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- Jul 29, 2013
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Been playing for a few weeks. Been thinking about this game a lot. Read about it a little. So i post this to share my ideas/suggestions.
Torpedoes
Basically very heavy missiles meant to take out heavy targets (devastating damage that could bleed through shields? Their goal is to take out heavy targets. I'd see them as a way to counter super-screened ships) Have them have low ROF to avoid spam.
Make them move at a reasonable pace, make them big in size... the reason being (keep reading, they shoudnt be OP)..
Shooting down torpedoes, missiles and point defense is a thing:
It would be fun (imho) if we could shoot down torpedoes before impact. And missiles too.
Either with our guns, or setting up an AI option for turrets to tell them to target “ordinance” first of all. A real point-defense turret behavior. If they don't have any ordinance in range..they shoot at “any”.
That's another layer for strategy when building ships. I think it would be fun.
..there could be AMMs (anti-missiles missiles), their accuracy is offset by their low ROF so they woudnt be reliable against a large/ constant barrage.
More flexible turret system
Beyond what have been already sugested (rotating canon bits, sharing power/screen with supporting ship) i think it would be nice if the mothership could be the one carrying the weapon blocks and the turret being that “output” for that set. The smaller turrets could then focus on looking nice, the mothership would, however, have to deal with the added bulk and energy needs to make the turret work.
Kinda like real turrets do in current (real-life) warships. What we see is the moving, shooting bit, but there's a lot of infrastructure under it, going deep in the ship.
Maybe the AI module (for turrets) could offer a few extra options. Like the turn rate for the turret (they all turn super fast), firing angle restriction (they behave strangely quite often, but i'd like it if it was possible to "force" some turrets to look at specific directions/hemispeheres so they focus their fire there) and such.
Heat system.
IMHO, as a way to counter ships that have hundreds of small gun to game the fact that the AMC is just too good right now. Might slow down the non-stop barrage of shot we always see. Also makes for more strategy when building and fighting ships.
The point being that heat will slow down the pace of combat a bit, having to place shots rather than just spam for all eternity.
It would work like the power bar, but in reverse, you want it to stay down.
Heat generated by :
Heat pool (max heat cap) affected by :
Heat dissipation (getting rid of heat) by :
What happens when overheating? You can still move, but cant fire weapons until heat dissipates back to safe levels (ala mechwarrior without the part where you blow up)
I dont put heat generation with thrusters nor energy generation as i guess they would be too troublesome to balance.
Fuel?
Would the inclusion of fueltank block to power the generators be a good idea? They dont need to be inefficient to be of use. Maybe a core would provide a little “unlimited” quantity of fuel for very small ships, and stuff like fighters wouldn’t need more than one or two clock of fuel to be effective. But for larger stuff that put out thousands and thousands of energy output.. i'd like to see them needing it.
But honestly.. i mostly see it as an extra sensitive target to shoot at, hoping to get a good hit in and see the fuel burn/blow up and damaging the target further.
Having fuel would add several options, such as fuel tanker ships, fuel transfer “beam” and such to refuel ships from a small distance.
Ship classification and role for AI use.
A way to assign ships blueprints to AI more easily, and setting them a “role” that change what the ai will do with it. Linked with faction system. Something you set up when you save a blueprint.
Examples:
Factions being Traders, pirates and military.
Roles being Combat, Trade (had support role but cant think of a way it would work).
So we would get a bunch of behaviors;
If ship is Trader faction, with trade role.. its a pure trade ship (goods, people and the like, it will want escorts) so all it does is moving from station/shop to another.
If Trader Faction with combat role, its an escort ship. It follows its buddies around as they do commerce and protect them.
Pirate F+ Trade R = Smuggler. (smuggle, basically trades illegal goods and try to avoid detection, ressuply pirate bases)
Pirate F + Combat R = Raider (patrol, attack then loot its victims)
Military F + Trade R = Supply/trade ship that usually goes with military-related stuff.
Military F + Combat R= Combat ship, meant to fight. Will escort military supply ships and patrol the sector to find pirates.
