Gimi wrote:Commander McLane wrote:Well, here's my suggestion: leave things as they are in the core game. Don't invent a strong navy out of the blue. Adding 16 Behemoths is fine, even adding rare encounters with Leviathans is fine. But I really don't see an infrastructure with heavy military presence everywhere. In Elite clearly nothing of the sort existed.
Spot on, and the very reason this discussion about a new "Navy" oxp came up (I actually think you are to blame for that McLane). Some, like you, find that the current Galactic Navy OXP does not fit within their Ooniverse. What you describe here, is where I would want this to go. But I also think that there should be some presence and some infrastructure for those that actively seek it out. The difficult part is finding the balance.
Back to my hacking Galactic Navy OXP ideas...
Eliminate "sector commands"...there is only typically 1 major navy installation in each Galaxy Chart, if that!
In Galaxy Chart 1, there's the Xeer Shipyards...which might somewhat resemble the Sector Commands found in Galactic Navy.
But beyond that, there's only the training base at Lave for new pilots that may be only loosely connected with the Galactic Navy.
In Galaxy Chart 3, there seems to be a "base" of sorts at Birera (a TL14 Rich Industrial Democracy). Maybe there's something else at Ceerdi, but since it's only a TL5 average agricultural Anarchy system...I doubt it.
The location of the official Galactic Navy presence in a Galactic Chart need not be convenient for the player. They may even exist as small office spaces in the normal main stations found at "capital" worlds (read: high TL places with stable governments). You encountered them that way to get the Constrictor and Thargoid Plans missions in the first place. Either there are multiple similar/identical "main stations" around rich worlds or even a single main station can hold a significant number of small ships, definitely at least 20...maybe even 100. With such capacities, there is no need for a specialized Galactic Navy station...especially since they're probably "thin-on-the-ground" if most really ARE out hunting Thargoids in interstellar space. After a disaster, news reporters at such stations could hardly ignore the arrival of a handful of badly damaged ships wearing the Galactic Navy colors. This would murder their PR, but at least shows they're fighting.
Having said that, the Galactic Navy Frigates are inappropriate for this since they're way too big to dock and bring little to the fight if the Thargoids avoid it or concentrate fire on it.
Behemoths would be too, but they're far rarer (16!) and even less likely to be seen near a regular station. The loss of just one would be devastating to an underfunded military. What if the bugs start singling them out? Funding could fail and morale could fall long before the Galactic Navy as a whole loses half of their ships.
What the Galactic Navy should have lots of is "regular" ships, but with a little better equipment than most traders/bounty hunters/pirates have.
So the Asps, Anaconda Transports, and other ships are all ok...but even they should be rarely seen.
It would be silly if they didn't also have the Boa 2 (Light?) Cruisers, what with their name hinting of a never-used purpose. These could be their midrange ships, acting as the "heavies" of a group in the absence of a Behemoth.
I've got a beef with how to fight the Thargoids. With no known base-of-operations and the ability to travel at-will through witchspace, there's not really much logistics to attack to weaken them. Presumably anywhere the Galactic Navy masses to fight them, the Thargoids could either attack them in huge numbers or possibly avoid them via some unknown long-ranged detection mode. The only point to catch Thargoids is when they attack shipping via induced misjumps in interstellar space.
A big fleet battle is placing a LOT of irreplaceable Galactic Navy "eggs" in 1 basket.
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