Luingar's Suggestion Thread

[Luingar]

Summery: Dynamic prices and stock levels equivalant to supply and demand.

Detail: Every item in the game should have an entry in a server-side database indicating its current price and 48 hour/weekly buy and sell trade volume.

Every time a purchase is made, the trade volume is increased; and the price is increased relative to the trade.

The price increase would be directly related to the percentage of trade volume, with caps on maxiumum price change.

(expressed via math
tradeVolume=previousVolume+purchases+sales


saleVolume purchaseVolume
averageStock=previousAverageStock - __________________ + ______________________
PreviousSaleVolume previousPurchaseVolume

tradeDifference=(averageStock*defaultPrice)/(price*defaultPrice)

tradeVolume
price=previousPrice*(___________________*tradeDifference)
previousTradeVolume
)

Thus: A player buys 1000 shield capacitors; trading volume for the last week was 100,000 purchases, the prices goes up by 1%. (Credit fractions would be tracked to 2 decimal places and rounded to nearest)

The effect of all this is prices would change reletive to manufacturing and purchasing. As everyone buys shield capacitors, shield capacitor prices go up, thus some players start making dedicated shield capacitor factories, bringing prices back down.

If trade convoys were implimented the volumes and such should be tracked per shop/sector; and go up or down as convoys come in to spread stock data from other shops/sectors.

Also, if tradeDifference isn't 1, price should slowly (around 1 unit per hour) convert to/from averageStock to make it as close to 1 as possible.

The primary downside I see to this is it would take up more hard drive space, but i don't think it'd be very much more. There's not even any reason to transmit the data to clients in multiplayer, unless you want to make it extremely and immediately obvious what items are most profitable to manufacture/trade.

 

[Luingar]

Summary: Dynamic fleets patrolling around doing... stuff.

Detail: There should be a number of fleets belonging to various factions patrolling around doing activities appropriate to their faction.
They would be tracked as point/credit values, co-ordinates, and vectors, but when a player gets within range the game generates a fleet with size appropriate to point values (so a giant battlecruiser would be worth 1m points, but so would 20 smaller frigates).

Each faction would have fleets doing various activities. Trading guild fleets would either be combat focused and patrol looking for hostiles and providing backup to convoys, or they'd be convoys bringing credits and goods from one shop to another, while pirate fleets would patrol close-ish to the pirate bases looking for convoys to intercept and providing backup if their home station is attacked.

Players could potentially also hire fleets to defend their stations.

Fleets would have 2 forms of combat, Generated where they simple have generated ships; for when they fight players, and math based; where they fight eachother.
Mathbased combat would be RNG*pointvalue*Combatmultiplier.
Combatmultiplier would be relative to the type of fleet it was, with a trader convoy being .25, a pirate light scout being 1, and a heavy trader capital fleet being 3.
The difference between the two generated values would be the number of points removed from one fleet or the other.

All factions would have dis-engage levels where if they take that percentage of damage or do that percentage of damage they dis-engage/allow the enemy to flee. Sometimes that value is 100% or 0%, but usually it's not.

Also you could use this same mechanic to track asteroid clusters flying through space, so it less often occurs that a certain area of space is completely out of ore forever.

 

[Luingar]

What: Shields should have diminishing returns on both capacitors and rechargers, with around each 126 blocks having half the effect of the 126 before.

Why: Diminishing returns on shields would give armor a use. As it is now, Armor is useless because shields do roughly the same thing, but the health is added together making it much more useful.

Effect: Frigates and fighters would have no change in design, while capital class vessels could potentially have no shields at all. Borg cubing would be slightly reduced as it becomes more efficient just to armor the front. Armor would actually be used. Space stations would have heavy outer shells. Also, you would see the occasional shield hard-point, turrets that exist solely to protect a certain area with their shields


Downsides:
Redesigns on ships would be required: But that's probably going to happen anyways, the game is still in beta after all.
Weapons would be disproportionately powered: they'd have to be nerfed down to like 80% their current power.
Turrets would be more powerful: This doesn't seem like much of a problem to me, they can fairly easily be detached and destroyed, which i feel counteracts this.

 

[Luingar]

What: Engines should have diminishing returns, with each engine having less effect on acceleration and turning than the one before.

Why: As it is now, larger ships are better. Period. The only reason to build a ship smaller than a space station is because you can't afford a larger one. By making both acceleration and turning tied to engine mass, and giving them diminishing returns, you give fighters and bombers a use, literally flying circles around capital class ships and disabling engines/coring through to the reactors/ship core.