Make it so that slow-firing heavy guns can be a viable option.
Because my ideal capital ships fire very powerfull single shots at long range, slowly (ala homeworld). But to be effective now its machinegun spam for everyone.
Yeah, its not much explanation. But that's how i feel about it.
Missile launchers fire from the way their output block is facing, and not “forward” as it is now.
I think it would be nicer visually, missile tubes don't need to face their targets anyway.. (plus Heatseekers move a few meters straight before "homing in", so if they launch in another direction that isnt forward before doign their thing.. it makes perfect sense).
Well, except for rockets. They need to face their target.
Docking blocks should allow us to set their facing, so any docking ships isnt forced to look forward.
I wanted to make a ship with drop pods in its belly to rain down on planets (ala HALO helljumpers), but not really doable right now, and carriers having all their passengers facing forward is "meh".
Docking ships shouldn’t be forced to use the ship core.
The dock have to acess the core, at most 1-2 block distace. It leave the core exposed.
Maybe some sort of proxy block (a block that serve as the dock anchor, and isnt the core) could be made to attach to a dock to allow bigger ships to do so without exposing their core to external fire.
That would make stuff like “airlocks” possible for large ships when docking to a station, for example. That wont hinder large ship design when you do want them to dock.
Dock beam that works both ways
I built a ship to carry around cargo containers, its a bother to go out and in the container to manually fire its beam to attach it to the “handler” ship. If the handler could fire a dock beam to tell the container to dock to himself..( like forcing the target ship to fire his beam to you) that would be usefull.
Ship core problems
Unless im mistaken (wich is likely), the ship center of rotation and the only way to control it is from the core.
The fact it is making noise indicate its a generator of some kind, its kinda annoying because i tend to use it in my ship control centers (bridge) and in the middle of others since it is also the center of rotation. Its a bit of a bother when i (try) to make good-looking ships. The engine room is silent and the bridge is noisy.
So the idea is; we could have blocks that can “take over” some function of the core (but you still need a core anyway), like an invisible/non-solid block that is considered the center of rotation of the ship (or the program figure it out on its own by using the middle point of the ship, by its dimensions?)
Edit - the noisemaker “core” that can kill your ship when hit, just place it in the generator room where its sound makes sense. The other blocks taking over its other functions.
And lastly, a block meant to be used as the block to control the ship; the control center block.
Cockpit block looks where it is facing.
Would be usefull for broadside ships, and for looking around when you use a utilitarian ship (like an harvester that looks down to fire loot beams, without having to face its target).
Better weapon computer interface
Use sliders to change the % around, would be faster than clicking arrows that way.
Or enter a value directly.
Better weapons option with computers, better info too.
When i set up a gun, some stats could use a bit more explaining (speed is velocity, distance for missiles is what?? They seem to go on forever with 40.. Rate of fire could use a metric rather than a somewhat vague number (something like shots per second).
Id like to see weapon computers give a lot of options. The number of blocks under each gun/launcher give it a “point budget” that wou can spend freely on stuff. You could have options that may, or may not cost a set % of the budget to allow special behaviors for the weapon.
Examples:
AMC -
Set DMG, Velocity, Maximum range, Rate of fire (per second? Minutes?). Those are the basic stuff.
Special stuff that would cost extra “points” to add:
Really special stuff that cost a set % of your budget to have:
Another special thing for AMCs: Damage falloff value. Maybe the standard value is 50% of damage at the point of maximum range. You pay points if you want your damage to stay 100% over all the range of the bolt (wich is the current behavior, damage doesnt change with range).
Aesthetic thing for guns: We could choose an aesthetic look for the bolts.. like “normal” shots like we have (they do vary in size i noticed), long bolts (like 2-3 times longer), tri-burst (still count as a single shot) and beams (very long bolts). Would be nice to set up their color too.
The same system above could be used for missiles. Basic stats (wich include turn rate), special stuff (AP, SP).
Maybe missiles could keep accelerating until out of “fuel” if they dont have a set speed.
How the damage falloff on the explosion radius behave could be played with.
