[Discussion/Suggestions] Background details!

[Song]

THis is based around a question I asked George during the IRC day event about background details.

Percieved problem: Currently, warzones don't really have atmosphere. You can't tell how old the war is, you can't see much impact of it....and so on.
My idea: Add environmental and "background" details that emphasise warzones....and get some other background stuff in place and polished to support areas the player goes through.

So here's where this thread comes in. Any "background" or environmental detail that is feasible and makes sense for the world of Transcendence that comes to mind can go in here. Hopefully we can come up with some easy stuff that help improve the atmosphere of the game.

Here's what I've had in my head for a few months now:

-Wrecked stations..varying from "regular, only destroyed" through to "shredded by nukes". Heavier damage levels could have some new graphics to show off how torn up they are. The CSC Europa is a good example of this. You can really tell that it's been through hell, and lost. Civilian stations from before combat got started, and military outposts from during the conflict that have fallen victim to hostilities really gives the impression that this is a place where stuff is happening.

-Minefields. I've been meaning to make them for years now, and I've never gotten around to it. They're somewhat tricky to do using the old Heretic Radfield code, as the mines mysteriously vanish and reappear. There's also the issue of the games buggy fragmentation code at times. But for the Ares/Commonwealth war, minefields in the right places make for both a good background detail, and an interesting tactical option for players: mines can kill them, but they can also be used as traps for the AI. DOWNSIDES: AI is dumb as rocks and will readily send 50 freighters into the same minefield, will definitely require some exclusion radius stuff (I can just imagine the "defensive minefield" around a commonwealth colony [as per the mine launcher description] blasting the colony to pieces), system generation may not place them in sensible places. Also, going back to the "mine time out" issue of the old Heretic code, preventing the mines from timing out and blasting the area around them with fragments is a must, since it would look pretty odd. This probably has the most work/engine problems with it of all the suggestions here, but it would be pretty cool.

(There's also the evil possibility of a minefield in a nebula, but I think that's a legitimate threat and makes pretty good sense)

-More shipwrecks in warzones, and change the "wreck clusters" we see in the game somtimes to indicate battles. Rather than a bunch of random ships, have these generate a single dead EI100 surrounded by corsairs, or an Aurochs with Sandstorms, a group of sandstorms and a tundra, a hauri ship and a bunch of sung ships, A smashed phobos with britannias or maybe a Drake with some milita ships nearby. Obviously, this would require basing the chosen "station" generation on what's in the system (and its level), since a dead phobos in Eridani will raise eyebrows. Might take a bit of work, but it's a possible background thing that simulates prior conflict in the system the player has just entered.

-Autons/Tenhoves orbiting friendly stations? I did this for my not-very-successful 'Elemental Shift' mod, and it worked pretty well, despite requiring new versions of the autons so the player couldn't try ordering them. The tenhove itself is pathetic, so I buffed it, but the vanilla autons make for good orbiting guards, and make good sense for civilian stations.

-Autons escorting freighters. Probably not something for the early game, but after St. K's, where Korolov is no longer active and the maruaders are a problem, having a random chance for freighters to have autons, with more (or better) autons assigned to larger ships. Again, it's a background detail that makes sense for the budget-conscious trader, and along with station-guards, makes it so the player isn't the only person in the entire universe who buys autons (IF the player buys them, since many people don't).

Anyone else got ideas/criticism of my ideas?

[Amariithynar]

Pretty much just a "hear hear!". Well written and agree on most points.

[Cirevam]

I agree with most of this fully and only partially on minefields. The one time I ever see mines (some mission where an Aurochs places mines in the path of a ship you're escorting) they are placed so tightly that they're basically worthless. I don't know how well a large, spread-out minefield would work and like you said the AI is dumb and would likely run into the mines constantly without some extra code, but if it's done right it might be a good addition.

Personally I think mines as they are now are worthless because space is so huge and the mines are extremely visible unless they're in a nebula. It would be nice to have some mines that are either undetectable without a special device/rom (maybe you can only see them on the LRS) or to have them camouflaged as something else like asteroids or other rocks.

[RPC]

Cirevam: +1
I think also we'd need a way for minefields to not lag the game?
If you cover a 100ls x 100ls square on the map with mines I'm pretty sure that those mines might lag the game (even moreso if they have hiteffects, etc).

[Cygnus.X1]

It would be nice to have some mines that are either undetectable without a special device/rom (maybe you can only see them on the LRS) or to have them camouflaged as something else like asteroids or other rocks.

I haven't looked into mines as yet (tho I do have a future project in mind of gravity mines ) but I'm pretty sure they can make use of the stealth modifier, at least, I know "m" type projectiles can

[Song]

Mines as fragments/missiles use the stealth modifier, and generally only show up within 30 light-seconds (assuming the maximum "7" value for the modifier). I'm not sure how this would work out for environmental mines, since there are issues around using fragments. This only really matters to the player, since AI ships are, as stated in the OP, dumb as rocks.

And proximity effects + frags are really needed for mines. Not only because the only 2 vanilla mines in the game have them (and the exact same ones. Go play SM&M/SM&M+ if you want variety! [/plug]), but because otherwise they're a bit too easy to miss. It also looks cool. The downside is that fragments have an annoying habit of not triggering their subfragments/whatever-we-call-frag-detonations when a ship goes near them that wasn't around when they were created. it doesn't always happen, but when it does happen, it wastes the mine completely and is really annoying. In general, hit-detection and triggering for fragments is pretty buggy (as evidenced by the terribleness of the XM900 against large targets), and is one of fairly large number of obstacles to minefields. That said, if minefields can be made to work, then the improvements required to have that happen could have positive flow-on effects to the rest of the game, and to modding projects.

