Planetary Auras (special buffs/debuffs)

[aRottenKomquat]

I've long wanted to see planets become strategic resources instead of big chunks of rock to be mined and forgotten. And after playing a round of Sins of a Solar Empire last weekend, I have a more concrete suggestion on how to do this.

I suggest that some planets (perhaps 5 - 10% probability) have an aura, some kind of special effect. Any planet with an aura should have both a buff and a debuff for balance purposes. These buffs and debuffs affect any stations or ships within their sector, and completely disappear if a planet is mined past 25%. This gives players and factions an incentive to keep and hold planets and possibly build strategic bases as part of their infrastructure to gain an advantage.

Planets are undiscovered at first. To discover such an aura, I propose a new kind of systems block, some kind of planetary survey module.

Here are some ideas for buffs. I'm not including percentages but I figure the bonuses range from 5 - 50% randomized, making each planetary aura/effect unique.

• Refining Speed Bonus
  
• Refining Productivity Bonus (more capsules per ore/shard)
• Refining Efficiency Bonus (less power required)
  
• Factory Speed Bonus
• Factory Productivity Bonus
• Factory Efficiency Bonus
  
• Reactor Output Bonus
• Weapon Damage Bonus
• Weapon Range Bonus

Now for some debuffs. These are similar to buffs, but I suggest they operate for a larger area. Buffs only work in the planet's sector, but debuffs may extend a sector or two away from the planet.

• Refining Speed Penalty
• Refining Productivity Penalty
• Refining Efficiency Penalty
• Factory Speed Penalty
• Factory Productivity Penalty
• Factory Efficiency Penalty
• Reactor Output Penalty
• Weapon Damage Penalty
• Weapon Range Penalty
• Thrust Penalty (makes it harder for ships to take off or maneuver)
• Jump Drive Charge Penalty
• Scanner Damper (scanners/antennas do not work)

So if you discover a planet with an aura/effect, it would have both a buff and a debuff and you'd have to decide if it's worth building on. For example, you might find one with a 30% refinery efficiency bonus so it would be worth the effort bringing all your ore/shards here for refining into capsules. On the other hand, it has a 40% thrust penalty so you may need a specialty ship which has enough thrust to take off and land.

And I'm sure there are many more buff/debuff ideas out there.

 

[Lecic]

I'm not sure if this is really the way to go for encouraging planets to be important.

 

[apelsinsaft]

I like the idea of having planets have both negative effects and positive effects. I also like the idea of having the positive effect extend only across the planet, but negative effects across several sectors. It definitely incentivizes building on planets.

I'm sure several of these negative effects could be taken advantage of in interesting ways. For example, you might choose to settle on a planet that has a weapon range penalty, and center your defenses around launching warheads. Or you could settle on a scanner damper planet and go for cloaked strike ships. Basically, countering whatever the weakness of your sector is by specifically designing your defenses around it.

I would like to see more ways for the buffs to have economic significance. For example, if there were NPC colonies, you could have bonuses that affect those. (Population growth +30%, but max population -50%) Or if there were renewable resources to extract, you could have bonuses for those. (Farms +30% growth, but harvesting equipment requires 100% more power and crew). Otherwise everyone would just simply be hunting for the best refinery planet and that's about it.

 

[Tolnorus]

I like the idea of having planets have both negative effects and positive effects. I also like the idea of having the positive effect extend only across the planet, but negative effects across several sectors. It definitely incentivizes building on planets.

A planets could impart an effect that is bound to entities that are produced within its sphere of influence. For example, perhaps a heavy gravity world gives all ships in its local shipyard +5% armor; ships that are built there keep the bonus when they leave the area.

I'm sure several of these negative effects could be taken advantage of in interesting ways. For example, you might choose to settle on a planet that has a weapon range penalty, and center your defenses around launching warheads. Or you could settle on a scanner damper planet and go for cloaked strike ships. Basically, countering whatever the weakness of your sector is by specifically designing your defenses around it.

It was not explicit in his proposal, but I was assuming that the penalties applied to the faction that owns the planet and to nobody else. Despite that, it could be the case that some effects are faction specific while others affect everyone within the influence range.

