i use pirate raids for cap experience.

Not really. Like I said, the starbase could link it's own power supply to the tug. Also keep in mind that this has real-life precedence; boat-tugs aren't nearly the size of the ships they maneuver.

His point is that it would be excessively unbalanced to the point of gamebreaking if titans could bring a starbase through phase space.

Well, it's not entirely true. The other alternative is that it's basically so nerfed that it's useless.

WRT to the experience, the idea is that the starbase transport and the titans would allow for massive carnage of enemy fleets and/or defenses, equating to excessively cheap/free experience for capital ships. That you use pirate raids for the purpose of leveling capitals is irrelevant; his point is that titan+SB=lots of capital experience.

currently you can build a star base faster than you can destroy it.  true it isn't a full base but the firepower is impressive all the same.

and your right a tug is smaller than the ships they tow.  but when they want to slow it down or stop it, they have friction to help them and they don't tow the ship across the ocean.  for that they have a special ship that can pick the other ship up out of the water, as they did with the Cole when it had the big hole in its side.

also if your moving a star base through a war zone, your going to have at lleast one of your biggest ships there to guard it.

The idea behind moving a SB isn't "move it through a warzone", it's "move it up to the new frontline".

The base (almost) never be used for offensive operations. It's a primarily defensive emplacement; once it's emplaced, it can't move anymore; offensive operation would be immensely daft.

Towing a starbase with a titan, not a bad idea but it could use some refining. Say the speed it moves through phase space with a starbase in tow should be drastically slower than normal movement, maybe say: longer phasic calculation time, slower movement through phase space( especially the Vasari seeing that their starbase is essentially two pieces), an early warning system that tells you an enemy is moving a starbase to one of your planets (because realistically something moving through space the size of the starbases wouldn't be too hard to spot), slower movement through a gravity well, a power-up time (say 3-5 minuets gametime because i agree that 10 minuets is too long) when the starbase is undocking (in which only basic defenses are operational [basicaly only close range weapons at only a quarter their full strength and low shield mitigation this goes for the titan as well as most of it's crew will be busy with the undocking procedures]). but enough about the towing of SB's.

Since the titan is going to be one of the largest ships in the game then why not upgrade its fighters and bombers strike craft instead of the tiny specks that the capital ships and the carriers have why not give it larger heavy fighters and bombers(or better yet [let me draw from my experiences of "X3" the light frigates you build you can assign to a titan as it's strikecraft instead of the heavy fighters and bombers) , as well as unique abilities per race

TEC

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In areas that the TEC's titan are if their pirates the pirates will not attack the TEC (due in-part if not in-whole to the TEC's connections and trade in the criminal underworld) and can "hire" the pirates to steal tech for the TEC to upgrade the titan with, with the titan in question being in the vicinity of pirates thus adding more use for the pirate bases other than setting the pirates upon the enemy. (giving the TEC reason to protect the pirates from those who would destroy them.)

Vasari

______

This is somewhat similar to the SB's ability but the Vasari Titan can cannibalize other ships around it for rapid repairs say if it's one of your ships the repairs are greater that salvaging the junk from destroyed enemy ships and the Vasari titan gains upgrade through the junk it salvages from enemy ships. (thus giving reason for the Vasari more reason to be aggressive)

Advent

______

Instead of buying the upgrades for the titan (minus the towing ability) the initial use for the Advent's Tractor beam as enemy ship acquisition so the Advent can study the tech and make upgrades to the titan. (as to keep with the lore of the Advent being more scientific and to give reason to the Advent to be more assertive.)

as for the sub-factions that have broken off from the main three that it still up in the air. But in-general i think that the Tech tree should be an open tech tree. I mean this is a rebellion defections are going to be common place i think that avenue should be explored in the upcoming sins allowing each race to steal the others secrets (again drawing form other games such as star-wars forces of corruption) each race should have another tech tree devoted to stealing tech or in the case of the upcoming sins, exchange the diplomacy tree for an espionage tree who's only two set research's are building an undetectable ship with no weapons, armor or shields who's sole purpose is to steal tech (say requiring 3 warfare labs to research) and a detection system (in the later part of the tech tree requiring 5 warfare labs to research). The tech that these ships will steal will be placed on the espionage tree for you to research yourself (being so to keep the game balanced) but will cost you more than the original race's cost is/was.

sorry for making this so long i'm just brewing with ideas and possibilities so much so that i could write a short book on the possibilities, or so i feel.