But yeah. Minefields are just one of the many possibilities for background and environmental things that can make the game feel more alive.

Or "Shortly to be less alive" in the case of minefields.


Edit: From making and testing mods that implement mines, minefield density is really important. The way the Aurochs does it (actually it doesn't, since they're scripted) is TERRIBLE, and should be avoided. A good minefield is large, and less densely spaced...while still being tricky to move around in if you don't want to cop a frag blast. It should always be possible to sneak through a minefield....it just has to be both dangerous and considerably trickier than just going around. Mines are primarily a deterrent, making your enemies go the long way around if they don't want to be damaged (or potentially destroyed).

[FourFire]

I agree with and like pretty much everything in the O.P.
Yes, mines could be laggy, unless you could cause a patch of mines to be treated as a single 'object', which applies dmg whenever a ship touches certain points of it's texture (the apparent mines) but then this would require rewriting sourcecode, so only a measure to be taken if the lag becomes unbearable, and minefields are a sought after feature.

[ThePrivateer]

Yeah I agree totally with the OP on this one - Trans can always do with a little more detail, and the warzones always do feel fresh. My favorite part was always after Point Juno where the system is just utterly shredded after the big Ares fight. But if you walk into a new system and see that, you'd get a better idea of the struggle in the warzones.

Off-topic, but related, as we're all currently talking about the future of Trans, I'd like to see more background details everywhere. There's been leaps and bounds since 1.01 on the amount of AI ships wandering around doing stuff, but I'd like to see more things like Borer's out mining asteroids, some adventurous Mercenaries out hunting down Charon pirates, maybe even some skirmishes between enemy factions. There's far too many systems outside of Eridani, just leading up to Rigel, where you get just systems of mainly enemies. And then after St Kats, it often feels really void of life - I don't know if that's intended or not, but I'd like to see some more detail!

-Autons escorting freighters. Probably not something for the early game, but after St. K's, where Korolov is no longer active and the maruaders are a problem, having a random chance for freighters to have autons, with more (or better) autons assigned to larger ships. Again, it's a background detail that makes sense for the budget-conscious trader, and along with station-guards, makes it so the player isn't the only person in the entire universe who buys autons (IF the player buys them, since many people don't).

^^ Totally agree with that one too, goes in hand with my comment on more detail!

Back on topic, I'd like to also add some brave Scavangers - not the giant Nomads, but little scavengers that are hostile to the player, scooting over wreckage and trying to get some decent gear.

[RPC]

There are some mods that do what you want Privateer.
Dynamic Systems does the "Borer's out mining asteroids" thing.
Fellow Pilgrims (if you set the Domina Power to 0) are your "Scavangers".
If you want it in Vanilla there's a different route consisting of waiting for years and hoping it happens.

[Ttech]

There are some mods that do what you want Privateer.
Dynamic Systems does the "Borer's out mining asteroids" thing.
Fellow Pilgrims (if you set the Domina Power to 0) are your "Scavangers".
If you want it in Vanilla there's a different route consisting of waiting for years and hoping it happens.

or you could open a ticket

[Song]

There are some mods that do what you want Privateer.
Dynamic Systems does the "Borer's out mining asteroids" thing.
Fellow Pilgrims (if you set the Domina Power to 0) are your "Scavangers".
If you want it in Vanilla there's a different route consisting of waiting for years and hoping it happens.

or you could open a ticket

Or starting a discussion thread so that ideas can be shared that will lead to good tickets being written with robust ideas for features.


Oh snap, that's why this thread exists.

Anyway. Back on topic. Another possibility is having salvager ships (not nomads, the hypothetical ones talked about up there ^^^) "sell" their (damaged) loot at the nearest tinker station, if one is available. Combine that with the possibility of tweaking tinkers to repair the damaged items they're sold and then resell them, and it could be rather interesting.

[FourFire]

[...] ... [...]

Or starting a discussion thread so that ideas can be shared that will lead to good tickets being written with robust ideas for features.


Oh snap, that's why this thread exists.

Anyway. Back on topic. Another possibility is having salvager ships (not nomads, the hypothetical ones talked about up there ^^^) "sell" their (damaged) loot at the nearest tinker station, if one is available. Combine that with the possibility of tweaking tinkers to repair the damaged items they're sold and then resell them, and it could be rather interesting.

Yeah, I agree, I was always expecting the tinkers to be able to repair damaged items (especially since they can repair most armor)

[Cirevam]

I'd like to see Tinkers repair items as well. The majority of their inventory is worthless, except for armour. That makes it really hard to sell junk to them since you can't easily replenish their stock of credits. Even better -- it would be great to be able to install damaged items. Then let Bobby's advanced repair droids take care of it :p

[Amariithynar]

Mines as stations under a sovereign so that allied ships are immune to friendly fire from the mines, nor do they trigger the mines? I know stations don't appear on the map until you discover them, so just reduce the "discover" range for them? When you get to close to a mine, it then explodes? Or there could be a mine-maker station that then surrounds itself to a large area with drone ships that are nothing but an engine, maneuvering jets, a control system and a bomb bundled together. That resolves the issue of being able to shoot them up to destroy them beforehand and they not being able to react to the threat, and makes them simultaneously more dangerous and less of a load on the computer due to the mine station generating the drones, so there doesn't need to be a field of like, 50 mines sitting there; It can deploy them at will within a large radius of itself. Something on par with the range of the Dwarg Cnidocyst would be a great start for the range it could send the mine-drones within, and it also makes more sense than trying to mine a huge area of space directly with mines directly- because there's just so much more space in 3D, well, space that it becomes incredibly costly just to lightly saturate the area just around an asteroid field, let alone an empty section of space.