Perhaps we could give the colony ship a task besides making colonies and helping to colonize FS. (Side note to colonization FS, some people say they should pop * on the blank spot and give fleeters a chance to time back those fleets. Maybe Science vessels can help hide that * VS their espionage level or something. Last second thought lol)
Since you unlock expedition levels with astrophysics and also unlock new planets maybe we could use the ship correlated to this tech to assist in expeditions?
"Your empire has grown into deeper areas of the universe! With this expansion the need for a new ship emerged, exploring the universe through expeditions has gotten more dangerous. With our growth in the knowledge of Astrophysics we have retrofitted our Colony Ships with new technologies to aid in our Empire's exploration. The Science Vessel has been born."
The idea is to allow the "science vessel" to make expeditions less dangerous and more importantly, bring more goodies home on time. Cut down on hostile encounters, black holes, delays. Increase resources found, ships found, early returns. The draw back to this is that the "science vessel" or colony ship is just dirt slow so you can't do as many expeditions per day.
Perhaps have the Colony Ship retrofitted into "Science Vessels" at astrophysics level 15 or level 17? Slightly later to middle aged unis since inactive raids become a much better use of slots as time goes on.... Late game expeditions are totally pointless. In Io.us I can send inactive raids out to net 1-2kk res per slot on a round trip of 30 minutes. An expedition is a pure waste of a fleet slot and a gamble.
Just a random idea, doesn't require a new ship, just a few new features on an existing ship to make the expedition feature worthwhile later into the game is all.
Since you unlock expedition levels with astrophysics and also unlock new planets maybe we could use the ship correlated to this tech to assist in expeditions?
"Your empire has grown into deeper areas of the universe! With this expansion the need for a new ship emerged, exploring the universe through expeditions has gotten more dangerous. With our growth in the knowledge of Astrophysics we have retrofitted our Colony Ships with new technologies to aid in our Empire's exploration. The Science Vessel has been born."
The idea is to allow the "science vessel" to make expeditions less dangerous and more importantly, bring more goodies home on time. Cut down on hostile encounters, black holes, delays. Increase resources found, ships found, early returns. The draw back to this is that the "science vessel" or colony ship is just dirt slow so you can't do as many expeditions per day.
Perhaps have the Colony Ship retrofitted into "Science Vessels" at astrophysics level 15 or level 17? Slightly later to middle aged unis since inactive raids become a much better use of slots as time goes on.... Late game expeditions are totally pointless. In Io.us I can send inactive raids out to net 1-2kk res per slot on a round trip of 30 minutes. An expedition is a pure waste of a fleet slot and a gamble.
Just a random idea, doesn't require a new ship, just a few new features on an existing ship to make the expedition feature worthwhile later into the game is all.
