Deuteros - The Next Millenium (SOASE Mod)

Project Overview:
Been reading lots about modding things like Babylon 5, or Star Wars, but nothing obscure. As a kid I remember spending weeks trying to complete Deuteros on the Amiga. When I first played the game, I was awestruck by the stylish industrial/apocilyptic vision of the future. It was tough, but as you begin to understand how it works you start to expand and slowly realise exactly whats going on. I just wanted to spend some time writing my thoughts down, as I think this would make a great game - if the balance is right!

What is it?
Wiki says...

The game is set some 800 years after Millennium (the original game), in a time when mankind has won the struggle to make the Earth habitable again but lost its spacefaring capabilities, which it is seeking to regain. While the game shares themes of space exploration and resource gathering - plus some elements of its interface - with its predecessor, the two are highly different in gameplay. Deuteros has been noted for its uncanny sense of timing in introducing new technologies that ease and automate tasks as they become trite, a graphics style somewhat similar to the works of H. R. Giger and a high difficulty level.

The object of Deuteros is to mine and manage resources, explore the Solar System and beyond, and rid the galaxy of the evil Methanoids. Winning requires the collecting of 8 parts of a mysterious machine as asked by a mysterious race that sends enigmatic messages to the game-player. Upon winning, the game ends with a mini video clip that shows three picture-slots with icons and pictures of in-game objects changing every 3 seconds accompanied by the main music of the game.

Feasbility
Some things will work, others I think will need changing to better suit the SOASE structure. It all depends on how much modding can be done at the end of the day, but there s no harm in wishing, and waiting.
I've decided to section everything out based on the Deuteros Universe, and how it could fit in SOASE.

Personel
This is a tough one. In Deuteros, one of the very first screens you would have to dive in to is the Gene Pool, where you can create your crew members who were drawn in to 3 categories: SHIP CREW, RESEARCH, CONSTRUCTION. Every planet you conquer, and every ship you run requires personel to operate it. The more a particular personel team builds, or acts as pilot then the more experience they gain, and so build quicker, or attack faster/stronger etc. Again, it could mean all the difference in battle, or manufacturing ships. The good thing about Deuteros was that you can transfer personel from one ship to another... so you could let a crew on a mining ship gain experience, then transfer them over to a war-class ship for attack runs. Sadly SOASE has no was of generating personel, and the only way I can think of tieing it in is to somehow use the infrastructure method. This would only work for manufacturing. Ships already have experience, but you cannot transfer crew around.

Research
One of Deuteroses key points was the way in which technology was granted to you - rather than simply being able to throw money/resources towards researching, it was about timing. For instance, you start with the bare bones, but as the story unfolds your tech guys begin to devise ways of improving things. SOASE has a more open ended approach to research, so ideally we can't really change the way research is done, but, at least research is available.

Manufacturing
Deuteros used a slightly different method of creating things. Rather than manufacturing entire ships, you would have to build ship components depending on what you wanted. To build a ship, you create the basic hull, then its engine type, before applying the attachments you want. So if you wanted to manufacture a mining ship then you would construct a grapple-hook, and mining-pod. You get the point. SOASE wont be able to split components up, but its easy to create different class ships. So we should be able to transfer MOST objects found in Deuteros in to SOASE.

Resources
VERY Different! I really like the way Deuteros handles the resources. As an example, I'll stick with the solar system for now, but it should give you an idea of how it works. Basically, you can either get resources from mining the planets, or the Asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The amount of resources is staggering compared to SOASE. As example is that in Deuteros, you can only manufacture 'MEH Fuel' processing Hydrogen and Helium, which can only found on a couple of moons in Jupiters system. It makes the place a key component for progress. Also, ships or objects may require rarer items such as silver in order to build one unit. It depends on how you look at micro-management, but I think using the tradeships as a way to transport resources around your empire is a good way of transporting it all. That way those that wish to ignore the potential micro-management can just leave it to their tradeships to deliver. Even better would be to have a reource screen for each planet, so depending on what resource that planet needs you just set a percentage marker on that material. Need Hydrogen for fuel on Earth? Boost the trade-ship priority to 100%. Don't think it would be possible to do in SOASE though.

Battles & Weapons
I think the SOASE approach is pretty cool on this. Deuteros only really limited you to using drones, which were good, but the battles consisted of exploding dots on the screen (hey it was 1991 ok!). It would be possible to use fighters as the drones, but I would also think of other ship classes for bigger and better battles!!

Ships
As above, Deuteros mainly relied on 3 classes of ship. One was from Planet to Orbit (station runs), from Planet to Planet, and then Star to Star. I would want to try and think of ways to get the ships looking like they did in the game, but also start fleshing out on other HR Giger designs and design many more ships depending on its job.

Conclusions
Well, depending on the level of interest, and the level of 'modability', then this project could take off, but for now this is only something to chat about, and think. Guess it leaves me with one question! Has anyone even heard of Deuteros?