Get more use out of new luminous ships and stations

[JohnBWatson]

After noting that EP, an expansion built around Luminous, introduced a number of interesting ships and stations that only appear in a few missions, I came up with a fairly simple way to integrate them into the general faction structure. This would both make the faction a more interesting opponent and a more viable threat, as well as put the excellent work George did on the Luminous content to better use. It would also serve to give more plot justification to the existence of all of these things, showing them as having a genuine role other than appearing once and never being mentioned again.

I made sure to keep everything simple, ensuring that all of the code needed could effectively be recycled from something else without much change. Thus, this change would have a very good cost - benefit ratio.

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[16:33] <JohnBWatson> hi
[16:44] <JohnBWatson> What do you folks think of giving the new luminous units greater presence?
[16:45] <JohnBWatson> At present, there are 5 ships and structures that could reasonably be used outside of missions but aren't.
[16:45] <JohnBWatson> And the current luminous only has drones and assemblers, making it a fairly lackluster faction.
[16:47] <JohnBWatson> I'm thinking assemblers could have a 25% chance of building a soldier as a guard rather than a drone, which would give them a better force mixture and make kiting them less effective.
[16:47] <JohnBWatson> They could also occasionally send a messenger to one of the stargates, and messengers could be a rare encounter.
[16:48] <JohnBWatson> Extractors guarded by some drones and turrets could appear in the Outer Realm as well.
[16:49] <JohnBWatson> Finally, in the very late Outer Realm(last 1 - 2 systems), destroying an Assembler could have a 10% chance of spawning a Hunter Killer from one of the stargates.
[16:51] <JohnBWatson> This could either serve to expand the content in EP, making Luminous appear as more of a threat, or be a general update to vanilla as well, giving the faction more personality and perhaps making more people interested in it(and thus interested in EP)
[17:23] <+digdug> mmhh
[17:23] <+digdug> that's a nice idea

[shanejfilomena]

I once did a shipping company with these creatures :
But I agree ( and always have ) that they are a tale that needs to be told : they should have more interaction in the universe as both friendly ( not hostile ) and Hostile

Also I think that if we can have Friendly Luminous : there should also be a station or be able to turn a station friendly....