- Joined
- Jul 17, 2013
- Messages
- 97
- Reaction score
- 27
I know a lot of these have been covered before, but I'll try and go in-depth here.
Feature Ideas:
- Uncoordinated fire button. Hold it down to fire your weapon arrays at a target without having them all converge on a single block, just as they would with no target. Good for massive, deadly barrages from a huge ship's secondary batteries.
- The ability to rotate the facing of a block in addition to its orientation, allowing us to have turret and ship docks that face forwards even if they're on the side or underside of a ship.
- Equippable night vision goggles that let us see in darkened areas, even while in build mode.
- SD Cockpits that give you a different view relative to their orientation, and weapons that can shoot in the direction the output is facing. This would allow for the creation of broadside batteries to deal with targets that leave your frontal field of view.
- The ability to link multiple computers to the same weapon, allowing for different weapon groupings.
- The ability to activate the gravity unit of a different ship to leave the gravity of your own. The current setup forces you to activate the gravity unit of the same ship to leave its influence before activating the gravity unit of another, or to walk/float out of range of the ship, or to reset your gravity with a build block, etc.
- Astronaut combat and boarding actions with small arms.
- The ability to design body armor and handheld weapons with miniature blocks. Think Guncraft. You place the core of the weapon or armor, add ship modules to it, and then you place a PlexShrinker block on it and activate it, and it gets turned into an inventory item that you can add to your character using a UI slot. Its performance also shrinks by 10 ten times, so for example, if you build a 1000 DPS AMC array, it will be shrunk down to a 100 DPS anti-materiel weapon. The location of the core decides where the grip will be on handheld weapons, and where the center of the head is on armor (both types show a green bounding box in the shape of your character to aid in construction). There is also a limit to the size of the weapons and armor. No more than 30 meters L/W/D for Heavy Guns (shrunk down to 3x3x3 and under), and 20 meters high (shrunk to 2 meters) for armor. When playing as an astronaut, the weapon tab allows you to tune your currently-equipped weapon, and the tunings are saved to that weapon. There are other limitations, including allowable block types.
- Better default damage reduction for hardened hull plating. Right now, it's practically useless. All you have to do is get an AMC over a very low threshold, and that's one block gone with each shot.
- The ability to set a degree angle range in azimuth and elevation for turrets to prevent especially large mega-turrets from clipping into your ship's hull, or shooting your other turrets. Limits range of movement for both players and AI.
- Saving of missile outputs and turret AI settings in blueprints.
- Chain-docking.
- Attempting to navigate at the edge of a star system is a nightmare right now. It'd be nice if you could fly straight towards planets and have them actually be there, instead of teleporting all over the place. Yes, I understand why this happens - because of the way the world is divided into cells. But there has to be some way to visually represent the positions of planets better.
- Better ship landing physics. Even the most stable landers vibrate like they're possessed after a while, unless you have a ground-based docking port set up. The physics impulse should lose energy and smooth out instead of the oscillations increasing in frequency.
- LAN multiplayer mode. Play co-op or compete with friends and family on a local network, all with zero lag.
- Renaming of ships, stations, and planets.
- Item trading and auctioning system. Sell items, ships, recipes, and blueprints to other players for credits or for barter. Bid on used capital ships to try and see if you can get them for a bargain-bin price. Engage in piracy and fence your loot to other players.
- Better player model and animations. Separate male and female models that can be custom-textured.
- Lesser rewards from taking out pirates and pirate stations, and more rewards from mining.
- Enemy NPC astronaut spawns on planets and in pirate stations, guarding the chests full of loot.
- Zoom button, for long-range shooting. When activated on ships, it zooms the currently-selected cockpit in increments of 2x. When activated as an astronaut, it gives you an overlay that looks like binoculars if you have no weapons equipped, and goes into ADS mode if you have a weapon equipped.
- Melee attack. Crush blocks and other players with your bare hands! However, there is a caveat. If you use it while in freefall, you will be propelled in the opposite direction at high speed. You could use this to navigate the environment. Note, if you attempt to melee a hull or someone else's body armor without wearing armor of your own, you will lose a small amount of HP instead.
- Grapple button. Has multiple functions. If you tap it while jumping against a wall, you will Rebound higher and face the opposite direction, kind of like a parkour tic-tac maneuver. If you hold it down and are wearing power armor with electromagnet blocks, and the surface you move towards is metallic, you will cling to it. While Clinging with your weak hand, you can use a one-handed weapon in your strong hand - or melee it - to keep attacking the target. If it's a fighter, you might be able to drain their shields and damage their hull in a reasonable amount of time. The only viable tactic to prevent a clinging opponent from damaging or destroying your single-ship is to either avoid letting power-armored infantry get close in the first place, or to leave the cockpit of your ship to deal with them mano a mano.
- When under the influence of gravity, you can sprint forward by double-tapping W.
Block Ideas:
FUNCTIONAL:
Build Block - When attached to a planet or asteroid, collects terrain blocks and surface plants, but not ores, components or hulls. On planets and asteroids, removing the latter three block types demolishes them. They are removed, but not added to your inventory. Does not apply to ships or stations.
Greeble Core - For building furniture and detail objects that are then shrunk down with a PlexShrinker and placed like any block. Objects must have at least one external dimension be 10 meters, to be shrunk down to 1 meter.
Shield Core - For making handheld tactical shields, sometimes with their own power supply and shield generators. Can only be equipped to your off-hand. Passively blocks damage from your front and to your left when lowered. When raised with the Block key (Shift by default), blocks damage from the front, but you can't use your weapon. Sprint into enemies with your shield raised to charge into them and knock them out of the way. If you're wearing power armor instead of regular armor, then the more Artificial Muscle blocks your power armor has, the more effective the charge maneuver will be.
