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[Tartiflette]

You could probably do it with custom terrain. Don't think it'd be all that complicated, even - just don't render the thing until the player "knows" about it.

If it's possible to add and remove terrain on the fly that would be perfect: I could switch from a "Weird looking nebula" terrain to a "Oh my gosh! This is no dust, it's a swarm of hull eating nano-machines!" terrain with the same render but different tooltips.

[Alex]

Terrain is a regular entity, so yeah, you could do that. I don't think a different tooltip would be required - you can only see the tooltip once you're already in it, but perhaps you're thinking of this differently than I am.

[Aeson]

Regarding minefields, I'd generally prefer that they not exist, as the number of mines required to meaningfully limit safe passage through a region of space is excessive even if we're just talking about mining the orbital space around a planet. Jump points might possibly be reasonable if ships can only enter or emerge from them in a very, very small region of space, but unless the point is associated with a nearby large body you'd require station-keeping thrusters on all the mines, which raises the cost and increases their visibility, reducing the effectiveness of the mines.

Regarding the fleet 'contrails' - is there any chance that we could have these linger for a while, in some fashion, so that we could have a way to track fleets? Might make the named bounties more interesting - the "rumors that so-and-so hangs out near XYZ" would only need to get you close enough to the target soon enough to pick up the trail, and you could follow it towards where the target is rather than always finding the target at wherever XYZ is.

Regarding asteroid belts - would it be possible to asteroid fields in addition (as a harsher version) or instead, or as an occasional feature of ring systems? Something that indicates "something big used to be here and was destroyed by some catastrophic event but the pieces haven't had enough time to drift apart enough to form a belt" or "something big is beginning to form here but hasn't really coalesced yet."

Regarding the fuel generation in nebulae - starship fuel in Starsector explicitly contains antimatter, and it's strongly implied that the facilities to produce antimatter and package it into fuel are sufficiently uncommon that it's not likely that ships would carry antimatter fuel production plants. It's an interesting idea, but I think not really one that fits the base game's lore. I could see collecting volatiles from nebulae or gas giants, but that's probably too much of a repetitive timesink, much like manual mining.

[Tartiflette]

Terrain is a regular entity, so yeah, you could do that. I don't think a different tooltip would be required - you can only see the tooltip once you're already in it, but perhaps you're thinking of this differently than I am.

Oh right, I thought tooltips where bound to the terrain all the time like with the fleets... But dynamically changing terrains open a heap of new possibilities (I smell asteroid ring mining coming)

[Alex]

Regarding minefields, I'd generally prefer that they not exist, as the number of mines required to meaningfully limit safe passage through a region of space is excessive even if we're just talking about mining the orbital space around a planet. Jump points might possibly be reasonable if ships can only enter or emerge from them in a very, very small region of space, but unless the point is associated with a nearby large body you'd require station-keeping thrusters on all the mines, which raises the cost and increases their visibility, reducing the effectiveness of the mines.

I'm not exactly sympathetic to realism-based arguments here (I mean, as I mentioned in the blog post, real asteroid fields are mostly empty space, so it's a very similar "issue"), but I do think minefields could be trouble. Wouldn't want to make the best way to win fights be by cheesing the enemy fleets through minefields - it risks cutting combat out of the loop. If minefields were a thing, they'd probably have non-direct-damage effects or be extremely limited in some way.

Regarding the fleet 'contrails' - is there any chance that we could have these linger for a while, in some fashion, so that we could have a way to track fleets? Might make the named bounties more interesting - the "rumors that so-and-so hangs out near XYZ" would only need to get you close enough to the target soon enough to pick up the trail, and you could follow it towards where the target is rather than always finding the target at wherever XYZ is.

Not contrails directly, no. They're very much not suited for that at all, implementation-wise. Right now, they don't even make their way into the save file.

Regarding asteroid belts - would it be possible to asteroid fields in addition (as a harsher version) or instead, or as an occasional feature of ring systems? Something that indicates "something big used to be here and was destroyed by some catastrophic event but the pieces haven't had enough time to drift apart enough to form a belt" or "something big is beginning to form here but hasn't really coalesced yet."

Well, most ring systems currently have overlapping asteroid belts, so yes

[Gothars]

I kinda knew that terrain had to be coming eventually, but it's awesome that it's here now! And so pretty
Almost makes me wish there were a "hide UI" button for the campaign, too...

Contrails: Always there? Or only above gas giants? Maybe also on other terrain types?


