Forums » Suggestions
Was going to put this in the "Reason to conquer stations" thread, but decided it's kind of a tangent and a bit far fetched:
Something to consider with conquerable stations coming. With such vast sectors, focusing player activity becomes very important. What if there were certain wormholes or areas in sectors that could only be reached by certain routes? Say a spacial anomaly or heavy debris field or nearby star prevents access to certain sectors. This is not to say you're pulled out of your jump like in an ion storm, but you actually can not move past the sector unless you take a specific route through the system. Doing this could create certain choke points, funneling conflict and general player activity into a smaller area or even a single sector. Thus certain sectors would be a lot more valuable to control. To illustrate, say this is a system:
0000000000
0000000000
0000000000
xxxxSxxxxx
0000000000
0000000000
0 = Normal Sectors
x = Impassable
S = Passable Sector With Station
In order to get from one area to another, a player has to travel through the station sector. The sector would function like an ion storm, pulling the player out of warp and providing him with an 'exit point' which would be placed on the opposite side of the station, forcing him to travel by it. This mechanic could be used to create all sorts of things from customs checkpoints to heavily defended resource rich areas. Whole systems could be filled with impassable sectors creating very specific routes to navigate by. The same effect could be accomplished by creating a system filled with ion storms except for certain clear routes.
Expanding on this to something even more far fetched, perhaps certain impassable sectors could be passed if there were an ion storm present. This could represent bypassing a station or sector's defences and focus conflict in storm sectors.
Edit: Yeah... after reading this over it's even more far fetched than I thought. But maybe something for the long long term.
Something to consider with conquerable stations coming. With such vast sectors, focusing player activity becomes very important. What if there were certain wormholes or areas in sectors that could only be reached by certain routes? Say a spacial anomaly or heavy debris field or nearby star prevents access to certain sectors. This is not to say you're pulled out of your jump like in an ion storm, but you actually can not move past the sector unless you take a specific route through the system. Doing this could create certain choke points, funneling conflict and general player activity into a smaller area or even a single sector. Thus certain sectors would be a lot more valuable to control. To illustrate, say this is a system:
0000000000
0000000000
0000000000
xxxxSxxxxx
0000000000
0000000000
0 = Normal Sectors
x = Impassable
S = Passable Sector With Station
In order to get from one area to another, a player has to travel through the station sector. The sector would function like an ion storm, pulling the player out of warp and providing him with an 'exit point' which would be placed on the opposite side of the station, forcing him to travel by it. This mechanic could be used to create all sorts of things from customs checkpoints to heavily defended resource rich areas. Whole systems could be filled with impassable sectors creating very specific routes to navigate by. The same effect could be accomplished by creating a system filled with ion storms except for certain clear routes.
Expanding on this to something even more far fetched, perhaps certain impassable sectors could be passed if there were an ion storm present. This could represent bypassing a station or sector's defences and focus conflict in storm sectors.
Edit: Yeah... after reading this over it's even more far fetched than I thought. But maybe something for the long long term.
Speaking of which, I want my mini-ion storm jump jammer mine!
A different approach would be a system with only one sector that has two jump points to the adjacent systems. It'd basically be like a sector in the old universe.
A new system would be better... it opens a new WH in "known" system, leading to a new system. But this one is not circular, 2 WHs type. Instead, it has only one worm hole, the most logical spot to put a barracks station. On another sector of same system, one mining station.
Later another WH can open on this new system, either leading back to know universe, or to more new systems...
Closer to mr_spuck idea. But I'd like to see a system with only one usable WH.
Later another WH can open on this new system, either leading back to know universe, or to more new systems...
Closer to mr_spuck idea. But I'd like to see a system with only one usable WH.
I like Ghost's idea better, although I would pull people out of jump if they could not travel further.
yes
Yes. Planning on doing this with the fixed-fog "reefs". I didn't specifically mention impassable sectors in the reef post, but that option was in mind. In my implementation, you would be able to go to the impassable sector, you just would not be able to jump out in the impassable direction, ever. You could only plot courses back the way you came.
