The Ice Shield (WIP)

[Song]

I've been working on this for a while now. Prophet coded a lot, and I've tweaked it and fiddled with the odd thing. My concept in the first place...

I first released it a while back, with my gunpod. But there's still a lot of work, and at this stage I really need feedback before I can go on with it.

Anyway..HERE IT IS.

You can use this contraption to collect water ice from ice asteroids, rings, ice planets, etc. There's no limit ATM on how MUCH you can collect.....I may change this at some point, if possible.
It uses ice automatically to regen the shield. Yes, I can see this may be a problem in the later game, but let's be honest, you're not going to be using this by that stage, hopefully.

WARNING: Try not to get swarmed by enemies with lasers. It IS partly transparent to them.

Please give feedback/constructive criticism.

[Jeoshua]

I love the idea behind this. Personally, I don't think there should be any limit on the amount of water ice one can collect... after all, water ice is one of the most common compounds in the universe, and ice asteroids are among the most common types of object out there.

The Ice shield is a very common and realistic sci-fi trope, so I love that part of the idea as well.

You might consider not allowing ice harvesting from ice planets tho. The gravity wells are so large that it doesn't make much sense.

-- OH, and first post, btw. Hi guys --

[digdug]

HI Jeoshua,
welcome to Transcendence Forums!

I like very much the idea.
I have a suggestion, it could be more realistic to slow down the ship after a certain limit of ice.

[Atarlost]

If you put a 1 ton 0 slot virtual device on the ship for every ton's worth of HP the ice shield has that should work.

[schilcote]

If you put a 1 ton 0 slot virtual device on the ship for every ton's worth of HP the ice shield has that should work.

You'd need a way to manually remove extra ice though, if you don't want your shield to make your ship (nearly) immobile.

[Atarlost]

Just don't add it if you don't want it. If you get in trouble because you're too slow that just means someone's kindly stripping off the excess ice for you.

[schilcote]

Just don't add it if you don't want it. If you get in trouble because you're too slow that just means someone's kindly stripping off the excess ice for you.

Eh... I suppose that works. You'd end up with a sort of homeostasis, too much ice and enemies remove it, too little and you start making effort to collect ice.

[Song]

Hmmm. I'd need to over-write the ingame, or add a new version of ice that's invokable.....because otherwise the present automatic use system would result in your ship going from a 0t shield to a massive lump of heavy ice in practically no time.....

[Atarlost]

Make the shield invokable instead.

[Song]

Make the shield invokable instead.

It is, I believe....although I still get terminology wrong. I may work on chaing it from collecting ice from asteroids, to using water from the hold.

[Atarlost]

override stSmallFrostAsteroid, stMediumFrostAsteroid, stSmallIceAsteroid, and stLargeIceAsteroid. (from worlds.xml) Add something like

Code: Select all

		<Items>
			<Item count="4d6" item="&itWaterIce;"/>
		</Items>

with different counts as appropriate. Then you can get ice with a mining laser from otherwise unminable frost and ice asteroids.

Then you can make the ice shield invoke to use ice from the hold. You can also worry less about it becoming overpowered because it effectively uses a weapon slot as well as a device slot.

[Prophet]

you could have the ice collection automated in an onUpdate event, like the bussard reactors. Then you could have the shield invoke show a dockscreen where you can set the desired ice thickness manually, view how much water you have onboard, etc.

the onUpdate event could also handle adding/removing the dead weight items to account for the mass of the ice on the shield.