Forums » Suggestions
new phenomina like ion storms
Space is a dangerous place, you can encounter pirates, arena seekers, bots, queens, or your average pk'er, but other then ion storms there really isn't much in the way of natually occuring events that are of any danger. And some would say that ion storms are not dangerous enough. An idea that I was kicking around for an additonal phenomina was to have "micro meteorites" that have a random chance of hitting you. More so in places where there are more astiroids. Odia is the perfect example, there are tons of rings around that sun and there has got to be a lot of collisions between them. So, lots of little, fast traveling rocks that go zingging thoughout the system.
How it would work. Your flying around and all of a sudden your ships hull is truck by a small rock at high velocity doing x amount of damage. In systems with little in the way of astiroids there would be a less then 5% chance of getting hit, but in systems with higher counts of roids the chances jump to 25%.
This would occur in zones with AND without roids in them, so jumping around roid fields to avoid the ion storms still have some parrel in it, and could potentially be fatal if traveling with low health/armor.
This may not seem that dangerous, but if your making a 4 system or more jump you may need to stop at a station to repair once or even twice if it's a bad day to repair as to avoid an accidental death while in route to your destination.
There could even be a warning that you are about to be struck if you do not avoid in x number of seconds, to keep people more attentive while making long trips. I know I find myself watching tv while making some of my longer runs. Something like this would definitely make me pay closer attention.
Thoughts, suggestions, exploites or general dislikes?
How it would work. Your flying around and all of a sudden your ships hull is truck by a small rock at high velocity doing x amount of damage. In systems with little in the way of astiroids there would be a less then 5% chance of getting hit, but in systems with higher counts of roids the chances jump to 25%.
This would occur in zones with AND without roids in them, so jumping around roid fields to avoid the ion storms still have some parrel in it, and could potentially be fatal if traveling with low health/armor.
This may not seem that dangerous, but if your making a 4 system or more jump you may need to stop at a station to repair once or even twice if it's a bad day to repair as to avoid an accidental death while in route to your destination.
There could even be a warning that you are about to be struck if you do not avoid in x number of seconds, to keep people more attentive while making long trips. I know I find myself watching tv while making some of my longer runs. Something like this would definitely make me pay closer attention.
Thoughts, suggestions, exploites or general dislikes?
It would get more annoying than ion storms even more quickly. People already gripe about having to fly through storms; imagine what would happen if you randomly had 25% health removed by something you had no control over.
I agree that we need more environmental thingamajigs to make the game more interesting, but I don't think this fits the bill as something positive.
I agree that we need more environmental thingamajigs to make the game more interesting, but I don't think this fits the bill as something positive.
Perhaps this could occur in a limited area with some rich ore in it and no bots. Maybe it could happen in the same sector as a wormhole to an otherwise unreachable and lucrative trading post.
no limited area, the idea is that it's flying fast, should be able to happen anywhere in a system, even if it's only a .5% chance.
ever seen Starship Troopers, where the two pilots are chatting it up in the command center and all of a suddent they see a huge gravety well coming there way, something like that, you have enough time to avoid if your paying attention. If not you take some damage, not enough to kill you, unless you were already previously damages.
ever seen Starship Troopers, where the two pilots are chatting it up in the command center and all of a suddent they see a huge gravety well coming there way, something like that, you have enough time to avoid if your paying attention. If not you take some damage, not enough to kill you, unless you were already previously damages.
"...suddent they see a huge gravety well coming there way..."
Slightly off topic, but they didn't see a huge gravity well... Boy, I'm telling you, those stars and planets just sneak up on you...
Slightly off topic, but they didn't see a huge gravity well... Boy, I'm telling you, those stars and planets just sneak up on you...
something should be implemented only if it is going to be able to help people in some way, such as having expensive minerals or added bonuses. Bring back power-ups? no, but you could have random guns flying in space for free, if you find them. That would be fun.
@CP
they didn't see it directly but it showed up on there sensors, but you know what I ment.
they didn't see it directly but it showed up on there sensors, but you know what I ment.
"Starship Troopers" the movie was about par with "Mars Attacks!" Flinging asteroids across light years of space? Hmmmm.
