Gas Giants with a purpose 2: Remade Edition

Right now, Gas Giants feel a LOT like a decoration that has a chance to spawn instead of a planet with actual resources.
One of my old suggestions involved making them have planet-wide facilities that would act as their "surface", but it eventually proved difficult to keep up with the newer suggestions (For starters, the acess quest had to be overhauled); and basically amounted to being allowed to acess facilities that were halfway in good shape, halfway ruined.
1.3 added lots of Space-related content, and made Asteroids, which used to be bland, much more interesting. This gave a base for making Gas Giants useful in a similar way: Making them require acess by using a specific vehicle.
Of course, this time, these wouldn't be either Mechs again, or a vehicle that is nearly the same thing. Instead, the new vehicles are aircraft.

Aircraft mechanics:

• Obtaining them is a bit like obtaining Mechs in that it involves quests given by Outpost NPCs that involve flight tests in circuits, which are intended to help the player get used to the Aircraft's unusual controls.
  • The quest is given by a new NPC that resides in the Outpost's room beneath the Ursa Miner (Or in a new room underground). The room also contains the means of both producing aircraft parts and assembling them.
• Their controls are rather unique, as they have 2 flight modes:
  • Hover Mode: This mode is similar to how Mechs fly. It is the least efficient form of flight, and, in this mode, they generally perform worse than Mechs. This mode is mostly useful because it makes taking off and landing easier.
  • Jet Mode: This is an unique mode that makes Aircraft fly like planes. In other words, they can't hover around an area, and will generally move in a specific direction without the Player's input.
    • Moving up and down is done by using the Jump and Crouch keys. Using them tilts the Aircraft's nose in their respective directions, up until the nose is nearly vertical. If either key is still pressed at this point, the aircraft won't stop, and will still keep the nose's movement as long as either key is pressed. Upon releasing the key, if the Aircraft's nose has made it past the vertical point, the aircraft will quickly right itself (Briefly showing it's silouette from the ground) after flying upside-down for a short while (In other words, the plane will pull off a Immelmann turn). Notably, the arcraft will follow the mouse if wither the A or D keys are pressed (This is very helpful in combat).
    • The W and S keys control speed, and will respectively increase and decrease the aircraft's speed. Their effect only holds on as long as they're pressed, but the resulting speed remains until either key is pressed again.
• They also consist of modules, just like Mechs, but they have a few differences:
  • Airframe: They have the same purpose as Mech Bodies. Generally, they tend to resemble various planes, which can be of many configurations (For example, a Miniknog airframe would be a lifting body design so it looks very sleek, while the Nightwinder equivalent would resemble a stealth aircraft. Notably, while most of the endgame aircraft would usually look like jets, the very early ones would often resemble prop-driven planes).
    • Apart from affecting the same stats as Mech bodies, Airframes also affect maneuverability, which in this case affects how responsive the aircraft are. They additionally have a Speed Multiplier, that affects their speed in relation to other airframes (This means that, out of 2 planes with the same engines, the aircraft with the higher Speed Multiplier stat is faster)
  • Aircraft Engines: They act like Thrusters, but instead of Maneuverability, they affect Efficiency, with a higher Efficiency decreasing Energy usage while moving.
  • Aircraft Siren: They're similar to Mech horns, but can be toggled to sound if the aircraft is in a specific position, such as diving (Of course, being able to make aircraft emit sounds while diving practically means that a suggested sound is the Stuka siren noise)
  • Radar: Detects enemies beyond the screen, and points at them. Also allows homing weapons to lock on to enemies. Their stats affect both lock-on time and detection distance.
  • Weaponry: Divided in 2 slots that mostly don't share weapons, unlike Mech Arms (The exceptions are generic ones, such as guns). Notably, some aircraft airframes can have duplicated Weapon Slots:
    • Integral: Generally, these are integrated weapons that mostly consist of various general-purpose guns. The guns themselves can range from low-caliber machine guns at lower tiers to rotary cannons and revolver cannons at mid-high tiers, and even beam guns and limited-traverse turrets. The weapons in this slot are fired by the LMB. This slot's place in the actual aircraft varies from airframe to airframe (Some airframes may have their guns in the wings, other airframes may have them in integral gun pods, other airframes may have them in the nose...)
    • Ventral Pod: These are more specialized, and can range from bombs and homing missiles to obliques-firing guns, drones... It's notable in that it's possible to find auxiliary energy tanks that increase the available Energy supply, at the cost of 1 Weapon Slot. These weapons are fired by the RMB.

