Planets emitting signals.(A way to make space exploration interesting)

Discussion in 'Mechanics' started by Dark-Grunt, Apr 29, 2016.

  1. Dark-Grunt

    Dark-Grunt Void-Bound Voyager

    So, I don't know if you have the same feelings about space's exploration than me, but I think that this part of the game is a bit empty. I feel like discovering new planets is only to get on a higher tier. What I mean is that there is no good reasons for discovering planets, except for looting everything we can find. To remediate to this problem, I got the idea of planets sometimes emitting signals. Let me explain: By passing the cursor over a planet, it could sometimes show a little icon, indicating that something is going on on this planet. Then, by clicking the icon, SAIL could give some informations on what is going on. Here, I got some examples of what could be happening on the planet:

    -SAIL detects a rare artifatc on the planet.
    -SAIL caught a transmission from a base asking help for a certain task.
    -SAIL sees a war between two civilizations.
    -SAIL detects the presence of a recent meteorite crash on the planet.
    -SAIL detects an epidemy of monsters.
    -SAIL detects the ruins of an old spaceship.
    -SAIL intercept a pirate's transmission, meaning that there is a pirate's base on the planet.

    An these are just some examples. Related to that, I think that some missions gave to you by your colonists should obligate you to travel on a specific star system, on a specific planet. All of these would make the whole universe more... REAL. Thank you for reading this post! :D
     
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  2. BreakingForce

    BreakingForce Big Damn Hero

    are you saying these would be permanent effects on specific planets? or just short-term effects? that could be kinda cool, depending on how it's implemented.

    also, because i'ma nerd and it was bothering me: *remedy, *artifact, *epidemic
     
    Last edited: May 3, 2016
    Dark-Grunt likes this.
  3. Dark-Grunt

    Dark-Grunt Void-Bound Voyager

    I think that would be better if it's a short-term effect that appears on random planets.
    P.S Sorry for the errors, English is not my origin language ;)
     
  4. BreakingForce

    BreakingForce Big Damn Hero

    heh. i'm totally not worried about your english errors. you do ok. just out of curiosity (and it's totally ok if you refuse. nbd), what country are you from and what's your native tongue?

    as for the idea, i actually feel like both would be ok - for different ones. like...it doesn't make sense that a pirate's base would just be around for a limited time. or a rare artifact. or the old spaceship thing. and maybe even the civilization war. those could be long-term or permanent effects. short term ones could be monsters breeding out of control, meteorite (though the meteorites would have to drop something worth running to them to make it attractive. like...put impervium or something in them), etc.
     
  5. Dark-Grunt

    Dark-Grunt Void-Bound Voyager

    Yes, I agree the permanent/non permanent events. Oh, and also, I am from Canada (Quebec) and I speak french ;)
     
  6. BreakingForce

    BreakingForce Big Damn Hero

    ahh, a Quebecois. neat. *waves at neighbor to the north*
     
    Dark-Grunt likes this.
  7. Valhi

    Valhi Master Chief

    I don't suppose you are accepting more ideas for events and curiosities you could investigate?
     
  8. BreakingForce

    BreakingForce Big Damn Hero

    i don't see why anyone would refuse some. throw them up here, this is the suggestion forum :3
     
  9. Dark-Grunt

    Dark-Grunt Void-Bound Voyager

    Oui, je suis Québécois *waves to the south*
     
  10. Ferociousfiend

    Ferociousfiend Astral Cartographer

    Message:
    -SAIL intercepted an encrypted message near the core of this planet
    Possible outcomes:
    1) It's a dud. A crashed pod that has little loot inside, maybe a moontant or two.
    2) A USCM base spanning the entire core, so you can't miss it. Has a treasure trove of loot, and plenty of guards to liven the place up. Some magma-based creatures behind glass.
    3) A pirate organization, with plenty of cultists to kill. Some can be traded with, to get some mafia ties.
    4) Erchius reserves! Fuel up as if the core of the planet is a moon with atmosphere. Moontants and Erchius Ghosts includes.

    Message:
    -SAIL is detecting abundant activity at the optimal landing site.
    Possible outcomes:
    1) A landship. Mostly this is me trying to get my idea out there, but it's a kestrel-sized mock-ship building that has a station below it, along with another station on the other side of the planet. All of these sites have decent loot, and merchants to interact with. Mostly Alex and human inhabitants, with a few others.
    2) A city. Essentially a biome of its own, the city spans the entire planet. Filled with more mediocre loot and pixels you could ever want, there are hundreds of merchants to find and exploit.
    3) Avian shrine. This is no mean feat, this is a massive, nearly planet-sized place of worship, full of treasure and guards, the core resembles the avian temple mission, with Kluex guards, towers, and maybe even a Kluex Avatar.
    4) Floran hunting grounds. Now that I think about it, most of the missions could really fit under this category, lol. But hey! Doesn't mean I lied! The hunting grounds would be massive, infested with hunters, monsters, and ixodoomlings. Treasure found separately.

