Meteor showers!

[sayerulz]

It would be cool if, from time to time, there would be meteor showers. There would be a high chance of them in asteroid sectors, a fairly low chance in normal systems, and they would be extremely rare in void systems. they would basically just be a swarm of weak dumb-fire missiles, but of course they would look like little meteorites. They would do little damage to hulls, and be targeted by defense turrets. However, they could possibly (not sure about this) pass through shields. This would add a number of things to gameplay.

- More considerations for the construction of mining ships: you would have to either make them heavily armored, small and fast enough to evade the meteorites, or give them PDS turrets.

- Make mining more interesting: you would want to be on the lookout for the meteor showers that frequently appear in asteroid sectors.

- A risk/reward for making bases in asteroid areas: you have to reinforce your base against asteroid impacts, and some will likely get through your defenses every now and then, so you will have to repair it, but on the other hand, you will be able to get resources easily, and will have some natural defense.

Any thoughts?

 

[CyberTao]

Sounds very Space-Engineers, one of the mechanics that barely makes any sense imho.

PD is powerful, all you would need to do is attach a pair of them and suddenly the whole thing is negated, it'd just be an inconvenience to players starting out, and would just tell people to not set up in an asteroid sector. What's a 10 second jumpdrive from a nearby and safe sector compared to not having to use a jump (even though you'd probably have one on a miner anyways).

It doesn't add anything to the game, it'd just be an easily overcome annoyance that is there to trip up noobs in a game that already trips up noobs.

 

[sayerulz]

Sounds very Space-Engineers, one of the mechanics that barely makes any sense imho.

PD is powerful, all you would need to do is attach a pair of them and suddenly the whole thing is negated, it'd just be an inconvenience to players starting out, and would just tell people to not set up in an asteroid sector. What's a 10 second jumpdrive from a nearby and safe sector compared to not having to use a jump (even though you'd probably have one on a miner anyways).

It doesn't add anything to the game, it'd just be an easily overcome annoyance that is there to trip up noobs in a game that already trips up noobs.

That depends on how they are done. If only one or two show up at a time, then yes. But if you have a huge swarm, then no, you cant just kill them all with PDS. It could also be made that they have health instead of just dying in one hit. And if nothing else, they would look good.

 

[Micro753]

Sounds interesting, but, like CyberTao said, point defense turrets are pretty good at shooting down missiles. Maybe make them really big, and when they get shot so many times, they break apart into several smaller ones with less hp that would do less damage. It could cause problems with lag, though.
[DOUBLEPOST=1436842291,1436842248][/DOUBLEPOST]Maybe an option to disable them or change their size also.

 

[CyberTao]

If only one or two show up at a time, then yes. But if you have a huge swarm, then no, you cant just kill them all with PDS.

Have you used much PD? I haven't, but I heard they were buffed quite a bit. Unless by swarm you mean like 50, a couple is all you're gonna need, especially since very few would actually be heading directly for you. Any more than that and you run into issues with discouraging new players from mining due to high risk, which is worse.

And if nothing else, they would look good.

That is a highly subjective statement, I personally think they would not look all that well. Space in SM is still aside from ships moving around, and randomly having a cluster of asteroids pop in every so often actually takes away from looking good. If you want 'looking good', somehow getting the asteroids to move along their path-sectors and enabling collision damage would be enough.