I am not 100% sure where you are planning to go next as far as features are concerned, Alex, but I thought I would bring something up I haven't seen mentioned here in a while.You already see this a bit in the campaign when you fight in and near asteroid fields, but yeah this would be nice to have.
I would like to see environmental battles implemented in the near future in the campaign.
For instance:
Battles near nebulae in the campaign map have a lot of nebulae clouds in them and maybe in lower sight radius on ships.
Battles near asteroid fields have larger and more menacing asteroids in them that can seriously damage ships/hold pirate bases.
Battles near stations or planets have the stations or planets in them somehow.
I think it would really open up the game's immersion and create some interesting tactical choices much like the mission scenarios would imply.
Of course it would be even better to see mod support for different battle variants/scenarios too. Modders could really use them in creative ways.
TwigTech station battles anyone? ;D
I agree. Asteroids need more credit. I think it would add some tactical variance to battles if there were larger asteroids in the play field. I also think game play would be more interesting if they did more damage. Maybe as much as a heavy weapons hit?
I agree. Asteroids need more credit. I think it would add some tactical variance to battles if there were larger asteroids in the play field. I also think game play would be more interesting if they did more damage. Maybe as much as a heavy weapons hit?
Personally, I am not a fan cos I've lost count of the amount of times I burn into a battle and while having no control of my ship, I smash into an asteroid at 600 meaningless-units-of-speed/second, knocking out a gun or two and blackening a chunk of the armour. A good thing about Starsector is that if you want to try out having asteroids hit harder, go into the ship_data file and amplify the mass of all ships. Double or triple their mass, possibly more if you feel a little adventurous. More mass drives up collision damage across the board without adjusting the maneuverability of a ship so a ship could have the mass of a black hole and be as agile as a Hyperion. Of course, if the black-hole ship touches nearly anything, it's gonna suffer several thousand damage from catastrophic impacts.
I'd imagine that there are some things that'd work - for example, the AI shouldn't have much trouble dealing with extra hostile targets, such as you might expect to see in a battle in an old domain-era minefield that nobody has the IFF codes for anymore.
OK. Well, if you guys think my suggestion sucks, how about tractor beams? A tractor beam could pull asteroids toward the ship and use them as armor. That would be sweet.Space Battleship Yamato vibe achieved. I haven't even watched more than a few clips of that show...
A bit late to the party here, but thought I'd respond anyway :)Welcome to the party ;)
The only one of these I could (potentially) see happening is space stations. The other ones would really, really mess with the AI - that's the main problem with having more interesting environments. The ways of dealing with them are very hard for the AI to handle, and so it would just end up being a way to cheese the AI rather than bring variety. Well, I suppose that's variety in some sense, but not good variety.
... old domain-era minefield that nobody has the IFF codes for anymore.
... old domain-era minefield that nobody has the IFF codes for anymore.
I just wanted to mention that I really like the idea of encountering old Domain era relics throughout the game. Some dangerous, some beneficial, some just interesting. Some maybe all three depending on how you interact with them. Would certainly add to the story depth of the campaign. Old automated defenses that you might have to fight, or depending on your skills might have other options for avoiding or disabling. Ships, docks, factories that can be located and possibly used to the players advantage. It would be a good opportunity to do a little lore-sharing while making for interesting player - game world interactions.
*Omnious laughter*
;D
I've been working on something these past 6 months to just fill that spot ^^ (now if I could just manage to finish Scy quickly and concentrate on this)
Granted the suggestion was made for Vanilla, but mods are better than nothing, right?
That said, why can't their be nebula on the campaign map, and having combat in/near them means more nebula on the battlefield, as in the case of asteroid belts? The AI doesn't get TOO cheesed by nebula as it is, and campaign combat really needs some more variety and differentiation.SS+ does something similar. The closer you are to gas giants and stars? the more nebula you have on the field
Cheesing the AI can be fun, sometimes figuring out how to cheese it is a fun puzzle-- but only if it's for a one-off quests. If it's something you repeat endlessly, then yes it's awful.
So if there were ONE quest where you have to survive by continually circling behind a giant asteroid from an onslaught or something like that, it would be interesting.
That said, why can't their be nebula on the campaign map, and having combat in/near them means more nebula on the battlefield, as in the case of asteroid belts? The AI doesn't get TOO cheesed by nebula as it is, and campaign combat really needs some more variety and differentiation.
I think I see what you mean. However right now supposedly the AI doesn't understand or recognize nebula.Well another problem is that the ally AI freaking SUCKS sometimes... It seems to only work real well in large numbers IMHO
Since the focus in SS is so much on combat, there is developer/community trepidation about anything putting AI and human on an (even more) unequal footing. In some ways this is too bad, since it really limits the play variety. Everything has to be a padded cel so the AI doesn't bang its head on it.
If more non-combat features & gameplay make it into the game it would be ok to introduce more situations that introduce variety at the cost of disadvantaging the AI. It could be balanced by trying to make sure the AI has more/bigger ships in this kind of situation, or through some other means.
Also if the game continues to discourage the human player from using only one ship to solo an entire enemy fleet (peak performance timers etc), this would also help since the human side would also be reliant on AI ships with the same susceptibility.