Read by Council Debris items and nebula

[ltmauve]

Rather than have debris drop as little icons that have to be picked up separately, instead they should have a little debris cloud.

Client-side it would look like a bunch of dust and random grey shapes, but server-side it would be a little box that doesn't have any collision, with an inventory. To pick it up, hit it with a salvage beam. By the way, it will still react to other weapons fire, losing random inventory from weapons that hit it. The salvage beam would pull items out of the debris' inventory to its own storage.

If you shoot a storage, the debris shouldn't be 100% effecient. Instead, some stuff will be destroyed.

You can see how a debris cloud would work similar to a nebula. Scale it up to about 50m, put a bunch of them near each other in a fancy shape, give them a prettier visual and you're all done.

Now, what would someone get out of a nebula? We can either have them get something they can get somewhere else, that we already have, or we have them get something new from it. I'm not sure which would be best, but I'm going to propose a new set of resources that could be gotten from the nebulas.

Spoiler: Nebula resource proposal

Nebula are colored according to their resources. There are 8 different colors of "gas" that nebula may possibly contain, though most nebula overall will only contain 3 or 4, and each "cloud" will only contain 2 or 3 of them.
Preliminary names:
Red: Metron
Orange: Syntogen
Yellow: Thorine
Green: Bastine
Blue: Hatlogen
Purple: Seriton
Black: Noxenon
White: Parsegen
These will be put in the capsule refinery, for 5 capsules of the gas.
They'll be used to make player weapons and gear, along with a small amount of normal resources. They will also be used in creature creation (i.e. mad scientist gene-modding type stuff)

 

[jayman38]

I love this idea for a nebula. It moves most of the strain of nebulas from the server to the client (mostly rendering). That means different clients can have different renderings. (Some people might like the colorful computer-enhanced nebula pictures, while realists would prefer various shades of grey in their nebulas.)

Since nebulas include a lot of dust, we don't necessarily need new elements for them. I think you might be able to get the same old crystals and ores from nebulas. Just at a very very slow rate. However, that doesn't mean you can't have new elements in them.

Plus, I think applying this to dropped inventory fields is a great way to improve the looks and immersion of the game.

I would recommend that as an astronaut, just passing through, you can automatically pick up one or two items from the inventory cloud into personal inventory per so many ticks (10 seconds? Server configurable?). The personal salvage beam would be more efficient, but that shouldn't preclude Dave's ability to reach out and grab something with his hand (assuming it doesn't sear his hand off at 22 km/s).

That brings me to speed. If the astronaut can pick things up from the nebula, restrict item pick-ups to regular astronaut speeds (<20m/s?), while at ship speeds, exposed astronauts suddenly experience inventory fields as areas of damage instead of areas of items. So if Dave passes through at 50m/s, he gets HP damage instead of an inventory item. (Assuming the space suits are self-sealing, it's a one-time HP hit.) And maybe remove some random number of items from the cloud (to simulate them bouncing off or flying through Dave and drifting off into space.)

 

[ltmauve]

I was thinking the nebula would be colored based on the composition of the nebula, so if there was metron (red) and syntogen (orange) in the nebula, it would mainly be red and orange.

I suppose there would be small amount of crystal and metal in the nebula, but I mainly see it as a source of gas resources, just as asteroids should mainly contain metal and crystal, but might have a little pocket of gas somewhere. And does it even make sense to use a block of metal to alter something's DNA?

The speed thing is interesting, not sure about the damage, since these wouldn't dissipate if you colided with them in a ship (collisionless, remember?) so it might be disconcerting to have a random chunk of debris fly through space and whack off half your HP when you are in the middle of your ship.

 

[jayman38]

I was thinking the nebula would be colored based on the composition of the nebula, so if there was metron (red) and syntogen (orange) in the nebula, it would mainly be red and orange.

I suppose there would be small amount of crystal and metal in the nebula, but I mainly see it as a source of gas resources, just as asteroids should mainly contain metal and crystal, but might have a little pocket of gas somewhere. And does it even make sense to use a block of metal to alter something's DNA?

The speed thing is interesting, not sure about the damage, since these wouldn't dissipate if you colided with them in a ship (collisionless, remember?) so it might be disconcerting to have a random chunk of debris fly through space and whack off half your HP when you are in the middle of your ship.

I think you are right.
1. Colors based on resources sounds good. Then you know what to expect when you start scooping.

2. Gas resources sound fun, and bioengineering sounds like a great new addition to the game. (More minigames! Wooo!) Yeah, the solid stuff probably wouldn't be used so much for DNA stuff, but solid stuff is still in nebulas, even if only at a molecular amount (Fewer ppm, hence my low quantity suggestion). Solid items can still be a required part of a particularly-hardy creature's diet, or creation. (For organically growing the tougher parts of their bodies, such as skeleton and outer shells.) I would recommend that gasses be in the inventory in canisters, similar to "suspended" crystals and ores.

