#1) Making normal forts per-planet rather than per-galaxy.
Currently forts are per-galaxy, making exactly where to deploy each individual fort an interesting tradeoff.
Hypothetically.
In practice, this strongly supports the practice of single chokepoints to tank the AI on, where all the best defenses are assembled.
I'd suggest that in these days of distributed defenses, much would be gained by making the normal fort caps be per planet rather than per galaxy. Minimal AIP games aren't able to afford running many forts either way, due to a considerable knowledge unlock cost and high energy expenditures, so they would be minimally affected, if at all, but more conquest oriented games, whether they be of the "what memo?", Fallen Spire, or just somebody playing on normal difficulty rather than being a masochist and thus being able to reach 600-700 AIP victories, would give players yet another incentive to consider focusing on distributed defenses and defense in depth, so long as they could afford the substantial energy cost.
My only worry is whether this might be usurping the mini-fort role, but that seems unlikely. If you are going to be building a few defenses in a system just to ensure there is
something in case a few enemies slip by, there's a huge difference between paying 90,000 energy for a Fort1 (and additional energy for some turrets to kill Polycrystal) and 18,000 for 2 mini-forts (and possibly some turrets, but mini-forts don't suffer from being unable to kill Polycrystal). Forts are just too expensive in energy costs to allow such deployment, just like deploying a full set of all per-planet turrets on each planet isn't remotely econonomically feasible.
#2) Enabling multiple Mod forts for knowledge
Currently there are a lot of defensive unlocks, more than enough for any minimal-AIP game, but in a large scale conquest game you'll run out of defensive unlocks and opportunities to increase defensive power substantially once things start to turn interesting, unless you have expansions and special expansion goodies like trader toys, Golems, or champions (for mod forts) enabled, where these alternative mechanics allow you to increase defenses significantly in addition to anything that can be unlocked with knowledge.
The current mod-fort unlock costs 3k for a single one, which is a fair price considering its benefits, but you are stuck with that one.
Enable champions, and you'll eventually get multiple even better mod-forts, and select multiple champions and it gets even better (verging on the absurd).
If you use the alternative champion progress, the cost of these mod-forts is effectively knowledge, meaning that it corresponds to an AIP cost.Enable Golems, and you get defensive powerhouses that dwarf the power provided by mod-forts, and each Golem's cost in AIP is - at most - the 20 AIP that would be gained from knocking off a single AI planet and plundering the knowledge. OTOH, Golems unlike mod-forts do come with the risk that if you lose them, you cannot rebuild them, which somewhat balances their awesome power at the low cost they have.
Each of these - and the trader toys as well - come with the drawback that the AI gets something too (unless you choose easy settings, of course), but what the AI gets comes nowhere near the defensive power these things grant, which is fine and why players happily use them for defenses in the first place.
So given this, how about making it possible to unlock further mod-forts at a price of 3k each? To prevent this from reaching grotesque heights in a FS/what AIP? game, just keep the total number somewhat under control, just like Golems, which are in finite supply.
I'm thinking:
3k current modular fortress unlock, prerequisite for:
9k 3xmodular fortresses, prerequisite for
18k 6x modular fortresses
for a total possible expenditure of 30k knowledge for 10 modular fortresses with the same stats as the current.
This would not devalue the existing fortresses, where a total of 12k knowledge gives you 5,4,3, marks 2 and 3 having substantially higher damage at 53k range, where the mod-forts primary damage-dealing is in their shorter module ranges.
One the one hand, I can't help feeling that allowing the player to potentially build another 9 mod-forts at a single chokepoint planet, should he so desire (and have the energy to spare), is a borderline insane increase in defensive power, even if the cost is 27k ~ 9 planets ~ 180 AIP and thus prohibitive for anything but large scale conquest games, be they "what memo?" or Fallen Spire oriented.
On the other hand, I know that such an increase in defensive power is already available at less AIP cost, so long as Golems, champion mod forts, and/or trader toys are used, which would argue that what seems borderline insane to me is already considered sane.
#3) If both of these were adopted
We'd have forts and normal turrets occupying the same niche (distributed defense, defense in depth), and mod-forts and special turrets occupying the same niche (concentrated power), which strikes me as elegant. Now, elegance isn't a strong argument in favour of adopting ideas, but it is something.
So have I gone completely off my rocker here, or is there a germ of a useful idea or two in this?
....Actually, better that you only answer the second question, as the two questions are not mutually exclusive.