A special thing for them could be if the missile have a warhead (set damage that doesnt change with range) and if it doesnt have one and instead use its fuel as the explosive medium (Damage decrease with the range, as there is less fuel to burn/blow up.. maybe it is more damaging this way as a bonus if you score close hits)
Once again, same system as above.. for shields:
You'll need a shield computer for that and it applies to all shield blocks on the ship.
The basic values could be what we get right now, but we could play around with stuff like:
Capacity (max shield points) Regen speed and shield reset speed.
Special stuff that cost extra: Damage reduction (set number or %), Deflection (% chance that a shot may bounce off and do no damage?)
Maybe shield could have a “hardness” or “puncture resistance” that prevent shots for punching through it.. but it could be broken. Like a fighter's measly shields cant protect it effectively against a capital ship heavy gun, so if the DMG of the shot is high enough it could get a chance to piece though the shield's hardness stat and hurt armor directly.
Or a heavily depleted shield lose its hardness, and ennemy shots start to hit you.
Maybe we could get different shield types. Like the one we got right now could be “hard” type (it holds strong until it cracks then you got nothing for a while).
A Soft shield that's more powerfull initially but its stats degrade quickly as it get depleted. It likes being as full as it can. (for hit n'runners)
A Fading shield that lets most shots through and hit armor.. not getting depleted much in the process, but significantly reduce the damage. (for countering small gun spam and helping armored ships) Basically it gives a %Damage reduction to any shots before it hit armor, but wont stop anything.
A shield computer could also be a way to neutralize a shield generator (make them stop working at all, even when blocks are still fine), since even a dying, crippled ship keeps generating screens non-stop.
Active sensor blocks
Counter sensor jammers by making their system less effective.
Improve detection range in general.
Makes you a lot easier to detect when activated (you are basically shouting “WHERE ARE YOU” in space) so active sensors arent for those seeking discretion, and its why it isnt a "perfect" option to have
Could improve turret accuracy (a tad) and improve missile lock-on times ( a bit)...
Maybe having active sensor blocks could have a passive effect, like 10% of the active bonus is working when in “passive/offline” mode (without the drawback) so its still usefull to have on your ship.
Shield burst charger block
Seems a bit too good.
Basically a shield battery that hold a charge and release it all at once (very fast regen) when the shields are getting low (20%?). So it can save your bacon when you are in trouble, wont work if shield collapsed too fast for it to do its thing. The drawback is, it takes a long while to recharge itself when spent and its very power-hungry when it does. (very inneficient power/shield ratio) but its an emergency thing.
The more blocks the more juice is sent back to the shields.
Can be set on/off if you want to allow it to recharge, controlled by a computer. That way it wont drain you dry when its done and you are still fighting.
More armor types
Pretty deep into game--balance country, its also frequently mentioned here.. but its worth talking about.
Armor blocks need more HP to resist burst damage. The DR% is fine as it is. They just get depeleted to quickly since its easy to stack up tons and tons of firepower on one point. (and missiles need a fix but its old news)
Having more tiers of armor blocks could be a solution, but it should be fairly priced since shields are good right now.
Some armor blocks could have a deflection chance? (shots glance off for no damage). Even a 5-10% chance of deflection could make a big difference in battle.
Some armor blocks could be powered (use up energy for increased performance? Toggleable?)
Beam weapons / mass driver
Like the ion cannon in homeworld, the warships in the Outsider webcomic. Beams because they are fun. I'd see them as slow-iring, hard-hitting weapons meant for capital ships. Choose your color.
Maybe the beam could stay a few seconds on "target" and damage whatever it hits (so it may pierce several layers if you stay on the same spot or damage several blocks if it moves around) while the mass driver shot could puncture several blocks at once(if it got the speed/damage to succeed).
Big guns that have different behaviors. Big fun.
More cosmetic blocks.
Id like to see smooth “plating” (or just a plain, simple texture, not a solid color nor the pattern we see with rocks/soil) options for ship/building interior, In a variety of colors.
