Sector Biomes

[whooplaah]

Imagine asteroid fields, ship graveyards, forgotten minefields, solar flares, high energy nebulae, comets, and black holes.

Perhaps for performance reasons, right now space in Star-Made is mostly empty. Flying in a straight line from point A to B is easy unless there is a Star or a fleet of pirates, and it's a massive universe but a boring flight. But what if it was difficult to get through Sector X,Y,Z because of the procedurally generated minefield? Or what if your home base happens to be right next to an impassable nebulae that occasionally disables all shields in your sector?

Asteroid Field: Like normal asteroids, these can be mined. However, they are moving and cause some major damage to unprepared ships, especially slow moving freighters. Clear out some of them, build a base, and use the rest of the field as a natural shield.

Solar Flares: Not all stars are healthy for the planets that orbit them. Solar flares can damage or disable shields, interfere with navigation, and even affect electronics in targeting software or factory machines. Once there is more to planet-side life, these might cause fires, damage creatures, spark aggressive behaviors, or wipe out villages.

Ship Graveyard: Perhaps this bounty would be quickly eaten up, but not all ships are cut out for space travel. These locations would be the perfect place for pirates to lie in ambush, and all the ship IDs would make it easy to loose someone who's trying to tale you.

Black Hole: Stear clear, especially if your ship's boosters aren't up to snuff. Venture any closer than the edge of the sector and you may never get out.

Nebulae: Enter this sector and take damage over time from the intense radiation. Nearby sectors also suffer from occasional energy bursts similar to Solar Flares.

Worm Hole: Who says you have to fly all the way across the galaxy? Venture through a short-cut if you think your ship is tough enough to survive the experience, and hope that the other end isn't too close to anything dangerous. A great alternative to ships without an FTL drive (if that ever gets implemented).

 

[ToyotaSupra]

Good timing with these, apparently the universe is going to get reworked over the coming months.

1) Yes, this! Should be toggleable though because you know some noob is gonna complain about it. Would need collision damage to be worked on.

2) Very apocalyptic. Solar flares (damaging ones) are pretty rare near Earth, so perhaps the more dangerous a planet (or more flares that happen) the more resources? Or you could tell how often they happen by how 'dead' the planet is?

3) This would be fantastic for battles, especially over the resources. What are those ship asteroid things called in Warhammer? The ones that have ships fused to rock that collect over time? Those should be implemented.

4) This might be difficult to implement. But it would make for some serious nightmare fuel > .

5) I don't think you should take rad poisoning. But what about the ships' nav system messing up? You'll see markers that aren't there, or destinations screw up or something?

6) FTL is planned. We shall wait and see if this gets in.

 

[FunnyBunny14]

I like all of these ideas, they all have been mentioned before, but they are good ideas non the less.

 

[whooplaah]

Another type of 'biome' could be faction controlled areas. And entire sector may be uninhabited (empty, or abandoned) or inhabited (friendly, neutral, hostile). Pirate waves are more likely to spawn in hostile sectors, or may have bigger ships or bigger waves. Friendly sectors are more likely to have shops, but you also have to have a high enough faction relationship to build a base or harvest asteroids in the area.. This could lay on top of the other biomes I mentioned, and only the hard-core players would dare venture into a pirate owned asteroid field near a nebula.

If alien races are added, then it creates more faction-owned area possibilities.

Also, I didn't mean rad-poisoning @ToyotaSupra . I meant that the ship takes damage, like when you fly too close to a star. I do like the navigation messing up though, it creates a Bermuda tetrahedron obstacle.

 

[Ithirahad]

Per-sector biomes aren't such a great idea unless the sector default size is changed to 10000 or so (default sectors are just too small to constitute an acceptable full biome), however I really do like some of these ideas. My only complaint is that I'd prefer serious hazards to be EXTREMELY rare. The current ability to simply fly in a straight line to your destination is actually closer to reality than this, considering how unlikely it is to hit anything in space. Also, nebulae usually shouldn't do direct harm to you; I find the idea of navigation-scrambling or shield-weakening (due to constant load on the shield emitters from the higher particle density or whatever) to make more sense and be far less annoying.

 

[wolfboyft]

The reason I clicked like instead of agree is because I disagree and agree with some ideas.

 

[whooplaah]

@wolfboyft , would you mind saying what you disagree with? It'll help the discussion progress to get multiple viewpoints and ideas in.

You're probably right, @Ithirahad. But biomes don't necessarily have to be per sector. It depends a bit on how it's implemented and how crowded the biome becomes. Also, I like the nebulae = shield weakening idea.

An asteroid field or ship graveyard would, by definition, have a lot more physics checks. For this reason, maybe it'll have to be as small as a single sector. Nebulae or gravity wells or inhabited systems could easily be larger than a single sector, maybe a cluster of 4 to 5 depending on the faction's characteristics.

Or there could be transition biomes. If one sector is a black hole (gravity towards a central point, stronger as you get closer, ships are destroyed once they fall into the middle), then the sectors surrounding it might be transition zones with warning indicators in the HUD, or some sort of lesser gravity effect drawing ships toward the black-hole sector, or the ship's constantly turning (slowly) to face the black hole. An asteroid field might be packed with rock and hard to fly through, but the transition zones around it having a smaller amount and a smaller size.

Alternatively, instead of biomes being bounded by sector limits they could be made more organic. The galactic structure could spawn like a base but with a random position, orientation, and size. This way an asteroid field might take up half of two adjacent sectors which would make more sense than aligning within a grid.

A few more ideas:

Solar Winds:
Similar to solar flares, these are emitted from certain types of stars. They are magnetic waves and ions, and can cause ships to turn and twist randomly. These sectors can make dog-fights extremely difficult, or navigating an asteroid field nearly impossible.

Heliospheres/Interstellar Medium:
The space around solar systems (heliospheres) isn't as empty as the space between solar systems (interstellar mediums). Because of the increased density of gases inside a heliosphere, the maximum speed of ships is decreased and the maximum thrust of ships is also decreased (perhaps being 75-80% of the normal). This encourages smaller vessels within the boundaries of solar systems, or a class of ship specifically designed to work with the decreased maneuverability.

Galactic Thin Disk:
The distribution of stars/solar systems within a galaxy is not spherical, but more like an over-easy egg. Thus, some areas would be more likely to contain solar systems than others. Anything with the disk (or the white of the egg) is much more likely to have a naturally occurring stellar object than the sectors outside the disk (above and below the white of the egg). Areas outside the Galactic Thin Disk would be nearly barren, no hazards to worry about but no resources either.