Mhh, I think you all are overthinking this way too much - AI Team-Mates do not have to be the same kind of "element" as you or the enemy or the Zenith AI thing. - But having said that, now i am going to over think it WAY beyond what this suggestion (AI Mate) covered.
Just from the top of my hat, heres a ways it would work (And add a lot to the gameplay too, and finally give a reason for the (atm pointless) missions tab)
1) Random spawning AI (as in, human ;p) enclaves (buildings) very very rare, rarer than golems which are neutral to you after freed them, and they can NOT be destroyed (only damaged like golems, costing progression to repair them.)
2) After freeing them, a random "Character" is assigned to them (From a set of 12 or so) each with unique personality and unique goals.
3) To ally with them (to gain their abilities/ships) you have to accomplish dynamically generated missions alá
- Kill 50 guard posts
- Kill all planets around the enclave
- Kill X amount of Y Ship
- Get a Golem etc.
But instead of generic missions like that these missions are real missions - with rewards - For example after capturing you could get the mission to destroy a neighboring IV planet and as reward you get XXX Amount of super fancy unique! (not in abilities, just unique!) MK5 ships
4) After alliance these outposts spawn ships randomly which can be bought with a newly added resource, XP (gained from destroying stuff of the AI enemy)
This XP is a resource that
- Decays over time (the longer you don't use it, the less you have)
- If you destroy 500 Infiltrators, every destroyed infiltrator earns you 0.5% less XP (per ship destroyed of the same type)
- Destroying planets gives you massive XP
Ok, actually this idea gets even better - this resource would be the counter-balance to progression and allow for a different way to play the game.
With this XP you get from accomplishing missions you can now buy special abilities from your newly gained allies. Like "Wormhole cleaner" / "AI Reinforcement jammers" / "Golem Repair for free (no progression costs) etc.
In exchange, destroying planets should have more progression penalty.
You see 1 gameplay element can lead to an entirely new subclass of gameplay - Deciding how to solve a problem based on how OTHER games solved is never a good idea.
My idea
My 2cts ,)
Needless to say, such a massive addition would need a 2nd expansion though it wouldn't carry a 2nd expansion alone.... Also how/if a 3rd resource is something x4000 considers at all is also interesting to hear. Because i think the game is selling itself short with just 2 resources. The Unique stuff (Esp mercenaries) should be paid with different resource than the things you build yourself.
Also - Mercenaries could become dependent on time-decaying "XP" (i am just calling it that, for lack of a good name) and when it reaches 0 (ie if you are not destroying anything for a while) the mercenaries start loosing power and hp (up to 50% less of all stats all around)
And mercenaries should spawn instantly then ^^
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Also, when i say XP i am actually thinking of something like a .. mhh, destructometer (the more stuff you destroy, the higher it gets, but when it you don't fight for a while it decays down to 0 again, slowly but steadily)