I want to go one step further than that, even, basically drilling cylinder "channels" in densely packed asteroid sectors, which is where convoys and capships will have to pass. Fighters, on the other hand, may be able to hide in the surrounding dense field. Makes asteroid radar occlusion pretty useful.
I want to go one step further than that, even, basically drilling cylinder "channels" in densely packed asteroid sectors, which is where convoys and capships will have to pass. Fighters, on the other hand, may be able to hide in the surrounding dense field. Makes asteroid radar occlusion pretty useful.
Sweet! And I would suggest not making the reefs permanent ion storms but rather something more akin to large electromagnetic seas. Have one system with one that's got some orange fog, another with some red/grey fog, etc.. Then you can mark the "passable" sectors as buoy sectors of some sort, or have them be conquerable stations. Then pirates could come in and disable the buoys or take over the station and, while the sectors would still be labeled as buoy sectors on the nav map, people would be jumping into a trap that they'd have to jump out of the way they came.
Or you could have the player need to pass over buoy sectors on their nav course to go through the electromagnetic sea and have disabled buoy sectors interrupt jumps. That might mix it up a bit for pirates and give anti-pirates sort of a "buoy maintenance team" job. Then you can have stations on either side of the "sea" that with lucrative trade routes between them. That would be totally badass.
Or you could have the player need to pass over buoy sectors on their nav course to go through the electromagnetic sea and have disabled buoy sectors interrupt jumps. That might mix it up a bit for pirates and give anti-pirates sort of a "buoy maintenance team" job. Then you can have stations on either side of the "sea" that with lucrative trade routes between them. That would be totally badass.
...basically drilling cylinder "channels" in densely packed asteroid sectors...
+1 and some change.
+1 and some change.
But before you start using ideas of making use of asteroids for cover from turret fire you need to make it so that they don't shoot at you if you're behind one. Most of the time bolts tend to go straight through asteroids.
You sure that's not just the effect you're seeing go through the asteroid? I've seen something like what you are describing, and to be honest, the projectile itself didn't go through the asteroid. The effect (I believe it was a guass turret) certainly made it look like it did, but I was effectively covered.
Sometimes it's only the effect and it just scares the crap outta ya, other times it actually damages you. I think it depends on the speed of the projectile, your proximity to the asteroid you're taking cover behind, and perhaps latency. Either way that should definitely be fixed before asteroids become a larger strategic tool.
90% of the time it's just the effect. If the asteroid is very thin and the projectile moving very quickly, it may miss the collision and actually hit you. But that is not going to be "fixed", as it isn't "broken", it's a known choice of engine development and inherent server-side CPU usage. All development is a tradeoff.
Anyway, I think that's kind of departing from the main topic, here..
Anyway, I think that's kind of departing from the main topic, here..
Well I wasn't suggesting that that be directly fixed (as I am aware enough to know that that's not possible), only that they not shoot at you if you're behind an asteroid as to avoid that case. Makes sense with the radar occlusion, anyways.
But yeah... impassible sectors... badass...
But yeah... impassible sectors... badass...
If I'm not mistaken, NPC's are not currently effected my radar occlusion. I would consider that a bug, and fixing it would help with the issue ShankTank describes.
Keep in mind that if you're putting these difficult and time-consuming to fly into choke points in place, you need to alter the cargo time-out to a flat 15 minutes, period. Those of us who are willing to spend our in game time sitting inside these things and making them dangerous/interesting are not going to do so if the cargo is gone by the time we fly out, get a hauler, and fly back, just because 5 minutes have elapsed and nobody's in the sector. Honestly, I'd say make it even longer, 30 minutes, but I don't know how that will affect server load.
