Ideas for new items

[F50]

Radar Upgrade v2.0 ROM

This upgrades your radar to have a range of 120 ls.

Radar Upgrade v3.0 ROM

This upgrades your radar to have intermediate siege range (150 ls).

[F50]

Radar Upgrade v0.5 ROM

This degrades your radar to have a range of 50 ls temporarily

Radar Upgrade v0.25 ROM

This degrades your radar to have a range of 25 ls temporarily

Defective Radar Upgrade ROM

This causes your radar to be filled with white noise (like defective visual display)

Database ROM (could use a different name)

Identifies any *single* pile of items.

Greater Database ROM (could also use a different name)

Identifies any *single* pile of items AND displays any other information (once) about an item (like resistances for armor, dice roll as well as number range, etc.)

[goat not sheep]

Radar Upgrade v0.5 ROM

This degrades your radar to have a range of 50 ls temporarily

Radar Upgrade v0.25 ROM

This degrades your radar to have a range of 25 ls temporarily

Defective Radar Upgrade ROM

This causes your radar to be filled with white noise (like defective visual display)

Database ROM (could use a different name)

Identifies any *single* pile of items.

Greater Database ROM (could also use a different name)

Identifies any *single* pile of items AND displays any other information (once) about an item (like resistances for armor, dice roll as well as number range, etc.)

Now... how will it give extra information? Will there be some words on the radar...? Cause words blocks out stuff on the radar.

[F50]

Find Weakness ROM

This ROM increases the damage of your weapons to a specific ship when targeted by 50% if the max level of the ship's shields and armor is less than or equal to V. The ship that is currectly targeted by the PC will recieve this damage increase. If no ship is targeted, but the PC still has a targeting ROM the nearest enemy ship will be targeted and recieve the damage increase.

Find Weakness 2.0 ROM

This ROM is like the Find Weakness ROM except it effects ships with a max shields and armor less than or equal to VIII

Find Weakness 3.0 ROM

This ROM is like the Find Weakness ROM except it effects all ships in existence (actually not true, just ships with a max shields and armor less than or equal to XI)



unnamed barrel

This barrel adds hp to a segment of armor, the new amount of hp may be over the max hp of the armor segment but will still only be repairable to the armor's max hp.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

Barrel of Monkeys

This unmarked barrel, when used, will release space monkeys into your cargo hold. They will slowly eat all the food in your cargo hold and when that runs out, starve to death shortly after. While they are in your ship there will be a chance every few seconds of them either activating/deactivating a random piece of equipment, firing one of your weapons, or (very rare) causing your ship to self-destruct. If you dock at a ringer station before they are dead they will buy them at high price.

[Yugi]

And once those monkeys have died, you'll find an item called Monkey Corpse in your cargo hold

[Clear Air Turbulence]

Me? I'll try, but it probably won't b very successful

Success if just a point of view, and from my point of view I'm pretty sure you'll be succesful, or I'll have to go to george to get it done (don't think it's gonna be necessary)

You could make a wreck destroying device by modding a weapon that has an extremely short range attack that does the same kind of damage as the fusionfire howitzer, but uses so much energy that all but the biggest reactors will be overloaded, that way it can be affordable and not unbalance the game. I love my fusionfire howitzer, I love cleaning up ship graveyards, keeping only the best loot before destroying the wrecks.

[F50]

Why the same as the FFH? It doesn't need to be that powerful to be effective. Make it kinetic. WMD 4 or so and several progectiles (like the mining laser) should be quite enough to destroy a wreak with one shot. That would also be balanced to be common for the Nova-100.

[Czert]

Long range scaners - you discover stations at longer range, great for mapping system.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

Why the same as the FFH? It doesn't need to be that powerful to be effective. Make it kinetic. WMD 4 or so and several progectiles (like the mining laser) should be quite enough to destroy a wreak with one shot. That would also be balanced to be common for the Nova-100.

