Orbital base

[deepdriller]

(moved here from General discussion because it really didn't belong there.)
The current end-game story line says that the colonists are in thermosleep somewhere in deep space, and you have to construct a space ship to fly there and get 'em.
But the devs have received some bad critizism for this and are thinking of rewriting it, but quote, "I will never give up the spaceship building "
Now you don't have to! Low- Orbit and upper-orbit factory designs are just an idea away!

• Send rockets to space to build platforms for extraterrestrial manufacturing goodness.
• Build cleanup drones to collect space debris for resources and to clear the path for future incoming colony ships!
• Build spaceport/spacefountain/space elevator for space refueling and space resupply!
• Build solar satellites which can send power planetside with power relais. (Power relais might also be able to send power starside and back so you no longer need to build all those large electric poles. Just one sender relais, a receiver and a relais satellite.)
• But what is this? The colony ship is off course? Build homing beacon to get the lost sheep home.
• Send yourself to the next moon or planet? Why not? Just be sure to research deep space exploration, terraforming and artificial life support first. Which you can only do in space laboratories. IN SPACE!
• Really, really large biter colonies won't stop nibbling on your turrets? Orbital weapon platforms are your friend! Laserbeam, ion cannon, kinetic bombardment or nuclear weapons launcher? Don't pretend like you dislike the thought of letting the sky fall on your enemies.

There are a few things that one could do with this. For example, until life support is researched, you cannot go up there and build things manually, so you can only have it done with drones. But everytime you want to apply any changes to space base at all, you have to send a rocket up there that has fuel for the drones (you need specialized builder drones up there that need fuel to move- at least, until the ion drive is developed) as well as all needed supplies and a blueprint.
It would be debatable in how far you need specialized equipment for the spce base (do conveyor belts really work in 0G? Furnaces without air? Do you need to build a space platform for all your equipment, or could some of it be able to just float about?), or if you need a special runway to bring ressources back planetside.
Did I forget something? What about ressources that can only be found in space?

[ssilk]

I think it is too early/late/not the right time for those suggestions, because this part of the game is currently in progress of development and we cannot change anything yet. All decisions are done, we don't know, how the result will be and it is a bad idea to change a plan in the middle of progress.

But it makes sense to keep this suggestion open and review after 0.12/0.13 release?

(If we have more such suggestions, we can make a new subboard "review".)

[Klonan]

I think it is too early/late/not the right time for those suggestions, because this part of the game is currently in progress of development and we cannot change anything yet. All decisions are done, we don't know, how the result will be and it is a bad idea to change a plan in the middle of progress.

But it makes sense to keep this suggestion open and review after 0.12/0.13 release?

(If we have more such suggestions, we can make a new subboard "review".)

Surely its better to post suggestions now, before anything about the space part is truly set in stone, at any rate it might give the devs a few ideas about their current vision.

[Projekt_13]

[*]Build solar satellites which can send power planetside with power relais. (Power relais might also be able to send power starside and back so you no longer need to build all those large electric poles. Just one sender relais, a receiver and a relais satellite.)
[*]But what is this? The colony ship is off course? Build homing beacon to get the lost sheep home.
[*]Really, really large biter colonies won't stop nibbling on your turrets? Orbital weapon platforms are your friend! Laserbeam, ion cannon, kinetic bombardment or nuclear weapons launcher? Don't pretend like you dislike the thought of letting the sky fall on your enemies.

i like space energy and orbitallaser.
The baconsound like a good goal, too...
But the otherthinks are a Bit early. This 3 thinks sound best to me.

[deepdriller]

While I see your point, would you think that you would want to see those other ideas at a later stage in development?
I mean, collecting and refining ideas can never be bad, can it?
So, it is useful to know if the ideas are usable in principle.

[ssilk]

As you see we (moderators) try to clean up the suggestions. I estimated the total job to one year. Because meanwhile there are some others, I think this one takes till end of year, until it is revisited. About the right time, cause I think we will have 0.13 then.