Survival Features I'd like to see...

[Jacemachine]

What sort of SURVIVAL features you think would be cool to include in StarMade? I originally posted this over on reddit, but obviously it SHOULD be posted here. I know that a few "features" have been mentioned elsewhere. I know some people don't want survival features, viewing StarMade as just a space battle game, but knowing Schine, they would allow the option to toggle survival modes on and off.

Here's some features I wouldn't mind seeing added:

• Requiring food.
  
  
• Hunting space mob game.
  
  
• Breeding docile space mobs and eating them later.
  
  
• Cultivating crops for food and trade (Yholes baby!)
  
  
• Crewed Space Stations: The Space Trade Stations eventually being manned is already a good possibility, but I would love to fly an armored drop ship onto the exterior of pirate base (after blowing an entry hole into its hull), and dropping off a highly motivated squad of armed fellow players who enter and clear the place out of sentient alien pirates, while their drop ship takes out turrets and incoming pirate ships.
  
  
• A System for luring animals into say a large cargo hold so you can transport said animals to a Space Zoo or your back yard.
  
  
• Sentient Alien Species. Good. Neutral. Evil. This is a lot, but I thought it could add a very cool "RISK boardgame" element to the game, because these factions could also be competing with players for Space. Aliens aren't REALLY a "survival" feature... but they are if you need to defend yourself from them or if you have to eat them for food. (Think of the awkward trade relations you may have with the GOOD alien faction after you accidentally hunted, killed, and ate a member of their species by accident.)
  

Anyway. I've rambled enough. I know Space Helmets may actually have a use in the future besides just looking cool. What about the inclusion of Oxygen Tanks to go along with the helmet? Oxygen management sounds like it would be a pain in the ass, but who knows!


Gas giants would be VERY cool (and are planned apparently), and perhaps having a module on your ship that would collect the gas while you float stationary in the giant itself could be used as some sort of in-game resource.

A mix of melee and ranged combatant types among the aggressive mobs. Alien Space Pirates that shoot, and other that walk up to you with energy cutlasses, swinging wildly at you.

As a server host it would be a cool feature to create additional AI-controlled factions, and set their behavior parameters. I love having Space Pirates and the Trading Guild, but having the option to include more and to decide how friendly or aggressive they are would be sweet!

I would like to see NPC factions taking/claiming systems just as players do. Admins could set a faction point cap on the NPC factions to prevent them going out of control, and claiming entire galaxies. I like the idea of being able to fight over territory, and this would give Single Player games a little more to do.


What SURVIVAL stuff would YOU like to see?

 

[Gladstone]

On the subjects of food, I'd like to talk about consumables more generally. Food might be nice, but what could also be cool is a drug/enhancement system. Different planets could have different flora that needs to be mixed together to create speed enhancers, health restorers, damage reduction, and possible even psychic powers or something similar. If people don't want to deal with needing food constantly, you could still have something helpful but not necessary like a drug system.

Something I suggested to a few friends a while back was making certain parts of the galaxy more dangerous than others. I wanted exploration to be, more than anything else, lucrative but risky. Basically, each system would either be classified as "Wild" or "Tame". Tame systems would host things like (by default friendly) alien civilizations/stations/planets, the Trading Guild, stable stars, and weak creatures, but generally would be resource-poor (as all the alien civs have mined it out!) Wild Space would be filled with dangers: pirates, gamma rays, ion storms, geologically active planets, violent alien monsters, black holes, nebulae, and even stranger things from beyond the stars. Things that'll kill any unprepared player. However, these areas will also have exotic creatures, huge resources, exotic matter, pirate loot, and incalculable treasure. This way, players who want to build, negotiate, and work in peace have safe areas where they don't have to worry about a rogue meteor destroying their lovingly crafted ship or space station. Players who are brave or desperate enough to venture out, however, can also be rewarded for doing so.

 

[Edymnion]

I would actually like to see some sort of consumables.

Right now I like to build my stations with biodomes just because I like having green space, but it would actually be really cool if ships required oxygen in the same way they require power. You could create it artificially with generators that use constant supplies of power, or you could plant trees and other plants to generate it for you passively.

 

[Jacemachine]

I like the drugs/chems idea. It takes the functionality of "potions" and places it firmly into scifi grounds.

 

[Gladstone]

I had an idea for how oxygen could work, though not being a programmer, I have no idea how difficult it would be.
There is an Oxygen Generator Module that, when placed in a ship or space station, generates "oxygen" in a certain amount of empty blocks (which can be any arbitrary but small number, like, say, 125). It draws outward from itself, first checking if all the blocks around it are empty. If any of those blocks are empty they become "oxygenated" and the module keeps drawing from that block outward in all directions. If it finds a block that is invalid (solid blocks) it stops drawing in that direction. As it continues drawing, it counts how many blocks it has successfully oxygenated. If it would perform a check that would take it over that set number (it finds the 126th valid block after oxygenating 125 blocks) it then shuts itself off, and all blocks loose their "oxygenated" status, as it is unable to support an area this large and the air becomes too thin to breathe!

 

[kookster]

I think before something like this can be implemented they really need to do a environment system, aka oxygen like Gladstone was talking about, I will refer to this as atmosphere. There not only needs to be a system for detecting what area becomes the atmosphere but they would also need a way of detecting when ships atmosphere gets vented, either by a door opening or a hole being blasted into your ship. Personally I would love to see this in game. It would pretty much make it so you have to have systems for getting in and out of ships without venting your whole atmosphere. They would likely have to track how much atmosphere is in each area too. Say you open a door and it starts venting but you have a massive area of atmosphere. It wont vent all your atmosphere at once so some way would need to be made to track that amount that is lost. I think I'm just going to make a post about this and throw the link here.

[Edit]
Link: http://starmadedock.net/threads/ship-station-atmosphere-aka-air-systems.20319/