Blade Core - Create ship and player-rending vibroblades. Can only be equipped to the right hand. When you hit the melee button, the blade is used if you have one. Cuts through blocks like a hot knife through butter, but you have to be very close to your target and their shields must be down. Its power is greatly increased by power armor with Artificial Muscle. Unarmed melee attacks with power armor crush up to 3x3 blocks in front of you, but only one block deep. Melee attacks with a Blade go deeper, cutting up to three blocks deep, but in a line in front of you one meter high by three meters wide.
Light Gun Core - For making pistols and submachine guns. Size of the weapon is very limited. Can be equipped to one or both hands. You can have a Blade in your right hand and a Light Gun in your left, a Light Gun in your right hand and a Shield in your left, or a Light Gun in both hands for double the firepower. If both hands are occupied, you cannot Cling to surfaces.
Heavy Gun Core - For making large handheld weapons, like rocket launchers and rifles. Uses both the left and right hand character slots. Cannot perform Clinging while equipped. You might consider using this to create handheld repair and salvage tools, too, but - just like the weapons - they will never be as effective as the ship-mounted versions.
Augmenter Core - For making special gear that is then shrunk down and slotted onto your power armor's utility belt. Slightly enhance your personal shielding, power generation, thruster power, oxygen capacity, or any of a number of attributes.
Armor Core - For making unpowered body armor out of hull pieces which are then shrunk down to human-size. For bone animations, the armor is automatically "split" around the joints and the resultant pieces animated the same as the limbs. The character model texture between the joints is automatically changed to look like a skin-tight undersuit, instead of the player's custom texture. To prevent clipping, the green helper bounding box in build mode has yellow indicators that show where the character's joints are.
Power Armor Core - For making powered body armor with shields, generators that augment the firepower of your handheld weapons, thrusters for EVA maneuvers, artificial muscles for enhancing physical performance, and electromagnets for grappling with ship hulls. Can be slightly larger than regular armor, by a few centimeters. Very expensive! Quality power armor can cost the equivalent of millions upon millions of credits in materials. If power armor is worn, handheld weapons will use the armor as a power supply, similar to turrets. One possible teamwork tactic is to have a player with Generator-type power armor shoot at a teammate with a handheld Powersupply beam while their friend uses a heavy weapon with serious drain, like a gunner-loader team.
Artificial Muscle Block - Has no effect when added to ships, weapons or regular armor, but when added to a Power Armor Core, it gives you enormous physical strength, augmenting your running speed, melee attacks and jump height. A player with strong enough power armor can actually punch out the viewscreen of an unshielded Isanth-VI in a single blow, sending both himself and the ship careening away from each other. Very useful for punching holes in enemy ships and boarding them. Running, jumping and meleeing drain power if these are used, so your armor must have sufficient reactors and batteries. If you're using a powerful handheld weapon, you might accidentally drain so much power that your suit will be unable to move at all. Be careful!
Electromagnet Block - When used with power armor, allows you to cling to metal hulls while holding down the Grapple button. Continuously drains energy. If you hit melee while grappling, and you have enough artificial muscle, you will punch a hole in the target if their shields are down, but you won't fly away from them. Good for boarding actions. If your power armor EVA Pack is strong enough (and we're talking a monster jetpack that's as big as you are), you might be able to overwhelm the ship's own thrust and alter its course while Clinging to it. Wrestle an enemy light fighter craft into a carrier's internal bay, and then have a firing squad of ten power-armored infantry annihilate it with their anti-materiel rifles. The humiliation!
PlexShrinker - For shrinking completed armor and weapons. Checks to see if there are any invalid blocks (for example, thrusters attached to weapons) or oversized configurations before proceeding. Removes itself when done. The shrinker itself can be outside the maximum dimensions of the object, to avoid leaving a hole in the object. Cannot be undone! Before shrinking, it is possible to blueprint your weapon/armor like a ship. After shrinking, the weapon/armor behaves like a master template with its own leveled recipe, and can be mass-produced by placing it in a Factory Input and supplying the requisite materials. All of the weapons and armor produced this way also behave like recipes, but start off at a low recipe level. The more advanced and expensive the weapon or armor, the more ingredients it will require, from puny pistols that take some tens of L1 ores, to advanced power armor that might take many L5s. The meta-item and its manufactured copies will have the same name as the "ship" you created with the weapon/armor/power armor core, and can be equipped in your UI slots and used by your character. When you hit X to create a ship/weapon/armor/blade/etc., you are presented with a menu that allows you to select the core type before naming it.
Command Block - Allows you to enter an RTS-style command mode, similar to Build Mode. Select and give directions to automated ground vehicles, set targets for turrets, and assign visible waypoints for other players to follow. Good for planetary defenses!
Antimatter Cannon - Rebalanced so that it is no longer viable as a primary shield-draining weapon for incredibly large (>10,000 mass) ships. Stat growth plateaus quickly, relegating it to secondary armaments for super-capitals, and primaries for smaller capitals and fighters only. Small ships whittling away the shields of much larger vessels without support craft aiding them becomes a lot more difficult. Also, you now have the ability to set multiple, rotating outputs for the same cluster of AMCs, with the rate of fire being reduced by the number of outputs active. Half for two outputs, a quarter for four, etc. When you fire it, it goes round-robin, firing each output in the order you activated them before returning to the first to repeat the process. This would allow you to create a volley gun that sends out sleeting waves of projectiles, or a multi-barrel "gatling" that fires in a circular pattern, all from a single cluster. Also makes for a neat visual effect with handheld weapons.