Ah, see, the FFH is the first weapon I got my hands on that would destroy wrecks with one shot. What's the weakest weapon available that will destroy a wreck? I also wanted it to overload the reactor on weaker ships so that it would never get used in combat...I wouldn't want the wreck destroyer to be a suitable substitute for other weapons. Otherwise, people will park on top of a station and blast it in a few shots, if it overloads the reactor you have to re-enable it to use it.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

I came up with an interesting idea. Figured one of the possible uses of a quantum computer would be to run an AI. Make a datacube that will load an AI spaceship pilot profile into the computer, possibly making various levels of skill (I noticed in the XML there's skill-type attributes for various enemy ships). When you activated the AI, it would take over your fire and maneuvering controls and engage whatever threats are in the area. If there are no enemies, it would perform a random "AI Mission". These would be semi-randomized goals that the AI will set for itself, like "Get to core" or "Get far from core" or "Kill Enemies". It will analyze the system's map and set a course for whatever it thinks will bring it closer to it's goal (i.e. a stargate or an enemy base).

Now, this second aspect (strategic rather than tactical) would not come up much with experienced players, because they would learn that the AI has a time limit that it can spend in "full awareness" mode before it goes insane and will either fail to respond or behave in erratic, suicidal ways. Weaker AIs might never get turned on because the computer could very well handle the ship in a less accurate manner than a human pilot. For people who don't want to use the auto-combat ability (which would be pretty fearsome as it would switch weapons as quickly as the AI and be a damn good shot), they can ask the AI for strategic advice, and it will tell them to do something that matches that AI's hidden goal. It may point out the stargate that takes them to the next closest system to Heretic, it may lead them back to Eridani, or it may need they go to a station or attack an enemy base. Whatever weird random thing the AI wants you to do, it will indicate on your map where that goal is, whether you have the system mapped or not. This could be useful for people who don't know what to do next, and if you realize the AI's goals are contrary to your own, only turn it on for combat until it starts acting freaky, then buy a new one.

[F50]

the flenser is the weakest weapon that I know of. But the only thing that makes destroying wreaks possible is the WMD factor. 2 should be enough. it would take a fair long time for a WMD 2, slow fire but mulit shot, weapon to destroy a station even if it only used 4 MW.

[Yugi]

I already made a Fichikai weapon designed to destroy wrecks. I made it a few weeks ago. If you want it, you can download it either from my site or from my Fichikai post on the UTF.

[george moromisato]

I came up with an interesting idea...

I really like this idea...although I think it would be hard to implement correctly.

Conceptually, though, I like the idea of some sentient artifact that has superpowers but also a will of its own that the player can only partially control.

This is the main concept in the Elric/Stormbringer series. Elric finds a semi-sentient sword, Stormbringer, that gives him great strength and power. Stormbringer "recharges" itself (and Elric) by sucking the soul out of anyone it kills. Unfortunately, the sword happens to enjoy killing Elric's friends most of all.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

I came upw with another idea, this time inspired by my inability to locate a targetting ROM in my current game.

Salvage Datalink - when you have this item installed, you can scan the remains of a wreck's memory banks for any useful ROMs. The type of ROM would depend somewhat on the type of ship, and there may not always be useful data - sure, any military ship would probably have targetting and visual upgrade software, but the chance that you got an uncorrupted version that's compatible with your ship might only be 1 in 10 or so. You might have a very tiny chance of getting a black market or military ID from an appropriate ship, but since those would be highly encrypted the chances are low. Other types of ROMs would of course be available - you might get a credit number that gives you a few thousand extra credits, or a shield or weapon upgrade.

The drawback would be you could download a virus that will infect other ROMs you already have installed, possibly destroying them. You might even have a virus temporarily disable your ship.

An add-on to this idea, which I'm not sure I'd want or not, would be to make it so you can also salvage datacubes if you have both the Salvage Datalink and the Heisenberg Quantum Computer. Some of those cubes can be pretty valuable, but it would be balanced somewhat by requiring two item slots to be used up to get them, and you might increase the odds of getting a dangerous virus from the more advanced forms of data.