Asteroid Fields/Nebulas etc.

    Valiant70

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    Stars damage through shields, something that would probably never change.
    Boy, I sure would like to replicate solar radiation in some sort of weapon! *evil face!* This feature doesn't make a lot of sense to be honest. It's possible it will change. I can't think of any plausible explanation for shields blocking laser radiation from dozens of concentrated beams or electromagnetic flux or whatever from pulse weapons, but not radiation from a star. Seems like the shields should have to be burned down first.

    Still just applying a buff, just creativity was used so that it's more lore-ish. No matter how you look at it, it is just a light buff afterall.
    I suppose what I'm trying to say is, don't make it seem artificial. (There's Lucky Charms-flavored space dust in this system so my reactor works better!? o_O:confused:)
     

    CyberTao

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    I suppose what I'm trying to say is, don't make it seem artificial. (There's Lucky Charms-flavored space dust in this system so my reactor works better!? o_O:confused:)
    Well that much was a given I thought, though my wording may have just been bad. I just want effects great enough to affect the designs of ships used in certain areas (Multiple system clusters of it I mean), cause I feel that would be more interesting. The effects would then have to be creative enough to make a distinction.

    A system where hull damage was halved and shield damage was tripled for example is what I would call creative, not just a flat +/- 5% to X system (Which may be better for 'conflict', but feels very uninspired).
     
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    A more practical use for a nebula could be to decrease visibility and hide space stations/other things that are inside from the map (until discovered?). The nebula would have to be 1000s of times more dense than real life in order to do this, but that is still plausible, better than giving a debuff for being surrounded by a bit of H2 gas. It could make the systems that don't have stars potentially more interesting, if some of them contained obscuring nebulae.
    As CyberTao above me said, it would be cool to have different designs of ships to be used in different places, like solar panels/sails near stars, super-detection-range sensors out in the intergalactic void, different reactors or weapons that don't work (well) when subjected to solar/planetary gravity, radiation shielding to protect against stars/star clusters/other radiation emitters, etc etc. Basically an option for specialization in certain environments.
     
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    There were plenty of forums that discussed galactic features back before the overhaul into what we now have. Here's one which I think would be great to look at: http://starmadedock.net/threads/sector-biomes.2487/#post-38224

    A summary of what's on that forum:
    Energy Fields: these range from intense solar radiation, to solar winds, to nebulae. Different types of stars have different types of radiation. They affect the hud, navigation markers, shield capacity/regen, energy capacity/regen, and/or maneuverability -- sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. These sectors will present unique challenges which can be defensive for a station, but problematic for normal play.

    Examples:
    Shield capacity: Double, normal, half, zero, or interference (every so often shields are reduced to zero and must be recharged)
    Shield regen: double, normal, half, or zero.
    Energy capacity: double, normal, half, or interference (every so often energy is reduced to zero and must be recharged)
    Energy regen: double, normal, half, or zero.
    Maximum speed: +50%, normal, or half
    Accel/Decel: Double, normal, or half
    Turning: Double, normal, half, or interference (every so often a ship is hit by ionic winds and is turned randomly about and must reorient)
    Navigation: Double range, normal, half-range, disabled (including waypoints, so don't get lost), false positives (shows ships that don't exist), or interference (every so often the navigation goes dead for 15 seconds)
    Other: Missiles have a 50% chance of exploding during flight without hitting anything, lasers have a randomized color every time they are fired, lock-on is disabled, Bobby A.I. is scrambled and ineffective, certain effect modules are disabled upon entering the system (re-enabled upon exiting), the light of the star is of a different color/intensity.

    Of course, the effect is consistent within the System, but random from system to system according to how the galaxy is generated.

    Unique Feature Generation: Asteroid fields, ship-graveyard, minefield, orbital stars, worm holes, black holes and more. These, by necessity, are more suited for a sector-by-sector generation than system-by-system. Some have already been implemented, such as galactic thin-disc and black holes, but others have not. These pose performance/optimization issues.

    Examples:
    Planets with moons, rings, or orbiting asteroids.
    Forgotten Battle Field - dead ships, random salvage, derelict stations, higher pirate spawn rates, and the occasional warhead.
    Minefield - large ships beware there are warheads here just suspended in space.
    Mineral deprived/enriched zones - places where particular ores/crystals are more or less abundant. Rather than having a System contain huge numbers of all ores, a faction will need to own multiple systems or else start trading to get that one ore they just can never find from a group who has too much of it.
    Fauna Hotspot - when/if creatures are implemented certain systems may have more life than others, or different types of creatures (robotic vs. organic vs. gaseous), or creatures of different difficulty.