Plasma Beamgun - The new primary for very large capital ships. Fires a continuous instant-hit beam of antimatter plasma that bores through shielding and armor like a salvage beam (no matter the weapon's cluster size, damage is always calculated at a rate of 20 hits per second, like the maximum for an AMC), only much longer-ranged. Power allocations are for beam Damage, Distance, Duration, and Reload. Very low rate of fire, measured in tens of seconds. Takes two seconds to charge up when the trigger is pulled. Only effective when hundreds or even thousands of the modules are linked together, where it experiences significant stat growth. Attempting to mount it to fighters or smaller capitals results in a weapon that takes a minute to reload and does meager damage. In a single cluster with thousands of blocks, however, it does devastating damage, hitting for about half a million DPS for roughly five seconds before requiring a cooldown period of fifteen seconds. The width of the beam can be increased by setting multiple outputs for a single cluster, but this increases the reload time. Each added beam connects side-by-side to any adjacent beam, and all the outputs fire at the same time, even for the same cluster. Therefore, plasma Beams can be any shape you want. Lines, Crosses, Diamonds, Circles, Boxes. Cut enemy ships in half with long emitter rows! All these beams each count for the same damage as what's in the weapon tuning panel, so for example, if you have one output, and then you add three more to make a 2x2 box-shaped beam, you've quadrupled your firepower for each shot, but quartered your rate of fire. You could take out a Titan with one of these in a spinal-mount configuration on a Battleship dedicated to capital-killing, similar to an Ion Cannon Frigate from Homeworld. Or, you could potentially use it to make a long-range handheld anti-materiel weapon.
Vibro-cutter - Used to create handheld swords. Destroys blocks that it comes in contact with, but only if their shielding is down. Impacts with the Vibro-cutter drain shields, but not quite as effectively as a proper AMC. Particularly insane players may use the full-size version of this block to give their vehicles functioning melee weapons and ram prows. If you mount those weapons to Rotating Joint blocks, you could even re-enact the bizarre space battles from Outlaw Star. Needs to be clustered in one or two long rows to be effective. If you attempt to mount them to the front of your ship in a huge pattern and create a flying ship tenderizer in lieu of using a disintegrator ram, their harmonics will cancel each other out through the hull, and it will do trifling damage. One interesting thing about the Vibro-cutter is that it mines blocks and adds them to your inventory. Yes, even the sword version will do this. You can use this to create pickaxes. Or, you can create tracked tunnel bore machines with a rotating bit using the Rotating Joint block.
Mass Driver - Fires fast-moving explosive warheads with a very small area of effect radius (think two to five blocks at the most). A gun-based alternative to missiles, for fighters, turrets, and secondary batteries on small capitals. Lower rate of fire and slower stat growth than AMCs. Has no effect on shields. Goes well with stronger hardened hull HP and/or damage reduction - gives it a proper nemesis. Can also be used to make ballistic handheld firearms that punch through bunkers and unshielded characters who aren't wearing power armor. Like AMCs, it supports rotating outputs.
EZ Caterpillar Pod - Place it on the underside of ground vehicles to make tanks that crawl across the terrain (the side looks like a tank suspension, and the functioning surface looks like an animated texture of moving tracks). Place it in the deck of a ship to create high-speed moving walkways. Must be oriented properly to apply a speed bonus to players moving in the desired direction. Having it turned the wrong way will cause them to slow, or even stop. Can be activated manually to set it as either movement key controlled or continuous-running.
EZ Caterpillar Pod Wedge - Angled version for climbing over obstructions with your tracked vehicles, or building escalators.
Rotating Joint - Behaves like a docking point, but allows you to dock ships that act as moving legs. Create stow-away landing gear, or legs for walking machines. Using the same Weapon settings panel for turret degree angles, you can set the movement range, speed and timing. At the press of a button, the legs are enabled, and the movement controls take over control of them instead of the ship's engines. Create quadrupedal spider-crawlers, or bipedal walkers with gyro-stabilization! Use chain-docking to build multi-jointed legs! Depending on its settings (accessible through a tab similar to the Bobby AI), the joint can also be used to create directly-controlled turrets for tanks, walkers and spacecraft, that behave as though they are an integral part of the ship they are attached to, allowing you to access their weapons if you're in the core that the rotating joint is linked to. The disadvantage is that they cannot be independently controlled by other players or by AI, and must be managed by the player at all times. Could be useful for making broadside batteries on capital ships that turn to face their targets. Can also be used to make wheeled vehicles if allowed to rotate 360 degrees when the movement key is depressed, but unless the wheels are made from blocks constructed with a Greeble Core, they will be square and the ride very bumpy. Tracks are better.
Gyro-stabilizer - Improves turning rate (lowers a ship's effective mass; we know that's not what it's actually doing, but for the sake of calcs, it's close enough), with the caveat that it only works when built in perfect cube shapes, like 1 block to reduce by 25 mass, 2x2x2 to reduce by 75, 3x3x3, and so on (irregular clusters only count for the tier of the perfectly cubic clusters they contain, so 2x2x2 with a small row attached to it still counts as 2x2x2). Each cluster level increases the bonus, but its usefulness begins to peter out for ships above 10,000 mass. Gyro-equipped ships are also resistant to rolling over when landed, and roll on command faster. Intended primarly for heavy shuttles, walking machines, light capital craft and advanced heavy fighters made of hardened hull. The block is very expensive, and adds significantly to the final price of a ship.
Anti-gravity Repulsor - An alternative to Hyperflux Coil Thrusters. Negates the gravity of a planet, but does not allow you to leave the gravity field of a planet. Good for airships, floating platforms and flying billboards, but if you mount it to very large ships with their own hyperflux coil thrusters, you need a huge number of them to negate the effects of gravity entirely.
EVA Pack - Thruster for power armor. Substantially higher power density and efficiency than hyperflux coils. Has no effect when mounted to vehicles. All modules must be linked together for them to have any effect at all.
Bow Thruster - Improves a very large ship's turning rate when placed and aligned properly, but consumes a considerable amount of energy while turning.
