PVP/PVE astronaut complete suggestion

[HerrColonel]

Hello

Here is my idea I suggest in the hope to see it in the game.
I think this will be great for cosmonaut PVP and cosmonaut PVE (hostile aliens/life forms this game is supposed to be close to have with the two last big updates focused on AI we had this year)

When calibri announced the new weapon system I was very excited, but when it was out it was very buggy and incomplete at first, then the updates focused on debugging and then something else popped out (the new planets if I remember well). I don't want to denigrate the previous updates but I feel like important features have been "rushed" , and the game still need depth in my point of view.

I see handguns/pzf/sniper rifles start to be implemented, and I think it's already quite good for the purpose, but I want this side of the game to be as complete and enjoyable as possible. So I think this (-------->) should be integrated in the main gameplay.

"Starmade Gear System"

So basically we have a new "window" in the inventory, showing your character's skin and armor. Armor only shows when equipped. By default, the armor should be done to fit on the default skin and look good. New models can be set just like skin now, so the apparence is fully customisable.

- 7 pieces of gear can be equipped by filling the empty slot corresponding. There is Helmet, shoulders, arms, legs, belt, front and back

- You can't have any special armor with this system (Collecting blocks is already a fine goal in the game, I don't think anyone want to farm for stuff right now). You equip a piece of gear by putting a block in the corresponding slot. The gear's model then appear (can maybe have an "equ animation" just like the helmet), and give you bonus depending on the type of blocks inserted to equip your armor. Some bonus have pre-requierments in order to be equipped.

- I see it like a bonus of preparation for astronaut fighting. If I get touched in an area protected by a piece of gear, the damages are taken by it and it's destroyed, consuming the block I putted in the slot (Does not work against roquets/grenades). Putting another block in the slot to equip a new armor should be possible, but may take 2-3 sec to do, to force the player to fear doing this while fighting. Type of block used for armor can optionnaly be reconizable by texture or color, to allow you to reconize what kind of armor your target may have. Every bonus depend on the armor block's type.

A sounf could be played when a piece of gear is destroyed, so you know immediately you just survived a shot.

- - > Power
The affected piece of armor give to the whole gear the status "powered"


- - > Shield capacitor
The affected piece of armor give to the player a personnal shield system. The shield capacity increase of 20 for every shield block in the player's gear. It require the "powered" status to work and a shield-recharger (see below), so the max equipped shldcapacitor at a time can not be above 5 and max personnal shield is max 100 (it's the amount of damage of a sniper rifle)

- - > Shield recharger
The piece of gear affected give to the personnal shield 5unit/sec of shield regeneration.
It require both "powered" and a shield capacitor to work.
Base shield regeneration is 0 so the max amount possible is 25/s for 20 capacity.


- - > Radar Jammer
The affected piece of gear give "radar jamming status" to the player, preventing him to be spotted by the default prism. Can be equipped on the helmet only.

- - > Any color of advanced armor
The affected piece of gear can take two shot instead of one before being consumed. Good againt low rof weapons. If equipped in 4 different slot, give the player the ability to survive a roquet shot with 1HP left, at the price of consuming the 4 pieces of armor. A different sound should be played.


- - > Thruster
Only one piece of gear at a time can be equipped with this

On belt: Maintain shift don't make you walk slower anymore, but produce a small thrust directed in the bottom. In 0g, this can be used to travels quite faster in the top direction. On gravity or planet, you slowly take off when maintaining shift, making possible to reach hight plateforms by flying slowly. Basically this will be an alternative of doing a dirt stair to reach it, but should be quite slower.

On Legs: Maintain shift don't make you walk slower anymore but produce a strong thrust forward for 1s (15s of reload). In 0g, this can be used to accelerate quickly forward. (The affected player should then return to basic speed by slowing 2-3 sec so this will be very usefull for 0g pulse jump). On gravity or planet this will allow, combined with the default jump to achieve a quick rush forward, usefull for tactical advantage or to reach a far distance by jump.