Hmm... you're talking about a Titan towing a starbase, but what I was talkng about was:

Special phase module frigate+ vasari starbase = morphing into a Titan.

This means a Vasari Titan shares some upgrades with the orky.

maybe the titan should have some upgrades based on experience and some based on buying them.    this would sap some of the experience away from the caps but not letting it rely totally on the experience of upgrades.

also let me add, that the usa carriers are all tankers too.  they carry the fuel and other supplies for their fleet.  they themselves dont require any fuel.

Oh boy, lots of ideas, some aren't good, some are. Let's get started.

I've bolded a few parts for emphasis. To be frank, it's probably one of the naffest ideas I've ever seen. Phase space movement slower than realspace movement? Do you have any idea just how long that would take? Particularly for interstellar transit or movement across an oddly long phase lane (like you might get on a random map).

I think it would be fitting if the phase drive for a SB tug had a longer charge time; it has to (possibly) link the SB's power supply to itself, and then charge the drive to allow both tug and SB to transit. I think it would be acceptable to have slower phase jump speed for a tug with an SB in tow, but not to the degree that it'd be faster if it didn't go through phase space. It's simply a daft idea.

Further, the Vasari SB shouldn't move slower through phase space. Remember how there's a metric ton of Vasari techs that make use of phase space? Well, it'd make more sense (and fit in with the race design better) if the Vasari SB was faster when under towing.

Now, the idea of having the SB take time to move to full functionality, I fully agree with. Lowered mitigation, regeneration, and lesser damage and range would be perfectly acceptable; the SB must reroute power from the tug back to itself, and in the meantime it must make do with backup systems that are only adequate for minor defense. A possible drawback is that during the "power-up" time, an SB that has been towed would actually take more damage than usual.

As for the "titan tows starbase", well, you already know that I consider that to be pretty daft.

If the only reason we're upgrading the SB's strikecraft complement is to give it SC with larger models, then we shouldn't do so, because it adds nothing of worth to the game. I do see merit in the idea of assigning frigates as the "strikecraft" complement of the titan, however.

Nowhere in the feature list for Rebellion was tech-stealing given. Ergo, I think we can safely assume that there won't be tech-stealing. Which makes around 90% of this idea useless. Further, why would the TEC support the pirates? It's stated that Sova carriers were especially useful for anti-piracy, so at a guess, I'd say that piracy has been a fairly long-term running problem for the TEC.

Rather daft that the TEC would suddenly support the guys who've been picking off their tradeships, don't you think?

The Vasari playstyle is already pretty well built around aggression. A Vasari player doesn't need more reasons to be aggressive; some of said reasons just need some tweaking and/or fixing.

I'll also point out that this ability is already present on the Vulkoras Desolator.

Once again, there's no reason to expect some kind of tech-stealing or tech-study mechanic will be implemented in Rebellion. TBH, this is also one of the naffer ideas I've seen. There's also the fact that, AFAIK, there's nothing in the lore that points to the Advent being "more scientific" than the other factions.

Further, the ability to acquire an enemy ship is already present in the game.

The idea you present here WRT the rebel factions (I presume), is absolutely daft. You obviously have no understanding of how the game engine works, because, as a former modder, I can tell you that there's no way we'd get anything like what you describe.

Stealth ship? Your concept is pretty, well, sucktacular. The idea of a stealth ship isn't off the board, but your concept is simply daft.

