Early-lategame event chain: Institute for xenoscience

[Mariawr]

The institute would give out exploration quests (like star survey and xenos speciemen zoo) every now and then and stay for the rest of the game. The quest could be spawned by a unique building that is just a reskin of a regular science lab (and follows the same upgrade paths), but if it gets destroyed it ends the questchain. Building the science lab would require "retiring" one of your scientist who will then proceed to be the curator/administrator and will appear as that person in all future quests.

Building it could be anywhere on owned planets, however, "sacrisfising" 1 scientist is needed (he then becomes the head researcher). Frog suggested making it in space instead.

Ideas so far:

Steam forums user "One Fine Ass Raptor." Event Title: Stolen Artifacts Description: The curator of our institute for xenoscience has reported the theft of priceless artifacts. So far the media and law enforcement authorities have not been alerted. The artifacts have been replaced by replicas. If we report the theft people may lose confidence in our ability to protect cultural artifacts, but will also help us in the apprehension of the criminals. If we stay quiet we can use more covert methods of uncovering the thieves. As far as the public knows everything is as it should be. Choices/Consequences: Go public and enlist the public's assistance/-5 happiness, -200 energy Keep it hush-hush/ -200 energy, -200 minerals Use the intelligence services to find the thieves/ - 400 credits Notes: Could be turned into a bigger quest chain, this is definitely a good starting point.

An event where one of the supposedly "dead" artifacts turns out to be an extremely dangerous weapon/a sentinent virus/some weird space magic artifact.

A midgame event where scientists realise they overlooked some systems of importance/relevance. Spawns a number of new systems in the empires borders.

Hyperlane research: Key points in the hyperlane map get surveyed to try and find a pattern and/or source of their existance.

Abandoned space station: Scans/renewed surveys indicate that in space that was considered empty is actually a big derelict space station

[P-aul]

I... really like the idea. I wanted to add more exploration quests and this is amazing way to tie them all up into a single semi-random "chain" that has pretty obvious opt-in for player.

[Talanic]

I am strongly in favor of the Institutes being multiple space stations rather than buildings. There's even a good reason to do so - interstellar scanning would get better resolution from multiple space-borne observatories. It's also always struck me as a bad idea to perform dangerous research on tremendously volatile objects and energies on the surface of populated planets.

Requires a science quest completion to unlock. Perhaps the stellar studies? After that, one scientist must retire to coordinate this new scientific Institution. Passive bonus - new scientist recruits have a small chance to gain the Institution Leader's traits.

Establishing the Institution allows you to build Institute Bases. One per system, buildable only in your (or allied / federated) territory, provides sensor data and one of each research. Also unlocks the new quest lines - and more Institute Bases are required to keep unlocking new quest lines.

Also, ideally, some anomalies and events specific to the Institute Bases would be just regular events - not the unlock-with-more-IBs kind, just occasional Human Resources (or Bzarkk!klakian Resources) struggles, Crimes Against Sentient Thought trials, the usual.

A Truly Neutral Third Party: Institute scientists have been contacted by trans-dimensional entities, who have - so far as we can tell - politely requested that we settle a dispute between two (or more, or fewer) parties. They wish for our input because we have no stake in their argument, nor will we ever, as the tenuous connection between their realm of existence and ours will, for lack of a better term, evaporate in the coming months.

That's No Moon: Excavations on a mineral-rich planetoid located the hull of what we thought was a crashed spaceship. Further analysis indicates that the planetoid was in fact debris that had aggregated on the surface of the ship, whose size boggles the mind. Better - or worse, depending on how you look at it - the ship appears to use spatial folding technology, and it may in fact be bigger on the inside.

[Mariawr]

I think the multiple stations idea is waaay to ambitious and loses focus of what we are trying to do as of now. It would make a great standalone idea but I think it just really steps away from what the mod is meant to do.

[Talanic]

I didn't do a good job of explaining my reasoning. The reason why I think building these relatively insignificant bases to trigger events is a good idea is because it would hand control of the flow of incoming events to the player. If they're at war with six other empires, they're too busy to build new Institute Bases and won't be getting interrupted by events they don't want to handle at that point.

Now, there's going to be other options for how to do that - perhaps setting policies, for example. The stations are just a suggestion for one way to go about it.

[tzerrell]

To summarize our Discord discussion:

We are planning on doing the Institute as a building or buildings on a planet, as we were unable to determine a good way to do this with space stations. Suggestions for how we might approach this included:

• Have a base building that can be upgraded if you complete quests in the chain
• Might do this by having upgraded versions of the building (with wings that include bonuses), or might do it by adding additional wings as separate buildings.
• The building(s) could be spawned by event to replace existing research labs. Alternatively, could make the building an Empire unique the player can build.
• Wings enable related events, e.g. an AI lab wing enables AI-related events

If I overlooked something feel free to add it

[tzerrell]

Forwarding a suggestion from @Mariawr : A sub-project for the xenoscience institute that you can launch every 10-15 years (or whatever makes balance work) to scan for interesting stars.