Anyway, this concept reminds me of an ongoing D&D joke back in the day called "wandering damage." In 1983, role-playing games relied on things like random encounter tables, so you'd roll some dice and hey! along comes some kobolds. The adventurers would fight the kobolds, and of course they'd win, but in the process the kobolds would get in a few hits. After the 300th random encounter, it was tedious, so you'd shortcut the process and just roll up a few points of damage for the players and call it good. There ya go. Wandering damage.
Anyway, this concept reminds me of an ongoing D&D joke back in the day called "wandering damage." In 1983, role-playing games relied on things like random encounter tables, so you'd roll some dice and hey! along comes some kobolds. The adventurers would fight the kobolds, and of course they'd win, but in the process the kobolds would get in a few hits. After the 300th random encounter, it was tedious, so you'd shortcut the process and just roll up a few points of damage for the players and call it good. There ya go. Wandering damage.
Oh noes! A Gelatinous Cube! Never mind that the denizens of this underground barracks have somehow lived their lives here without being inconveninced by the damn thing, KILL IT!
Er, anyway...we could get all sciency about this (i.e. the specifics of meteor paths and travel, and the fact that a shower that routinely headed into an asteroid belt would be extinguished after a few run-ins, etc), but it's generally a good idea. I wouldn't use it quite so broadly as has been suggested, but it's no big deal. Let it be.
Er, anyway...we could get all sciency about this (i.e. the specifics of meteor paths and travel, and the fact that a shower that routinely headed into an asteroid belt would be extinguished after a few run-ins, etc), but it's generally a good idea. I wouldn't use it quite so broadly as has been suggested, but it's no big deal. Let it be.
Hmmm.....the term "gravity well gives me an idea for some in game phenomena.
Say that only in sectors that didnt have any rodis that there could be a percent chance that there would be a "gravity well". It could have a similar effect as ion storms except that it wouldnt pull you out of a jump. Instead if you jumped into an empty sector that had a gravity well in it then your ship would automatically detect to center of it and the closer you got to the center of the well the harder it would be to get away and if for some reason you get a little too close and youre unable to escape then the well pulls you in and hyperspaces you to some random spot in the universe along with dealing your ship a certain amount of stress related damage.
Say that only in sectors that didnt have any rodis that there could be a percent chance that there would be a "gravity well". It could have a similar effect as ion storms except that it wouldnt pull you out of a jump. Instead if you jumped into an empty sector that had a gravity well in it then your ship would automatically detect to center of it and the closer you got to the center of the well the harder it would be to get away and if for some reason you get a little too close and youre unable to escape then the well pulls you in and hyperspaces you to some random spot in the universe along with dealing your ship a certain amount of stress related damage.
That sounds fun Big Mike, I like it.
Random gravity wells? 0_o
Ion storms already anger people because they have no point and just serve to waste time (except in CtC, for the attackers). Causing people random damage would just waste more time, causing more anger. There would have to be some purpose other than "random effects" to causing player inconvienience - in the case of ion storms, their only real application is to randomly slow down the transport. I guess this suggestion would be to randomly damage the transport.
Hm, maybe add comets into the game? The comet would span several sectors for some short period of time (say, fifteen minutes), during which it would spawn temporary moving roids minable for very rare and expensive ores. However, the cometary halo and tail would be full of debris that would make mining a comet highly dangerous. The debris itself would be moving at a good clip (maybe 65m/s or so?), so players would have to really manuever to keep the minig beam on it and dodge other dangrous roids.
It would move.. so say it starts in sector A-1 and moves straight across to P-1. The comet would be three sectors long - so sectors A-1 -> A-3 would have some sort of "comet" effect and randomly spawn fast moving roids somewhere outside whatever main debris existed in system.
Bleh nm, this would be complicated as hell. Well, it was worth a thought.
Ion storms already anger people because they have no point and just serve to waste time (except in CtC, for the attackers). Causing people random damage would just waste more time, causing more anger. There would have to be some purpose other than "random effects" to causing player inconvienience - in the case of ion storms, their only real application is to randomly slow down the transport. I guess this suggestion would be to randomly damage the transport.
