What I could think of in that direction would be that MMs for money generation could be moved to the planet / system level as a “consumer market”. These MMs would have a dynamic demand depending on the population (and population classes) and a dynamic pricing depending on how much is delivered to that consumer market.
The faction / corp controlling the system will have it in their colour and have access to the consumer market to make some profit. The faction / corp would need to station military ships in the system to control it. These ships need upkeep creating another sink. (Yes I really want my ships and not just a bar to throw resources at)
Elections would still run like normal.
Possible extentions:
the faction / corp gets a seat with 10% weight on every planet in the system making it a political tool which has a slight effect on elections. You would still need 45% of the votes to get a majority so it isn’t possible to take over just by military force. (even with a 20% seat it would still need 38% to a majority).
the faction / corp could make rules in their area similar to the current faction area (max taxes for example)
piracy: A damage event (or just raw damage like radiation) that can happen when traveling through a system which can be nullified through the faction / corp with a stationed police (military) force in the system, with the strength needed depending on the “value / wealth” of the system. Freighters could add a small fighter bay to safely travel through low value systems without a police force needed.
if the military presence is high enough the faction / corp has control over asteroid mining rights. “high enough” so that it is a investment and not every small system will be locked down easily. Mining would decrease the micrometeorite density, and with that the yield but the system becomes safer. The micros regenerate so that there is only a limited amount of miners before it becomes unprofitable. Or if the mining is about big asteroids then the amount would also be limited and so on-
While I’m not sure I understand your idea about mm so I won’t comment on it, here is what I like and some issues I see with the proposed extension as compared to my proposition :
Advantages
1- retains the idea of map colour as vanity goal
2- By being able to set max taxes and the likes, it provides wider defensive opportunities and creates a double layer of defense
Issues
1- control with ships would snowball as a long esthablish corp could just build large reserves of them and mothball or move them where required, a consumption bar effectively resets every months and corps would need to make choices as to where to spend the upkeep
Combat ships are expensive to build and need a good amount of upkeep “for training and maintainance”
Upkeep is weekly and they will pull it from a designated inventory (would be nice if CoGC would work the same way and pull from a WAR owned by the gov). If no upkeep is provided the ship is out of action until upkeep is provided again and during that time will be not counted towards control and safety.
Combat ships are expensive to move and even more expensive in actual combat
during combat there will be actual ammo consumption and fuel usage in addition to the repairs of battle damage or even complete loss of the ship
(imo logistics should be a decent part of the combat system as the storage space on a combat ship is limited so cost effectiveness and ammo usage should be taken into consideration. Simple kinetics for example are cheaper and need less space compared to missiles and give longer endurance because you can carry more but have a lower hit chance on moving targets. Offensive fleets would need freighters ready to resupply them after the battle to be ready to defend against a counterattack)
There are STL only patrol / defense ships which are cheaper and more cost effective but can not be moved between systems (maybe by carriers / supercarriers / superfreighters but that would be money and time intensive)
The ships need to be stationed there, for example on a small space station that only has maintainance facilities for smaller ships (freighters and smaller combat ships) and a WAR + LM)
=> the amount of ships that can be sustained is limited through the amount of upkeep and combat supplies they require, and defense has to be easier than offense because a offensive fleet only attacks one system while the defense has to cover all systems and it would provide political stability as systems wouldn’t change owners fast
I think it’s interesting that competition was deeply associated with combat here, and not other systems that lean more heavily into the economic sim that is the current game. If you take out PVP and the concept of combat - which, no matter how simple you think it is to build, it is 50x more difficult to balance - I think more interesting forms of competition emerge.
Derelict ships: Could require a special building to detect derelict ships in orbit, in n+1 nearby sectors. Exists as a ship-travel destination. Can be looted by any players “at” the derelict ship. Vanishes once it’s been looted / breaks apart / cannot be used as “trash bait” storage to trick players.
Orbital contracts: NPC contract-givers that sparsely appear around planets, with frequency and contract value tied to base density. Gives you a reason to scout distant, uninhabited planets looking for rare, high-value contracts in the far reaches. They’re recurring but finite, thus, competition.
Asteroid mining:I proposed this in August 2024, following up from a 2021 similar proposal. Creates natural competition over creating and maintaining challenging bases in otherwise undesirable systems, naturally fuels the economic sim.
Overall, my point is, “just add combat” is a wildly challenging proposal, and for all it’s worth, PU has systemic stability to a large degree. Leaning into those systems, IMO, will make for a more fun game - rather than a hard pivot into a different type of game.
Military (ships) would fulfill multiple roles, even without actual combat. They would be a new endgame objective, resource sink and would add a competition layer to the game where players / groups of players can strategically throw resources at each other to move “something” in the universe. (+RP because ships can get names and lore)
That could for example mean that every military ship is worth X points depending on configuration and when there are military ships of a different faction in the system they will receive Y% damage per day making it a battle of “who can throw more resources at it”. This is basically the same as a simple bar but with initial investment (building the ships) and strategy (transfering ships costs time and money).
Asteroid mining would completely depend on how it is implemented. Be it temporary bases on asteroids or mining ships collecting raw resources which then have to be refined on a base into ores and elements, both would be very or at least somewhat micro intensive which would mean that many big players would (mostly) avoid it as it would mean “more work” while having noth.
I personally would like to see asteroid mining as a RE / ship player but it wouldn’t really add to the endgame which is currently very thin as there is nothing to really throw money at (gateways, planet development and market manipulation).
Derelict ships sounds rather frustrating with “the winner takes it all” and it would likely just be the same few players competing over it.
NPC contracts sounds interesting but could as well be another dead end because it is very far from the core game loop.
This game is build around everything being planable and having fairly predictable results, at least if you have enough and correct information. So wandering too far from that likely won’t find many supporters in this player base.
I’m not active anymore, but when I played, I chose to play PrUn and not OGame and for a very good reason. I might come back to this game one day but not if it turns into OGame level stress just with (many) extra steps.