A few extra colors for blocks like crimson red, forest green, cyan, orange, purple ect ect.
Good icons for cosmetic blocks display (all 4 are the same), and of course, more variety for them would be nice.
Stuff for blueprints:
The blueprint could give “vital stats” on its own (mass, shield, energy, ect), leaving the “comment” section for comments only. I find myself running out of room to explain a blueprint a bit too often.. i kinda like writing fluff for my stuff.
When saving a blueprint; being able to set it to a category (like trade ship, WIP, civilian ship, pirate ship ect) so that the list ca be structured with scrolling bars. It would help, imho, easier to find a plan when we aren’t looking at a long list.
If a category could have sub categories, that would be nice too. (Like Pirate ships – Small hulls, or Military ships – Capital hulls)
Pre-made fleets for AI spawning. Odds of spawnign some ships for AI.
Maybe as an admin, setting a “rarity value” to a blueprint (so some individual ships are rarer than others when the Ai can use them). That way we wont often see a swarm of expensive ships.
Also i would like it if it was possible for the player to set up something for the game to spawn a specific group of trader ships ( ex: 3-4 dedicated trader ships + a few escorts) , or a specific military patrol fleet as a pre-made encounter.Same with pirates.
It could take the form of a txt document (or some other mean in-game), being able to write a simple list of ships that the AI could spawn as a group.
The pre-made fleet could have a value to change the probability of them spawning at all, so its not always the same thing over and over.
That's in addition of the current spawning system.
.. and that's all. Discuss!
Torpedoes
Basically very heavy missiles meant to take out heavy targets (devastating damage that could bleed through shields? Their goal is to take out heavy targets. I'd see them as a way to counter super-screened ships) Have them have low ROF to avoid spam.
Make them move at a reasonable pace, make them big in size... the reason being (keep reading, they shoudnt be OP)..
Shooting down torpedoes, missiles and point defense is a thing:
It would be fun (imho) if we could shoot down torpedoes before impact. And missiles too.
Either with our guns, or setting up an AI option for turrets to tell them to target “ordinance” first of all. A real point-defense turret behavior. If they don't have any ordinance in range..they shoot at “any”.
That's another layer for strategy when building ships. I think it would be fun.
..there could be AMMs (anti-missiles missiles), their accuracy is offset by their low ROF so they woudnt be reliable against a large/ constant barrage.
More flexible turret system
Beyond what have been already sugested (rotating canon bits, sharing power/screen with supporting ship) i think it would be nice if the mothership could be the one carrying the weapon blocks and the turret being that “output” for that set. The smaller turrets could then focus on looking nice, the mothership would, however, have to deal with the added bulk and energy needs to make the turret work.
Kinda like real turrets do in current (real-life) warships. What we see is the moving, shooting bit, but there's a lot of infrastructure under it, going deep in the ship.
Maybe the AI module (for turrets) could offer a few extra options. Like the turn rate for the turret (they all turn super fast), firing angle restriction (they behave strangely quite often, but i'd like it if it was possible to "force" some turrets to look at specific directions/hemispeheres so they focus their fire there) and such.
Heat system.
IMHO, as a way to counter ships that have hundreds of small gun to game the fact that the AMC is just too good right now. Might slow down the non-stop barrage of shot we always see. Also makes for more strategy when building and fighting ships.
The point being that heat will slow down the pace of combat a bit, having to place shots rather than just spam for all eternity.
It would work like the power bar, but in reverse, you want it to stay down.
Heat generated by :
AMC and/or Energy weapons (lots, mostly based on damage and ROF)
Missiles (quantity fired, even then, low)
Support systems (on use, low)
Turrets (as their own thing, i do wish they would share heat with their mothership since they would be a bit too small to have enough heat dissipation)
Shields (when they recharge, low)
Heat pool (max heat cap) affected by :
mass of the ship/station, maybe some block types could store more/less?
heat sinks (blocks that can store a lot of heat)
Heat dissipation (getting rid of heat) by :
Ship “area”. Very low effect, passive. Mostly based on a value wich is based on mass+"dimension" of the ship.. unless surface area can be calculated.