Effect: You will see players choosing to fly smaller, well designed ships, using skill and precision to cripple enemy vessels and then destroying/capturing them at their leisure. You'll also see more turrets, better designed/specialized to battle and destroy enemy fighters, and smaller ships in general will become more of a threat. Finally, Ships in general would be more specialized into specific roles such as long range sniper, Sustained combat bruiser, ect ect.

Downsides:
Redesigns on ships would be required: But that's probably going to happen anyways, the game is still in beta afer all.
Coring would become more common: But it should be fairly easy to design and place turrets to prevent it, additionally large ships are more likely to have jump drives to allow them to escape coring.
Flying the largest ships would be boring: But the firepower you bring to bear would compensate.

 

[Luingar]

What: Instead of accelerating until you hit top speed, have an acceleration curve that approaches the top speed, and have it so that a higher engine percentage gets you closer to the top speed.

Why: As it is now, you hit an acceleration wall, where all of a sudden you just stop accelerating. This also means that large clunky cargo haulers with 2 engine blocks go the same max speed as the elegant interceptors that are 25% engines, and the former can effectively outrun the latter. (especially if they have a jump drive) (Excluding of course afterburners)

Effect: A more varied ship design as player make a conscious choice on engine size, not just for agility, but also for sheer speed.

Downsides
I can't actually think of any for this one, other than everything would go slower (probably would want to increase default top speed to 100 if this was implemented.)

 

[Luingar]

What: Storage blocks linked together should access the same inventory with a combined capacity (and a scroll bar)

Why: It would make inventory management and refinery/factory management, easier. Also, then you could make each individual storage block store less and make dedicated cargo ships a thing.

 

[Luingar]

What: Armor distributes damage to nearby armor blocks, with 3/N the damage going to the block that received the damage and 1/n going to surrounding attached armor blocks, where N is the number of armor blocks attached+3. This distribution does not apply to non-armor blocks (hull is considered armor for this purpose), and ignores damage reduction (damage is already reduced by the initial hit)

Why: Anything armor can do, shields can do better. they pool their hit points and cover the whole ship, including internals.

Effect: You will see players using armor more often, and armor layers being thicker as its effectiveness is increased by the number of armor blocks in the layer

Downsides:
borg cubes would be slightly more common

 

[Megacrafter127]

What: Instead of accelerating until you hit top speed, have an acceleration curve that approaches the top speed, and have it so that a higher engine percentage gets you closer to the top speed.

Why: As it is now, you hit an acceleration wall, where all of a sudden you just stop accelerating. This also means that large clunky cargo haulers with 2 engine blocks go the same max speed as the elegant interceptors that are 25% engines, and the former can effectively outrun the latter. (especially if they have a jump drive) (Excluding of course afterburners)

Effect: A more varied ship design as player make a conscious choice on engine size, not just for agility, but also for sheer speed.

Downsides
I can't actually think of any for this one, other than everything would go slower (probably would want to increase default top speed to 100 if this was implemented.)

The top speed is a server-setting to prevent physics-tunneling due to high speeds. Most popular servers I know have it set to 200 or 300.

 

[Luingar]

What: I think blueprints should be configurable. By this i mean any block group in the blueprint has a drop-down field that can be used to select any block with the same class. (weapon, which includes salvagers, Effect, which includes all effects, armor, which includes armors and hull)

Making these changes would also change any attached weapon blocks.

Why: This way, a single blueprint could make a variety of small ships, without having to make 40 different blueprints that have only a 2 letter difference.

 

[Luingar]

The top speed is a server-setting to prevent physics-tunneling due to high speeds. Most popular servers I know have it set to 200 or 300.

...yes i know? This suggestion isn't about removing the tops speed, just changing how it's implimented.

 

[Megacrafter127]

...yes i know? This suggestion isn't about removing the tops speed, just changing how it's implimented.

Problem is, softcap implies it can be surpassed, so the reason of having the top speed in and of itself(to prevent entities from reaching tunneling-speeds), would be no more.

 

[Valiant70]

I wonder if it will ever be possible to use raycasting and collision damage to allow us to travel at light speed? Ah well.

Anyway, a rework to the thrust system is already planned but I'm not sure how it's going to work exactly.

 

[Megacrafter127]

I wonder if it will ever be possible to use raycasting and collision damage to allow us to travel at light speed? Ah well.

