Making ships SO much cooler

[Xotano]

all of this, all of it, it all sounds good, add it now, chop chop :D

 

[Calbiri]

There are some major issues with turrets right now, but ill leave those to the bug forum, what i have on the link below are some of my early suggestions on improving turrets and some minor ideas towards docked AI ships (used as drones)
(yes its an old post, dont spam me about problems listed that have been fixed please)
http://www.star-made.org/content/turrets-and-drones

 

[Calbiri]

Ok, so if youve explored a bit, youmay have encountered the sun... :D yes, in all its block melting goodness its \"cool\"
But imagine if you fly into the suns sector and found a giant ball of actual star... (instead of just a bright light)
Your engines sputter, you lose altitude, its pulling you in and.... you burn up faster the closer you get until you hit the surface, then your ship is vaporized instantly
Combining this with sheilds that can resist sun/damage (assuming each \"ray\" of sun damaging you has a set or scaled [based on distance] amount of damage.)
Ya this isnt a \"ship\" feature exactly, but its close enough to ship functions (near a star)

 

[Calbiri]

Sorry, but while im on the topic of stellar improvements, i have a small list of more suggestions

• 
  Line planets up on system ecliptic planes (make the planets generally on flat orbits)
• 
  Maybe give small \"moons\" to random planets and more to gas giants
• 
  Make the \"sprite\" planetary disc of planets seen from afar always face the veiwer, instead of usually showing the disc from some side perspective (this wouldnt effect the actually placement of the blocks in the planet disc when close in)
• 
  Gas giants
• 
  Less frequent asteroids in systems (still as they are in void sectors) except inside randomly spaced \"Belts\" or planetary rings

 

[Calbiri]

Real time 2 way gates within gate block frames (like the type of gates in the portals games)
they drain ship power until enough power to activate for 1 jump
possibly 1 can be carried on a flagship? (or any ship qwith adequate power)
block cost is very high (hundreds of millions, these arent generally for personal use, more of a faction tool)
You can SEE the other side through the gate
gate is always open (careful of attacks from the other side)
theres just so much gameplay/tactics involved in this system :D
person gates are relavtively cheap for rich players, but gates to allow a destroyer would be billions to construct
Trade hubs would be possible/Ideal (admin can make sector a safezone to protect officail trade hubs)

 

[Calbiri]

making grav blocks have a set feild range, orientable, and toggle on/off based on proximity (with a locked off switch)
this would solve the issue of getting out of your core and falling through your ships rear as it speeds away
this would also allow Futurama style transport tubes
can even be weaponized using disentegrator blocks and a sort of catapult
the catapult could also be used with normal ships as a speedy local travel method (generally within a sector or 2)
would allow for \"centrifugal\" style gravity in ships

 

[Calbiri]

being able to carry a spawnpoint and buy ships aboard ships over a certain size/mass would be helpful
an example, you have a big carrier with dozens of fighters, but only 5 freinds to fly them (this is aside from your drone fighters)
a friend gets shot down, but simply spawns in the carrier and hops in a new fighter
the ship purchase ablitity (with a spawn time greater the more the ship costs) would have keep a fleet supplied in a sustained faction battle (maybe capping the mass/ship cost allowed to be purchased)
An even better method for the mobile ship catalog, make it require blocks in storage on its carrier ship to actually build the catalog ships with, now you must keep supplied, risk lots more resources on that big ship, and a fleet battle doesnt come down to who has more money, but who has bothered to stock more into their carrier, builds more effecient ships, has more skilled fighter (dont blow themselves up)
This resource system can also be used to \"repair\" a purchased ship, it removes all blocks, then rebuilds according to the saved schematic using inventory/storage blocks for a fee of course (this would also work to simply dismantle a mothballed ship)
Additionally this setup would Tie in well with Xyrafyrs idea on Munnitions blocks that take damage as you fire as a way of tracking/removing ammo. Repairing would remove the proper ammo type from storage, and place it in the schematic defined spot in you ship without you having to get out and reload each block by hand

 

[Calbiri]

I know that life support is a planned feature, so i submit we consider this as part of the system
A rock furnace/gas factory, you throw in certain rock types to get certain gas type, for your ships atmosphere, also for terraforming planets, for filling up asteroids (possibly an option to melt \"ice\" as well)...
Id also like to add in the suggestion that a large enough mass object should be able to start generating its own atmosphere (and a size-scaling effect, like you see from afar) so that airless moons (ya we will eventually have those) can slowly be given a breathable VISIBLE atmostphere (or very large bases/stations developing an atmosphere from leaked internal gasses)
this would mean the need to tie the atmospheric effect to an object rather than the sector it is generated in
additionally an option to pick o2/co2/methane/hyrdogen/anoroebic/aquatic breathing types (and unable to breathe the others) would be an interesting feature in character control (these types are just examples)

