" in the game.  If the mothership works like Star Control II then there is essentially nothing too it.  There is no dynamic to the mothership, it is just a big ship that carries (most likely) more pure combat ships than you need or can use.  There is literally nothing too it, and no game there.  But it is, in reality, the focus of the game.  The way that you can add the most to Star Control II is, therefore, to turn the mothership into an RPG character.  To make the mothership it's own very dynamic entity within the game.  It is the focus of the game, the entire game revolves around the mothership.

As I was saying here, that can be done with support ships that are "wasted hangar space" as far as ships that you have available to bring into a fight are concerned.  This also solves the issue of the "battleship build" being clearly the best and most powerful build and makes the pure carrier build of the mothership the best and most powerful build which is as most people will think it should be.  With the SCII mothership there are really no decisions to make about the mothership, this creates a constant decision making process regarding the mothership.  How many combat ships do I need right now, which strategic support ships do I need right now?  Will a tactical support ship and 3 combat ships do better for me right now or is the extra combat ship with no tactical support better at the stage of the game?  In the early-mid game players will probably want the Diplomatic and Science ships to improve relations during encounters and speed research/get price break on building up the mothership, while in the later-game they will want the Hospital and Marine Landing Force ships during the phase of the game where there is less diplomacy and progression and more combat.

The mothership is the “flagship” and might also be useable as a tactical support ship. Choosing the mothership as the tactical support ship would reduce the disengagement delay time. Remember, in SCII you could hit ESC and your ship would leave the battle after a delay so that you had to seperate to do this or take hits as you disengaged. Choosing the mothership as your tactical support would reduce that delay and make disengaging easier and safer.

This all makes the mothership an endless source of decision making instead of just a big ship carrying more little ships than you can even use.  This way, the player will always feel as though they don't have enough ships.  For example, if your build for the mothership can carry 8 ships 4 combat ships, 1 tactical support, and 3 strategic support would be a good general balance to carry.  But you'll probably be wishing that you had 2 more combat ships, and maybe another tactical and strategic support as well that you just don't have the room to carry.  Or, if you have decided to build the mothership into a "battleship" and just use it in all of the fights then it would only carry 2-4 ships.  And all of those would be strategic support, the battleship build still has ships that it needs and wants to carry now, instead of 2-4 combat ships the player never intends to use.

The mothership is the focus of the game, and support ships introduce the concept of "fleet composition" to Star Control.  This essentially turns the mothership into an RPG character.  Strategic support is your armor, tactical support are your spells, and pure combat ships are your weapons.  And then the strategic support ships are a part of the story as much as they are the mothership, they are "story ships" in addition to strategic support.  So this turns the fleet composition of the mothership into a tangible "RPG character" in a very obscure and subtle way, and the strategic support ships like a “party” of characters. It really is there in a tangible way.  And when you combine it with the earlier posts I made about making the mothership build a sliding scale between battleship/hybrid carrier/pure carrier the mothership becomes even more dynamic with even more options regarding the "build" of the star character of the game.

There is probably a lot of work, and some change of direction for Stardock, to do this and I'm sorry I didn't think of this earlier.  It was the idea of "passives" that made the "support ship light bulb" turn on over my head.  But this really is worth it.  This makes the game what Brad seems to be saying he is wanting it too be "a better, modernized Star Control".  A design along these lines for the mothership takes you most of the way towards being there.  Not only in itself, but also in all the ways that other aspects of the game can interact with the mothership now through it's support ships.  It turns the mothership into a game in itself, within the universe around it that is also a game.

As for “Passives in Super Melee”, if that's all you want then I think a single tactical support variant for each race/species is the best way to go. Each one tailored to eliminate or mitigate a weakness of that race. So a race might have slow energy recharge as a racial trait of their ships, and their support ship is Power Transfer than increases recharge rate. The race with low hit points gets a Sensor Masking support ship that adds hit points, etc.

If they go with the “fleet composition” design for the single player game, then those tactical support ships could be the “passives” in Super Melee. It works exactly as it does on the mothership, the tactical support ships are useless in combat. They have had their ability to cause damage taken away from them to add the support ability. You would select them as a part of your supermelee force, but they are a “blank choice”. You are spending points on the support ship but you aren't getting another ship to bring into the fight for those points, just a ship that enhances the combat ships that you do have. But this makes some forces that otherwise not be a wise choice an option. For example, a force of all small fast ships is probably not a good idea without support ships... but with a support ship that adds 2 or 3 HP to all of those ships it now becomes a viable option. So the “single player” option I am talking about here does work in supermelee, I just like the “race specific” version better if you are only talking about supermelee. Overall, I'd go with the “single player fleet composition” version of this because it is so important to the full game and it still works for supermelee too if you want it in supermelee.

EDIT: Strange... it pasted in black...

"'Super Melee Passives' could be similar too this" - really, Kavik? REALLY?

I should also point out something I have just been assuming without saying.  Brad seems to be saying that there will be what I call the "Nintendo Ice Hockey Balance" were most or all races have a little guy, a medium guy, and a fat guy.  The hangar modules that service the ships would match this in terms of "space".  There would be a single-space hangar bay for the little guy ships, a hangar bay that takes 1.5 "spaces" of the ship for the medium guy ships, and hangar bays for fat guy ships would take up two spaces of the mothership.  Other non-hangar modules would then also come in 1, 1.5, and 2 space sizes depending on what they are.  Some smaller modules, like electronics enhancements, might only be .5 space modules.

