Shipwrecks

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    A second post from me in one day. Maybe this one won't be something I missed in an update! I think I'm in the clear this time.

    I was reminiscing about my time playing Freelancer, ducking through debris fields and hunting wrecks for loot, and the details of this idea came to me.

    Shipwrecks. They would, in many ways, work like existing abandoned stations as far as the "purchase" system goes (see note 1). However, there would be some changes.

    Shipwrecks would be generated from the ship catalog, in the same way existing ships can be used by pirates or the Trade Guild. An additional option would be added to the Admin tab, allowing you to enable or disable shipwreckery on a ship-by-ship basis.

    There's one core difference between shipwrecks and abandoned stations, however. Shipwrecks could spawn with random damage. Damage should, as a general rule, follow existing weapon types, though a few oddball things could be thrown in, representing internal damage or accidental collisions. Larger ships (determined by block count, presumably) have higher chances of more damaged bits and larger damage areas. Occasionally you'll be lucky enough to find an undamaged abandoned ship - maybe the pilot died for other reasons, maybe his power grid just went bad and he got rescued, whatever.

    New shipwrecks will periodically spawn in any sector, with a spawn roll happening at some predetermined interval. They can potentially spawn anywhere except for a sector with a planet.

    An accompanying feature is the Ship Graveyard. This is like an Asteroid sector, it just spawns shipwrecks instead of space rocks. In addition to rarely showing up naturally in some Abandoned Station sectors, sectors that have had a large number of ships or a non-Abandoned station blow up can become Ship Graveyards. This does not apply to any sector with a planet ("oh god it's raining ships!") or still-inhabited station, but a station can be built in a Ship Graveyard without destroying said graveyard.

    Individual shipwrecks, but not those that spawn in a Graveyard, can potentially have cargo aboard. The cargo can be looted without needing to go through the salvage routine, just board and grab it. This along with the sporadic respawning offers a reward for both exploring and patrolling claimed space, which is why Graveyard sectors don't get the cargo spawn - also because that would be way too farmable. Ship Graveyards also generate more damage on the wrecks than individual shipwrecks usually do.

    Server config options:

    Shipwreck Spawn Probability: adjust the rate of shipwreck spawns, like the current shop spawn config. Can be disabled with 0.

    Ship Graveyard Spawn Probability: Works like the shop spawn. Determines the possibility of an abandoned station sector being accompanied by a ship graveyard. 0 to disable.

    Ship Graveyard Conversion Type: Disabled, Block Count and Ship Count, Station Required.

    Ship Graveyard Conversion Block Requirement: Number of total blocks destroyed to cause the creation of a Ship Graveyard.

    Ship Graveyard Conversion Ship Requirement: Number of ship cores destroyed to cause the creation of a Ship Graveyard. The ratio between these two requirements will influence the balance of what ship kills are needed to create a Graveyard.

    Ship Graveyard Conversion Station Probability: If Ship Graveyard conversion requires only an inhabited station's destruction, this variable determines the odds of a graveyard's creation.

    (note 1: I'd love to see a better "repair" option for salvaging old ships and stations, the problem is that I have no idea what it could actually be.)
     
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    A second post from me in one day.
    How dare you ;)

    An accompanying feature is the Ship Graveyard. This is like an Asteroid sector, it just spawns shipwrecks instead of space rocks. In addition to rarely showing up naturally in some Abandoned Station sectors, sectors that have had a large number of ships or a non-Abandoned station blow up can become Ship Graveyards. This does not apply to any sector with a planet ("oh god it's raining ships!") or still-inhabited station, but a station can be built in a Ship Graveyard without destroying said graveyard.
    Instead of excepting planets from being eligible for a ship graveyard, when it's first generated and determined as being a ship graveyard sector, wrecks could be generated as surface structures; thus they wouldn't cause collision issues, but still allow for planetary graveyards.
    Anyone remember "B-17" from Heavy Metal?
     
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    Ooh, I like that idea. I was thinking of the issues of ships falling, hadn't even thought of them spawning down there to begin with.
     
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    Something similar was suggested a short time ago. In a post on that thread, I suggested the method be as follows: Ships that are overheated disappear when the countdown reaches 0, but they're temporarily saved as a bit of memory in the system in which they died. When enough (Config!) ships have been destroyed in a system, a graveyard spawns, loading in all of the saved destroyed vessels and then deleting the temporary blueprint used to save them. These vessels would show all of the damage that destroyed them, and then would be missing random blocks of hull or systems, because drifting in space without shielding or thrust leads to a lot of decomposition and impacts with small but high-velocity particles or pieces of rock.

    Shipwrecks on planets would be a problem...perhaps, later, an algorithm capable of faking the damage wrought be crashing an otherwise intact vessel onto a planet plate. As in, as part of a planet's spawn, a plate is generated and then filled with a crash....or multiple crashes. The algorithm would have to find a ship smaller than, say, 1/2 the plate's size, then generate a sort of rough-edged trench, placing the ship (With damage on the bottom of the vessel, of course) at one end of the trench.
    That or just scattering bits and pieces of the ship around a crater. That'd work as well.
     
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    I remember that story from Weird War Tales, a comic from the '70s. Very creepy.
    I'm no fan of zombies, much less space zombies, but this one... very creepy indeed. Probably because it was way before the zombie inflation of recent years. Perfect ship graveyard surprise - as long as 99% of them are just wrecks, nothing else.
     

    JonasWalker

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    I'm no fan of zombies, much less space zombies, but this one... very creepy indeed. Probably because it was way before the zombie inflation of recent years. Perfect ship graveyard surprise - as long as 99% of them are just wrecks, nothing else.
    If that comes to pass (with whatever manner of critter you propose) its a good thing most people make their hallways 3x3. Besides looking good you can fit a surprising amount of firepower in that small of a shape. :D