Updated regularly.
TOPICS
1. Gameplay
1.1 Docking
1.2 RCS
1.3 Turrets
1.4 Power Distribution
1.5 Structural Field Generators
1.6 Different Stars
1.7 Universe Temperature
2. Building
2.1 Lock Mode
2.2 Eye dropper tool
2.3 Half-size blocks
3. Economics
3.1 Stardocks (Blueprints reworked)
4. Factions
4.1 Faction AI Designer
1. Gameplay
1.1 Docking
It would be really helpful if it was possible to access Docking Modules from the 'T' (Weapons) Menu to be able to change the height and width of the docking area. I have a few long ships, and they will not fit, because the cubed area becomes too large and hits walls.
The values (X,Y,Z Size of docking area) would of course scale, depending on how many docking enhancers were connected to the docking module, so that functionality wouldn't scale.
1.2 RCS
Reaction Control Thrusters (RCS).
I would really like to see some (external) RCS to increase a ship's agility, I'm not quite sure what the drawbacks for them could be, though... Imagine encountering a large ship; it's trying to turn to engage you, buy you take out it's RCS and see it keep spiraling because it can't counter it's own inertia...
1.3 Turrets
Ship-controllable turrets (Without AI control) would be very useful on larger ships, combined with an exterior view. When you enter Turret/External mode, your ship controls are slightly altered, so A and D controls your ship's roll (Like pressing left ctrl and turning your mouse does in standard), W and S your ship's pitch.
Your speed would be automatically set to the speed you had when you entered external view, making you have to re-enter normal ship mode if you need to change speed or other things.
Turrets would probably work very well as they are, because the mass system is already there, so large turrets will have a very hard time tracking small target, whilst small turrets will have the opportunity to be able to track small fighters with relative ease (The small fighter would have an advantage, though, because of speed to tracking.
1.4 Power Distribution
A power distribution block that you can use to allocate power to your different systems (The same way allocation now works with the weapon controllers), to be able to focus you ship designs. Do you want a nimble ship? Divert power to your RCS (mentioned above)! Do you want a massive shield, and less damage? No problem! This would be really useful.
1.5 Structural Integrity Field Generators
I've been thinking a bit how bigger ships would be affected by damage to it's hull.
Bigger ships (Maybe 40-50 Mass and above?) would need to have structual field generators to keep it's hull intact if taking damage. These would, when needing to be activated (After the Hull has taken a loss of around 20%) would drain a lot of power, increasing as the ship takes more damage. Each Generator would only be able to support a set amount of blocks, so if you don't have enough structural integrity, your ship could break apart (Random explosions on the ship that removes more hull lost).
How this would work after a shield failure and diverting loads of power to those, I haven't worked out, yet.
1.6 Different stars
Different kinds of stars with different temperatures, which would affect the temperature of space and the planets surrounding the star.
1.7 Universe Temperature
When a planet is created, if checks the distance and temperature of the closest star and then derives a planet type (excluding "alien" worls, maybe just a random chance to spawn them if certain conditions are met?) from that.
2. Building
2.1 Lock Mode
A "Lock" mode for building. A toggleable mode that will lock the blocks built from being edited or removed while not in that mode. Useful if you need to keep something intact while building around it.
2.2 Eye Dropper tool
Eye dropper tool when building.
Pressing shift + right click when in building mode would switch to the block type (Provided that you have that block type in your inventory) you are currently hovering over and putting it in your currently selected quick bar slot and use the angle of the selected block.
This would really help when you need to switch between block types faster, without having to move items back and forth from your inventory to your quick bar.
2.3 Half-size blocks
Half size blocks (All sides) would also help immensely when building smaller ships without ending up with frigates the size of small moons...
3. Economics
3.1Stardocks (Thanks to Doomsider for the initial idea)
Make all blueprints useable in a specific station only, namely the Stardock. This would be a station block that gives you a bounding box, just like the docking module (except with options for x/y/z sizes, of course) . Each blueprint will have It's dimensions listed in the information window, and the bounding box would have to match the blueprint dimensions in question to be able to produce it.
The Stardock would have It's own inventory, just like a factory and use all the materials needed for production.
The ship will be built block by block or blocks by blocks, gradually finishing it.
Production time should scale with the ship size (number of total blocks) due to the more complex nature of bigger vessels, examples:
150 blocks or less = 1 block built every 2 seconds. (5 minutes build time for a 150 block ship)
151-400 blocks = 1 block every 4 seconds. (26 minutes for a 400 block ship)
This could be interesting for economy, making people able to destroy stardocks and partially completed vessels.
There should be small NPC/AI stardocks available for smaller scale production scattered about where you can produce and repair ships.
There should also be a server side setting for restricting very large ships to be built in stardocks.
That way capital-sized ships would be unique on each server and much harder to replace.
3. Factions
Faction AI Designer
Tools for creating custom AI Factions with additional settings:
Instead of defining ship sizes (Frigates, Cruisers, etc.), each ship would be given a spawn chance percentage.
For example small vessels the percentage would be a lot higher than on larger vessels.
How large is the Faction in the universe?
Expansive/Established: If the faction actively tries to expand it's borders or not.
Aggressive/Passive: How the faction treats border violations.
Aggressive/Defensive: If the faction ships focus on dealing out as much damage as possible, or try to evade and counter-attack.
Blatant/Stealth: If the faction ships attack you head-on, or try to cloak and/or try to attack from behind.
Being able to design new modules and weapons that are normally destroyed when the active ship is disabled and only be able to looted under rare circumstances and/or only useable in conjunction with other specific faction modules.
