Debris

a rather nifty idea actually

The more ships involved the more likely that something useful is there. If the losing side has ship techs that the winning side does not have, maybe there is a chance that the tech can be learned from reverse engineering the wreckage. Or by seeing how aliens do things you get a bonus against them in battle in the future.

Maybe reverse engineering, ship capture, xeno engineering, etc. could be techs to research that increase the probablity of learning from destroyed or captured enemy ships. Maybe a stealth ship that is used to attempt the capture of enemy ships.

Just some thoughts on the topic.

Yeah, we were chatting about this idea earlier.  I think it's really good and can be used to nicely balance the new paper/rock/sissors meathod of space battle.

For example:
Lets say your race has been researching alot of "Beam" weapon technology.  You go up against a race that has been researching more "Mass Driver" technology.  If you're the winner, and some debris is left behind, your surver ship can explore it and hopefully come across some useful info about mass driver technology, either giving you x bonus towards a technology, or flat out giving you a lower level M.D. tech.  This way, you can balance your attack abilities some other way than just through research.

Just a though...but yes, I really like this idea.  Plus, Survey ships will always have something to do this way 

either giving you x bonus towards a technology, or flat out giving you a lower level M.D. tech.

Sound nice. Maybe x bonus toward a tech, and if requirements are missing, towards requirement when the bonus would have given the tech.

Hmm. Good idea, I se one problem though. if only survey ships can enter, you can create a debris wall around your space, by intent or accident. To solve this I would reccomend that any ship can move through debris fields, but unshileded ships risk damage, and only survey ships can explore/search them.

Well we would probably make it random if it creates a debris anomaly or not.  Or it might be better to make it an actual object that can only be salvaged by a salvage ship, and since the AI could also use it, you wouldn't necessarily have to worry about it staying on the map.

Debris might be better off as a BC bonus... This would allow for a simple "salvage" event. Having it generate 5 RP for Mini-Ball 2 and 10 RP for Missiles is a lot of data to calculate, and then add to some salvaging civ's Research tree. After all, should you really be able to research Missiles purely from what your survey ship recovers from scrap?

Better yet... shouldn't that scrap turn into +EQ for your survey ship? It seems like they throw on every little sandcaster or ball bearing shooter or nail gun or tack on a bit more sheet metal as armor already. Such inventive crew.

lol thats the best thing those when youv found enough stuff and you can take on a basic battleship with your starting exploration ship

A BC bonus is boring. It's just a number in the corner that's already pretty high to begin with. Better to have a tangible result from the battles, that even makes it easier to fight future battles against the same race. And,

should you really be able to research Missiles purely from what your survey ship recovers from scrap?

The complex underlying theory of what allows these particular missiles to inflict massive damage against heavily armored faster-than-light ships with sophisticated point defenses? Probably not. How to build a missile? Of course.

From a game point of view, it heightens the "rich get richer, and the other guys lose faster". Too much of that isn't fun.

Why? Easy... the more of their wreckage you crawl, the better your ship tech gets. For you to have a survey ship to crawl their wreckage, you either a) Own the skies, or b) are on friendly terms with them. Otherwise, they'd blow you away. What's this mean: 1) you are blowing them up already, so you don't need help getting further advanced in the game, or 2) you are just benefiting from someone's aggression. In the case of #2, you can just diplo the aliens to fight each other, and harvest all their ship techs! That might sound fun (it does to me), but it means that playing the aliens off each other just got another reward. Does it need more bonuses? Isn't being the primary trade partner of the map, and the guy who is out teching everyone else be enough of a reward for that strategy?

Having the wreckage be a "wreckage" anomoly would fine. Except for the "random ship" result. How does a destroyed scout turn into a corvette? It wouldn't. So small change to wreckage anomoly to keep it non-cheesy.

The least game balance change seems to me to be extra BCs. After that choice is the small, random tech bonus. But a small tech bonus would be worthless past the early stage of the game. What's 5 or 10 RP when you are making 100 a turn? If techs were randomly determined, then I'd suggest searching wreckage could "open up" one of the techs found on the ship that you don't already have (but low probability, so you'd need to search many such wreckages before you'd get it, on average). But techs aren't. So what's left? EQ for your survey ship so that, by the end of game, it has Missiles +100, Hull +350 and PD +85, and can beat up your opponent's best battle stack by itself?

What if there's a new kind of "wreckage" anomoly, that specifically applies to combat losers. The anomoly would have a random-draw from the ships that died in THAT battle (yes it would be a dynamic draw, rather than some generic scripted draw). The result could be a boost to any tech that is higher than the player's tech, or it could be a ship that was in the battle, badly damaged but salvagable (10% hp left). All systems outside player tech wouldn't be repairable.