Yes, Cuorebrave, I get why that struck you as an obvious point, but there really is more too it than the obvious fact that the “general tactical support” ships can also work in supermelee. But they don't work very well, not nearly as well as race-specific ones would work in supermelee. The most common mistake aspiring game designers make is what I call the “Glorious Vision”. In this case, many will have a “Glorious Vision” of all the things these support ships can do within the game. But, in reality, the actual tangible things they can and will do in the game are usually very limited. In this case, the general support ships that affect any ships only real, tangible impact within supermelee would be along the lines of the example I gave. Making certain line-ups that would otherwise not be viable a good choice with the support ship added in. But that's really the only impact they would have on supermelee. It is a very limited thing.

In addition to that, you'd have to replace the “Target System Jamming” tactical support ship I listed with something else. That was intended to be the “best” endgame tactical support ship. It is essentially a much better version of the Sensor Masking ship. It blunts the damage of all weapons fired at the ship, and was intended to be an in-game difficulty level thing. New players will all choose that ship in the end game because it is clearly the best tactical support ship. Someone playing through a second time might intentionally choose not to use it, which raises the difficulty level of the end game because you don't have the “crutch ship” blunting all incoming damage from the powerful late game ships. This kind of “in game difficulty level adjuster” type of unit/componant is a part of my style that might not blend with Brad's style. You might replace that ship with one that is generally the equal of the others if you don't want this in-game difficulty level unit in the game because it doesn't match your style, and therefore doesn't match the rest of your game. And, of course, that ship doesn't really work for supermelee because if it is a choice there really isn't a reason to use any of the other support ships in supermelee.

No, it wasn't that... it was actually that "there really is more too it"......

I'm not sure i like the support ship idea. The mechanics are similar to using ship modules, so I don't understand why you need to call them support ships, and further than that i don't think they are required for quests at all... I really don't want generic quests in a Star Control Adventure Game.

Not that i think that its a bad idea, it certainly has its cool aspects. It's just not what i'd personally like the focus to be. This sounds like a good idea for Star Control : The Strategy Game.

And this really belongs in its own thread simply because it deviated severely from the original topic here... you know as they say if you get the coordinates wrong you might end up in a black hole?   

Think about how the mothership works without this.  There is no game too it, no dynamic too it, and with a pure carrier build you almost certainly have a lot more ships than you ever need.  This turns the mothership into it's own little game within the game.  And the strategic support ships are also story ships.  In DLC/expansion you might even have "guest ships" over the course of the game.  A pirate would be a particularly good one, because he can do things you don't want your "good guy" ship taking the blame for.  So maybe a you meet a pirate, he joins your crew, he has a storyline for a while doing side quests away from your ship (but a hangar bay is still being taken up while he is with you), and in the end you wind up with some special piece of equipment that you can't get any other way.  

You are are right, you can do the same thing with ship components.  But that doesn't add a whole other layer to the mothership like doing these things with support ships does.  Using components would mean giving up hangar bay space and having fewer ships.  Using support ships to do these things keeps a larger number of ships, and the added dynamic of managing fleet composition.  Managing fleet composition is what many people consider to be the most interesting part of these types of games.  In SFB the roster of support ships to create endless fleet composition makes the fleets of SFB seem huge compared to any other game.  I think the Klingons have over 200 uniquely different ships in SFB.  Compare that to other space ship games you've played, where it is hard to imagine even coming up with 20 unique ships for a race.  The support ships are where all of the variety comes from.

Without fleet composition, all you have are base hulls/standard variants.  Only one type of ship, front line combat.  So you can't really do anything with that.  The mothership is just a big ship carrying little ships.  Or, like a US Navy carrier that only has F-18s.  No helicopters, no AWACS, no Vikings... it is incomplete without the support ships, and the gameplay shows it.  There is no game to the mothership, and you have more ships than you even need which many players perceive as "broken".  You should never have enough of what you need, and having more than you need feels "broken".

I disagree with your statement, "There is no game too it, no dynamic too it".

With the SCII mothership the only "game in it" is upgrading the ship itself.  And that really just creates a problem, that the mothership quickly becomes the only ship you ever need to use.  As far as the ships that it carries, there is no game there.  And no dynamic.  It can just carry different kinds of combat ships, and more of them than you even need.  And that's it.  Having a fleet composition to the ships you carry adds a whole new layer to what is really your character in the game, and helps alleviate the problem of upgrading the mothership to the point that no other ships are needed anymore.  Instead of simply being able to carry more or fewer ships, this creates three categories of ships to decide between and compose a fleet that meets your needs/style at that point in the game.  Even forgetting all of the things the two different classes of support ships can do to enhance other areas of the game, they make the mothership a far more interesting thing just in all the decisions you have to make about which ships to carry and when.  And you are free to go heavy on combat ships, or heavy on strategic support ships, or even few strategic support with a lot of combat and tactical support ships.  

Fleet composition is one of the most important aspects of these types of games, that the players like the most about them, and would also be essentially a new thing to the modern gaming world.  This is a key element of the Star Fleet Universe, and my own universe (and real world navies), but has never even been done in computer games.  This has always been a key piece of the puzzle missing from computer games about space ships, Star Control's mothership could introduce the modern gaming audience to this aspect that has been missing from their games for all this time;-)

Just gonna leave this here...