Long time ago (playing original Frontier) i wondered how the gameplay could be easily extended. So here is an idea.
Destroy Satellite Mission pseudo-algorithm:
-when mission is picked, AND player warped to the target solar system - a NPC "ship" is spawned in low/med/hi orbit of target planet
-combat is going like ordinary fight, the main difference is that a satellite have no engine
-types of satellites:
-non combat
-combat (lasers and missiles)
-combat with fighters (additional ship spawn)
-if satellite is destroyed before mission deadline, player is going for reward
-when mission is picked, AND mission deadline is passed AND player warped in to the target solar system - satellite is not spawned
So, becouse we have now allready kill missions, i think that could be comparatively easy to implement. And should be considered in future extending of gameplay, specially in border star systems, where for sure will be a strong tension between factions.
That's interesting! Perhaps you should work with walterar on this. I think the '-combat with fighters (additional ship spawn)' implies that the satellite is actually a space station in this case. That would be quite a challenge!
I like the idea, it'd be cool if you can work with someone to put it together.
Uhm, it will be interesting. I should read the docs then.
Sounds like a great idea 🙂
I find these docs useful for the script API along with the existing core modules for examples.
http://eatenbyagrue.org/f/pioneer/codedoc/files/LuaBody-cpp.html
A really easy way would be to add a ship and use a satellite as the model. Then place the 'satellite' in orbit when the player jumps in. As far as I know, ships are the only things that can be blown up as of now. This would also allow it to use lasers and such as there are no turrets yet. If you have some way to disable the engine so it doesn't start flying after you, it could work pretty well.
If you did that, you could use assassinations.lua as a template for the rest of the stuff. Heck you could probably implement this in assassinations.lua with minimal added code.