That could easily be done by treating the maximum speed as if it was lightspeed.

 

[Luingar]

Problem is, softcap implies it can be surpassed, so the reason of having the top speed in and of itself(to prevent entities from reaching tunneling-speeds), would be no more.

That is correct, but i'm not actually describing a soft-cap here, i just used that term because i didn't know how to refer to it other than such (it would "feel" softer)

In actuality what would occur is as you approached the limit, friction would increase, thus slowing you down, until the friction became greater than your thrust.

 

[LittleJoe]

What: Shields should have diminishing returns on both capacitors and rechargers, with around each 126 blocks having half the effect of the 126 before.

Why: Diminishing returns on shields would give armor a use. As it is now, Armor is useless because shields do roughly the same thing, but the health is added together making it much more useful.

Effect: Frigates and fighters would have no change in design, while capital class vessels could potentially have no shields at all. Borg cubing would be slightly reduced as it becomes more efficient just to armor the front. Armor would actually be used. Space stations would have heavy outer shells. Also, you would see the occasional shield hard-point, turrets that exist solely to protect a certain area with their shields


Downsides:
Redesigns on ships would be required: But that's probably going to happen anyways, the game is still in beta after all.
Weapons would be disproportionately powered: they'd have to be nerfed down to like 80% their current power.
Turrets would be more powerful: This doesn't seem like much of a problem to me, they can fairly easily be detached and destroyed, which i feel counteracts this.

I think this is a really good idea. personally I'd like to see armor have a use beyond just covering up a ship's guts.....

 

[Lecic]

First of all, please make multiple suggestion threads for multiple, unrelated ideas.

What: Instead of accelerating until you hit top speed, have an acceleration curve that approaches the top speed, and have it so that a higher engine percentage gets you closer to the top speed.

Why: As it is now, you hit an acceleration wall, where all of a sudden you just stop accelerating. This also means that large clunky cargo haulers with 2 engine blocks go the same max speed as the elegant interceptors that are 25% engines, and the former can effectively outrun the latter. (especially if they have a jump drive) (Excluding of course afterburners)

Effect: A more varied ship design as player make a conscious choice on engine size, not just for agility, but also for sheer speed.

Downsides
I can't actually think of any for this one, other than everything would go slower (probably would want to increase default top speed to 100 if this was implemented.)

You can accomplish this right now by increasing the space friction, which is what you seem to be suggesting here. Considering how space friction is LOWER than what it used to be, your suggestion seems to be the exact opposite of what schema is going for.

Also, while any ship may be able to reach max speed (provided space friction is off, anyway), it certainly won't reach it as FAST as the "25% engine interceptor," and that's what's really important.

What: Armor distributes damage to nearby armor blocks, with 3/N the damage going to the block that received the damage and 1/n going to surrounding attached armor blocks, where N is the number of armor blocks attached+3. This distribution does not apply to non-armor blocks (hull is considered armor for this purpose), and ignores damage reduction (damage is already reduced by the initial hit)

Why: Anything armor can do, shields can do better. they pool their hit points and cover the whole ship, including internals.

Effect: You will see players using armor more often, and armor layers being thicker as its effectiveness is increased by the number of armor blocks in the layer

Downsides:
borg cubes would be slightly more common

I'd like a buff to armor, but this would would just make armor be weaker. It'd essentially give explosive effect to every weapon.

What: Shields should have diminishing returns on both capacitors and rechargers, with around each 126 blocks having half the effect of the 126 before.

Why: Diminishing returns on shields would give armor a use. As it is now, Armor is useless because shields do roughly the same thing, but the health is added together making it much more useful.

Effect: Frigates and fighters would have no change in design, while capital class vessels could potentially have no shields at all. Borg cubing would be slightly reduced as it becomes more efficient just to armor the front. Armor would actually be used. Space stations would have heavy outer shells. Also, you would see the occasional shield hard-point, turrets that exist solely to protect a certain area with their shields


Downsides:
Redesigns on ships would be required: But that's probably going to happen anyways, the game is still in beta after all.
Weapons would be disproportionately powered: they'd have to be nerfed down to like 80% their current power.
Turrets would be more powerful: This doesn't seem like much of a problem to me, they can fairly easily be detached and destroyed, which i feel counteracts this.

This is a horrible idea. You'd have fights end so much faster. Hull is NOT currently enough to hold up with shields being this weak.