I know, I know, it isn't possible. But it is in Star Trek, so I wanted to voice the following; What if, at the very end of the research scale, you could branch into temporal technology?

Chronometric weapons, eraser technology and even travelling through time... now I don't pretend to know much about the finer points of the inner workings of the game, but even I can tell that at least the last two of those three would be pretty difficult to implement. Let me tackle the latter, first.

Time Travel: At first when ever this technology would be used, it could, for instance, only be used from a star system, where it was built to send ships through time. It would be highly dangerous and imprecise, sending things forward or back.

If they travelled forward, then it's a simple matter of waiting until they reappear. For instance, if you sent them off in turn 50, then they would vanish and not reappear until (lets say for the sake of argument) turn 75. That shouldn't be too difficult. Going back in time... now that could mess things up. I mean, you'd have to keep track of all turns and what happened in them all the way through a game and then revert back to that point in time. Altering the time line from that point on. That does mean that all that hard work would be lost but you'd have one or severally more advanced ships then you'd normally have... which might not be much of a consolation... so that one I leave for people to discuss.

Eraser technology... now that one, I can't fathom working at all. I'm basically talking about the Krenum (spelling?) Imperium weapon that was captained by Braxton. Erase something, alter time... yeah, judging by what would happen if you erased a comet (as Chakotay proposed to do) I think that one would be even more difficult to implement.

Chronometric weapons on the other hand. Nice and easy. In fact 'quantum' torpedoes kind of makes me think that stuff is already in the works in the Star Trek universe.

Anywho, some thoughts I wanted to throw out and observe the effect. Discuss!

One way they could maybe do time travel is by pushing technology levels back or foreward. That way it wouldn't be just a ship disappearing for a few turns. Resetting al the technology levels would be hard and I'm guessing it would take forever to get to the next turn...

Well see I was proposing that the sending a ship forward wouldn't do anything, it'd simply pop up in a later turn. However sending a ship back, could alter the timeline in all sorts of ways, thus the need to revert back to an earlier turn. This could be annoying though as it might only yeild a small research bonus and one advanced ship. However you'd lose a lot of turns since you've 'created an alternate timeline'.

I suppose if if does happen you could give the player the choice to simply continue the timeline (in which case the ship would be lost for good) or continue from the point at which the ship appeared in its new time (erasing the turns after the point at which it appeared).

Later on you'd gain more control over when and where you could send your ships (or even have ships that can send themselves), and take over the galaxy from the begining. The final push for the last technology that will ensure your domination of the galaxy... unless the other major powers gain time travel as well.

In fact, see this thread for a way to incorperate other super technologies into the game.

I was thinking, what about random effects? You send a ship back, and suddenly you are at war with another Empire, or one or more of your colonies have vanished, or maybe you control big part of the galaxy. To sum up, you wouldn't be able to control the alteration, it could be bad or good.