- So if I understand correctly, should you have partialy researched tech / constructed drone, you could stop the research, turn the yellow bar back to credits in 1:1 ratio and then make the green progress bar go slowly back to 0, resulting in only a portion of that money being slowly turned back into your pocket? Hmm... Could be... *shrugs*
- Hmm... If I am not mistaken, that would result in special nans... Let's say you would give UtlCannon a negative damage and shield skipping, creating an UtlNan... This way you would make something that would be excellent at nanning miners/cons, but would suck at nanning anything else, assuming it would really work that way... Hmmm... Well, I have to accept that would be a valid technological approach. Choosing between being jack-of-all-trades and specialist has always been a part of strategical decisions... One can do many tasks at low efficiency, the other one can do only a single task, but much more effective...
Oh well, there was one idea to "Augment the current gameplay"...
- Ability to issue commands in queues. Currently, In F3-window you send someone to a waypoint by right-clicking somewhere on the map. But, if you - for example - Shift-Rightclicked on several spots, you would "chain" those commands first, and ordering the target to execute would be done by the last click, without shift. So the target would go to the first waypoint, upon reaching it, it would be automatically told to go to another waypoint... Or miners - (shift-click)Mine this, (shift-click)mine that, (click)dock there...
- By being given a "queue of commands", the pilot might be given an option to "select next command in queue"...
(Along with "Uninvest" and "Freighters rearming Capships", this already makes three serious suggestions... Four if I count the subsystems... More might arrive in the future.)
Not quite decided if this one is serious one or random one (EDIT: Random one.):
RipDocking: Might be a faction specific thing or some global feature...
To get you in the picture, imagine you would have OP with the abilities of TELE. Now, you could either rip to the TELEOP, or rip *into* it. Should there be two separate buttons for these, by hitting the first one, you would rip somewhere outside the station (just the way ripcord works now), and by hitting the other one, you would "rip" directly into the hangar (as if you docked directly on the spot where you ripcorded).
Since current stations are not combined with TELEs, the only thing that you can both ripcord to and dock at is Carrier. But since Carrier does not make you go into the hangar, but just RRRs you, then this would be the only thing that would happen (RipDock at Carrier, countdown, carrier-launch animation combined with RRR).
Hovewer should "Base Built-in Teleport Recievers" become either a research or some faction's feature, then it would be more useful (meaning: useful for the team, as they would be able to dock faster - now it's "rip, find the green door, get to the green door, hit the green door, get docked", with this it would be "rip, get docked")
Another few "randoms":
- Ship-stats altering weapons and weapons with effect-duration: Here I am pretty much just interested, whether something like this would be technically possible... I mean weapons, that would - per each hit - add +1 to ships mass, +1% to ships signature, -10 to ships scanning range, -1% to weapon damage... - either permanently or for some brief period of time - the other way might be to make the effect bigger, but make it so the effects of each hit wouldn't stack, but each hit would extend the duration of the effect - either by stacking the durations, or just reseting the "countdown" (
could be used to fake the subsystem damage?) - I don't know what the current formula for calculating for example weapon damage is, but I suppose it's something like "BasicDamage + UpgradeBonus", so this would just add another variable to that formula, a variable that would be individual for each ship and could be altered by ship-stat-alt weapons... Also weapons, that would deal some additional damage over time (weapon that would fire metal-eating nanites).
- Shield-Slot Armor: Practically a stronger shield than those usual ones, but one that doesn't recharge itself.
- Collision damage upgrade + Ramming shield: Upgrade would reduce the damage your ships take from collisions and increase the damage they deal this way. The reduction/increase would be set in such way, that it wouldn't affect the damage you deal to your own ships with friendly-fire on. Ramming shield would work the similar way, but for the ship that wears it only - also would provide reduced protection against weapons.
(Well, this was actually inspired by an idea for a faction, that wouldn't use weapons at all, but fast, agile and durable ships specially designed to kill by ramming - so reduced damage they take and increased damage they deal in collisions... "Bombers" would be able to damage stations, etc...)
So, I've been thinking about ejecting from your ship...
I shall start with something that is already there: ejecting from a turret.
juckto wrote:QUOTE (juckto @ May 7 2009, 11:32 PM) I'd rather see the option to eject from a turret removed. Ejecting 1 second before the ship explodes in order to deny the attacker kb is cheating, face the facts.
Right now and for me, the most important part of this statement is
Ejecting 1 second before the ship explodes in order to deny the attacker kb.
Because if it indeed works that way, then I would change it a little. How? First, let me tell you about something that might seem slightly off-topic at the moment, however, it is not:
Who gets the kill if there were more people attacking one target? It's the one that did the most damage to the target (there might be some other rules, but I believe this is the basic rule) when the target is destroyed.
