Rare drops / ancient modules

[Knack]

This idea tries to make exploration more rewarding.
I'm thinking of mighty blocks on rare and strong ships or stations.
This ships/stations should have a spawnchance of about 10% per system, so you have to travel through the galaxy to find more of them.
The blocks would not be craftable or avaliable at shops.

Three types came to my mind:
1.) An power module named ZPM (Zero point module, you Stargate fans know it)
Generates 100.000 e/s, stores 100.000 e and gives 5% shieldrecharge bonus.
Shieldrecharge not linear: newrecharge = oldrecharge * ((count_zpm^0.5) * 1.05)
That means 1 ZPM gives 5% bonus, 2 give 7.07%, 4 give 10%, 16 give 20% ,...
If you have a ship with more than one million e/sec, one ZPM would replace 4.000 power blocks.

2.) An ancient shield module, maybe consisting of three different types, but if we don't want to waste block ids, just make it on block.
Gives 10.000 shield, 1.000 shieldrecharge and 10% shield capacity bonus.
Bonus not linear: new_capacity = old_capacity * ((count_ancient_shields^0.5)*1.1)

3.) An ancient beam computer (modules craftable but expensive)
Doing 10 times the damage per module as the normal beam.
Twice the range, half firerate

All powerrequirements per regen- or dmgpoint would be the same as with normal modules.

Imagine a ship the size of a heavy fighter, with one ZPM, one Ancient Shield Module and Ancient Beams.
It would have the energy, shields and weapons of a more than a Corvette. Perfekt playership to lead your drone swarm, while the turrets of your flagship are destroying other capitalships

Or you travel through the whole Galaxy to build The One and only real Titan.

One could also use the ZPM to build a small cloaked ship with almost normal firepower.

Especially on servers with max block per ship restrictions, this rare modules would be very valuable.

 

[aceface]

i am pretty sure its planned. i hope we can have something like this.

 

[Keptick]

An interesting concept. Assuming that rarity is prohibitive enough those modules wouldn't really be of any use to capships but wou be a godsend to fighters and the like. I mean that in the sense that a capital wouldn't benefit nearly as much from the stat boost (say adding 3 of those power blocks to a 10 million regen ship, the difference wouldn't really be anything major). Fighters, on the other hand, could power themselves on a single of those generators, increasing their effectiveness by a huge amount.

Rarity and the diminutive returns you stated (big +1 on that) would really ensure balance. You really wouldn't want a big ship to be entirely made out of those things (It'd be insanely hard to acquire and be a massive expense in the case of a loss; not worth it). I think that the things shouldn't be available for purchase either from the blueprint system (for those servers still using buy with credits), not sure how that'd work though (not a major issue anyways).

It'd also be a nice currency, kinda like diamonds are in minecraft (and real life).

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Equipment tiers are planned but nothing about them has been discussed for a very long time.

 

[jayman38]

As always, I'm concerned about Block IDs. I'm thinking about ways to compress ideas for multiple blocks into single blocks. In this case, I'm thinking of a single block (maybe named "Artifact" or "Booster") that can have different values programmed in, such as a thrust and power boost, so that a single block can, depending on how it's set up prior to being found, might add a bunch of power generation, some power storage, a bit of shielding, and maybe a 5% across-the-board weapon boost (range, damage, reload, energy usage reduction, etc.).

This way, you get an infinite variety of ship-wide equipment improvements with the addition of only a single block ID.

 

[Knack]

An interesting concept. Assuming that rarity is prohibitive enough those modules wouldn't really be of any use to capships but wou be a godsend to fighters and the like. I mean that in the sense that a capital wouldn't benefit nearly as much from the stat boost (say adding 3 of those power blocks to a 10 million regen ship, the difference wouldn't really be anything major).

If you replace 4000 power-blocks by one ZPM, you could instead add 3999 Weapon Modules. I think it would make a difference
But sure, fighters would benefit much more.

The idea with the artifact is nice, but would that realy save anything? It would take only one block ID but you have to save the properties.

 

[jayman38]

The idea with the artifact is nice, but would that realy save anything? It would take only one block ID but you have to save the properties.

Thanks!

Block ID count is a known limit, but storing properties could possibly be implemented a different way. For example, I enjoy rotating blocks around for different aesthetics, but maybe the artifact could have only one orientation and use the orientation bits (only 5 available) as a reference number related to a table that stores different enhancement settings that could be applied to the ship when built into it.

 

[Ithirahad]

Thanks!

Block ID count is a known limit, but storing properties could possibly be implemented a different way. For example, I enjoy rotating blocks around for different aesthetics, but maybe the artifact could have only one orientation and use the orientation bits (only 5 available) as a reference number related to a table that stores different enhancement settings that could be applied to the ship when built into it.

Indeed. It could also be rather fragile (100 HP?) and use the rest of the HP values for enhancement settings if needed.

 

[Cornedo]

Why is there a limit to the number of possible ID's?

 

[Ithirahad]

Why is there a limit to the number of possible ID's?

Because computer nerd stuff. Basically, technical limitations relating to the amount of data a block can hold.

 

[Spartan-228]

I already sort of did this on my server. Only problem is I have to place the ancient ships manually.

 

[Viridis00]

An interesting concept. Assuming that rarity is prohibitive enough those modules wouldn't really be of any use to capships but wou be a godsend to fighters and the like.

While I think that would be awesome because I love small ships, I think something like this needs to be carefully considered. Rare modules in this case would become the standard for any kind of small ship in this fashion. I think that's kind of a bad way to make small ships actually useful.

However, the idea in and of itself of uncraftable blocks is solid and would go a long way to the game.