Regards,
RPGprayer
TOPICS
1. Gameplay
1.1 Docking
1.2 RCS
1.3 Turrets
1.4 Power Distribution
1.5 Structural Field Generators
1.6 Different Stars
1.7 Universe Temperature
2. Building
2.1 Lock Mode
2.2 Eye dropper tool
2.3 Half-size blocks
3. Economics
3.1 Stardocks (Blueprints reworked)
4. Factions
4.1 Faction AI Designer
1. Gameplay
1.1 Docking
It would be really helpful if it was possible to access Docking Modules from the 'T' (Weapons) Menu to be able to change the height and width of the docking area. I have a few long ships, and they will not fit, because the cubed area becomes too large and hits walls.
The values (X,Y,Z Size of docking area) would of course scale, depending on how many docking enhancers were connected to the docking module, so that functionality wouldn't scale.
1.2 RCS
Reaction Control Thrusters (RCS).
I would really like to see some (external) RCS to increase a ship's agility, I'm not quite sure what the drawbacks for them could be, though... Imagine encountering a large ship; it's trying to turn to engage you, buy you take out it's RCS and see it keep spiraling because it can't counter it's own inertia...
1.3 Turrets
Ship-controllable turrets (Without AI control) would be very useful on larger ships, combined with an exterior view. When you enter Turret/External mode, your ship controls are slightly altered, so A and D controls your ship's roll (Like pressing left ctrl and turning your mouse does in standard), W and S your ship's pitch.
Your speed would be automatically set to the speed you had when you entered external view, making you have to re-enter normal ship mode if you need to change speed or other things.
Turrets would probably work very well as they are, because the mass system is already there, so large turrets will have a very hard time tracking small target, whilst small turrets will have the opportunity to be able to track small fighters with relative ease (The small fighter would have an advantage, though, because of speed to tracking.
1.4 Power Distribution
A power distribution block that you can use to allocate power to your different systems (The same way allocation now works with the weapon controllers), to be able to focus you ship designs. Do you want a nimble ship? Divert power to your RCS (mentioned above)! Do you want a massive shield, and less damage? No problem! This would be really useful.
1.5 Structural Integrity Field Generators
I've been thinking a bit how bigger ships would be affected by damage to it's hull.
Bigger ships (Maybe 40-50 Mass and above?) would need to have structual field generators to keep it's hull intact if taking damage. These would, when needing to be activated (After the Hull has taken a loss of around 20%) would drain a lot of power, increasing as the ship takes more damage. Each Generator would only be able to support a set amount of blocks, so if you don't have enough structural integrity, your ship could break apart (Random explosions on the ship that removes more hull lost).
How this would work after a shield failure and diverting loads of power to those, I haven't worked out, yet.
1.6 Different stars
Different kinds of stars with different temperatures, which would affect the temperature of space and the planets surrounding the star.
1.7 Universe Temperature
When a planet is created, if checks the distance and temperature of the closest star and then derives a planet type (excluding "alien" worls, maybe just a random chance to spawn them if certain conditions are met?) from that.
2. Building
2.1 Lock Mode
A "Lock" mode for building. A toggleable mode that will lock the blocks built from being edited or removed while not in that mode. Useful if you need to keep something intact while building around it.
2.2 Eye Dropper tool
Eye dropper tool when building.
Pressing shift + right click when in building mode would switch to the block type (Provided that you have that block type in your inventory) you are currently hovering over and putting it in your currently selected quick bar slot and use the angle of the selected block.
This would really help when you need to switch between block types faster, without having to move items back and forth from your inventory to your quick bar.
2.3 Half-size blocks
Half size blocks (All sides) would also help immensely when building smaller ships without ending up with frigates the size of small moons...
3. Economics
3.1Stardocks (Thanks to Doomsider for the initial idea)
Make all blueprints useable in a specific station only, namely the Stardock. This would be a station block that gives you a bounding box, just like the docking module (except with options for x/y/z sizes, of course) . Each blueprint will have It's dimensions listed in the information window, and the bounding box would have to match the blueprint dimensions in question to be able to produce it.
The Stardock would have It's own inventory, just like a factory and use all the materials needed for production.
The ship will be built block by block or blocks by blocks, gradually finishing it.
Production time should scale with the ship size (number of total blocks) due to the more complex nature of bigger vessels, examples:
150 blocks or less = 1 block built every 2 seconds. (5 minutes build time for a 150 block ship)
151-400 blocks = 1 block every 4 seconds. (26 minutes for a 400 block ship)
This could be interesting for economy, making people able to destroy stardocks and partially completed vessels.
There should be small NPC/AI stardocks available for smaller scale production scattered about where you can produce and repair ships.
There should also be a server side setting for restricting very large ships to be built in stardocks.
That way capital-sized ships would be unique on each server and much harder to replace.
3. Factions
Faction AI Designer
Tools for creating custom AI Factions with additional settings:
- Ship types available
Instead of defining ship sizes (Frigates, Cruisers, etc.), each ship would be given a spawn chance percentage.
For example small vessels the percentage would be a lot higher than on larger vessels.
- Faction Size
How large is the Faction in the universe?
- Faction Behaviour
Expansive/Established: If the faction actively tries to expand it's borders or not.
Aggressive/Passive: How the faction treats border violations.
- Faction Combat Behaviour:
Aggressive/Defensive: If the faction ships focus on dealing out as much damage as possible, or try to evade and counter-attack.
Blatant/Stealth: If the faction ships attack you head-on, or try to cloak and/or try to attack from behind.
- Faction-specific modules (rare-drops)?
Being able to design new modules and weapons that are normally destroyed when the active ship is disabled and only be able to looted under rare circumstances and/or only useable in conjunction with other specific faction modules.
Regards,
RPGprayer