    Message:
    -SAIL classifies this planet as a "melting pot", full of diverse lifeforms.
    Possible outcomes:
    1) randomised monsters keep randomising, instead of being one randomised species for the whole planet. Never see the same monster again!
    2) There was a malfunction, and it's actually a trap. Floran hunting grounds, and the teleporter doesn't want to work! Plenty of treasure, and a teleporter somewhere within the maze of randomly generated caves. Did I mention the planet is protected?

    Those are all of my ideas for now.
     
    Dark-Grunt and X marks it like this.
  11. Dark-Grunt

    Dark-Grunt Void-Bound Voyager

    Great ideas :D
     
  12. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    Can't speak in details... But "anomaly and distress signals" that one could detect on the star map sounds like it would make great future content after 1.0 as an incentive to travel to worlds we may have ignored because they were slightly out of our preferred path for great/material progression.
     
    Dark-Grunt likes this.
  13. Dark-Grunt

    Dark-Grunt Void-Bound Voyager

    Yeah, this would be the goal of this feature. I would definetly see this in Starbound!
     
  14. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    A lot of space 4X strategy games already use a lot of "space anomalies" and "sensors"(required to find them) mechanics already, and Starbound's galactic map is not TOO far off from what a lot of these game's maps look like.

    I don't know how hard it would be to code(likely very hard, since the galactic map right now is ultimately but a seed of world clusters and all ultimately, so adding stuff like that might be going a bit beyond what it was originally intended to do) but there's a lot of potential for it if they can later pull it off.

    If anything there's no urgency.
    With 1.0 there will be already a lot of revamped and updated gameplay(with farming being so updated for one that we now even have legit livestocks and it won't just be fluffalos by the look of the nightly asset changes compilation text files) and a story to add a layer of gameplay experience we didn't have before(especially with some amount of rare boss drops which might introduce even stuff like MMO-like raid quality to them warranting running a same dungeon multiple times... to not mention all the alternate paths and secret to be found in those dungeons that sometimes require techs a player might not have possessed on their original run).

    With modding that, afaik, should see somewhat more officially support that too will likely add to the "longevity" of the game which should free the team more time/space to plan out additional major content such as space anomalies discussed here.

    After all, they already mentioned a lot of times that they would love to add a form of ship combat et al in the future for the game(if sales allows the additional development of complex features after release) which could even include literal galactic map "random encounters" if i recall.
     
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  15. jaymee_murder

    jaymee_murder Subatomic Cosmonaut

    I like this idea, some of the signals could just be identifying settlements, other signals could identify special limited time events like you listed :D
     
  16. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    It may be interesting if signals could be tied to a "beacon" item of sort. NPC settlements(though potentially not ALL of them to include the possibility of villages basically "living off the grid") could thus be more easily discovered.... and it could even tie into craftable or purchaseable "player colony beacons" which could add functionalities like renaming the planet they're on and/or even halving FTL travel costs to that planet(due to "more efficient FTL coordinates matching" or some similar explanation) which could encourage players to further lay out colonies/outposts not just for the sake of having said colonies but literally to make use of them as "FTL relays" to make back and forth travel cheaper on the long run(especially on system where they are interested in more than one planet but do not want to buy teleporters for all of them to save on pixels and keep

    An easy way of counter-balancing such features might be that like a Terramart shipment station they could only be "functional" if there is actually open sky above them(in their case, so that signal is not blocked by layers of ground or anything). Like Teleporters, these might be considered complex enough that trying to move them would only give you back the rarer component that goes in their makeup.

    In the long run I feel it might be an interesting thing to implement in the game. A way to not only further encourage a feeling of ownership on individual planets, but to give reasons to/encourage exploring farther away thanks to the ability to setup "FTL relays"(that also double as "Colony Markers") that would make travel back cheaper.

    Thus with an easy way to travel back to "owned systems"(rather than just individual teleporters-supported planets) it might thus make people feel safer about traveling to farther and more spread out cluster of stars rather than just hunt for the "proper" cluster which include the "proper" variety of stars needed for progression within "proper" distance of each others.

    Thus, a player might thus begin slowly building up a network of relay so that their travel would not just cover a single cluster of stars, but multiple of them in the long run.
    (plus, if "Faction multiplayer" is ever implemented, such colony markers might feel like something that would be a good way of marking one faction's ownership of different systems versus another's).

    This said, at this scope, this might be best left for it's own suggestion thread now though ^^;
     
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  17. jaymee_murder

    jaymee_murder Subatomic Cosmonaut

    This idea of relays reminds me of stargates from the stargate tv series
     
  18. Dark-Grunt

    Dark-Grunt Void-Bound Voyager

    I think that we just built up a great possible feature for the future versions of Starbound :D Let's see if the idea will interest the devs!
     
  19. Ludovic

    Ludovic Giant Laser Beams

    Possibly but a closer equivalent might be mass relay(and even then, only a loose one ^^; ). Basically, they don't instantly allow you to travel from one relay to another, but instead make it easier to "home in" on a world with a beacon(no matter where you are) than a world without.

    Thus reduced fuel cost when using the ship to travel to that specific world versus any others. Even when travelling FROM a world with a beacon to one without you wouldn't get the bonus fuel cost because it's not the start but end coordinates that matters.
     

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