What about having radioactive sectors scattered in the universe?

Preferably in some sectors with asteroids (rare ores) in them and then subject to ion storms/fog

Those sectors would cause damage to ship hull at a "to be defined" rate of X/s.

Radiation screens equipment should be also available at some stations,with total or partial protection (also to be defined).

We could start with homogeneous sector radioactivity (make it a property of all sectors with 0 damage rate for normal sectors).

To be discussed also: radiation immunity for hive ships:
again
complete/partial,
specific hive ships / all of them

I am sure miners and traders would love this : )
(and for others, free cargo droppings from npc convoys)

(If that effect is not to hard to implement, why not include proximity radiation effect from space objects like asteroids.
After that a sun/black hole object could be created... )

I'd say the hull loss would be proportional to the amount of hull you have in the first place-

so say you lose around 1%-5% of your total hull a minute

I like this idea. Imagine a green fog sector with large concentrations of Xith roids, but with lethal radiation blasting all passers-by... would definitely make things a lot more interesting.

Maybe 3% hull would work... that's 60% hull in 20 minutes, a lot of damage, easily enough to make prolonged mining risky and require some care to be taken when you make an approach to the roids.

You could make these sectors fairly rare. Maybe one hidden sector in each greyspace system, requiring you to find each one with careful searching, then dodge rats to successfully carry off your loot.

Also, I think that these sectors sound hazardous enough without adding radproof bots, honestly. If you lose anywhere from 10-50% of your hull in ten minutes, I think that getting attacked by bots also makes it almost too hard.

One thing we could consider is having different sectors have different levels of hull loss, as well as different concentrations of valuable ore. Less valuable sectors would be less hazardous.

All in all, awesome idea BT!

This would only make sense if there were some actual source for the radiation. Contiguous areas of space should have similar levels of radiation, and should be centered around stars and sectors with a large concentration of radioactive ores.

However, considering the fact that ships in VO are specifically designed to be hammered on with bolts of high-energy plasma, antimatter, and neutron bolts, I imagine their armor would be pretty resistant to radiation as well. Even sitting right on top of the Helios sun, I wouldn't expect a VO ship to take more than 1 or 2 hull points of damage each second.

I think radiation would affect your ability to recharge your battery rather than affect your hull (as ladron said, our hulls are good... but I say our battery tech is crap! :p).

Either way, neat idea, though there should be some "reason" behind the radioactivity. Of course, it's not hard to come up with a "reason", you just need to be creative.

Reason.

Heliocene ore is in its natural state, highly radioactive or maybe corrosive.

I'm for something like this. Long ago in a VO far far away I suggested that at least some ion storms cause gradual damage to ships beyond the hive that anything but a swarm laden XC can outrun.

While it would make sense that ion storms damage ships, it would just make traveling even more annoying than it is now.

@ landron
Perhaps. I think something that keeps the mind involved in the act of playing the game could have relieved travel of some of its tedium. It would have certainly been a real hazard for the slower trade ships or any ship that already had significant damage.

But taking damage simply for being in an ion storm doesn't keep the mind involved. Most people already jump around ion storms. If you happen to get stuck in one anyway, there isn't anything you can do about the damage, you just have to fly to the storm exit jump point exactly the same way you always do and jump out.

Perhaps the bombardment of ions on the asteroids in an ion storm causes them to emit dangerous radiation in a limited proximity, forcing you to make course adjustments to dodge them if you find them in your path? This would also make you vulnerable to attack by bots while you are making course alterations.

Perhaps the bombardment of ions on the asteroids in an ion storm causes them to emit dangerous radiation in a limited proximity

Besides the fact that it doesn't make even the slightest bit of sense for any part of this to occur (the amount of physical knowledge displayed by burger-flippers like you is pathetic to the point of hilarity), it would make ion storms even more annoying, as you would have to sit in them for longer. Of course, the best way to get through with as little damage as possible would be to point at the storm exit point and hold down turbo until you can jump.