I would like to see more ways for the buffs to have economic significance. For example, if there were NPC colonies, you could have bonuses that affect those. (Population growth +30%, but max population -50%) Or if there were renewable resources to extract, you could have bonuses for those. (Farms +30% growth, but harvesting equipment requires 100% more power and crew). Otherwise everyone would just simply be hunting for the best refinery planet and that's about it.

According to the End Goal document https://starmadedock.net/threads/starmade-endgoals-all-parts.29380/, colonies are something we can expect to see eventually. (Hopefully they are coming in the Universe update!) And if so, then I agree that there are a bunch of possibilities for bonus and penalty adjustments that could be imparted by planets, claimed or unclaimed, colonized or not colonized. I have no idea at this point what scale to expect from planets. I just hope that everything gets astronomically large.
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I've long wanted to see planets become strategic resources instead of big chunks of rock to be mined and forgotten.

This I agree with profoundly! But the Universe update is coming, and will hopefully do this in one form or another. But I think the best answer to this particular issue is simply that
A) planets must be much larger, large enough that they are not easily mined away to nothing; and
B) planets should possess slowly regenerating resource nodes, or spontaneously generate new resource areas that can be mined, easily represented through vulcanism, but could also exist as a consequence of obscurity if the size of the planet is sufficiently large to make surveying the entire planet non-trivial.

I suggest that some planets (perhaps 5 - 10% probability) have an aura, some kind of special effect. Any planet with an aura should have both a buff and a debuff for balance purposes. These buffs and debuffs affect any stations or ships within their sector, and completely disappear if a planet is mined past 25%. This gives players and factions an incentive to keep and hold planets and possibly build strategic bases as part of their infrastructure to gain an advantage.

I like the idea of planets have unique properties that make them interesting, on every level. Being in their sector, in orbit, on the surface, claimed for the possessor, claimed for all, claimed for the faction. There is room for great complexity if the planet's properties were expressed slightly differently for each player based on which of these situations exist. Just as an example, a planet could provide a bonus that makes it attractive to claim for your faction and simultaneously makes it challenging to defend, but the penalty is not imparted to non-faction players, thus making it vulnerable to attack. These kinds of asymmetries are good for game balance because they help avoid reinforced advantages. (Being in the lead makes you stronger, so you get more stuff, so you stay in the lead.) Kinda like the MarioKart blue shell, except (hopefully) less crippling.

Planets are undiscovered at first. To discover such an aura, I propose a new kind of systems block, some kind of planetary survey module.

I think this sort of function is better served by a reactor chamber effect. The Recon tree could logically have a branch for planetary survey. Or an entirely new reactor chamber could be created to be exclusively devoted to dealing with planetary information if it is the case that there's a bunch of different stuff to know. Maybe different planets require different kinds of scanner settings.

On this subject, when I first began to play with Power 2.0 reactor chambers, I thought that this was exactly what Recon was for, so I built a ship with a Recon chamber and configured it with an Ore Scanner, thinking that I could discover what kind of ore was inside an asteroid or a planet using my scanners.

As for your list of buffs and debuffs, I think the Universe update is going to add features to planets that do not currently exist. And future updates will add even more stuff. At the very least, Colonies and the presence of numerous virtual or real NPCs (and all the stuff that goes with that) will expand the sorts of things that we expect from planets, and each of those could be adjusted or augmented.

 

[Nebulon-B_Frigate_FTW]

I think buffs and debuffs are the wrong way to go. People would just build bases atop them and mine away the entire ground, living on a molten ball with a stone throne.
The thing that planets bring that nothing else can, aside of natural gravity, is life. Basically, I think certain resources should be (easily) farmable only on the surface of planets. It'd make planets useful in a way that you don't want to tear them up, and make things a bit more vibrant as opposed to the current bleakness of the game.

 

[Ithirahad]

This might be interesting, but that doesn't necessarily make it good. Buffs like this seem to be the sort of thing you would want to have as features for stations, maybe relying on some resource from planet mantle extractors to continue running.

 

[nightwalker_007]

I personally would like to see a server config that disables the ability to mine planets with ship's salvage beams.