    NPC Faction Territories: The trading guild, pirates and neutral factions exist and have stations. Why don't they claim territory? Within that territory their structures are much more likely to spawn and waves of ships are also more likely to spawn; some sectors are overrun with pirate stations while others are overrun with shops. With only 3 NPC factions in game, this has limited applicability.
     
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    I must agree with this, better asteroid fields and nebulae would be so cool to have in game. I really hate the current asteroids, they spawn teensy little clusters. It would be much better if they spawned more asteroids, and spread them out relative to sector size.
    Now nebulae, I feel there should be large clumps of sectors in some systems with nebulae instead of individual sectors, and yes they should definitely have differing effects.

    The best Star Wars RTS game that has ever existed, that's what it is.
    Oh, never really liked Star Wars, just found it boring
     

    NeonSturm

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    I think 40'000 years in future (or the time StarMade actually is played) there will be a lot of Remains from ancient Galactic Wars.
    (assuming that from how often we put weapons into ships)​

    These Remains could be more dense than natural nebulae and actually have a reason to interfere with your systems.
    (But then we would have to create some (possibly hostile or useful) Remains/Debris for some planets too)​

    ____
    All of you seem to think that nebulae needs to be 1000 of times more dense to actually hide something player-created.
    Why?
    It could just make radar-jamming and optical jamming a lot easier because you don't have to fake the emissions from behind your ship in all directions.

    If jamming/cloaking would only work up to certain distance, we could buff/debuff this distance.
     
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    wait, Asteroids in an Asteroid field are really far away from each other, the chance that your ship gets hit by one is to low. and even when a Asteroid is on collision course with your ship, you could just fly away. on the galaxy map asteroid belt orbits are mark with a line... in real asteroid belts are gapes but there are still a "complete" cycle around a star or planet, in starmade these asteroid belts are just one moving sector with a few asteroids.
    And nebulas... well, nebulas would give the radar jammer a use... but we would need somekind of camouflage shield.
    so, i really like the idea but i think something is missing.
     

    Jake_Lancia

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    a practical use for a nebula could be to decrease visibility and hide space stations/other things that are inside from the map (until discovered?). The nebula would have to be 1000s of times more dense than real life in order to do this, but that is still plausible, better than giving a debuff for being surrounded by a bit of H2 gas. It could make the systems that don't have stars potentially more interesting, if some of them contained obscuring nebulae.
    A concrete YES to this. I love the idea of hiding a shipyard in a nebula like that and building a secret fleet xD
    Remains from ancient Galactic Wars.
    Randonly generated shipwrecks surrounded in leaking gases? Count me in. Maybe give the wrecks themselves asteroid physics and make them mineable, but of course not pilotable. It would give exploration a purpose too, so you could be hunting for the long-lost SS Whatever to mine its hull blocks or something.
     
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    All of you seem to think that nebulae needs to be 1000 of times more dense to actually hide something player-created.
    Why?
    because most real life nebulae are less dense than any vacuum we can create here on Earth. They're only visible because they are enormous; you could hide things inside or behind a real life nebula, yes, but only from observers at such extreme distances that it doesn't matter anyways, you'd need a super-duper-telescope to see them (and you'd need to know where they were already to find these objects with said telescope). Inside a nebula, everything within many light-years would be easily visible.
     
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    because most real life nebulae are less dense than any vacuum we can create here on Earth. They're only visible because they are enormous; you could hide things inside or behind a real life nebula, yes, but only from observers at such extreme distances that it doesn't matter anyways, you'd need a super-duper-telescope to see them (and you'd need to know where they were already to find these objects with said telescope). Inside a nebula, everything within many light-years would be easily visible.
    You are absolutely correct, but this isn't real life.....
    I assume every1 wants something like this?
    (just skip to 1:30)
    Because if something like this existed here, that would be great.
     

    Valiant70

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    How about we NOT confuse nebulae and little gas clouds. You can certainly have little blobs of dust, gas, and junk that look sort of like that. (Think asteroid field, only it's gas instead of rocks.) Nebulae are kind of already a thing if you have procedural backgrounds on. They just don't do anything.
     

    sayerulz

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    What about this: there would be some super dense nebulae that would totally block radar, and be visually obstructing as well. They would be a perfect place to hide, and whatever gas harvesting system would work twice as well. BUT because of how dense they are, they are unstable. This means that there would be frequent bursts of radiation that could rapidly deplete shields and damage players in unshielded ships. There would also be lightning discharges from the static charge created by all of the nebula particles. These would act like a powerful beam with perhaps 80% EMP effect, so it could only damage ships slightly, but would severely drain power. These would exist within larger multisystem nebulae, and would have a small chance at any time to dissipate, while and normal nebula sector has an equal chance to become an "ion storm" or whatever you want to call them. This would keep them at a more or less constant number, but with shifting locations.
     
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