Missile/Beam pacts with non-identical races

I'd agree; these pacts should be scrapped in favour of some that are universally useful.

I think that some pacts could be unilateral - I benevolently grant you access to our tech - while others would work bilaterally.

All pacts with same-race would work bilaterally, but the racial differentials would be one-way ex.: TEC armor, Advent shields, Vasari phase missiles. 

To work better, there should be the possibility of bargaining, i.e. asking 'what will you give me if I give you X', or 'What do you want in exchange of Y'? And being able to counter-offer.

 

TEC and vasari DO have beam weapons... just... not very many.

and... i think... that the advent starbase 2nd weapon upgrade (psionic surge or something) is a missile weapon.

That's the problem.  They have so few beam attacks that the pact isn't useful to them, which is the point to begin with.  Not useless in the literal sense, but close enough for all intents and purposes.

just because the tec doesnt get much from the beam pack... the advent player does.

you might as well get any pacts you can with everyone... because while one of you may not benifit from it... the other one will.

I don't know about you but I will only do pacts with allies.  That's why I like locked teams

Id like for the pacts to change the weapon type of your LRFs for example. Like if you get a beam pact, your lrms fire beams! but still benefit from your own missile research. This would be cool.

It would be cool, but, I can't see how this would benift both of the pact members anymore than it does now. If the pact only benifts your allies and not you it could be to your detriment later if they become your enemies, but isn't that what diplomacy is all about?

What I 'd like to see would be along the same lines as you are thinking, but once you have formed a pact with another faction, you are then able to research a particular thing like "co-operative design" for beam weapons or missiles or what ever the pact is, that gives you and that ally access to a new weapon or shield or what ever, that is better than either has, or at least different with more versatility. Like strong against shields and hull or something like that.

This could be difficult to implement though. I'm not sure how these new weapons could be added to ships that are allready made in game. I'm not sure, maybee it would be easier if a new ship was made available for the new weapons.

If it could be done, I think this would be cool.

 

You know, this makes me think back to Red Alert 2 where, if you got a spy into an enemy battle lab, you'd get access to a mixed technology unit; for instance, if you were an Allied nation, getting a spy into a Soviet battle lab would unlock Chrono Ivans.

What if these pacts could do the same? As examples, getting a beam pact with an Advent player as TEC would unlock beam cruisers, getting a missile pact with TEC as Advent would grant you cluster missile destroyers, and Vasari with the TEC siege pact would get a sort of micro-capital ship; a multirole heavy cruiser that can bomb planets and effectively fight other ships.

Of course, the balancing would be a bit nasty and the workload would be a bit heavy (Were my basic examples to go through, that'd be nine new ships, three for each race, which may well be more than Entrenchment had to offer), but I say it'd be worth it.

 

Although, I seriously doubt this is going to be implemented. I just figured I'd throw that idea out before I went to bed.

While I generally agree that that the Advent gets shafted on the TEC's Missile pact, and TEC gets shafted on the Advent's beam pact, that's apparently the idea behind this design decision and is not going to change.

      I personaly feel pacts were created because they couldnt think of enough DIPLOMATIC options. So we'll just add more ship enhancements.  Since I usually play single player 1x1 locked teams pacts are kind of pointless to me. Or am I wrong?

I wouldn't mind one of the Vassari pacts being that other players could use your phase "inhibitator" - is it? (The one that has dark armada function) so that your allies could travel through them to different places which has one like you can with them if your Vessari.

I think that some of the weapon pacts could add weapon banks on ships which would improve their firepower.

A Beam pact would increase the effectiveness of beams, as well as adding bemas to ships which would otherwise not have them.