The tech stealing? Simply impossible with the game engine, even considering the fact that it will be altered for Rebellion.

An interesting concept. Has promise.

US aircraft carriers are not fleet tenders, which is what you've described in the latter half of your post. They carry fuel and munitions for the aircraft that they carry, but they most certainly do not carry fuel, munitions, or consumables for their attending escorts. You probably didn't know this, but aircraft carriers take on supplies after they leave port.

@Whiskey144

first does it not say in the lore at the 1,000 years ago mark

"During the formation of the Trade Order, emissaries found a single world orbiting a giant red star on the periphery of what was to become Trader Space.  The people of that desert planet were eventually found to be practicing the utmost in scientific and social deviancy; ancient taboos long since assumed to be law.  Shocked and disgusted, the Trader Worlds conspired to have their forgotten brethren exiled far outside the territory they were claiming as their own".

the Tec has criminal ties if you ever pay attention to some of the civic researches, "Favored Client Discount" and "Backroom Deals" are two i can think of

"Nowhere in the feature list for Rebellion was tech-stealing given. Ergo, I think we can safely assume that there won't be tech-stealing. Which makes around 90% of this idea useless. Further, why would the TEC support the pirates? It's stated that Sova carriers were especially useful for anti-piracy, so at a guess, I'd say that piracy has been a fairly long-term running problem for the TEC." 

My answer to this is that the TEC way of upgrading the titan is to pay for it like the SB upgrades to the "Pirates" thus if the pirates are dead the TEC titan upgrades take a little longer. Also just because it doesn't say it in the feature's list doesn't mean in stone that their will not be something like it in it.

and the vasari ability for cannibalizing ships come from the starbases ability but also the "Improved Salvaging" and "Wreckage Auto-Salvage"

and what i mean by slower speed is slower than a capital ship in a gravity well and a tad slower movement through phase lanes i'm not saying that ships that take 30 seconds to cross a phase lane will make the ship in tow with the SB (be it titan or otherwise) take 1 minuet but only 10 seconds longer to traverse the phase lane. And while where at it the idea of the stealth ship is not to far fetched, the design in the game engine will not allow you to see anything on a planet you do not hold or have something in orbit so use a modified concept of that to where the ship is question cannot be seen while in orbit around the enemy planet without the sensors. or if you want to whine some more about it some more. then the ship in question will be able to move around or through the enemy gravity well while PHASED OUT so it cannot be attacked unless their is a sensor in the gravity well.

And i repeat THIS IS A REBELLION DEFECTION WILL BE COMMONPLACE! These ships in orbit will allow the defectors to share/steal tech and put it on your espionage tree

P.s. constructive criticism is welcome but outright trolling is not. and don't deny it eather with the phrase you used:

Stealth ship? Your concept is pretty, well, sucktacular. The idea of a stealth ship isn't off the board, but your concept is simply daft.

not that i have anything to hold animosity towards you for because i thank you for agreeing that some of my ideas where good

"Now, the idea of having the SB take time to move to full functionality, I fully agree with. Lowered mitigation, regeneration, and lesser damage and range would be perfectly acceptable; the SB must reroute power from the tug back to itself, and in the meantime it must make do with backup systems that are only adequate for minor defense. A possible drawback is that during the "power-up" time, an SB that has been towed would actually take more damage than usual."

"If the only reason we're upgrading the SB's strikecraft complement is to give it SC with larger models, then we shouldn't do so, because it adds nothing of worth to the game. I do see merit in the idea of assigning frigates as the "strikecraft" complement of the titan, however."

 p.s.s. i originally wrote this out of anger but after rereading it and yours and i made several edits.

sorry i didn't read much of the posts so sorry if this has been posted before.

i personally think titans will be massive ships that have a wide array of possible powers. since you are limited to 10 points to allocate to the ship, it would force you to specialize what you  want to use the ship for. will it be for lunching massive swarms of fighters and bomers? or will it have a wide array of support skills that will make your fleet nearly impossible to kill off? will it have a self destruct protocol so when it's on it's last legs it will blow up and take it's aggressors with it? i can see all sorts of possibility with this ship i can't wait for this expansion lol.

anyone else thinks this thing will be limited to 1 or 2 per player?