Radiators. Low effect, passive. I'd see that as the main vent for non-combat ships.
Active Cooling block. Good effect but eat up power to work properly.
What happens when overheating? You can still move, but cant fire weapons until heat dissipates back to safe levels (ala mechwarrior without the part where you blow up)
I dont put heat generation with thrusters nor energy generation as i guess they would be too troublesome to balance.
Fuel?
Would the inclusion of fueltank block to power the generators be a good idea? They dont need to be inefficient to be of use. Maybe a core would provide a little “unlimited” quantity of fuel for very small ships, and stuff like fighters wouldn’t need more than one or two clock of fuel to be effective. But for larger stuff that put out thousands and thousands of energy output.. i'd like to see them needing it.
But honestly.. i mostly see it as an extra sensitive target to shoot at, hoping to get a good hit in and see the fuel burn/blow up and damaging the target further.
Having fuel would add several options, such as fuel tanker ships, fuel transfer “beam” and such to refuel ships from a small distance.
Ship classification and role for AI use.
A way to assign ships blueprints to AI more easily, and setting them a “role” that change what the ai will do with it. Linked with faction system. Something you set up when you save a blueprint.
Examples:
Factions being Traders, pirates and military.
Roles being Combat, Trade (had support role but cant think of a way it would work).
So we would get a bunch of behaviors;
If ship is Trader faction, with trade role.. its a pure trade ship (goods, people and the like, it will want escorts) so all it does is moving from station/shop to another.
If Trader Faction with combat role, its an escort ship. It follows its buddies around as they do commerce and protect them.
Pirate F+ Trade R = Smuggler. (smuggle, basically trades illegal goods and try to avoid detection, ressuply pirate bases)
Pirate F + Combat R = Raider (patrol, attack then loot its victims)
Military F + Trade R = Supply/trade ship that usually goes with military-related stuff.
Military F + Combat R= Combat ship, meant to fight. Will escort military supply ships and patrol the sector to find pirates.
Make it so that slow-firing heavy guns can be a viable option.
Because my ideal capital ships fire very powerfull single shots at long range, slowly (ala homeworld). But to be effective now its machinegun spam for everyone.
Yeah, its not much explanation. But that's how i feel about it.
Missile launchers fire from the way their output block is facing, and not “forward” as it is now.
I think it would be nicer visually, missile tubes don't need to face their targets anyway.. (plus Heatseekers move a few meters straight before "homing in", so if they launch in another direction that isnt forward before doign their thing.. it makes perfect sense).
Well, except for rockets. They need to face their target.
Docking blocks should allow us to set their facing, so any docking ships isnt forced to look forward.
I wanted to make a ship with drop pods in its belly to rain down on planets (ala HALO helljumpers), but not really doable right now, and carriers having all their passengers facing forward is "meh".
Docking ships shouldn’t be forced to use the ship core.
The dock have to acess the core, at most 1-2 block distace. It leave the core exposed.
Maybe some sort of proxy block (a block that serve as the dock anchor, and isnt the core) could be made to attach to a dock to allow bigger ships to do so without exposing their core to external fire.
That would make stuff like “airlocks” possible for large ships when docking to a station, for example. That wont hinder large ship design when you do want them to dock.
Dock beam that works both ways
I built a ship to carry around cargo containers, its a bother to go out and in the container to manually fire its beam to attach it to the “handler” ship. If the handler could fire a dock beam to tell the container to dock to himself..( like forcing the target ship to fire his beam to you) that would be usefull.
Ship core problems
Unless im mistaken (wich is likely), the ship center of rotation and the only way to control it is from the core.
The fact it is making noise indicate its a generator of some kind, its kinda annoying because i tend to use it in my ship control centers (bridge) and in the middle of others since it is also the center of rotation. Its a bit of a bother when i (try) to make good-looking ships. The engine room is silent and the bridge is noisy.
So the idea is; we could have blocks that can “take over” some function of the core (but you still need a core anyway), like an invisible/non-solid block that is considered the center of rotation of the ship (or the program figure it out on its own by using the middle point of the ship, by its dimensions?)