Advanced Optics - Increases your ship or weapon's maximum zoom level up to a cap. Takes exponentially more for each level. Does not work on swords or shields.
Ballistic Computer - Gives you a lead indicator for your currently-selected target. More blocks means that the indicator updates faster and more accurately.
Boarding Pod - Add them to the nose of a boarding ship. When you ram a ship that has its shields down, it consumes the module and does three things. One, it drills a ragged 3x3x6 hole in the target just large enough for you to fit through. Two, it ejects you from the ship. Three, it causes you to enter the targeted ship's artificial gravity field. And then you have an epic shootout with the opposing crew on the flight deck of a carrier! Or... y'know. You ram their ship to find that the inside is nothing but starship components, with no room for people.
R/C Block - Remote control for faction-owned ships. Select them from a list in the faction menu, and take control (it handily indicates which ship they're docked to). Pilot gun drones and cruise missiles equipped with this block without even leaving the cockpit of your fancy capital ship. Of course, the drawback is that you're a sitting duck while you're remote-piloting another ship. Fly a reinforcement vessel to your friends several sectors away, and then relinquish control so they can take it and keep up the fighting, or use it to effect a tactical retreat. While R/Cing, you don't have access to the remote-controlled ship's docked ships or turrets.
Ship Core - Renamed to Vehicle Core. Can be used in ground vehicles and anti-gravity airships in addition to regular spacecraft, depending on what you attach to it. You can no longer enter flight mode while occupying the core. You must be sitting in one of three chair types; the Command Chair, Passenger Bench or Ejection Seat.
Command Chair - Hard metal chair in various colors, for the center of large ship bridges and control areas, or armored ground vehicles. Only one can be added to a ship or vehicle.
Passenger Bench - Regular seating bench with padded cushions and a restraint harness. Good for dropships, freighters, mining ships and shuttles, or secondary seating on a ship's bridge. If a ship is equipped with a Command Chair or Ejection Seat, then no one who uses a Passenger Bench may fly the ship. If it is not equipped with a Command Chair or Ejection Seat, then the first player on the ship to use a Passenger Bench is the pilot, and the players using other passenger benches subsequently are passengers only.
Ejection Seat - Like the Command Chair, but a little different. This one can be activated like a hotbarred weapon, and when you do so, it will violently eject you from your ailing ship with a cool rocket motor effect. If you're under the influence of a planet's gravity field, you will parachute to the surface if you're wearing regular armor or a jumpsuit. If you're wearing power armor when you eject, then the fight isn't over yet. Your suit's thrusters take over, and you may attempt to grapple with your attacker and destroy them with your personal weapons in a desperate last stand.
Wingback Chair - Fancy leather wingback chair with buttons. You can activate it and sit in it. Does not activate flight mode. Good for an officer's quarters or a conference room.
Air Recycler - Supplies air to a ship's interior. In order to function, at least one of these blocks must face the interior of each enclosed compartment. If the hull is breached, the compartment will be decompressed and you won't be able to breathe (the default player model is wearing little more than a jumpsuit). Cannot be used in armor.
Oxygen Tank - You can use this block for suits of armor or power armor that are expected to go EVA in hard vacuum. Each block adds 30 seconds to your maximum EVA duration. Proper long-duration air tanks contain at least a hundred of these blocks, shrunk down by ten times. For example, a 3x5x10 configuration of blocks gives you a 30x50x100-centimeter bulky air tank that lasts 75 real-time minutes. This time continues to elapse even if you are in a build block, ship core, or chair, unless said block is under the influence of an Air Recycler. If you enter the atmosphere of a planet or the area of effect of an Air Recycler while wearing armor or power armor equipped with one or more Oxygen Tank blocks, your oxygen supply will be restored over time. The larger the tank, the longer it takes (about one to two minutes to fully resupply the aforementioned 150-block oxygen tank). In order to function at all, they must all be clustered together. If even one Oxygen Tank block is out of place, it will not work. If you build two tanks in your backpack, they must have a "crossover valve" (or at least a 1x1 line of oxygen tanks, to be more precise) to connect the clusters.
Memory Crystal - Looks like a terminal with a small crystal in a sealed chamber with a glass viewing port. Acts like a stationary logbook when activated.
Mobile Factory Input - Factory Input that can be used on ships. Low efficiency. Requires double the materials for the same output, and production rate cannot be enhanced. For mobile fortresses with their own logistics centers.
DECORATIVE:
Exhaust Blocks - Leaves a colored trail when your ship is under acceleration. An alternative to lava or ice crystals. Comes in various colors, including purple. Multiple Exhaust Blocks clustered together create a larger plume instead of many small plumes. Add them to your power armor's EVA Pack for a really intimidating effect.
Hull/Hardened Hull Inside Corner - Self-explanatory.
Plexlight Wedge - Self-explanatory.
Bookcase - A bookcase that also functions as a storage chest with drawers.
Bed - Block that forms a luxurious-looking bed.
Bed Pillow - Place at the head of configurations of Bed blocks.
Bunk Bed - A stackable bed block for high-capacity sleeping areas.
Bunk Bed Pillow - Same as bunk bed, but with a pillow.
Capsule Hotel - A block with a texture that looks like the door and interior of a capsule hotel, perfect for inns on starbases.
Drinking Fountain - Special zero-gee drinking fountain, designed to refill a personal sippy bottle. Doesn't actually do anything.
Control Console - Angled decorative control console.
Holo-tank - A block with a glowing topological map on the top and controls on the sides.
Hologram - A patterned semi-transparent block with glowing lines and figures. Set this on top of your holo-tanks.
Reel-to-Reel Tape Machine - For super-retro builds.
Punch Card Machine - Again, very retro.
