Gameplay dynamics rehash.

So anyway, I was thinking... (I seem to be doing a lot of that lately...) And with all the upgrades we'll be doing to things from ships, to weapons, to the addition of new features, I think the overall gameplay dynamics will need to be improved upon.

First and foremost, Colonization.
With the advent of a plan to increase weapon setups, the number of weapons, and so on and so forth, the actual dynamics of in game colonation need to be looked into.

To start, unlike classic stellar frontier, the new colonies on planets are going to be ARMED, and won't be simple "Battlefield"-esque control flags anymore. So how colonization and planetary conquering need to be looked into. My oppinion is that simple dragging and dropping colonies is going to be too little to make planet conquering a challenge.

At the moment, I'm thinking that the only real items to colonize would be planets and moons, with asteroids and gas giants being relegated to some other game roll. Keeping in the general area of Stellar Frontier's gameplay should still be top priority, but a new way to 'conquer' by force should be looked into. I'm open to ideas, but at the moment I can submit something along the lines of perhaps some kind of operation where you have to tow a colony into orbit, and then hold it there while it deploys dropships or something. Kind of like blockade orbiting, but more agressive. Something to make the act a bit of a challange something to turn a planet taking attempt into a full scale battle worthy of the planet throwing up massive amounts of defensive fire.

In light of that, another factor is to expand the 'space' of the fight. Which would be the easiest part of the fight. Simply make systems bigger, more open so that things feel a bit more 'space like' and planets more 'alone' in the void and Q drive a more important tool. With the increased focus on a more planet-by-planet scale rather than crash conquering the star system in ten minutes while 'nobody's looking', also improve the rewards for conquering a planet to match the increased difficulty.

As a side effect of making the systems wider, is that in-game speeds can be more widely varied without having the fastest ships (fighters and drones) feel broken when they're racing about.

To put it one way, I think we should 'zoom in' the dynamics of game play a bit. Increase the individual importance of a planet, the difficulty of attacking it, the rewards of gaining it, and make the war more like a war, a struggle to attack and counter attack.

I'll try and phrase it better later. I have my dog locked up in his room so he doesn't scare a visitor, and he's whining and yipping like he was the most abused animal in the world.