Forums » Suggestions
Breaking down barriers.
Currently, systems are split into 256 itty bitty squares that a person can choose to warp to at their own leisure. However, whenever I'm playing VO, all I can think about is how I'm trapped into one of these itty bitty squares and I have to sit through a loading screen to go to another itty bitty square with other contents. It's rather like living in a castle made from cardboard boxes, and you need to feed the troll before moving between them.
What I propose, as a long-range sort of thing, is breaking down "visible" walls between things. I've been playing EVE Online recently and one of the features I most liked was the fact that there was no visible sectors and when you warped- you saw all the planets and the star(angers me to no end that there are only single-star systems in EVE, clearly not what their backstory states as well- but that is another subject) shift positions depending on you moving from location to location.
However, I don't like how EVE won't let you just "pick" a position to warp to- it sucks really. You sort of have to cheat to go where you want, and then you can only go there if it's between celestial objects. So, I'd prefer a sort of nav interface where major locations of interest(stations, wormholes, 'roid belts) are on one navigation "layer" to allow for quick and easy selection and another nav "layer" for grid-level jump navigation.
This, hopefully, would allow a lot of cool stuff that the current system just isn't flexible enough to handle, like objects in orbit that actually orbit. You may visit a system one day and note the positions of the stars and planets as well as a really nice 'roid belt for mining- and then a few weeks later you come back and everything has proceeded in orbit, so your precious ore asteroid belt takes a bit of work to find again. It also leaves open for the very cool effect of watching the stars and planets shift positions as you warp- as well as with the growing in size as we already have.
What I propose, as a long-range sort of thing, is breaking down "visible" walls between things. I've been playing EVE Online recently and one of the features I most liked was the fact that there was no visible sectors and when you warped- you saw all the planets and the star(angers me to no end that there are only single-star systems in EVE, clearly not what their backstory states as well- but that is another subject) shift positions depending on you moving from location to location.
However, I don't like how EVE won't let you just "pick" a position to warp to- it sucks really. You sort of have to cheat to go where you want, and then you can only go there if it's between celestial objects. So, I'd prefer a sort of nav interface where major locations of interest(stations, wormholes, 'roid belts) are on one navigation "layer" to allow for quick and easy selection and another nav "layer" for grid-level jump navigation.
This, hopefully, would allow a lot of cool stuff that the current system just isn't flexible enough to handle, like objects in orbit that actually orbit. You may visit a system one day and note the positions of the stars and planets as well as a really nice 'roid belt for mining- and then a few weeks later you come back and everything has proceeded in orbit, so your precious ore asteroid belt takes a bit of work to find again. It also leaves open for the very cool effect of watching the stars and planets shift positions as you warp- as well as with the growing in size as we already have.
Yeah, that's how the game was supposed to be. Until we found out it was just going to be the four of us making it. Maybe someday we can redo things as seamlessly as originally intended, but it probably won't be in the near future.