• Like Mechs, Aircraft also use Energy, but their mechanics are different: Enemies don't drop Energy on death, and Energy is instead gradually replenished by landing in specific Landing Pads. If Energy runs out, Aircraft won't explode or kick the Player out. Instead, Aircraft will act as gliders, slowly losing altitude in level flight, and slowly losing speed (Speed is lost more quickly by doing certain maneuvers, such as climbing, and can be partially recovered by losing altitude). If it loses enough speed (Or switch to Hover Mode), the Aircraft will stall and fall. If falling for enough time, the Aircraft will eventually arrive at the Core layer, which instantly kills the Player on touch.

Generally, unless noted, all Aircraft weapons are fixed, which means that they can't be aimed at all without moving the entire aircraft.
Aircraft in relation to Mechs:
Generally, Aircraft have less health than Mechs, but are faster. While both can be used in both Space and Gas Giants, Aircraft will perform badly in Space, while Mechs will do the same in Gas Giants. Both can be deployed on Planets, in which case, Mechs tend to be better at exploring the surface, while aircraft are better at exploring the skies.
Apart from that, Mechs cannot be deployed to Gas Giants, and Aircraft cannot be deployed to Space. If either somehow ends up in their "Forbidden area", then they are completely ineffective: Mechs will act just like in Planets (This means that they will just fall down and crash agaisnt the core) and Aircraft are unable to move in Space because they use air-breathing engines.

Gas Giant content:
Gas Giants contain floating dungeons, such as resource extraction facilities, large atmosphere-bound ships that would act as flying aircraft carriers, abandoned remnants of various structures, floating labs (That make Scientist NPCs easier to get as Tenants)...
Ancient structures are comparatively common.
The enemies found in Gas Giants tend to be designed so that dogfighting them is possible, with some of them showing a behavior similar to that of Aircraft.
Loot here includes unique furniture, blueprints, etc... Notably, rather than finding salvaged crafting materials like in the case of Mechs, furniture stations found in structures can be found, which are used to produce the parts themselves. Another difference is that there's several kinds of tiered blueprints:
"Base" blueprints, which are usually obtained by trading with NPCs in Gas Giants. The NPCs that sell the blueprints have a limited selection: They can run out of stock. On the flip side, they will switch their stock after a set period of time. These tend to contain Aircraft parts with specific behaviors (For example, they may sell an fighter airframe).
"Derivative" Blueprints, that are found in Gas Giant dungeons and in temporary planet structures that would require Aircraft to reach by spawning at high altitude (Going by the fighter airframe example, the "Derivative" version could be a modified airframe designed for long-range flights, providing more Energy in exchange for a lower Speed Multiplier).
Finally, althrough they don't have a solid surface, Gas Giants still have layers. Each Layer has different enemies and also has characteristic weather patterns (For example, it may rain in the lower layers, while the higher layers may be subject to electric discharges that can cause entire areas to be unsafe, other layers may have storms that may lower the Aircraft's speed in one direction and increase it in the opposite one...).

 

I think this is a great idea. Perhaps we will finally see cities in the form of gas mining facilities (like in Star Wars). Avian airships finally would have a reason to be, well, airships. It should be made so that if you fall too deep into the atmosphere you die, just like in asteroid fields, except this actually makes sense.

 

Why not just use mechs? Just slap on some technobabble from SAIL the first time you land on the planet justifying why gas giants are being handled different from other planets the first time you go there, and you've avoided adding a completely redundant mechanic.

 

Because I personally felt that Gas Giants should use an entirely different vehicle in order to prevent them from being too similar to space.

 

some sort of cruiser flying vehicle

 

It seems that part of your post has been cut somehow, considering that it isn't properly capitalized and that it has no context.

 

I posted something similar to this on one of ThatThunderCookie's videos, but alot simpler. This is an overall great idea, plus you went into great depth explaining it. What I thought should be added to gas giants are floating islands, hovercrafts, like you said, new electric-discharge weather, and also the re-addition of space junk weather. Also a toxic gas biome for it where you need an EPP. Also rings around planets would be cool and the structures you mentioned would be on the planet would be awesome as well. Honestly its a great idea and I like how you went in-depth explaining it. Also you should post this on reddit, because the lead dev' of starbound posted a suggestion thread for the upcoming update.

 

I loved the space junk weather. I think they should re add it to toxic and scorched planets

 

That is a different topic. Loks like you accidentally posted this here instead of elsewhere.

 

both of my replies were referring to what the people above me said