Need "powered" to work


- - > Storage
Back only. When equipped, give the player 5 aditionnal inventory slots. The corresponding slots are reconizable by color or anything in the inventory. If the piece of armor get destroyed, the items are dropped down.


- - > Any color of light
Equippable only on arm and helmet. Basically this will attach a flashlight of the depending color to the player left wrist or helmet.


- - > Cloaker
Need both "powered" and radar jammer to work. If 5 pieces are equipped, this will allow the player to get fully cloaked. If the player moves or jump, the cloaking is interrupted. Once interrupted the camo can not be used again for 30 seconds. Moving slowly with shift maintained will allow to move without breaking the cloaking.



Here are my ideas for the moment, but more effects can be set for lots and lots of block, allowing lots of gameplay possibilities. I allow everyone to disagree regarding my idea, but don't you want this side of the game to be awesome? I'm waiting for your critics, support or other ideas (maybe even better).

Zouk!

 

[Jaaskinal]

The issue with developing the astronaut side of the game is that a ship can kill an astronaut fairly easily, and it doesn't even have to be a large ship by anyones standards. With this, it'd have to be a bit larger, but a ship will still do the job better than another astronaut.

 

[HerrColonel]

The issue with developing the astronaut side of the game is that a ship can kill an astronaut fairly easily, and it doesn't even have to be a large ship by anyones standards. With this, it'd have to be a bit larger, but a ship will still do the job better than another astronaut.

Hello, quick reponse

I don't think astronauts can be stronger than any ship, this is not the purpose of this suggestion. Do you plan to do everything in this game using a ship? Can you imagine seeing a hostile alien in an abandonned station while in astronaut (already possible)? Have you already played the game with a friend on skype and wanted to use the base you just build for a small deathmatch? That's just pretty crappy atm that's why I think starmade need depth

Additionnaly, I think "astronaut" side of gameplay will happen quite soon, because otherway why would we have 3 different types of personnal weapon recently? Why the IA spawner happened? Shooting at hostile targets is the only purpose of crew AI. I remember a post of Calibri saying something about astronaut side, but can't recover it to show you sorry. But I would like it to use a kind of system like mine because like this we will have useful bonus depending on "cheap" material. The forward bump for example may be useful for you to get to one ship to another quickly, even if you just restrict yourself - and keep in the future - to ship gameplay.

I'm not using my mother tongue I hope I'm not "rude" by any means

I found Calibri's text. I think He's perfectly right
"
Q: What is the number one thing you would like to see put into Starmade?

CALBIRI: "I think the next thing I look forward to the most is player content. Specifically player gear, armor, weapons, utilities, tools, other equipables, and how you obtain and utilize these. This should go a long way to providing alternate game styles to explore besides just building a cool ship and flying it through the void as if that wasn't cool enough already."
"
http://starmadedock.net/threads/developer-q-a-october-2014.3705/

I still see your point. But here this is the size of the smallest possible ship to kill someone
http://s22.postimg.org/q6l4pwj0g/starmade_screenshot_0018.jpg
(and consider adding a thruster if this is not used as a turret)

I think it's quite "fair" an astronaut, even heavily armored, is inferior to a structure like this.
But still, in situation, and with the right use of cover, a soldier can use some little tricks to destroy such a small structure. (like distraction and panzerfaust)

But I'm more aiming at a fun gameplay between players and AI

 

[ltmauve]

First, directly using blocks as armor doesn't sound very conducive to fights ever ending if the players are good enough to avoid taking too many hits at once. Then you can just hide behind cover and put on new armor. And no good inventory system is going to prevent from carrying 1000+ hull blocks.

I'm also not a fan of the idea of having seperate slots for different areas of the body. If the armor is for the entire body, and only one armor, that means you can't remove damaged armor with exposing your entire body. Prevents fieldswapping you gear too often.

