I surfed around the OP3 forum for a bit to find a resolution to one thing: What happened to Plymouth? Or Eden, if you took that desired road in the Plymouth main game. Obviously, it's a stretch to believe that both colonies actually managed to survive the Blight and escape into space.
So, as I had a brain storming time during a particularly boring class period, and I had a revelation. I designed a new Command Center for a pet project, and lo and behold, it seemed to work.
Now, this idea involved a third colony, because you either miraculously save both the old ones, or you kill one off and create a new one. The new one I came up with was the versatile "New Haven", which I've head of in the past.
New Haven is basically another starship's colonists, sent from another Corporation/Government on Earth in a last ditch effort. They either didn't know, or didn't care about the Conestoga. Though their plight is basically the same as the New Terrans, they cannot find a suitable planet in time. They adapt to their new surroundings in a different way than the Edenites do, however, and they create much different units and structures, utilizing extremely different technologies.
New Haven's structures, in my mind, are rugged, multipurpose units that had to be quickly and effeciently designed to combat harsh and inhospitable areas, much like Eden had to in the first few days on New Terra.
The structure I designed was of particular importance: It was what I call a "Base Command Center". It's multipurpose design allows for four functions, a Vec Factory, Command Center, Garage, and 1/4th of an Agridome. This all comes at a cost, however, in relatively high common metals. Not to mention a much larger size compared to Eden and/or Plymouth structures.
I came up with many different structure combinations, and I'll post a few here:
Guard Tower - LightHouse/Guard Post
Base Command Center - Vec-Fac/CC/Garage/a fourth of an Agridome
Agricultural Facility - Agridome times two
Residential Unit - Residence/Recreation Facility
Manufacturing Plant - Structure Factory/Vec-Fac
Hot Lab - Standard/Advanced labs
Research Outpost - CC/Standard/Advanced Labs
Base Lab - Basic/Standard labs
Power Plant - Pretty much an MHD generator
StarPort - Spaceport/Common/Rare Storage
Turret - Dual-Barrelled guard-post
Generic Command Center - CC/Tokamak/Robot CC
Silo- Commom/Rare storage
Missile Silo - Self Explainatory
This is leaving out the smelters, mind you, for obvious reasons. Not to mention some other structure types that I've forgotten about at the moment.
Vehics and weaponry, then. New Haven utilizes older technology for their defensive and offensive vecs and neutral units.
Cargo Trucks and Con-Vecs are similar in design to modern day Eight-teen wheelers, only with either flat-beds in the case of cargo trucks and bulbous crane-esque devices for their Con-Vecs. Surveyors and Scouts utilize a sonic imaging technology that allows them to "see" similar to the way bats do, and pinpoint both enemy units and different ore deposits.
New Haven is also more likely to send out human defence in a firefight in their area, so handheld weapons would be on their list of things to make.
Weapons consist of things such as:
Anti-Personelle Machine Guns
Anti-Tank shells
Anti-Tank rockets
EMP Missile Launchers
ICBM "Trucks" AKA Artillery
Sonic Charges
Anti-Tank mines
Large Scale ICBMs (Missile Silo required)
EMP Charges
and the Armor Peircing Machine Guns
Basically, they'd have to have a delivery device for the charges, a re-configured truck would do the trick, laying mines and charges as it goes. A device similar to the Eden Repair Vec for delivery of charges to structures would also make a difference.
Their vecs would look similar to modern tanks, only a bit more futuristic. They'd be equivalent to about the armor average of a Panther mixed with a Tiger, and be fitted with single or double mounts depending on the vec. For example, a truck carrying anti-tank mines would shoot with a relatively weak Anti-Personelle machine gun as it retreats.
The last issue is the Starships themselves. In another particularly loathsome period I designed the innards of a Starship for New Haven. It was a long, thin vessel, perferated in the middle by a section jutting one deck below and above, with four double-turrets and four triple-turrets on the bottom deck. Not bombardment weaponry, but capable of destroying any undefended areas in space. Its bridge jutted off in the front, next to the landing/takeoff bay for New Haven's colony landers. The Starship was also capable of producing landers and other space craft, as well as storing and housing up to four structure kits for transport down in specially configured landers. It had the same propulsion drives as the New Terran vessel, Ion Thrusters and Fusion Engines. Its cryogenic drives were almost identical to the Conestoga's, which drastically decreased life expectancy of the crew. It has a VERY large plate of reflective armor sheilding all but the landing/takeoff bay doors, so that the crew is safe in-transit.
I think I've thought of, and covered, most options here. Except, perhaps, the naming of the class of tank that the New Haven colony uses. Tell me what you think. I'm also pretty good at fiction, if you still need writers. I look forward to hearing what the other "Think Tankers" think.
Edit 2: Cause - To better explain the functionality of the BCC.
Now, the Base Command Center may have a vec-fac, but it refuses to produce anything higher-level than a convec. Cargo Trucks, Scout/Surveyors, Dozers, and Convecs are produced, but tanks are not, to avoid giving the New Haven player an unprecidented advantage.
Edit 1: Cause - Minor Spelling Issues, known from now on as "MSI"
-Kurgan Out!- :op2: