- Joined
- Jul 11, 2013
- Messages
- 277
- Reaction score
- 20
Well, since these things won't stop bugging me, I thought I will share them with you and find out whether any of these ideas are good:
1) Flashing lights/beacons - the idea is that we would have the ability to program all the lights and beacons (also colored beacons) to flash or switch on/off at random (or specific) intervals.
Basically, this would mean that we could make runway lights, position lights, ''police'' lights, system lights and any other kinds of lights you can imagine.
For example: having lights on the side of the ship that simulate rooms is nice. But if these lights could switch on and off randomly (following a pattern programmed by the user) they would simulate people entering and exiting rooms on the ship and would make the whole thing come alive.
We could have lights that symbolise energy transfer to systems or power cables. We could also have lights for rail-gun effect i.e. lights flashing in a sequence going in a specific direction.
It would add some life to the game.
Programs for lights and flash patterns would be set in build menu. When the ship is saved, they program is saved with the ship and loads up with the blueprint. These patterns would then be animated client-side and an option would be available in the graphics menu to switch the animations off. They are not syncronised and they do not affect server performance, only visual client side effects.
2) EMP weapon - a weapon that can charge up and release all the ships stored electrical energy. The charge would take about 10 seconds (grouping emp blocks could have some effects such as more power, range or quicker loading etc). While the EMP is charging, there would be lightning flashes appearing on the hull of the ship - following the outline of the ship like shields do. These would get more frequent as the charge goes up and when it's ready, a large ball of electric charge would ''explode''.
Ships and objects in the EMP range would suffer from disrupted scanners, drained electric charge and a progressively lower regeneration penalty. Ships would be disabled completely only if the EMP was powerful enough to drain all their electricity AND disable generators (which would have an EMP resistance value equal to half their regen value or something along those lines).
Disabled ships cannot use any weapons or move - they are after all disabled. EMP would only be useful when mounted on very large ships which can generate enough energy to disable other ships.
I think shields should also drain with EMP but I'm not sure how people would react to that.
3) Fixing ships from blueprints at the shop - Often, I found that people scrap damaged ships in favor of buying fresh ones. I haven't found much use for tech-beams either since usually blocks are destroyed more often than being simply damaged. This is because building takes al ot more time than buying and people usually tend to have a lot of credits.
Therefore I think there should be an option for people with blueprints of ships they own to fix those ships and restore them to original blueprint condition.
Fixing a ship will cost as much money as is needed to replace all damaged or destroyed blocks. Simple.
4) Thrusters mounted on turrets should enhance turning speed and general mobility - basically engines on hinges. They could apply thrust to help turn large ships around with more force.
5) Ability to use turrets as hinges for miscellaneous uses - I'm experimenting with making turrets into hangar bay doors. The idea is sound and works in practice but it's very cumbersome. An alternative is to use ugly plex doors or leave open hangars.
What if we could use ai turrets to have sliding and turning doors for hangars and other purposes? Maybe covers for turret mounted salvaging systems?
All we would need to do this is to have the ability to program the AI to turn a turret by a certain amount of degrees in a certain direction at the touch of a button (hangar doors added to quick bar like weapons?). When we assign a number to the doors, we could just click it and watch them open automatically.
6) Free camera mode. Press a button and enter the free camera mode where the camera itself pivots around the ship core but allows you to look in any direction.
It would be good to at least have some more freedom in looking sideways from the cockpits.
7) Turrets should get a shield bonus based on the amount of shields on the ship. Simple, something like 10-20% of the shield power of the ship would protect the turret. If the ship loses it's shields, all turrets lose this bonus. It would help making tiny turrets or turrets with little shields of their own more protected.
Well that is all I have so far. It's a lot of different ideas which probably won't make it into the game anytime soon if at all, but I feel better for sharing them.
Any feedback is welcome.
1) Flashing lights/beacons - the idea is that we would have the ability to program all the lights and beacons (also colored beacons) to flash or switch on/off at random (or specific) intervals.
Basically, this would mean that we could make runway lights, position lights, ''police'' lights, system lights and any other kinds of lights you can imagine.
For example: having lights on the side of the ship that simulate rooms is nice. But if these lights could switch on and off randomly (following a pattern programmed by the user) they would simulate people entering and exiting rooms on the ship and would make the whole thing come alive.
We could have lights that symbolise energy transfer to systems or power cables. We could also have lights for rail-gun effect i.e. lights flashing in a sequence going in a specific direction.
It would add some life to the game.
Programs for lights and flash patterns would be set in build menu. When the ship is saved, they program is saved with the ship and loads up with the blueprint. These patterns would then be animated client-side and an option would be available in the graphics menu to switch the animations off. They are not syncronised and they do not affect server performance, only visual client side effects.
2) EMP weapon - a weapon that can charge up and release all the ships stored electrical energy. The charge would take about 10 seconds (grouping emp blocks could have some effects such as more power, range or quicker loading etc). While the EMP is charging, there would be lightning flashes appearing on the hull of the ship - following the outline of the ship like shields do. These would get more frequent as the charge goes up and when it's ready, a large ball of electric charge would ''explode''.
Ships and objects in the EMP range would suffer from disrupted scanners, drained electric charge and a progressively lower regeneration penalty. Ships would be disabled completely only if the EMP was powerful enough to drain all their electricity AND disable generators (which would have an EMP resistance value equal to half their regen value or something along those lines).
Disabled ships cannot use any weapons or move - they are after all disabled. EMP would only be useful when mounted on very large ships which can generate enough energy to disable other ships.
I think shields should also drain with EMP but I'm not sure how people would react to that.
3) Fixing ships from blueprints at the shop - Often, I found that people scrap damaged ships in favor of buying fresh ones. I haven't found much use for tech-beams either since usually blocks are destroyed more often than being simply damaged. This is because building takes al ot more time than buying and people usually tend to have a lot of credits.
Therefore I think there should be an option for people with blueprints of ships they own to fix those ships and restore them to original blueprint condition.
Fixing a ship will cost as much money as is needed to replace all damaged or destroyed blocks. Simple.
4) Thrusters mounted on turrets should enhance turning speed and general mobility - basically engines on hinges. They could apply thrust to help turn large ships around with more force.
5) Ability to use turrets as hinges for miscellaneous uses - I'm experimenting with making turrets into hangar bay doors. The idea is sound and works in practice but it's very cumbersome. An alternative is to use ugly plex doors or leave open hangars.
What if we could use ai turrets to have sliding and turning doors for hangars and other purposes? Maybe covers for turret mounted salvaging systems?
All we would need to do this is to have the ability to program the AI to turn a turret by a certain amount of degrees in a certain direction at the touch of a button (hangar doors added to quick bar like weapons?). When we assign a number to the doors, we could just click it and watch them open automatically.
6) Free camera mode. Press a button and enter the free camera mode where the camera itself pivots around the ship core but allows you to look in any direction.
It would be good to at least have some more freedom in looking sideways from the cockpits.
7) Turrets should get a shield bonus based on the amount of shields on the ship. Simple, something like 10-20% of the shield power of the ship would protect the turret. If the ship loses it's shields, all turrets lose this bonus. It would help making tiny turrets or turrets with little shields of their own more protected.
Well that is all I have so far. It's a lot of different ideas which probably won't make it into the game anytime soon if at all, but I feel better for sharing them.
Any feedback is welcome.