Okay, so my proposal: Different suits
A character has a base "undersuit" in their inventory. It has 6 slots. You can have 6 items in there, or put in one other, higher-level suit.
You find suits in pirate bases or possibly more-dangerous abandoned stations.
These suits aren't super-powerful: they only have a few more slots. Sometimes they will have boosts to certain properties of items that you put in. Also, the higher-level suits will break down over time, meaning that veterans won't be able to dominate a rookie simply by having 5x the capcacity of the non-decaying suits.

As for putting items in, I was thinking something that would have to be crafted from a few of the appropriate types of blocks (or their resource ancestors) rather than normals blocks, because see above about field-swapping out destroyed blocks. Also, armor modules just add damage resistance and max HP (simply for ease of repair)

Another thing is hardpoints. Basically, weapons and tools won't work unless you put them in hardpoint slots. You start with 4(?) hardpoints, and you can add modules to give yourself additional hardpoints.

Also, you've neglected the weapon side of the equation.

 

[HerrColonel]

First, directly using blocks as armor doesn't sound very conducive to fights ever ending if the players are good enough to avoid taking too many hits at once. Then you can just hide behind cover and put on new armor. And no good inventory system is going to prevent from carrying 1000+ hull blocks.

I'm also not a fan of the idea of having seperate slots for different areas of the body. If the armor is for the entire body, and only one armor, that means you can't remove damaged armor with exposing your entire body. Prevents fieldswapping you gear too often.

Okay, so my proposal: Different suits
A character has a base "undersuit" in their inventory. It has 6 slots. You can have 6 items in there, or put in one other, higher-level suit.
You find suits in pirate bases or possibly more-dangerous abandoned stations.
These suits aren't super-powerful: they only have a few more slots. Sometimes they will have boosts to certain properties of items that you put in. Also, the higher-level suits will break down over time, meaning that veterans won't be able to dominate a rookie simply by having 5x the capcacity of the non-decaying suits.

As for putting items in, I was thinking something that would have to be crafted from a few of the appropriate types of blocks (or their resource ancestors) rather than normals blocks, because see above about field-swapping out destroyed blocks. Also, armor modules just add damage resistance and max HP (simply for ease of repair)

Another thing is hardpoints. Basically, weapons and tools won't work unless you put them in hardpoint slots. You start with 4(?) hardpoints, and you can add modules to give yourself additional hardpoints.

Also, you've neglected the weapon side of the equation.

Hello nice to read your developpement
I see you're telling this could be overused to avoid too many shots and you're right it's not fun if everyone hide behind cover to replace armor at every shot

But I think the multiple area of the body idea deserve a chance.
How I see it, the player would want to be fully equiped when going to a routine mission, and if shot in fight, know his gear is functionnaly deficient and cannot protect him again in the same area (unless advanced armor).

Maybe the player could only gear up (or replace current one) with the appropriate block, and it would have a cooldown just like medical bays, and you could equip yourself before going out of your ship.

Like Jaaskinal said, ships will always be superior to dave in terms of firepower, speed, shields, etc. So giving us more HP, damage resistance? I don't know if it will be used much compared to the shields, jumps, radar/cloakers. I thinked the advanced armor bonus to give an option to the player to get "full armored" but I think this is not a problem if we think at somethink for the field-swapping issue you pointed.

If you miss your target's kill because of this, this is a shame, but with luck, you will destroy something important, like radar jammer, or power. Si if you're equipped you have a good tactical avantage over your target and if you're not you have neutralised one of your opponent's avantage, it may be interesting no?

Your idea to have crafting items instead of blocks for armor is good, so we can up the armor price for the player. But I don't like the idea of armor suits only available through exploration. I like exploration and I want lots of things of interest to be added, but what kind of secret the pirate would keep to be the only one to be able to produce it?

You're right about guns, I'm quite good with the ones we have ATM (except for fps pov) they serve every possible purpose for now, but we need to make the use of lots of different and "contradicting" weapons limited so the 4 weapons slot is a good idea for this