I will say that my recent experience has been that although I can destroy a trident and 3-4 moth heavies in a single sector (after wearing down the moths to ~6% each and then blasting the trident, whittling it down, and finishing all off at once), I rarely beat the 15 minute clock on all the cargo. Watching the last 120cu of ADV rails time out is fucking heartbreaking after a 6 system hunting trip.
It would also be helpful if, once you've had cargo in your hold, you could target it over a great distance (like a group member): I like hunting the convoys that get trapped in the dense, foggy Deneb sectors, but there's little point to it when I cannot find the goodies again when I return.
I will say that my recent experience has been that although I can destroy a trident and 3-4 moth heavies in a single sector (after wearing down the moths to ~6% each and then blasting the trident, whittling it down, and finishing all off at once), I rarely beat the 15 minute clock on all the cargo. Watching the last 120cu of ADV rails time out is fucking heartbreaking after a 6 system hunting trip.
It would also be helpful if, once you've had cargo in your hold, you could target it over a great distance (like a group member): I like hunting the convoys that get trapped in the dense, foggy Deneb sectors, but there's little point to it when I cannot find the goodies again when I return.
Making NPCs generally obey radar occlusion, along with other radar distance limitations, is definitely needed.
We'll be adding waypoint markers, for more generalized usage in foggy sectors (marking asteroids with the best ore, dropped cargo, whatever).
We could also deal with cargo timeouts in a couple of different ways. Either writing it out to the database (definite pros and cons there), or making the sector timeout more dynamic and increasing it to a minute past the timeout of the last cargo dropped, or some such. But, that might be bad for a lot of generalized situations (every empty sector where a newbie kills a drone that drops some scrap), increasing server load undesirably. Anyway, we'll take a look at that.
We'll be adding waypoint markers, for more generalized usage in foggy sectors (marking asteroids with the best ore, dropped cargo, whatever).
We could also deal with cargo timeouts in a couple of different ways. Either writing it out to the database (definite pros and cons there), or making the sector timeout more dynamic and increasing it to a minute past the timeout of the last cargo dropped, or some such. But, that might be bad for a lot of generalized situations (every empty sector where a newbie kills a drone that drops some scrap), increasing server load undesirably. Anyway, we'll take a look at that.
Some things could probably be given substantial permanance without much load increase, rare drops that are in high demand (lenbs, hive posis and fcs, levi and queen components), and perhaps all trade goods would benefit from similar time outs. Scrap and most if not all ore can probably be safely left as is.
suggestion:
Make cargo drop have a date.time tag, instead of timer tag. Then the update of sector thread can check that against now() to 'kill' old cargo. And if sector thread goes suspended, no problem, when it returns/starts it checks each cargo date.time tag compared to now().
i know technical reasons for that, but is there any RP explanation, like "containers only stands 15min of open space vaccum and temperature conditions"?
Make cargo drop have a date.time tag, instead of timer tag. Then the update of sector thread can check that against now() to 'kill' old cargo. And if sector thread goes suspended, no problem, when it returns/starts it checks each cargo date.time tag compared to now().
i know technical reasons for that, but is there any RP explanation, like "containers only stands 15min of open space vaccum and temperature conditions"?
Date/time-tagging every piece of cargo wouldn't help, considering it isn't written to the database at present, so it won't be instantiated in the sector. If we do choose to write it to the database in the future (as I mentioned above, one option), then some strategy to determine remaining cargo-lifetime is a given.
Cargo accumulation can be burdensome over time, we did the 15 minute thing to try and keep a lid on it, although we didn't have cargo-globbing back thing (single cargo units with high capacity).
Anyway, like I said, there are various options we'll examine, for the cargo situation. This thread, on the other hand, is about impassable sectors. Let's keep further commentary to that subject.
Cargo accumulation can be burdensome over time, we did the 15 minute thing to try and keep a lid on it, although we didn't have cargo-globbing back thing (single cargo units with high capacity).
Anyway, like I said, there are various options we'll examine, for the cargo situation. This thread, on the other hand, is about impassable sectors. Let's keep further commentary to that subject.