Sigh. I'm really getting tired of naffing idiots like you. First off:

First off, "scientific...deviancy" != scientific progression. For all we know, it could mean that they engaged in unethical scientific practices, such as human testing. It may also refer to the fact that the Advent's progenitors chose to (heavily) develop psionic technologies, something completely lacking in the Trade Order.

Further, criminal ties != buddy-buddy with the pirates. Just because there are officials (let's face it, you'd have to be exceptionally daft to think the entire Trade Order/TEC was friendly with the criminal underworld) that are buddy-buddy with piratical or criminal elements doesn't mean the vast majority are.

We don't know jack squat about the titan mechanics, so we can't say anything about how they'll upgrade (or if they'll upgrade at all). Further, it's still pretty daft to have the extant pirates provide an upgrade to titan upgrades. What are the pirates contributing? Money? The Trade Order/TEC has plenty. Materials? The TO/TEC would by nature have massively more resources than the pirates. Personnel? Pretty naffing daft for the TEC to use pirates as crew, don't you think?

As for Vasari cannibilization of enemy ships, keep in mind that this is after those ships have already been destroyed. The only exception is the Vulkoras Desolator's Disintegration ability. Every other method for cannibilizing ships requires that said ships be wreckage; further, Improved Salvaging doesn't apply to the enemy, only yourself. Wreckage Auto-Salvage also only applies to capital ship wreckage!

Quite honestly, I'm not sure what this wall-of-text says. There's very little punctuation, grammar and capitalization is non-existent, and even basic spelling is incorrect.

Pretty naffing bad.

Anyways, from what I can discern, you seem to have quite a few misconceptions about the mechanics of the game.

1. Stealth ships are actually already in the game: the Vasari scout frigate has a researchable phase cloak ability. It could further be argued that the Antorak Marauder's Phase Out Hull ability allows for "stealth" operations.

2. The Advent do happen to have methods of surveying worlds they do not control, and without scout frigates: the Revelation Battlecruiser has an ability allowing it to act as the SoaSE equivalent of a giant space telescope. Similarly, the TEC has Tier 1 researchable surveillance probes for their scout frigate, allowing for long-term observation of a planet without naval presence being required.

3. You seem to have some very grave misconceptions about the game engine; a ship in a gravity well, even if phased out, it still visible; it's just incapable of being attacked. Note that the boolean modifier "PhaseOut" also disables all movement and regeneration and weapons. So the correct modifier would be "Invulnerable", which makes it impossible to be targeted.

Rebellion != Defection. The two terms (and the states they describe) are generally mutuall exclusive. A rebel isn't going to defect, and a defector isn't going to be a rebel.

Rebellion: when the populace/inhabitants of a political entity rebel against the current political regime. Generally, this is due to general outrage and discontent with the regime in question.

Defection: when one (1) or more individuals escape from a political regime/nation-state (we'll call it Regime A) to the enemy regime/nation-state (or Regime ; usually to provide B with intel on A.

Note that someone who "defects" to get a better life is not defecting, but a refugee.

Further, there's nothing in the description of the expansion that says that your empire will randomnly split apart in a massive rebellion. I'm not saying that that isn't in. But I think it's a sure thing that tech-stealing, tech-sharing, and defection will be out, due to the fact that such things require a lot of fairly smart AI-something Sins rather lacks.

Me? Trolling?!

OF COURSE!

You must not be particularly familiar with my reputation; I'm quite the accomplished troll. WRT your very ridiculous concepts, well, I can't help it if you come up with some pretty naff ideas. Not my mind that was working it out.

