After discussion with ChatGPT, I’ve developed another idea for a leviathan.

Pharos Station is an ancient, advanced space station created by a long-lost civilization to contain repositories of knowledge. Despite its worn and scrappy appearance, it is still a formidable defender with advanced technological capabilities. Originally, it was freely open to the public and access only required presenting a government ID. Unfortunately, that government hasn’t existed – or issued IDs – for thousands of years.


Pharos Station would be built similarly to a standard large Cosmoteer station, though with evident wear and tear, and would thus require more components to be added to the Leviathans ship class. Many of these components could likely be sprited by kit-bashing vanilla assets, though. Since Pharos Station’s components aren’t in the Terran ship class, the unique components won’t be available to career or competitive players. This leviathan could act as a conceptual bridge of sorts for players who are new to the mod; it would increase familiarity with fighting unique enemies but would still have a vanilla feel.

This leviathan could have the color scheme of silver and blue; its components look like they’re made of tough overlapping metal plates, with occasional damage showing glowing blue circuitry beneath.

All components of this leviathan would be autonomous and would not require crew or energy, since it’s supposed to be an AI-run station.

• Four powerful roof-mounted energy turrets with around 500 meters of range. These would have a slow recharge time, a very slow turn speed and would fire a quick high-penetration energy beam. The beam would not travel instantaneously, giving the player some time to dodge. Essentially, turret-mounted energy railguns. The lore reason might be that player ships cannot modulate their energy levels precisely enough, or something to that effect. This weapon is heavily inspired by the central weapon of the Ori motherships in the show Stargate SG-1, and the similar weapon of the Lantean defense satellite shown in Stargate Atlantis. The player will not be able to obtain these for game balance reasons.
  
• Several bays of side-mounted seeker drone bays for long-range defense. Seeker drones behave like standard HE or EMP missiles but have a far longer lock-on range and a very, very long lifetime. They should have a small but powerful explosion with some EMP effects. Seeker drones should have a targeting range of somewhere around 800 meters; this is longer than the maximum railgun range and will ensure that players cannot snipe the mostly stationary station. In other words, they might be firing even before the player gets a visual of the station. They will be deployed in volleys of four from wide launch bays within the station, which will continuously build more drones to replace the ones that are launched. These are heavily inspired by Ancient drone weapons from the Stargate series, though they cannot be retrieved after being fired.
  
• Powerful short-ranged plasma roof turrets that discourage ships from approaching within about 50 meters. This is deliberately a very low range, but there will be many of these turrets to shred any ships that come too close. The player will be able to build these after salvaging Conduit Plating, as a discouragement to rammers.
  
• Plentiful shields that will automatically (though slowly) regenerate energy over time. This will give the player an incentive to focus fire on one area to keep the shields in that area down.
  
• A massive sensor array forming the core of the station, boosting the station’s view radius to around 1000 meters. This should be a large enough range for it to take full advantage of its long-range weaponry.

• Tensor Processor: Used to produce Tensor Cores, command rooms that do not require crew but do require increased power. Yes, this is a reference to the tensor processing units currently used to run advanced AI models. I thought it was only fair, considering that an AI helped develop this idea. These can also be used to build a factory for Sensitive Electronics.
  
• Sensitive Electronics: Used to build more advanced sensors, increasing detection range and accuracy. Also used to build Seeker Drones (a weaker variant). These can also be used to build a factory to produce Conduit Plating from steel and tristeel.
  
• Conduit Plating: Used to build short-range deck-mounted plasma cannons for potent close-quarters combat. Essentially used to deter rammers. Could be used in other parts as well.
  
• Large amounts of steel and hypercoils.