Essentially, I'm stressed because I had all of my ideas fully fleshed out, then it got cleared by me clicking on the chat box. So I'm posting a general synopsis of all the ideas instead.
First, please go check out my post in the thread "hull absorbtion" because all of my ideas assume that the other ideas were implimented to the fullest extent.
Improved ship destruction!!
When a ship collides with anything, both things take damage. A mildly shielded ship colliding with an asteroid would put a dent in the asteroid and take the shields down on the ship. A capital would see an asteroid as "That annoying blip on the shield bar that keeps popping up" because of the much higher shields. Of course, a capital ramming into an asteroid will = no more asteroid. A ship crashing into an atomsphere would create a crater around it.
When a ship block such as engines gets destroyed, a value is produced depending on the type. If multiple blocks are destroyed in the same tick, then the values get added together. After the tick, a splash explosion effect occures at the epicenter of the blocks. The value is how much damage it does to the surrounding area. A fighter won't have enough components to do more than lower shields a bit for nearby fighters, but a capital could knock a hole in the hull of a nearby capital, and may set off a chain reaction of nearby frigates and corvettes being blown up as well. Possible side effects: Chain reactioning the HECK out of the ship's own components! This, coupled with the increase hull health from the research idea, would result in a different type of ship combat.
Improved drones
A higher AI module of course, one maybe 100x more expensive. This AI module should be capable of leaving a ship and redocking, offloading cargo holds into the ship it returned to's holds, capable of firing salvage beams at abandoned targets it finds, exploring systems in a logical patrol progression, avoiding collision, and even building/repairing ships it finds that are allied. Reasons? It should be able to be used to salvage wrecks. It should be able to be used for complicated fighters that undock when detecting a threat, then return to the ship. It should also be the exclusive use of blueprints. When a drone finds a damaged ship of a kind it has blueprints of, it will search it's assigned ship/station/base for the pieces used in repairing the ship, then start constructing it. Common idea. But it should also be the only way to construct new ships via blueprint, because the load credits into shop, output ship system is crazy, and auto shipyards would look awesome.
Ship battle aftermath!
Imagine, if you will, a fleet vs fleet battle took place in deep space. Everyone intellegient died, and all the AI ships killed each other after a while. All that is left is a wreckage floating in space.
Every piece of your ship that gets disconnected from the rest of your ship entirely falls off completely and is no longer considered part of your ship. Every piece, from that stray block of hull to the aux engines that you didn't secure well enough. Every block has gravity, a mild attraction to each other, that is barely present in small pieces but compounds as the pieces get closer together and larger. Orbit is possible.
In this empty void of space, the pieces float together. No one thinks of returning to this area, in fear of the Ai ships continuing to wage eternal war against anything that comes close. The ships patrol this area, avoiding collisions perfectly, and searching for enemy ships. As they're exploring the area, not leaving because they have a range on their carrier which is now a wreck, the wreckage is attracted to each other. The larger pieces slowly pull the smaller ones closer in, until the smaller pieces collide and merge with the larger pieces. Eventually, all the pieces of wreckage become one structure the ships protect.
Center of gravity should be used on all things (except functional ships of course). A cave-in feature would also be nice to see, where blocks fall closer to the center of gravity if they can, occassionally, resulting in a smoothing effect.
Over time, this structure smooths as pieces collapse into the gravity, filling pockets formed by the interiors of the ship, until, years later, the wreckage cloud becomes a moon-like structure (bonus points to anyone who knows where this idea came from!) with small pieces orbitting around it, guarding by AI fighters that were launched from the ship that now makes up the core of the moon.
If this happened over a planet, the moon like structure would orbit the planet, unless the pieces crashed into the planet one by one, in which case, collision damage would result in the surface being pelted with small ships and blocks.
Larger galaxy
Srsly. We need solar systems so far from each other that you can spend hours in deep space trying to fly a fighter from one to the other.
"but that's no fun!"
FTL drives. Specifically, a hyperdrive would be best, because it makes a ship phase out of reality to prevent it from hitting objects. Smaller ships have to do something called "Jump" however, which meant a spot in which the ship stopped nearly entirely to recharge, then started back up. A small ship, such as a interceptor, would be unable to use a FTL drive at all. A heavier ship, like a fighter or bomber, may be able to use one, but their generator would burn out after only a few seconds, forcing it to jump slowly. A larger ship like a freighter would be able to hop larger distances, and a capital ship/carrier would be capable of jumping HUGE distances without needing recharging except for the largest of jumps.
