Hey all, first post. I've been reading up on Sw tech and found this: "In order for hyperdrives to function, a starship must be free of a planet's gravity well. Safety cut-offs restrict the hyperdrive from activating, and the gravitic presence also interferes with a nav computer's ability to calculate accurate coordinates." Obviously that fits perfectly with Sins' gravity wells. "The Empire took advantage of this weakness of the hyperdrive and developed artificial gravity well generators. These devices send out powerful waves that disrupt the mass lines in space, thereby simulating the presence of a large stellar body such as an asteroid or a planet. The presence of such simulated mass prevents ships in the area from engaging their hyperdrives, and also drops ships already in hyperspace back to realspace." You could just rename the phase lines to mass lines. Seriously though I'm in support of keeping the phase lines, they help to keep a large game sane (you basically have "front lines" so that you only have to defend certain areas). Hyperspace beacons could also be an option (replicating the ability of the Vasari phase stabiliser). The beacon contains navigational data for each planet that contains one, allowing safe hyperspace travel between them. Another idea would be to give some ships (perhaps capitol vessels) the ability to drop a Hyperspace beacon, which operates until it is destroyed. It could add some very interesting gameplay. I like the idea of getting rid of "Research" and instead having Military and Economic "Development". Players could purchase (well lease would be a more appropriate term) a KDY factory. An idea would be to have the factory drain all resources from a planet while manufacturing. The more a planet produces the faster the ship(s) would be constructed. This I believe would also fit with the universe as you would need to have a whole planet dedicated to manufacturing to produce such vessels quickly. There could also be a base resource draw, an operation cost. It would make an interesting game mechanic, you'd have to dedicate entire worlds to military manufacturing instead of economics. An upfront charge would also have to be paid for each ship (this would in essense be a payment to the KDY corporation for the actual manufacturing, the resource draw is the raw materials needed). Before manufacturing you would have to invest in the blueprints for the vessel. Of course you could invest in Development to make ship manufacturing faster. These could be Military Development in the form of more advanced manufacturing droids which are more efficent (therefor the make better use of the resources they get) and/or Economic Development to increase the production of the planet (and thereby increase speed). I'm up for a good discussion on this.
