- Joined
- Apr 23, 2013
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This is a suggestion i touched on in this post.
So, one of the things many of us can agree on regarding the power system is that trying to make a ship "punch above its weight" by placing a bigger reactor than it should be able to handle should carry some kind of penalty rather than being prevented completely. How to determine how big your reactor should be is the topic of a lot of other threads, but something that caught my attention was the idea that you could actually let the player decide what the penalty should be and open up a lot of potential for customisation and minmaxing fun.
Assume we have built a ship. We finished making the hull and the reactor and it turns out the reactor is much bigger than it should be, whether it's because we didn't fit enough stabilizers or the ship doesn't have enough heat boundaries or silhouette or whatever. Say our ship has 1500 power when it should "only be able to fit" 1000. Since we've gone past our "limit" by 50%, we now have 50 "Penalty Points". Similarly, if we had 4000 power on a 2000 limit ship, we'd have 100 penalty points to get rid of.
In a prominent menu somewhere next to the reactor menu, there'd be an interface with lots of colorful sliders and checkboxes. Some sliders and checkboxes could be very simple, like a "structure HP penalty" slider or a "this ship has volatile reactors" checkbox. Some could be more complicated, like "whenever you take damage, your aim goes bonkers" checkbox. Every slider would take off as many penalty points as you've dragged up the slider, and every checkbox would take off a set amount of penalty points.
If penalty points aren't assigned, the extra power is wasted. That way there's a kind of hard limit to how much power a ship can make, but i think there should be enough options to punish yourself that it never actually really comes into play. Additionally, a counterpart to penalty points, "Bonus Points", could be added that you can assign just like reverse penalties into various areas to make an underpowered ship slightly stronger.
So, one of the things many of us can agree on regarding the power system is that trying to make a ship "punch above its weight" by placing a bigger reactor than it should be able to handle should carry some kind of penalty rather than being prevented completely. How to determine how big your reactor should be is the topic of a lot of other threads, but something that caught my attention was the idea that you could actually let the player decide what the penalty should be and open up a lot of potential for customisation and minmaxing fun.
Assume we have built a ship. We finished making the hull and the reactor and it turns out the reactor is much bigger than it should be, whether it's because we didn't fit enough stabilizers or the ship doesn't have enough heat boundaries or silhouette or whatever. Say our ship has 1500 power when it should "only be able to fit" 1000. Since we've gone past our "limit" by 50%, we now have 50 "Penalty Points". Similarly, if we had 4000 power on a 2000 limit ship, we'd have 100 penalty points to get rid of.
In a prominent menu somewhere next to the reactor menu, there'd be an interface with lots of colorful sliders and checkboxes. Some sliders and checkboxes could be very simple, like a "structure HP penalty" slider or a "this ship has volatile reactors" checkbox. Some could be more complicated, like "whenever you take damage, your aim goes bonkers" checkbox. Every slider would take off as many penalty points as you've dragged up the slider, and every checkbox would take off a set amount of penalty points.
If penalty points aren't assigned, the extra power is wasted. That way there's a kind of hard limit to how much power a ship can make, but i think there should be enough options to punish yourself that it never actually really comes into play. Additionally, a counterpart to penalty points, "Bonus Points", could be added that you can assign just like reverse penalties into various areas to make an underpowered ship slightly stronger.