How do you keep ships from jumping away? Gravity wells of course! A gravity well is a structure slightly more expensive than a warp core. It prevents all enemy ships in a huge radius from activating their hyperdrive, allowing you to chase them down if they try to get away. Alternatively, you could have scanned them and aimed for their hyperdrive. More on that later.
Solar systems should be the size of our own solar system, and planets should be MUCH larger to reflect this, with potentially moons and of course, spherical. The deeper you go, the higher tier of resources you find.
Better resources
THe ability to refine all resources to the point where it appears to be a pure block of said resource. Another thing that would be nice is if resources spawned in veins in the huge planets, meaning that you would come across occasional blocks of insanium T1, then slowly the T1 would become more common and T2 would appear, then the T2 would become more common, the T1 would disappear nearly entirely, and the T3 appeared more, as you got closer to the center of the vein. A large enough vein could have SEVERAL T10 blocks in it's node. These would be rare of course. How do you find them?
Scanners
Scanners locate certain blocks when used. Larger scanner banks will result in larger range. When a scanner is aimmed at a structure and a block is selected in the UI, it shows where that block is with very little accuracy. This can be put on a planetside vehicle to locate ores of various types, or can be put on a ship to find the cores and components of it. Speaking of which...
Cores
I think that multiple ship cores should be placeable, for one, as well as the component core idea which allowed a ship to be crippled one piece at a time. There's other threads suggesting this and explaining why, so eh.
Research system
Reinforced hull? Useless! Okay, well, it does look nice, but this idea is a better implementation of it. All ship components, hulls, and ect can be upgraded infinitely using the same T system as resources, except the blueprints gain efficency, and much more expensive, IE: 100 of T1 needed to make T2 at first, and so on. This is to make it more of a group effort than a personal one. It's also a good way to make the prettier ships more effective in battle, because it's no longer efficent just to pile things together, but rather to work on the higher build of something.
Ship Blueprints also have this system added, where rather than it just looking at the type used in the original build, it has text entry boxes allowing you to tell it what tier of each block to use in all blueprints of this type. That makes it so that a blueprint can be updated to have the newest level of engine tech, and then a repair drone will fly up to all ships of that type that dock, realize that it has the wrong blocks, and replace them with the newer ones. Weight would of course increase as well, to keep ships from suddenly becoming nimble when they just don't have any buisness being so, unless of course only the engines are upgraded and everything else is crap, but you might as well make a fully upgraded fighter if that's your approach.
Side effects? It's possible for a fighter to become as powerful as a carrier if it's makers were well established.
Cool side effects? Precursor ships abandoned by long dead civilizations, warping into a system looking for their also long dead enemies, and then warping out, completely piloted by their AI modules.
Fun gameplay side effects? Salvage scales in value with wealth.
Blueprint painting software
Someone linked me to this. Nevermind. I feel shtupid now.
New ground combat system
Of course!
We need tanks, aircraft, and walkers.
I'd like to see a RPG launcher, a machine gun type weapon, a handgun, a handheld salvage beam, a lasercutter beam that only works on blocks, and a sniper rifle, all upgradable using the same system as components, just for boarding ships. I'd also like a portable spacewalk item set, which is a few things, including a gravity well attacher, allowing you to enter the gravity of enemy ships while outside them, pulling yourself onto them despite their movement, a jetpack, an item allowing speedier movement through space, and a "velocity reducer" allowing you to skyjump without taking damage upon collision with the ground. Oh!
Objects take damage when entering atmosphere
The heavier the object, the more damage it'll take depending on speed.
A fighter could easily manage the small damage to it's shields, but a capital ship would lose their shields in a matter of moments and start having their hull burn up. Once the capital ship has hit the ground, all shields would be gone, and it's hull would be ripped away. The final blow to the ship would be the collision with the ground, at which point the entire ship would fall apart in a wreckheep.
Some larger ships could be designed for planetside landing, but they'd require specialty engines designed to slow movement speed enough to drop the ship cautiously.