3. Since the ship passes right through item clouds, I now see your point regarding speed-based cloud-to-astronaut damage. I can imagine a new player being frustrated at the death of his crew, simply because he tried to pick up some stuff. Good call!

Additional ideas:
1. Adding these nebulas to "asteroid fields", to give a more unified feel to asteroid fields. That way, it feels like one rock is part of a larger whole, simply because there's additional stuff in the form of nebulas between individual rocks of the field.

2. Have you already made a "bioengineering" suggestion thread? Could be popular if you haven't done it already.

3. Bioengineering should be probably the most complex "factory" system in the game, probably requiring several different types of waters, crystals, gasses, and plants for each creature. It would be good to have a bioengineering database (maybe a game folder?) with individual creature "recipes", so that the playerbase can add to the possible creations, eventually creating wildly complex recipes for a great number of creatures. Then imagine a massive factory on your home base cranking out hundreds of monsters for defense against boarders. Could be OP in that case! On the other hand, such a monster factory would be an interesting thing to add to abandoned stations to provide a central "shutdown" quest for the station, and to explain the presence of the laser spiders.

There. That's a novel. I've written my quota now. :p

 

[ltmauve]

Okay, I'm pretty sure this thread was pre-council, so I'm going to bump it to bring it to CIR 's attention and see if it goes anywhere.

 

[Darkkon]

I support this idea, it seems like a very nice addition. Although nebulae shouldn't dissipate because someone took all the inventory, they should regenerate over time imo.

 

[aRottenKomquat]

I like the idea of nebulae and gas resources. Not sure on random debris fields though.

Nebulae could be very interesting if they were rare, with only a few instances per galaxy, and provided resources that are not vital to survival but can confer some major bonuses when used in crafting, e.g. reactors that are 50% more powerful or armor blocks with 50% more armor.

 

[sayerulz]

This is not a bad idea gameplay wise, but I am concerned about performance.

 

[Darkkon]

Performance is an issue that will be resolved over time. Having the rendering client-side would take the load off the servers though so there should be less server crashes. And as the rendering technique for the game on the whole is improved, performance should become less of a concern anyway.

 

[Madman198237]

I like the idea of nebulae providing gases. I hate the names, though. How about some "hydrogen", "helium", "methane", and maybe even a bit of "oxygen". Wouldn't those be cool.


And technically, you modify genes by using modified viruses to "infect" the host with the new DNA. However, these gases could be used instead to create organic compounds, and from there you can move to modifying DNA. Or you could just modify DNA with a lab table, some fancy, preferably moderately noisy, machinery, and an animal.

 

[ltmauve]

I support this idea, it seems like a very nice addition. Although nebulae shouldn't dissipate because someone took all the inventory, they should regenerate over time imo.

Good point. Though it would probably work like asteroids - it would just respawn.

Not sure on random debris fields though.

WOuld you rather have the loot clouds we have now?

Nebulae could be very interesting if they were rare, with only a few instances per galaxy, and provided resources that are not vital to survival but can confer some major bonuses when used in crafting, e.g. reactors that are 50% more powerful or armor blocks with 50% more armor.

Tiered crafting is bad. See one of the many threads on it for reasons why

I hate the names, though. How about some "hydrogen", "helium", "methane", and maybe even a bit of "oxygen". Wouldn't those be cool.

Well, the devs are clearly not going for the "actual chemistry" route, given the names they picked for the ores and crystals. And I support that.

And technically, you modify genes by using modified viruses to "infect" the host with the new DNA. However, these gases could be used instead to create organic compounds, and from there you can move to modifying DNA. Or you could just modify DNA with a lab table, some fancy, preferably moderately noisy, machinery, and an animal.

A) Video game.
B) I actually made a thread for a bioengineering suggestion shortly after this one. linky~

 

[Madman198237]

LTMAUVE! Let me go all astrobiologist without your additional crap!!!!!

 

[ltmauve]

LTMAUVE! Let me go all astrobiologist without your additional crap!!!!!

Additional crap? What additional crap?

 

[Madman198237]

You're spoiling my science with reality. Stop that!

 

[ltmauve]

You're spoiling my science with reality. Stop that!

... are you actually upset, or are you being sarcastic? I can't tell.
Anyway, I do have a thread on bioengineering, so maybe poke at that instead.

Link to that.

 

[Madman198237]

I'm joking. So, there. But, seriously, how could anybody ever be that upset over something so stupid? It's meant to be obviously over-the-top and absurd.

 

[Byamarro]

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/62790607.jpg
I'm into it