 

[Calbiri]

Imagine flying into your factions home sector and seeing a dozen of your factions specailized (and faction exclusive ship saved) fighters flying around on guard duty, attacking any hostile faction ships, or even any neutral ships (depending on the passive/neutral/aggressive stance you set your faction to) a mass limit would be needed to prevent exploits, as well as instant destructs if the core is damaged (to prevent loss of top secret designs to enemy factions, or item duping by the home faction) and be unharvestable by any faction.
maybe set the spawn rates to be higher per day at a fiscal cost to the home faction?
oh, and faction banks, for things like base repair, faction mob spawns, and the like would be cool too

 

[achoo92]

Carriers are big because the carry ships, not cause they build them. Spawning on carriers is a great idea. Buying ships is not. You want more ships? Make your carrier bigger, or the ships smaller.
I like the idea of gathering an atmosphere, that goes right along with adding gravity to objects based on their mass. though the proccess at which it gathers the atmosphere may be difficult to code...
Having spawns in a factions system could make people lazy in the defense of their property. You want defense? Build turrets.... lots of turrets.

 

[Calbiri]

What rule says a large space based carrier can\'t manufacture ships? Battlestar Galactica did, war hammer has that precedent, even star Trek\'s Voyager managed to build a ship, as well as many other sci-fi worlds. I don\'t mean buying a ship for straight credits though, I mean building a ship using gathered resources that are stored aboard the carrier/factory ship... look at the idea I mentioned about building schematics using inventory blocks.

Schema plans to have ship atmosphere\'s, its up to him how he wants to do that.

Why should pirate NPCs spawn near a factions home? Replace them with faction aligned fighter sized ships. Considering the relative weakness of a few picket ships, if you depend on them for defense then you deserve to be invaded.

 

[achoo92]

well, how about some sort of block that allows you to buy a ship, and it docks it on the ship/station that you put the block(s) on. which would limit the size of the ship based on how much room the mothership has, and have it cosume rescources as suggested.
Ships, yes, but you also mentioned moons and asteroids. Which wouldn\'t accumulate an atmosphere without something basically colliding with it.
And why shouldn\'t pirates spawn near a factions home? They are PIRATES, they show up everywhere. Altough, it would be cool if the pirates spawned at a \"pirate station\" or something and traveled outwards from there, made raids and such until you can destroy their base. Or maybe claim it to spawn freindlies?

 

[Calbiri]

Now those are suggestions
I like both
As for the limit on ship size..., make it a time based build, you can build an entire new carrier if you have the blocks, and lots if time (this would depend on the build block creating maybe 5-10 blocks a second, or whatever amount seems balanced, the same method could be used to repair other ships

 

[Calbiri]

Perhaps it would be feasible to make AI\'s be more directly limited to what they are linked to, for example, linking an ai to the core gives it control of all sublinked systems under the core, essentially the whole ship
or you could link the ai to just 1 computers set to fire sideways for a broadside, then, the ai could only operate that 1 weapon computer, and be content to shoot something that comes into veiw on the side of the ship (but be unable to pilot or control other systems

 

[achoo92]

that would make turrets for ships more simple, without changing the way turrets attachted to a station would work. would also be cool to have a targeting ai or something if target locking on missles ever becomes more advanced

 

[Calbiri]

Perhaps make ship purchase\'s take a small construction fee (a % credits based on schematic mass) and require the blocks needed to build the ship be player supplied
then, have a build timer occur, based on mass (say 1 second build time added per each mass in the schematic)
and the ship will slowly build itself out starting from the core and expanding in a larger/larger cube until all parts of the ship are built,
OR make the timer based on the growing construction cube/space, each additional cube size increase adds 5 seconds (or whatever number) to the total build time... although this would tend to favor larger ships (since larger cubes would inclose more are per cube each itteration)

 

[BasicPaul]

Love the idea.

Id like to see a system where parts of your ship could detatch if severed.

Additionally, I like the idea that you could keep replacement parts stocked, and then fly them into place and attatch them as if welding a new plate or section in place.

 

[Digi]

In my opinion, this should be automatically done by the game... in the sense that if you cut the ship in half, it should split into pieces.

Of course, implementing this would require alot of work to instantly create entities with large amount of blocks... and huge amount of debris entities that are persistent (don\'t disappear or blow up)... imagine a battle of 2 huge ships firing on eachother... the amount of space junk they create there would be just awesome !

 

[Morrigi]

Definite +1 on the structure suggestion. Seeing bits of ship drifting off into space would be quite satisfying.

 

[Jolkanin]

Yeeeeeeeesssssssss not just block disappearance, but parts just flying off :D Combined with impact damage, think about the amount of mayham a complete explosion of a ship would cause!