Why is this on-topic? Because of the way the ejecting should - in my opinion - work. In this way, it would be easier to describe ejecting from one-man ship, so I shall start with it:
When you eject, you destroy your ship. Not by doing any damage to it, but simply boom, just like that. The thing is, if someone damaged your ship *before* you ejected, then *he* would be the one who caused the most damage to your ship before it was destroyed and therefore he would also be the one who gets the kill and KB.
Ships with manned turrets - such as bomber, would have to be a little different thing, as the damage done to the bomber would count not only for the bomber, but also for the turrets. Therefore, if you ejected from a turret on a damaged bomber, it would equal ejecting from a damaged ship - The one who did the most damage to the bomber until you ejected would be the one who would get KB for you.
Obviously, should you eject from undamaged ship, nobody would get the kill.
(There was one variation to that idea: Nobody gets the kill if your ship still has more than 50% hull integrity when you eject. If it has less, then the kill goes to the guy that has done the most damage to you)
Only thing that remains unclear to me: What are all the rules about being recognised as the one who killed the target (forced the target to eject)?
From my point of view, there is only one big tactical issue connected to being able to eject from any ship:
Let's say you managed to bomb the enemy base on the other side of the map, cleared the sector of any enemy presence, but suddenly you need to get as much people as possible back home... Everyone ejects except one pilot, that picks up the pods, getting everyone else back home (however, the same thing is still kinda possible... Everyone except one can ram the rocks or with FF on, the group can pod one another...).
Should it work like this, then the only way how to deny the enemy their KB would be to eject *before* engaging in combat, like in "Oh dear... It's just me and my (t)rusty scout, I have a huge eye on me, no prox left, and five mean interceptors are storming to get me in such manner, that I have no chance of escape... Well... EJECT! You are not getting the KB, you cowardly bastards!" :-D
Totally random idea:
Target practice probes
- these would be things deployed like ordinary probes but they would act as if friendly fire was always on and their sole purpose would be increasing the KB of those that shoot them down. Each one of them could be bought for a few credits (the exact price would be determined during balancing-out phase... I dunno... Like 50-100$ maybe?), then loaded on a scout or other ship with dispenser, deployed, and other team-mates would shoot them down for a little KB bonus.
Payment rewards for ...: There would be several specified actions, that would earn the player some extra cash on his next payday - podding enemies, blowing up enemy cons / miners / stations, etc. being the most obvious ones, but there might be others - picking up pods, finding He3roids / techrocks / alephs...
Also, it might work the other way around - your payment might be reduced should you get podded... Right now, I cannot think of other things that could reduce your payment, but there might be some...
So, there are these random ideas:
Debris fields
- Good start would be, if the destruction of asteroids and stations didn't result just in "*poof* and it's gone", but in the creation of a debris field. Large area filled with randomly floating pieces of the 'roid/base. An area that would act pretty much like a minefield. You could fly through, but the faster you'd fly, the more damage you'd take (from hitting the rocks/pieces of metal).
- And should it work, then it could be applied to all the ships as well. Like everything would spawn a "minefield that does less damage than normal minefields" when it is destroyed. And maybe - just maybe - the debris might retain the momentum of the original ship, so it would fly ahead, until being stopped by the "alleg-space drag"...
- And, the debris field would have limited lifespan - the bigger the original station/asteroid/ship, the longer would it stay there...
- Also, being in the debris field, your signature might be decreased because of the interference of all the flying stuff... Or it could work kinda like normal asteroids... Right now, you can hide behind an asteroid and the scanners won't detect you... Here, you woud be hiding inside the debris field and the range someone would be able to detect you would be only reduced.
- Example: The debris from a scout would have like 50m in diameter and would disappear in 15 sec., but the debris from a garrisson/techrock would have a diameter of at least 2k and would stay there for several minutes (maybe like 10?)...
- Asteroid fields could also be made an optional part of normal alleg-space. They could also come in various variants - "cloud" (having a center and a diameter), "belt"/"ring" (being based on some curve and having a set width and thickness) etc...
He4 (or something else) asteroids
- these would be radioactive, damaging the shields (and maybe even the hull, if you manage to find some believable reason) of anything within the effect radius. On the other hand, the "He4 to Credits" conversion ratio would be higher than "He3 to Credits"... More profit with greater risk (the miners mining He4 would suffer from reduced shields, being easier target...).
Random idea - Eye-Bleeps:
- While eyed, you would hear a bleeping sound. The frequency of the bleeping would indicate the distance to the nearest object that eyes you (1sec between the bleeps could be like 1k of distance). Nothing accurate, just audio-warning that you have been eyed and an indicator that would be able to tell you if you are getting away from the eye, or closer. Could be a normal feature, or a feature to be toggled on or off, or a research...
Possibly useful idea: Relative distance counter
- When more targets would be selected, the game would display an average distance of the targets from one another - so with two targets, it would display the distance between them. (Click - enemy base, click - aleph, *look* - the distance is 1657m)