Glowing Strip - A light block that looks like a thin, glowing strip of luminescent material. For ship interiors. Comes in various neon colors.
Feature Ideas:
- Uncoordinated fire button. Hold it down to fire your weapon arrays at a target without having them all converge on a single block, just as they would with no target. Good for massive, deadly barrages from a huge ship's secondary batteries.
- The ability to rotate the facing of a block in addition to its orientation, allowing us to have turret and ship docks that face forwards even if they're on the side or underside of a ship.
- Equippable night vision goggles that let us see in darkened areas, even while in build mode.
- SD Cockpits that give you a different view relative to their orientation, and weapons that can shoot in the direction the output is facing. This would allow for the creation of broadside batteries to deal with targets that leave your frontal field of view.
- The ability to link multiple computers to the same weapon, allowing for different weapon groupings.
- The ability to activate the gravity unit of a different ship to leave the gravity of your own. The current setup forces you to activate the gravity unit of the same ship to leave its influence before activating the gravity unit of another, or to walk/float out of range of the ship, or to reset your gravity with a build block, etc.
- Astronaut combat and boarding actions with small arms.
- The ability to design body armor and handheld weapons with miniature blocks. Think Guncraft. You place the core of the weapon or armor, add ship modules to it, and then you place a PlexShrinker block on it and activate it, and it gets turned into an inventory item that you can add to your character using a UI slot. Its performance also shrinks by 10 ten times, so for example, if you build a 1000 DPS AMC array, it will be shrunk down to a 100 DPS anti-materiel weapon. The location of the core decides where the grip will be on handheld weapons, and where the center of the head is on armor (both types show a green bounding box in the shape of your character to aid in construction). There is also a limit to the size of the weapons and armor. No more than 30 meters L/W/D for Heavy Guns (shrunk down to 3x3x3 and under), and 20 meters high (shrunk to 2 meters) for armor. When playing as an astronaut, the weapon tab allows you to tune your currently-equipped weapon, and the tunings are saved to that weapon. There are other limitations, including allowable block types.
- Better default damage reduction for hardened hull plating. Right now, it's practically useless. All you have to do is get an AMC over a very low threshold, and that's one block gone with each shot.
- The ability to set a degree angle range in azimuth and elevation for turrets to prevent especially large mega-turrets from clipping into your ship's hull, or shooting your other turrets. Limits range of movement for both players and AI.
- Saving of missile outputs and turret AI settings in blueprints.
- Chain-docking.
- Attempting to navigate at the edge of a star system is a nightmare right now. It'd be nice if you could fly straight towards planets and have them actually be there, instead of teleporting all over the place. Yes, I understand why this happens - because of the way the world is divided into cells. But there has to be some way to visually represent the positions of planets better.
- Better ship landing physics. Even the most stable landers vibrate like they're possessed after a while, unless you have a ground-based docking port set up. The physics impulse should lose energy and smooth out instead of the oscillations increasing in frequency.
- LAN multiplayer mode. Play co-op or compete with friends and family on a local network, all with zero lag.
- Renaming of ships, stations, and planets.
- Item trading and auctioning system. Sell items, ships, recipes, and blueprints to other players for credits or for barter. Bid on used capital ships to try and see if you can get them for a bargain-bin price. Engage in piracy and fence your loot to other players.
- Better player model and animations. Separate male and female models that can be custom-textured.
- Lesser rewards from taking out pirates and pirate stations, and more rewards from mining.
- Enemy NPC astronaut spawns on planets and in pirate stations, guarding the chests full of loot.
- Zoom button, for long-range shooting. When activated on ships, it zooms the currently-selected cockpit in increments of 2x. When activated as an astronaut, it gives you an overlay that looks like binoculars if you have no weapons equipped, and goes into ADS mode if you have a weapon equipped.
- Melee attack. Crush blocks and other players with your bare hands! However, there is a caveat. If you use it while in freefall, you will be propelled in the opposite direction at high speed. You could use this to navigate the environment. Note, if you attempt to melee a hull or someone else's body armor without wearing armor of your own, you will lose a small amount of HP instead.
- Grapple button. Has multiple functions. If you tap it while jumping against a wall, you will Rebound higher and face the opposite direction, kind of like a parkour tic-tac maneuver. If you hold it down and are wearing power armor with electromagnet blocks, and the surface you move towards is metallic, you will cling to it. While Clinging with your weak hand, you can use a one-handed weapon in your strong hand - or melee it - to keep attacking the target. If it's a fighter, you might be able to drain their shields and damage their hull in a reasonable amount of time. The only viable tactic to prevent a clinging opponent from damaging or destroying your single-ship is to either avoid letting power-armored infantry get close in the first place, or to leave the cockpit of your ship to deal with them mano a mano.
- When under the influence of gravity, you can sprint forward by double-tapping W.
Block Ideas:
FUNCTIONAL:
Build Block - When attached to a planet or asteroid, collects terrain blocks and surface plants, but not ores, components or hulls. On planets and asteroids, removing the latter three block types demolishes them. They are removed, but not added to your inventory. Does not apply to ships or stations.
Greeble Core - For building furniture and detail objects that are then shrunk down with a PlexShrinker and placed like any block. Objects must have at least one external dimension be 10 meters, to be shrunk down to 1 meter.
Shield Core - For making handheld tactical shields, sometimes with their own power supply and shield generators. Can only be equipped to your off-hand. Passively blocks damage from your front and to your left when lowered. When raised with the Block key (Shift by default), blocks damage from the front, but you can't use your weapon. Sprint into enemies with your shield raised to charge into them and knock them out of the way. If you're wearing power armor instead of regular armor, then the more Artificial Muscle blocks your power armor has, the more effective the charge maneuver will be.