Edit - the noisemaker “core” that can kill your ship when hit, just place it in the generator room where its sound makes sense. The other blocks taking over its other functions.
And lastly, a block meant to be used as the block to control the ship; the control center block.
Cockpit block looks where it is facing.
Would be usefull for broadside ships, and for looking around when you use a utilitarian ship (like an harvester that looks down to fire loot beams, without having to face its target).
Better weapon computer interface
Use sliders to change the % around, would be faster than clicking arrows that way.
Or enter a value directly.
Better weapons option with computers, better info too.
When i set up a gun, some stats could use a bit more explaining (speed is velocity, distance for missiles is what?? They seem to go on forever with 40.. Rate of fire could use a metric rather than a somewhat vague number (something like shots per second).
Id like to see weapon computers give a lot of options. The number of blocks under each gun/launcher give it a “point budget” that wou can spend freely on stuff. You could have options that may, or may not cost a set % of the budget to allow special behaviors for the weapon.
Examples:
AMC -
Set DMG, Velocity, Maximum range, Rate of fire (per second? Minutes?). Those are the basic stuff.
Special stuff that would cost extra “points” to add:
Armor piercing (may ignore/reduce a set% of the armore protection, so an armor block with 50% DR hit by a gun with 5% DR will only have 45% DR for that shot.)
Shield piercing (may pass through shields a % of the time? Maybe punch through it if the shield isnt strong enough? Does extra damage to shields but is even worse against armor?) I honestly don't know what to make of it withotu it being too good.
Really special stuff that cost a set % of your budget to have:
Area of Effect. Gives splash damage to your shots (very little, like 2-3 at maximum) Its something i'd like to see, especially on long-ranged heavy guns (kinda like artillery.. but combat in starmade really doesnt go that way)
Another special thing for AMCs: Damage falloff value. Maybe the standard value is 50% of damage at the point of maximum range. You pay points if you want your damage to stay 100% over all the range of the bolt (wich is the current behavior, damage doesnt change with range).
Aesthetic thing for guns: We could choose an aesthetic look for the bolts.. like “normal” shots like we have (they do vary in size i noticed), long bolts (like 2-3 times longer), tri-burst (still count as a single shot) and beams (very long bolts). Would be nice to set up their color too.
The same system above could be used for missiles. Basic stats (wich include turn rate), special stuff (AP, SP).
Maybe missiles could keep accelerating until out of “fuel” if they dont have a set speed.
How the damage falloff on the explosion radius behave could be played with.
A special thing for them could be if the missile have a warhead (set damage that doesnt change with range) and if it doesnt have one and instead use its fuel as the explosive medium (Damage decrease with the range, as there is less fuel to burn/blow up.. maybe it is more damaging this way as a bonus if you score close hits)
Once again, same system as above.. for shields:
You'll need a shield computer for that and it applies to all shield blocks on the ship.
The basic values could be what we get right now, but we could play around with stuff like:
Capacity (max shield points) Regen speed and shield reset speed.
Special stuff that cost extra: Damage reduction (set number or %), Deflection (% chance that a shot may bounce off and do no damage?)
Maybe shield could have a “hardness” or “puncture resistance” that prevent shots for punching through it.. but it could be broken. Like a fighter's measly shields cant protect it effectively against a capital ship heavy gun, so if the DMG of the shot is high enough it could get a chance to piece though the shield's hardness stat and hurt armor directly.
Or a heavily depleted shield lose its hardness, and ennemy shots start to hit you.
Maybe we could get different shield types. Like the one we got right now could be “hard” type (it holds strong until it cracks then you got nothing for a while).
A Soft shield that's more powerfull initially but its stats degrade quickly as it get depleted. It likes being as full as it can. (for hit n'runners)
A Fading shield that lets most shots through and hit armor.. not getting depleted much in the process, but significantly reduce the damage. (for countering small gun spam and helping armored ships) Basically it gives a %Damage reduction to any shots before it hit armor, but wont stop anything.