Can terrain types be temporary or have a time component? I could for example imagine a system with an unstable sun that has solar flares every few minutes. Or a pulsar. Or storms emerging in hyperspace. Or huge swarms of plankton like alien creatures/gene experiments passing through regions of space.

If it's possible to add and remove terrain on the fly that would be perfect: I could switch from a "Weird looking nebula" terrain to a "Oh my gosh! This is no dust, it's a swarm of hull eating nano-machines!" terrain with the same render but different tooltips.

That sounds awesome. Awesome.

[Aereto]

With the presence and effects of terrain, therein lies the strategic value, as does tactical value. Trying to make sense of the applications, so I made my speculations on how they will be applied on both fleet maneuvers and engagements.

In the case of asteroid belts and planetary rings, campaign map slows fleets with large ships, but the combat map would also have multitudes of debris present of both moving and non-moving, concentrated at center (since reinforcement ships happen to come into the field at full burn and little means of redirection until full burn state ends; no point losing more ships from a scatter of stray debris on sheer kinetic impact in such a terrain than without).

Nebulae would significantly reduce the burn of smaller ships that a fleet composed of only ships larger than the fleet pursued can catch up. Wings are most severely reduced, though a ship with a hangar bay or a carrier may be able to ease the penalty if such workaround can be done. In combat, fighter wings are most severely impaired in terms of max speed or speed dampening, which frigates come next in terms of trying to force through a consistent soup of matter. Capitals would have the mass and momentum to punch through the soup to be least affected. All won't have the 0-flux speed bonus, however, as ships try to keep the particles from interacting with the engine systems.

[Alex]

Contrails: Always there? Or only above gas giants? Maybe also on other terrain types?

Always there. Just put it over the gas giant to make a nicer screenshot

Can terrain types be temporary or have a time component? I could for example imagine a system with an unstable sun that has solar flares every few minutes. Or a pulsar. Or storms emerging in hyperspace. Or huge swarms of plankton like alien creatures/gene experiments passing through regions of space.

Could be, yeah. None currently are, but nothing is preventing it from being dynamic. Could easily have events, or just simple scripts, create/destroy/modify terrain, for example.

Kind of want to do solar flares, actually. One issue is animating them in a way that does them justice.

[orost]

How about an option for a fleet to just plow right through an asteroid field, ignoring the speed penalty but taking damage/CR loss instead, so that a larger ship can chase down a smaller one... the quetion being, is it worth it?

I didn't think this through (I can't, really, with no idea how the new campaign plays out in practice), it just seems cool.

[Sproginator]

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

[Spoorthuzad]

YEAH, another blog!

This fleshes the campaign out even more and makes me all the more excited!

Question: Will ships with modded contrails show up the same in the campaign map as in battle?

[Unreal_One]

Regarding minefields, I'd generally prefer that they not exist, as the number of mines required to meaningfully limit safe passage through a region of space is excessive even if we're just talking about mining the orbital space around a planet. Jump points might possibly be reasonable if ships can only enter or emerge from them in a very, very small region of space, but unless the point is associated with a nearby large body you'd require station-keeping thrusters on all the mines, which raises the cost and increases their visibility, reducing the effectiveness of the mines.

In space, mines as stealthy, stationary explosives wouldn't work. Space mines could work, though, as a hive station that tends to a fleet of drones with torpedoes, or just a range of satellites with long range missiles.

[Aeson]

Space mines could work, though, as a hive station that tends to a fleet of drones with torpedoes, or just a range of satellites with long range missiles.

Except, you know, for these not having any features in common with actual mines except for their relative immobility and the lack of human crew. Just call them drone (or hive) stations, drone satellites, missile satellites, automated weapons platforms, etc, which is what they are. You're also not likely to have a collection of these which could qualify as a 'field' except perhaps as orbital defenses around a planet or station (which brings us right back to calling these 'satellites' rather than 'mines').

[Talkie Toaster]

Can I throw out accreting binaries and accretion disk ⁽¹⁾ winds ⁽²⁾ as terrain? They're neat, and accretion disks are rather hot and radiate a lot (and have interesting MHD going on) so could be ascribed a range of effects. Also microquasars!
Okay my project is on modelling quasar winds so I have a vested interest, but still...

[Doogie]

Would this potentially include "terrain" that exists in hyperspace? Some subspace anomaly or whatever Star Trek techno babble you can think of.