Face the facts kid, 90% of the ideas that will be presented on these forums will be naffing daft. The other 10% will be either:

1) pure gold, and implemented, OR
2) pure gold, but impossible with the engine, and thus not implemented, OR
3) have already been thought of by the devs, and either implemented or not.

First, FIX YOUR NAFFING ENGLISH. Seriously. No one will read your posts if you don't bother with:

Grammar, Punctuation, Capitalization, Spelling, and Syntax.

As for your suggestions, the long&short of it is that we simply do not know. WRT to a limitation of number of titans/player, I'd say that it would be a built-in thing; the cost and logistics requirements of fielding more than one or two titans would be cost-prohibitive.

not everyone can be perfect like you and unless you can prove that you are a college level English professor then don't try to correct anyone.

so for my pure entertainment at your incessant need to correct people i shall continue as such:

icanreallyseewhatyourtryingtogetatanimecrazyguybutwereallydontknowenoughaboutthetitantomakesuchassumptionsbutitwouldbeanintrestingideaifthedevelopersputsomethinglikethatinthegameorsomethingalongthelinesofwhattheydidwiththestarbaseswecanonlyhopeatthistimebutatleastthatsbetterthannothing

my turn.

my idea of moving a starbase, wasnt to move it through a war-zone.

the original idea was that if you built a ship of this size and your running for your life, you wouldnt want to leave it behind.  that is an lot of resources tied up in there.  

but as we all know, the military doesnt do anything unless they can put a combat aspect to the idea.  so moving a base from grav. well to grav. well would be the same as moving it to the front lines.  but in a war, front lines move.   so what may have been a safe grav. well when you launched the base and its tugs, may not be a safe port when it arrives.  so in moving a base and then undocking it will take time because they didnt design the ability to undock in a battlezone. 

in the case of the cole, i believe it took them a day to load it for transport back the usa for repairs.

the reason, strike craft would not be hindred well docked is pilots do not normal help with ship operations.  they are their to fly their fighters or bombers.  of course the higher ranks may also have ship board responsibilities.  the only exception i can think of in the usa navy is the landing officer.

the other races, arent running so their bases wouldnt be designed to be moved.

as for number of titans limit it to say 1 for every 3 military labs.  these numbers as with the 10 minutes are just numbers i am pulling out of the air.   they dont mean anything except to give us a bases for conversation.  i am sure that the devs. arent going to take any of my ideas.  although it does seem like they took a few of my ideas for starbases, or we were thinking along the same lines.

1. I'm far from perfect.

2. College level English professor != the ability to correct basic writing ability. TBH, what I'm getting at is that people aren't going to even bother reading a poorly-written post, let alone reply to it. This is why you want to make an effort to actually form a coherent thought, instead of going off half-cocked and writing the Internet equivalent of gibberish.

3. You're an idiot. The whole "incessant need to correct people" bit is pretty daft, considering what I'm trying to do is force people to face the fact that average forum user XYZ simply won't put the effort into reading a poorly-written post. Sadly, it seems that most of the people in need of realizing this simply lack the ability to comprehend basic points.

Rather like yourself.

I'll also point out that forum != chatroom. The errors you can get away with in a chatroom are because you're carrying on a conversation in real-time. A forum isn't real-time; there's a delay between every post. Hence, use the bloody time and put some effort into forming cohesive thoughts.

I'll point out that the line of reasoning that involves the "big ship+running for survival" doesn't work all that well for Sins, because only the Vasari have that situation. The Trade Order was largely static, and then geared primarily for defense with the emergence of the TEC. The Advent are more-or-less offensively geared because they're coming back to take control of their lost homeworld.

TBH, I think that any contrived limit of titans isn't going to work out all that well. It's a very arbitrary mechanic. IMO, the titans will pretty much be a self-limiting weapon; much like superweapons, if you have enough cash to buy multiple superweapons, than it's a pretty sure thing that you've already won the game, and the other guy simply doesn't know it (or refuses to acknowledge it) yet.