A shield computer could also be a way to neutralize a shield generator (make them stop working at all, even when blocks are still fine), since even a dying, crippled ship keeps generating screens non-stop.
Active sensor blocks
Counter sensor jammers by making their system less effective.
Improve detection range in general.
Makes you a lot easier to detect when activated (you are basically shouting “WHERE ARE YOU” in space) so active sensors arent for those seeking discretion, and its why it isnt a "perfect" option to have
Could improve turret accuracy (a tad) and improve missile lock-on times ( a bit)...
Maybe having active sensor blocks could have a passive effect, like 10% of the active bonus is working when in “passive/offline” mode (without the drawback) so its still usefull to have on your ship.
Shield burst charger block
Seems a bit too good.
Basically a shield battery that hold a charge and release it all at once (very fast regen) when the shields are getting low (20%?). So it can save your bacon when you are in trouble, wont work if shield collapsed too fast for it to do its thing. The drawback is, it takes a long while to recharge itself when spent and its very power-hungry when it does. (very inneficient power/shield ratio) but its an emergency thing.
The more blocks the more juice is sent back to the shields.
Can be set on/off if you want to allow it to recharge, controlled by a computer. That way it wont drain you dry when its done and you are still fighting.
More armor types
Pretty deep into game--balance country, its also frequently mentioned here.. but its worth talking about.
Armor blocks need more HP to resist burst damage. The DR% is fine as it is. They just get depeleted to quickly since its easy to stack up tons and tons of firepower on one point. (and missiles need a fix but its old news)
Having more tiers of armor blocks could be a solution, but it should be fairly priced since shields are good right now.
Some armor blocks could have a deflection chance? (shots glance off for no damage). Even a 5-10% chance of deflection could make a big difference in battle.
Some armor blocks could be powered (use up energy for increased performance? Toggleable?)
Beam weapons / mass driver
Like the ion cannon in homeworld, the warships in the Outsider webcomic. Beams because they are fun. I'd see them as slow-iring, hard-hitting weapons meant for capital ships. Choose your color.
Maybe the beam could stay a few seconds on "target" and damage whatever it hits (so it may pierce several layers if you stay on the same spot or damage several blocks if it moves around) while the mass driver shot could puncture several blocks at once(if it got the speed/damage to succeed).
Big guns that have different behaviors. Big fun.
More cosmetic blocks.
Id like to see smooth “plating” (or just a plain, simple texture, not a solid color nor the pattern we see with rocks/soil) options for ship/building interior, In a variety of colors.
A few extra colors for blocks like crimson red, forest green, cyan, orange, purple ect ect.
Good icons for cosmetic blocks display (all 4 are the same), and of course, more variety for them would be nice.
Stuff for blueprints:
The blueprint could give “vital stats” on its own (mass, shield, energy, ect), leaving the “comment” section for comments only. I find myself running out of room to explain a blueprint a bit too often.. i kinda like writing fluff for my stuff.
When saving a blueprint; being able to set it to a category (like trade ship, WIP, civilian ship, pirate ship ect) so that the list ca be structured with scrolling bars. It would help, imho, easier to find a plan when we aren’t looking at a long list.
If a category could have sub categories, that would be nice too. (Like Pirate ships – Small hulls, or Military ships – Capital hulls)
Pre-made fleets for AI spawning. Odds of spawnign some ships for AI.
Maybe as an admin, setting a “rarity value” to a blueprint (so some individual ships are rarer than others when the Ai can use them). That way we wont often see a swarm of expensive ships.
Also i would like it if it was possible for the player to set up something for the game to spawn a specific group of trader ships ( ex: 3-4 dedicated trader ships + a few escorts) , or a specific military patrol fleet as a pre-made encounter.Same with pirates.
It could take the form of a txt document (or some other mean in-game), being able to write a simple list of ships that the AI could spawn as a group.
The pre-made fleet could have a value to change the probability of them spawning at all, so its not always the same thing over and over.
That's in addition of the current spawning system.
.. and that's all. Discuss!