Blade Core - Create ship and player-rending vibroblades. Can only be equipped to the right hand. When you hit the melee button, the blade is used if you have one. Cuts through blocks like a hot knife through butter, but you have to be very close to your target and their shields must be down. Its power is greatly increased by power armor with Artificial Muscle. Unarmed melee attacks with power armor crush up to 3x3 blocks in front of you, but only one block deep. Melee attacks with a Blade go deeper, cutting up to three blocks deep, but in a line in front of you one meter high by three meters wide.
Light Gun Core - For making pistols and submachine guns. Size of the weapon is very limited. Can be equipped to one or both hands. You can have a Blade in your right hand and a Light Gun in your left, a Light Gun in your right hand and a Shield in your left, or a Light Gun in both hands for double the firepower. If both hands are occupied, you cannot Cling to surfaces.
Heavy Gun Core - For making large handheld weapons, like rocket launchers and rifles. Uses both the left and right hand character slots. Cannot perform Clinging while equipped. You might consider using this to create handheld repair and salvage tools, too, but - just like the weapons - they will never be as effective as the ship-mounted versions.
Augmenter Core - For making special gear that is then shrunk down and slotted onto your power armor's utility belt. Slightly enhance your personal shielding, power generation, thruster power, oxygen capacity, or any of a number of attributes.
Armor Core - For making unpowered body armor out of hull pieces which are then shrunk down to human-size. For bone animations, the armor is automatically "split" around the joints and the resultant pieces animated the same as the limbs. The character model texture between the joints is automatically changed to look like a skin-tight undersuit, instead of the player's custom texture. To prevent clipping, the green helper bounding box in build mode has yellow indicators that show where the character's joints are.
Power Armor Core - For making powered body armor with shields, generators that augment the firepower of your handheld weapons, thrusters for EVA maneuvers, artificial muscles for enhancing physical performance, and electromagnets for grappling with ship hulls. Can be slightly larger than regular armor, by a few centimeters. Very expensive! Quality power armor can cost the equivalent of millions upon millions of credits in materials. If power armor is worn, handheld weapons will use the armor as a power supply, similar to turrets. One possible teamwork tactic is to have a player with Generator-type power armor shoot at a teammate with a handheld Powersupply beam while their friend uses a heavy weapon with serious drain, like a gunner-loader team.
Artificial Muscle Block - Has no effect when added to ships, weapons or regular armor, but when added to a Power Armor Core, it gives you enormous physical strength, augmenting your running speed, melee attacks and jump height. A player with strong enough power armor can actually punch out the viewscreen of an unshielded Isanth-VI in a single blow, sending both himself and the ship careening away from each other. Very useful for punching holes in enemy ships and boarding them. Running, jumping and meleeing drain power if these are used, so your armor must have sufficient reactors and batteries. If you're using a powerful handheld weapon, you might accidentally drain so much power that your suit will be unable to move at all. Be careful!
Electromagnet Block - When used with power armor, allows you to cling to metal hulls while holding down the Grapple button. Continuously drains energy. If you hit melee while grappling, and you have enough artificial muscle, you will punch a hole in the target if their shields are down, but you won't fly away from them. Good for boarding actions. If your power armor EVA Pack is strong enough (and we're talking a monster jetpack that's as big as you are), you might be able to overwhelm the ship's own thrust and alter its course while Clinging to it. Wrestle an enemy light fighter craft into a carrier's internal bay, and then have a firing squad of ten power-armored infantry annihilate it with their anti-materiel rifles. The humiliation!
PlexShrinker - For shrinking completed armor and weapons. Checks to see if there are any invalid blocks (for example, thrusters attached to weapons) or oversized configurations before proceeding. Removes itself when done. The shrinker itself can be outside the maximum dimensions of the object, to avoid leaving a hole in the object. Cannot be undone! Before shrinking, it is possible to blueprint your weapon/armor like a ship. After shrinking, the weapon/armor behaves like a master template with its own leveled recipe, and can be mass-produced by placing it in a Factory Input and supplying the requisite materials. All of the weapons and armor produced this way also behave like recipes, but start off at a low recipe level. The more advanced and expensive the weapon or armor, the more ingredients it will require, from puny pistols that take some tens of L1 ores, to advanced power armor that might take many L5s. The meta-item and its manufactured copies will have the same name as the "ship" you created with the weapon/armor/power armor core, and can be equipped in your UI slots and used by your character. When you hit X to create a ship/weapon/armor/blade/etc., you are presented with a menu that allows you to select the core type before naming it.
Command Block - Allows you to enter an RTS-style command mode, similar to Build Mode. Select and give directions to automated ground vehicles, set targets for turrets, and assign visible waypoints for other players to follow. Good for planetary defenses!
Antimatter Cannon - Rebalanced so that it is no longer viable as a primary shield-draining weapon for incredibly large (>10,000 mass) ships. Stat growth plateaus quickly, relegating it to secondary armaments for super-capitals, and primaries for smaller capitals and fighters only. Small ships whittling away the shields of much larger vessels without support craft aiding them becomes a lot more difficult. Also, you now have the ability to set multiple, rotating outputs for the same cluster of AMCs, with the rate of fire being reduced by the number of outputs active. Half for two outputs, a quarter for four, etc. When you fire it, it goes round-robin, firing each output in the order you activated them before returning to the first to repeat the process. This would allow you to create a volley gun that sends out sleeting waves of projectiles, or a multi-barrel "gatling" that fires in a circular pattern, all from a single cluster. Also makes for a neat visual effect with handheld weapons.