So.. don't tell me what you think because TL;DR usually.
First, please go check out my post in the thread "hull absorbtion" because all of my ideas assume that the other ideas were implimented to the fullest extent.
Improved ship destruction!!
When a ship collides with anything, both things take damage. A mildly shielded ship colliding with an asteroid would put a dent in the asteroid and take the shields down on the ship. A capital would see an asteroid as "That annoying blip on the shield bar that keeps popping up" because of the much higher shields. Of course, a capital ramming into an asteroid will = no more asteroid. A ship crashing into an atomsphere would create a crater around it.
When a ship block such as engines gets destroyed, a value is produced depending on the type. If multiple blocks are destroyed in the same tick, then the values get added together. After the tick, a splash explosion effect occures at the epicenter of the blocks. The value is how much damage it does to the surrounding area. A fighter won't have enough components to do more than lower shields a bit for nearby fighters, but a capital could knock a hole in the hull of a nearby capital, and may set off a chain reaction of nearby frigates and corvettes being blown up as well. Possible side effects: Chain reactioning the HECK out of the ship's own components! This, coupled with the increase hull health from the research idea, would result in a different type of ship combat.
Improved drones
A higher AI module of course, one maybe 100x more expensive. This AI module should be capable of leaving a ship and redocking, offloading cargo holds into the ship it returned to's holds, capable of firing salvage beams at abandoned targets it finds, exploring systems in a logical patrol progression, avoiding collision, and even building/repairing ships it finds that are allied. Reasons? It should be able to be used to salvage wrecks. It should be able to be used for complicated fighters that undock when detecting a threat, then return to the ship. It should also be the exclusive use of blueprints. When a drone finds a damaged ship of a kind it has blueprints of, it will search it's assigned ship/station/base for the pieces used in repairing the ship, then start constructing it. Common idea. But it should also be the only way to construct new ships via blueprint, because the load credits into shop, output ship system is crazy, and auto shipyards would look awesome.
Ship battle aftermath!
Imagine, if you will, a fleet vs fleet battle took place in deep space. Everyone intellegient died, and all the AI ships killed each other after a while. All that is left is a wreckage floating in space.
Every piece of your ship that gets disconnected from the rest of your ship entirely falls off completely and is no longer considered part of your ship. Every piece, from that stray block of hull to the aux engines that you didn't secure well enough. Every block has gravity, a mild attraction to each other, that is barely present in small pieces but compounds as the pieces get closer together and larger. Orbit is possible.
In this empty void of space, the pieces float together. No one thinks of returning to this area, in fear of the Ai ships continuing to wage eternal war against anything that comes close. The ships patrol this area, avoiding collisions perfectly, and searching for enemy ships. As they're exploring the area, not leaving because they have a range on their carrier which is now a wreck, the wreckage is attracted to each other. The larger pieces slowly pull the smaller ones closer in, until the smaller pieces collide and merge with the larger pieces. Eventually, all the pieces of wreckage become one structure the ships protect.
Center of gravity should be used on all things (except functional ships of course). A cave-in feature would also be nice to see, where blocks fall closer to the center of gravity if they can, occassionally, resulting in a smoothing effect.
Over time, this structure smooths as pieces collapse into the gravity, filling pockets formed by the interiors of the ship, until, years later, the wreckage cloud becomes a moon-like structure (bonus points to anyone who knows where this idea came from!) with small pieces orbitting around it, guarding by AI fighters that were launched from the ship that now makes up the core of the moon.
If this happened over a planet, the moon like structure would orbit the planet, unless the pieces crashed into the planet one by one, in which case, collision damage would result in the surface being pelted with small ships and blocks.
Larger galaxy
Srsly. We need solar systems so far from each other that you can spend hours in deep space trying to fly a fighter from one to the other.
"but that's no fun!"
FTL drives. Specifically, a hyperdrive would be best, because it makes a ship phase out of reality to prevent it from hitting objects. Smaller ships have to do something called "Jump" however, which meant a spot in which the ship stopped nearly entirely to recharge, then started back up. A small ship, such as a interceptor, would be unable to use a FTL drive at all. A heavier ship, like a fighter or bomber, may be able to use one, but their generator would burn out after only a few seconds, forcing it to jump slowly. A larger ship like a freighter would be able to hop larger distances, and a capital ship/carrier would be capable of jumping HUGE distances without needing recharging except for the largest of jumps.