Hm, maybe add comets into the game? The comet would span several sectors for some short period of time (say, fifteen minutes), during which it would spawn temporary moving roids minable for very rare and expensive ores. However, the cometary halo and tail would be full of debris that would make mining a comet highly dangerous. The debris itself would be moving at a good clip (maybe 65m/s or so?), so players would have to really manuever to keep the minig beam on it and dodge other dangrous roids.
It would move.. so say it starts in sector A-1 and moves straight across to P-1. The comet would be three sectors long - so sectors A-1 -> A-3 would have some sort of "comet" effect and randomly spawn fast moving roids somewhere outside whatever main debris existed in system.
Bleh nm, this would be complicated as hell. Well, it was worth a thought.
Star, that actually is not a bad idea, and one I thought of as well but as you said, thought it might be too difficult, but with the way you described it I think it could actually be done, just needs to be a stock roid, with a trail of gas coming off of it, it could even look like a really damaged ship for the outgassing just change the color of the smoke plumes and make more of a trail of particles. Again, these suggestions are for WHEN the devs get around to it, this definitely would not happen fast.
Cometary tails would be a fitting place for taking hits from flying ice cubes and bits of rock. And getting nice, rare ores would make it worthwhile. The comet wouldn't have to move, if you ask me. The planets don't orbit, and everyone's fine with that -- same with a comet.
That would be interesting. With a permanant tail stretching out behind it, so a few sectors behind the nucleas would have less valuable ores and be less dangerous.
@ Starfisher...
So these random gravity wells have no point eh? Well how many times have you been chasing someone or in my case been chased and try to jump to any empty sector to avoid further conflict? I know as a trader that I have done it several times. Now say the same person tries to jump into an empty sector but theres a gravity well there. They are caught in its suction and cant get away quickly. They have two choices. Fight you and risk death or be hyperspaced to some random destination on the map whilst taking some damage and risking further and possibly more evil NPCs. I dont know about you but sounds like a jump deterent to me. Besides who cares about the gripers anyway. Just ignore em like I do.
So these random gravity wells have no point eh? Well how many times have you been chasing someone or in my case been chased and try to jump to any empty sector to avoid further conflict? I know as a trader that I have done it several times. Now say the same person tries to jump into an empty sector but theres a gravity well there. They are caught in its suction and cant get away quickly. They have two choices. Fight you and risk death or be hyperspaced to some random destination on the map whilst taking some damage and risking further and possibly more evil NPCs. I dont know about you but sounds like a jump deterent to me. Besides who cares about the gripers anyway. Just ignore em like I do.
The 0_o was to denote my skepticism of ever being able to pull off "random gravity wells" with anything approaching even a ghost of realism. I'm not looking for a perfect rendition of reality, but randomly tossing gravity about seems a bit off.
The rest of my post was addressing the "random DAMAGE" suggestion, not random grav wells.
It actually wouldn't be much of a jump deterrant, especially assuming it were implimented realistically. I just boost toward a point a little to one side of the grav well, I get pulled in and accelerate faster than I normally could, then shoot past it at a different angle but with much more velocity. I am therefore not very inconvienienced in my running at all - in fact, assuming that the other guy is caught as well, it's somewhat of a help to my running since he now has to disentangle himself from the well WHILE chasing me. I just have to run. It makes it harder for the pirate.
Now, if you want to make sectors where heavy ships move slower for some crazy reason... that's a different suggestion. And you'd need to come up with a good explanation for it.
The rest of my post was addressing the "random DAMAGE" suggestion, not random grav wells.
It actually wouldn't be much of a jump deterrant, especially assuming it were implimented realistically. I just boost toward a point a little to one side of the grav well, I get pulled in and accelerate faster than I normally could, then shoot past it at a different angle but with much more velocity. I am therefore not very inconvienienced in my running at all - in fact, assuming that the other guy is caught as well, it's somewhat of a help to my running since he now has to disentangle himself from the well WHILE chasing me. I just have to run. It makes it harder for the pirate.
Now, if you want to make sectors where heavy ships move slower for some crazy reason... that's a different suggestion. And you'd need to come up with a good explanation for it.