SpaceSimCentral

How do people feel about encountering alien artefacts?Any suggestions what form they could take?What rewards, if any, the player could receive?What dangers might they face since we probably don't want to put in an entire system for handling "live" AI aliens? :)etc.

Yes an intriguing idea! I always envisioned an ancient dead world (any one of those beautiful desert planets s2odan created would do) with still active defences you would have to find away around to get to the goodies on the surface. A sort of Xeno-archaeology type mission. All right, I admit it, I want Z'ha'dum (or something like it) in Pioneer! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%27ha%27dum_%28planet%29

I always the "Alien Artifacts" commodity in FFE was a bit dumb, but I understand the point - it was so the Thargoids could give you a bunch of stuff. Something I have plans for is a scriptable cargo type that missions can control. So then you could write a mission to go and find some magic rocks or whatever and actually see them in your cargo bay, jettison them, do everything with them that can be done with normal commodities.

Perhaps this "special cargo" could provide buffs for your ship? EG The Large Plasma Accelerator Of Smiting +6 :lol:Uh Oh, I've been playing too much Neverwinter Nights 2 again haven't I?

Actually, moving to a RPG-like class/trait setup has been discussed...

That's interesting, so you could have certain artefacts that could say, boost the output of your thrusters or shields ect? The good thing about keeping these as cargo is you could transfer their benefits easily to a new ship once you bought it.

Something like that. We were also talking about having crew that would boost your stats, eg hiring an engineer might improve fuel efficiency, or hiring a gunner might improve accuracy.

So if you have a ship that requires a crew, you would do well to hire a person with the proper stats for the job, is that what you mean? It couldn't apply to a one person ship, but it has the interesting effect of adding characteristics to non-player characters. Someday it would be cool to go to a space bar or stroll through a spaceport and encounter people and situations and mission opportunities. And some scattered artifacts from the Old Ones would be welcome, too.

Of course it could apply too a one man ship! They have spacesuits don't they? We'll just lash a guy to the hull with rope

the idea of a super death ray maybe somewhere in the galaxy or super shields or even small buffs is something to work with or an rpg quest type thing seearch a sector of 10 systems for piece one and then it sends u somewhere else

A dyson sphere hidden away somewhere by some unknown extinct civilisation?

Heh, forgot I'd even started this thread Yes, other world types is definitely on my mind but also scattering alien cities on distant worlds. They'd probably have star ports, stations and ships for example.I'm not saying that you could just go and pick up an alien ship and start flying it, but perhaps stow it or equipment from it and sell it to institutions at one of the factions.Could we tie that kind of thing into the criminal/loyalty system, so that taking alien artefacts from within space governed by one faction to another faction would net you more profit but also earn you enemies etc.Andy

s2odan wrote:
A dyson sphere hidden away somewhere by some unknown extinct civilisation?
I like that! With on the surface a crashed vessel, and you have a quest to save Scotty out of the transporter buffer, again.

How about a ringworld? The possibilities here are endless!

Marcel wrote:
How about a ringworld? The possibilities here are endless!
A RingWorld would be awesome, but for now I'm starting with something smaller I just hope I've poked the right holes in my website to allow hot-linking

Banks fan, eh?

Yup It also took ages to find somewhere I could get a shot like that!*edit* also, I figure these would probably fall afoul of the "no-pink-nebulae" rule for human civilisations even in the year 3200, but as rare alien artefacts at the edges of civilisation they should be ok(?). Also flying upto one is just awesome!!!

fluffyfreak wrote:
A RingWorld would be awesome, but for now I'm starting with something smaller
And I thought I had crazy ideas for this game

robn wrote:
And I thought I had crazy ideas for this game
hehe, yeah. I've done something similar to this in little test apps before but never anything with ships you could fly upto the object, it makes the whole thing sooooo much cooler :DWhat's holding me back at the moment is my lack of collision/physics experience but I'm getting the hang of it and I really need the practice at this stuff anyway for my usual career, so I'll get there.Still to do is general (impact) collision, landing on/takeoff from the surface, then the outer hull and edge walls (plus collision), and a better way of defining the orbital as it currently uses the planet generation information.So some work still to do.

Excellent work I was thinking the terrain would have needed some kicks and pokes to get it to look right, but that shot looks pretty fucking awesome