How do you keep ships from jumping away? Gravity wells of course! A gravity well is a structure slightly more expensive than a warp core. It prevents all enemy ships in a huge radius from activating their hyperdrive, allowing you to chase them down if they try to get away. Alternatively, you could have scanned them and aimed for their hyperdrive. More on that later.
Solar systems should be the size of our own solar system, and planets should be MUCH larger to reflect this, with potentially moons and of course, spherical. The deeper you go, the higher tier of resources you find.
Better resources
THe ability to refine all resources to the point where it appears to be a pure block of said resource. Another thing that would be nice is if resources spawned in veins in the huge planets, meaning that you would come across occasional blocks of insanium T1, then slowly the T1 would become more common and T2 would appear, then the T2 would become more common, the T1 would disappear nearly entirely, and the T3 appeared more, as you got closer to the center of the vein. A large enough vein could have SEVERAL T10 blocks in it's node. These would be rare of course. How do you find them?
Scanners
Scanners locate certain blocks when used. Larger scanner banks will result in larger range. When a scanner is aimmed at a structure and a block is selected in the UI, it shows where that block is with very little accuracy. This can be put on a planetside vehicle to locate ores of various types, or can be put on a ship to find the cores and components of it. Speaking of which...
Cores
I think that multiple ship cores should be placeable, for one, as well as the component core idea which allowed a ship to be crippled one piece at a time. There's other threads suggesting this and explaining why, so eh.
Research system
Reinforced hull? Useless! Okay, well, it does look nice, but this idea is a better implementation of it. All ship components, hulls, and ect can be upgraded infinitely using the same T system as resources, except the blueprints gain efficency, and much more expensive, IE: 100 of T1 needed to make T2 at first, and so on. This is to make it more of a group effort than a personal one. It's also a good way to make the prettier ships more effective in battle, because it's no longer efficent just to pile things together, but rather to work on the higher build of something.
Ship Blueprints also have this system added, where rather than it just looking at the type used in the original build, it has text entry boxes allowing you to tell it what tier of each block to use in all blueprints of this type. That makes it so that a blueprint can be updated to have the newest level of engine tech, and then a repair drone will fly up to all ships of that type that dock, realize that it has the wrong blocks, and replace them with the newer ones. Weight would of course increase as well, to keep ships from suddenly becoming nimble when they just don't have any buisness being so, unless of course only the engines are upgraded and everything else is crap, but you might as well make a fully upgraded fighter if that's your approach.
Side effects? It's possible for a fighter to become as powerful as a carrier if it's makers were well established.
Cool side effects? Precursor ships abandoned by long dead civilizations, warping into a system looking for their also long dead enemies, and then warping out, completely piloted by their AI modules.
Fun gameplay side effects? Salvage scales in value with wealth.
Blueprint painting software
Someone linked me to this. Nevermind. I feel shtupid now.
New ground combat system
Of course!
We need tanks, aircraft, and walkers.
I'd like to see a RPG launcher, a machine gun type weapon, a handgun, a handheld salvage beam, a lasercutter beam that only works on blocks, and a sniper rifle, all upgradable using the same system as components, just for boarding ships. I'd also like a portable spacewalk item set, which is a few things, including a gravity well attacher, allowing you to enter the gravity of enemy ships while outside them, pulling yourself onto them despite their movement, a jetpack, an item allowing speedier movement through space, and a "velocity reducer" allowing you to skyjump without taking damage upon collision with the ground. Oh!
Objects take damage when entering atmosphere
The heavier the object, the more damage it'll take depending on speed.
A fighter could easily manage the small damage to it's shields, but a capital ship would lose their shields in a matter of moments and start having their hull burn up. Once the capital ship has hit the ground, all shields would be gone, and it's hull would be ripped away. The final blow to the ship would be the collision with the ground, at which point the entire ship would fall apart in a wreckheep.
Some larger ships could be designed for planetside landing, but they'd require specialty engines designed to slow movement speed enough to drop the ship cautiously.
So.. don't tell me what you think because TL;DR usually.