Plasma Beamgun - The new primary for very large capital ships. Fires a continuous instant-hit beam of antimatter plasma that bores through shielding and armor like a salvage beam (no matter the weapon's cluster size, damage is always calculated at a rate of 20 hits per second, like the maximum for an AMC), only much longer-ranged. Power allocations are for beam Damage, Distance, Duration, and Reload. Very low rate of fire, measured in tens of seconds. Takes two seconds to charge up when the trigger is pulled. Only effective when hundreds or even thousands of the modules are linked together, where it experiences significant stat growth. Attempting to mount it to fighters or smaller capitals results in a weapon that takes a minute to reload and does meager damage. In a single cluster with thousands of blocks, however, it does devastating damage, hitting for about half a million DPS for roughly five seconds before requiring a cooldown period of fifteen seconds. The width of the beam can be increased by setting multiple outputs for a single cluster, but this increases the reload time. Each added beam connects side-by-side to any adjacent beam, and all the outputs fire at the same time, even for the same cluster. Therefore, plasma Beams can be any shape you want. Lines, Crosses, Diamonds, Circles, Boxes. Cut enemy ships in half with long emitter rows! All these beams each count for the same damage as what's in the weapon tuning panel, so for example, if you have one output, and then you add three more to make a 2x2 box-shaped beam, you've quadrupled your firepower for each shot, but quartered your rate of fire. You could take out a Titan with one of these in a spinal-mount configuration on a Battleship dedicated to capital-killing, similar to an Ion Cannon Frigate from Homeworld. Or, you could potentially use it to make a long-range handheld anti-materiel weapon.
Vibro-cutter - Used to create handheld swords. Destroys blocks that it comes in contact with, but only if their shielding is down. Impacts with the Vibro-cutter drain shields, but not quite as effectively as a proper AMC. Particularly insane players may use the full-size version of this block to give their vehicles functioning melee weapons and ram prows. If you mount those weapons to Rotating Joint blocks, you could even re-enact the bizarre space battles from Outlaw Star. Needs to be clustered in one or two long rows to be effective. If you attempt to mount them to the front of your ship in a huge pattern and create a flying ship tenderizer in lieu of using a disintegrator ram, their harmonics will cancel each other out through the hull, and it will do trifling damage. One interesting thing about the Vibro-cutter is that it mines blocks and adds them to your inventory. Yes, even the sword version will do this. You can use this to create pickaxes. Or, you can create tracked tunnel bore machines with a rotating bit using the Rotating Joint block.
Mass Driver - Fires fast-moving explosive warheads with a very small area of effect radius (think two to five blocks at the most). A gun-based alternative to missiles, for fighters, turrets, and secondary batteries on small capitals. Lower rate of fire and slower stat growth than AMCs. Has no effect on shields. Goes well with stronger hardened hull HP and/or damage reduction - gives it a proper nemesis. Can also be used to make ballistic handheld firearms that punch through bunkers and unshielded characters who aren't wearing power armor. Like AMCs, it supports rotating outputs.
EZ Caterpillar Pod - Place it on the underside of ground vehicles to make tanks that crawl across the terrain (the side looks like a tank suspension, and the functioning surface looks like an animated texture of moving tracks). Place it in the deck of a ship to create high-speed moving walkways. Must be oriented properly to apply a speed bonus to players moving in the desired direction. Having it turned the wrong way will cause them to slow, or even stop. Can be activated manually to set it as either movement key controlled or continuous-running.
EZ Caterpillar Pod Wedge - Angled version for climbing over obstructions with your tracked vehicles, or building escalators.
Rotating Joint - Behaves like a docking point, but allows you to dock ships that act as moving legs. Create stow-away landing gear, or legs for walking machines. Using the same Weapon settings panel for turret degree angles, you can set the movement range, speed and timing. At the press of a button, the legs are enabled, and the movement controls take over control of them instead of the ship's engines. Create quadrupedal spider-crawlers, or bipedal walkers with gyro-stabilization! Use chain-docking to build multi-jointed legs! Depending on its settings (accessible through a tab similar to the Bobby AI), the joint can also be used to create directly-controlled turrets for tanks, walkers and spacecraft, that behave as though they are an integral part of the ship they are attached to, allowing you to access their weapons if you're in the core that the rotating joint is linked to. The disadvantage is that they cannot be independently controlled by other players or by AI, and must be managed by the player at all times. Could be useful for making broadside batteries on capital ships that turn to face their targets. Can also be used to make wheeled vehicles if allowed to rotate 360 degrees when the movement key is depressed, but unless the wheels are made from blocks constructed with a Greeble Core, they will be square and the ride very bumpy. Tracks are better.
Gyro-stabilizer - Improves turning rate (lowers a ship's effective mass; we know that's not what it's actually doing, but for the sake of calcs, it's close enough), with the caveat that it only works when built in perfect cube shapes, like 1 block to reduce by 25 mass, 2x2x2 to reduce by 75, 3x3x3, and so on (irregular clusters only count for the tier of the perfectly cubic clusters they contain, so 2x2x2 with a small row attached to it still counts as 2x2x2). Each cluster level increases the bonus, but its usefulness begins to peter out for ships above 10,000 mass. Gyro-equipped ships are also resistant to rolling over when landed, and roll on command faster. Intended primarly for heavy shuttles, walking machines, light capital craft and advanced heavy fighters made of hardened hull. The block is very expensive, and adds significantly to the final price of a ship.
Anti-gravity Repulsor - An alternative to Hyperflux Coil Thrusters. Negates the gravity of a planet, but does not allow you to leave the gravity field of a planet. Good for airships, floating platforms and flying billboards, but if you mount it to very large ships with their own hyperflux coil thrusters, you need a huge number of them to negate the effects of gravity entirely.
EVA Pack - Thruster for power armor. Substantially higher power density and efficiency than hyperflux coils. Has no effect when mounted to vehicles. All modules must be linked together for them to have any effect at all.
Bow Thruster - Improves a very large ship's turning rate when placed and aligned properly, but consumes a considerable amount of energy while turning.
