Suggestion: Special research buildings

[Admiral Tolwin]

To explore a system with a adv.- research station is always a exciting situation.
You dont know what the reward is, but u want it to play with it 

I think it could be add more fun to have a building like the adv research station, but with a higher "price" to get it and ,of course, with a higher reward.

This "special research building" should be rare, and add some new technology that could change a game.

Of course capturing this research buildings isnt that easy, they are far away from the homeworld and only on class IV planets.
To spice it up, the buildings will start a countdown to selfdestruct after the 1st guard post is destroyed.

Here some Ideas i had, what technology could be unlock:

 - a warpgate technology that allow connecting some systems
 - a nuclear weapon defence system (the system is immune against nuclear weapons as long this building is online)
 - a "wormhole closer" ( as long this building exits, no one can use the wormhole where this building is build on)
 - unlock a zenith trader building for the half price ( wy buying it, when u can build it self ;-) )
.
.

If you thing this is an interesting idea than please support my mantis issue here : http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=3400

[Orelius]

Uh, no.

Frankly, this idea is too similar to the normal advanced research station, and ideas for expansion upon this avenue are few.
In addition, your new ideas are probably very difficult to balance or already in the game.
The warp gate is partially covered by the already existing warp gates for ship production.  In addition, this form of wormhole has been discussed to death already.
Making a system immune to nuke is blatantly overpowered, as the only likely source of nukes are yourself and the AI mothership.  It just doesn't workout.
The "wormhole closer" already exists as the black hole machine.
The halving the cost of zenith buildings doesn't make sense (As you build it yourself anyway).  There's no way to justify it in-game, and it doesn't sound very useful at all.

Sorry if I sounded too unfriendly, but, well, I don't see how this can work.

[Admiral Tolwin]

Well,
1st thanks for the critic. I havnt problems with this kind of arguments.

The Idea is that these research buildings SHOULD have some gamebreaking technology.
They should be far away from the homeworld on well defended planets, so if u can take them u probatly dont need this to win but to accelerate the endgame.
Overpowerd technologys should be expansive also of course.

Its not that easy to balance thats right, and i havnt any problem with other ideas for technologys.
They shouldnt have another Ships, than they are equal to adv. research.

Perhaps is enough to have only one or two of this kind of buildings.


EDIT: Some points to the technologys u criticize:
        - the "wormhole closer" shouldnt be like the black hole machine.
          The "closer" should prevent that any ship can enter and leave the system through one specific wormhole.
        - halving the cost of zenith buildings could make it worth to build a zenith building that u otherwise wouldnt build
        - of course sound it imbalance to make a system immune to nukes, but 1st the building could be expansive (both in resources and   energy). It could save only one system and it should come verry late in the the game.

As i say b4, i dont care what technologys u can receive, but it shouldnt be new ships and it should be worth to take a higher risk to attack a level IV system verry fast.
My ideas for the technologys should only show the way what goodies could be given.

[FarAway Warrior]

I like the notion of unlocking something special, but I do think that, from a play-balance and AI standpoint, this is something that would take the Devs a lot of effort.  I'm not so sure that it'd be worth the payoff, in terms of development time and testing for play-balance, compared to some of the other developments that might be undertaken.

Those game-breaking technologies would be interesting, but they'd also be sufficiently random that they'd likely either be a waste of time or turn a difficult game way easy.  That randomness would be interesting, but I'm not 100% sure that it would really enhance the game play so much--depends on your gameplay tastes, I guess.

It almost feels to me that you're moving in the direction of a different kind of research tree if they want to go that way in AI Wars II.  Different planets offer different types of research bonuses--maybe each planet offers 1,000 research that goes into a "Universal" pool and and another 2,500 research that goes into a "specialized" pool (e.g., Economic vs. Starship vs ships vs. Defense).  Gives you one more thing to consider as you're plotting your conquest of the universe, and might give a bit more incentive to employ knowledge raids in specific places...

Those changes would be sufficiently radical as to upset the current game, and I don't think the current research system is sufficiently broken that it needs that kind of a fix.  But if they ever get around to making a sequel, it'd be interesting to see if they wanted to try that approach...