Since you guys want to come up with a way to make ion storms mentally engaging, let's apply a simple mutation of the Turing test to any ideas you come up with in the future. Assume a ration human pilot is using dullbot to travel. If, after your proposed modification, dullbot's behavior would be the same as that of the human pilot, your idea fails. So far we're 0/2.

What if radioactive sectors makes radar / jump reading useless?
Gives a reason for someone wish to enter such sector...

That can be directly related to a gas giant planet, 1-sector-wide, like, you can jump in/out but can't cross atmospheric boundaries.

Also, it could be some sort of radiation that only affects human pilots, and caused by the hive... like a new +levi+2+ causes this fog to protect itself.

AVALONS!

I think a more realistic approach to adding something like radiation would be sectors prone to "solar flares." Where a solar flare is announced and the miner needs to get out of the sector or in a station within 30 seconds or something. Actually... that might be an effective tool against AFK mining. Fry them with gamma rays.

Radiation in Vendetta Online would be a tricky thing, though... I wouldn't really be a fan of having the ship, itself, get damaged or have it blow up but I can't really think of a way to get around having to do that. You could make it so that any ore in your cargo hold or outside at the time of the solar flare would become "irradiated" and then stations wouldn't let you dock with it. That would be pretty good because it wouldn't interrupt any duels that might be going on in a sector.

Here's how it would work: after the solar flare warning in the sector (it could be anywhere including wormhole sectors, empty sectors, station sectors, marked and unmarked asteroid sectors, even in ion storms) there would be 30-60 seconds before the radiation starts. When it starts there will be a 30-60 second period in which radar length would go down to 500m (although visibility stays the same), every roid in the sector starts baking at a heat rate of 5, and any ore in the sector in widget form inside or outside any ships (although ore inside stations is safe) becomes "irradiated" and stations will not let you dock with it from there onward; much like how you can't dock with pure xith.

Maybe radar range could be reduced to 500m until you dock and have it "repaired," or taken out all together.

Well the radiation doesn't damage the radar. Solar flares emit all kinds of radiation wavelengths from radio waves to gamma rays. Whatever wave length VO radars use will also be belched out in mass quantities by a sun's solar flares, thus making the radar nearly unusable for the duration of the radiation, not permanently unusable. I can imagine, though, that 1) Raptors could still use their radar well enough and 2) there would be addons to shield ore in a ship's cargo hold. The roid heating will be generally unavoidable by afk miners, though... If they're too slow to get out but have a radiation shield for their ore they would be able to keep their progress but would still have to move on to another sector.

Whatever wave length VO radars use will also be belched out in mass quantities by a sun's solar flares

The sensors in Vendetta are not radar in the sense of "RAdio Detection And Ranging". When we were rebuilding Old Earth technology after the wormhole collapse, we forgot about that one. Instead, sensors in VO are actually 5km-long nanotube whiskers which protrude from ships in all directions. As such, it doesn't make sense for radiation, even that from solar flares, to affect sensors.

I do like the bit about irradiating cargo though.

How's about an ore like very active uranium, or a radioactive transuranic which is very rare, mildly radioactive and extremely sought-after as a power source, but which has the unusual and distressing side effect that U-235 does, namely if you pile too much in one place it goes supercritical and explodes with extreme violence.

This would prevent miners simply sitting there and roasting a roid to suck out every last drop, it would make AFK mining distinctly dangerous and it would make piracy rather dodgy, too.

I thought about doing this a long time ago, system-wide, just based around the idea that local celestial body was close to the wormhole and emissive in a dangerous spectra or level of output. Enter your favorite celestial body reasoning (maybe too close to a Class O hypergiant and the actual UV radiation is burning up the ship.. that would make an interesting case for shadows, and the ability to hide behind other objects). A black hole could be fascinating too.. like maybe the jump system can travel without interaction, but you can only be out of "jump" in normal flight for a few minutes before your ship gets pulled over the event horizon or yanked apart or something.

We could also just have "corrosive" fogs of some sort, that are in specific sectors, basically as the original poster stated.

So much potential weirdness.. Anyway, I value further feedback, as there are plans to add fogging and expand grayspace, and it'd be great to add in some strangeness.