Advanced Optics - Increases your ship or weapon's maximum zoom level up to a cap. Takes exponentially more for each level. Does not work on swords or shields.
Ballistic Computer - Gives you a lead indicator for your currently-selected target. More blocks means that the indicator updates faster and more accurately.
Boarding Pod - Add them to the nose of a boarding ship. When you ram a ship that has its shields down, it consumes the module and does three things. One, it drills a ragged 3x3x6 hole in the target just large enough for you to fit through. Two, it ejects you from the ship. Three, it causes you to enter the targeted ship's artificial gravity field. And then you have an epic shootout with the opposing crew on the flight deck of a carrier! Or... y'know. You ram their ship to find that the inside is nothing but starship components, with no room for people.
R/C Block - Remote control for faction-owned ships. Select them from a list in the faction menu, and take control (it handily indicates which ship they're docked to). Pilot gun drones and cruise missiles equipped with this block without even leaving the cockpit of your fancy capital ship. Of course, the drawback is that you're a sitting duck while you're remote-piloting another ship. Fly a reinforcement vessel to your friends several sectors away, and then relinquish control so they can take it and keep up the fighting, or use it to effect a tactical retreat. While R/Cing, you don't have access to the remote-controlled ship's docked ships or turrets.
Ship Core - Renamed to Vehicle Core. Can be used in ground vehicles and anti-gravity airships in addition to regular spacecraft, depending on what you attach to it. You can no longer enter flight mode while occupying the core. You must be sitting in one of three chair types; the Command Chair, Passenger Bench or Ejection Seat.
Command Chair - Hard metal chair in various colors, for the center of large ship bridges and control areas, or armored ground vehicles. Only one can be added to a ship or vehicle.
Passenger Bench - Regular seating bench with padded cushions and a restraint harness. Good for dropships, freighters, mining ships and shuttles, or secondary seating on a ship's bridge. If a ship is equipped with a Command Chair or Ejection Seat, then no one who uses a Passenger Bench may fly the ship. If it is not equipped with a Command Chair or Ejection Seat, then the first player on the ship to use a Passenger Bench is the pilot, and the players using other passenger benches subsequently are passengers only.
Ejection Seat - Like the Command Chair, but a little different. This one can be activated like a hotbarred weapon, and when you do so, it will violently eject you from your ailing ship with a cool rocket motor effect. If you're under the influence of a planet's gravity field, you will parachute to the surface if you're wearing regular armor or a jumpsuit. If you're wearing power armor when you eject, then the fight isn't over yet. Your suit's thrusters take over, and you may attempt to grapple with your attacker and destroy them with your personal weapons in a desperate last stand.
Wingback Chair - Fancy leather wingback chair with buttons. You can activate it and sit in it. Does not activate flight mode. Good for an officer's quarters or a conference room.
Air Recycler - Supplies air to a ship's interior. In order to function, at least one of these blocks must face the interior of each enclosed compartment. If the hull is breached, the compartment will be decompressed and you won't be able to breathe (the default player model is wearing little more than a jumpsuit). Cannot be used in armor.
Oxygen Tank - You can use this block for suits of armor or power armor that are expected to go EVA in hard vacuum. Each block adds 30 seconds to your maximum EVA duration. Proper long-duration air tanks contain at least a hundred of these blocks, shrunk down by ten times. For example, a 3x5x10 configuration of blocks gives you a 30x50x100-centimeter bulky air tank that lasts 75 real-time minutes. This time continues to elapse even if you are in a build block, ship core, or chair, unless said block is under the influence of an Air Recycler. If you enter the atmosphere of a planet or the area of effect of an Air Recycler while wearing armor or power armor equipped with one or more Oxygen Tank blocks, your oxygen supply will be restored over time. The larger the tank, the longer it takes (about one to two minutes to fully resupply the aforementioned 150-block oxygen tank). In order to function at all, they must all be clustered together. If even one Oxygen Tank block is out of place, it will not work. If you build two tanks in your backpack, they must have a "crossover valve" (or at least a 1x1 line of oxygen tanks, to be more precise) to connect the clusters.
Memory Crystal - Looks like a terminal with a small crystal in a sealed chamber with a glass viewing port. Acts like a stationary logbook when activated.
Mobile Factory Input - Factory Input that can be used on ships. Low efficiency. Requires double the materials for the same output, and production rate cannot be enhanced. For mobile fortresses with their own logistics centers.
DECORATIVE:
Exhaust Blocks - Leaves a colored trail when your ship is under acceleration. An alternative to lava or ice crystals. Comes in various colors, including purple. Multiple Exhaust Blocks clustered together create a larger plume instead of many small plumes. Add them to your power armor's EVA Pack for a really intimidating effect.
Hull/Hardened Hull Inside Corner - Self-explanatory.
Plexlight Wedge - Self-explanatory.
Bookcase - A bookcase that also functions as a storage chest with drawers.
Bed - Block that forms a luxurious-looking bed.
Bed Pillow - Place at the head of configurations of Bed blocks.
Bunk Bed - A stackable bed block for high-capacity sleeping areas.
Bunk Bed Pillow - Same as bunk bed, but with a pillow.
Capsule Hotel - A block with a texture that looks like the door and interior of a capsule hotel, perfect for inns on starbases.
Drinking Fountain - Special zero-gee drinking fountain, designed to refill a personal sippy bottle. Doesn't actually do anything.
Control Console - Angled decorative control console.
Holo-tank - A block with a glowing topological map on the top and controls on the sides.
Hologram - A patterned semi-transparent block with glowing lines and figures. Set this on top of your holo-tanks.
Reel-to-Reel Tape Machine - For super-retro builds.
Punch Card Machine - Again, very retro.
Glowing Strip - A light block that looks like a thin, glowing strip of luminescent material. For ship interiors. Comes in various neon colors.
