Brainstorming...

[Aeonic]

Why is energy/fuel storage determined by the reactor? Shouldn't there be fuel tanks or batteries that determine how much fuel/energy can be stored? Yeah, you might have a 5GW reactor, but if your battery only supports 10000 power, you'll be drained before you know it running those 1GW shields.

Why aren't there any tools to change the long range sensor distance?

Why are fuel supplies in levels instead of working with attributes? As in, a reactor could only use fuel which has a matching fuel attribute? If a reactor supports "helium3, assembly, xenotite, heliotrope", then it essentially supports level 1-5 fuels. But if I want to make one that runs on water as suggested in an older thread, then all I'd have to do is give water items a fuel= "water" attribute and create a reactor that runs on fuel= "water". This would allow much more diversity in reactors and their requirements.

Capacitors could be used to store power in case of emergencies. These will build up power at a slow but persistent rate at no expense, and can be used to power a ship in case of emergency when the ship's primary power supply has failed. Capacitors typically do not generate enough power to run a ship for a prolonged period of time.

Space debris might gradually damage some armors if the ship is not properly shielded. Harder forms of armor could deflect space debris, while sophisticated but non-hard forms of armor could still be damaged.

Player ships should support a maximum reactor size, so certain reactors can only be equipped on larger player ships.

Why is there no way to view your ship's overall stats during the game, just like you can when selecting a ship? The only way to know my ship's armor size limit, for instance, is to restart the game and view my ship in the selection screen.

It would be sooo cool if armor segments could be designated to have specific effects when depleted:
- cargo segments would cause damaged cargo (non-equipped items) whenever hit after depletion.
- engine segments would reduce the ship's speed (damage to drive) when hit after depletion.
- reactor segments would create extra large explosions when hit after depletion.
- sensor segments could disrupt ship display like the defective visual ROM, or long range sensors like nebulae. These would be fixed over time after they are damaged.
- weapons segments could damage equipped weapons.
- shields segments could damage equipped shields.
Alternatively, instead of assigning this to armor segments, a new ship section could be created that controls where systems are located on the ship using the same start/span variables that armor segments use. Then taking damage in those areas has a chance (based on armor percentage, perhaps limited to below 50%) of damaging those systems - except for shield sections, which can be damaged regardless of armor or shield status in order to lower shields more easily with targeted strikes. This could create a whole slew of mission objectives besides just destroying or protecting:
- a cargo freighter is transporting sensitive, stolen cargo and your mission is to destroy that cargo, but not the freighter.
- a rebel ship is escaping and you must disable its engines and allow a boarding shuttle to reach it.
- intercept an enemy dreadnought and disable its sensors before it can reach the station.
- disable the dreadnought's weapons while you're at it.
- instead of spending tedious minutes repetitively blasting away at a powerful ship's shields, target its shield generators (Star Wars - Star Destroyer style) to bring them down and then target the ship's reactor for a decisive boom.
This could also make for interesting moments where you're struggling to protect certain portions of your ship from enemy fire, instead of just protecting the entire ship. Maybe your ship has a vulnerable reactor section and you need to keep it protected lest you explode, or perhaps the enemy ships are trying to disable your ship's drives. There could also be another window on the ship screen for viewing your ship's system locations (just an image, like the ship selection screen)

All ships should have targeting ROMs built in... Its no fun when you can't even target an enemy ship to find out what its called...

Cloaking devices make you invisible to ships with inferior sensors unless you fire weapons, then you become visible for a short time. However, they could require excessive amounts of power to maintain.

Cloak field projector - ala the Arbiter unit from Star Craft. Have a flag ships that projects a limited cloaki field around it to hide all its supporting ships or vulnerable freighters.

Stealth devices make you invisible to long range sensors Is stealth restricted to armor? Should we be able to have stealth items? Stealth shield generators?

Improvements to scanners could allow detection of stealthy objects, and detect cloaked vessels (or mines!)

Jump anchor prevents other vessels from escaping using a jump drive... assuming other vessels could use jump drives.

Interdictor - slows ships down around your ship. Slow down your enemies for easier targeting, or have your enemies slow you down, which would be highly annoying.

Nullifier - nullify the effects of an interdictor.

All ships should start with practically no thrust or top speed, and extremely minimal power generation, but come equipped with drive and reactor items. Why? Because I like it more when ships start with brand-name reactors, and having them come with equipped drives instead of built-in drives would allow for MUCH more diversity in drive items. Alternatively, drives should replace top speed and thrust instead of adding to it.

--

That's all I can think of for now.

[Arisaya]

Why is energy/fuel storage determined by the reactor? Shouldn't there be fuel tanks or batteries that determine how much fuel/energy can be stored? Yeah, you might have a 5GW reactor, but if your battery only supports 10000 power, you'll be drained before you know it running those 1GW shields.

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seeing as george now has a fuel-drain attack, we could theoretically do the exact reverse in order to get around the max fuel levels [both the max of the code itself, and the max of the program [since otherwise it overflows]

Why aren't there any tools to change the long range sensor distance?

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I think taben has plans for this in 1.0

Why are fuel supplies in levels instead of working with attributes? As in, a reactor could only use fuel which has a matching fuel attribute? If a reactor supports "helium3, assembly, xenotite, heliotrope", then it essentially supports level 1-5 fuels. But if I want to make one that runs on water as suggested in an older thread, then all I'd have to do is give water items a fuel= "water" attribute and create a reactor that runs on fuel= "water". This would allow much more diversity in reactors and their requirements.

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This would be so much better IMO. I'm pretty sure this is doable even now, though it would require an overwrite of the player ship's dockscreen

Capacitors could be used to store power in case of emergencies. These will build up power at a slow but persistent rate at no expense, and can be used to power a ship in case of emergency when the ship's primary power supply has failed. Capacitors typically do not generate enough power to run a ship for a prolonged period of time.

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Overlays

Space debris might gradually damage some armors if the ship is not properly shielded. Harder forms of armor could deflect space debris, while sophisticated but non-hard forms of armor could still be damaged.

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You could alwayse just add the "decay" attribute...

Player ships should support a maximum reactor size, so certain reactors can only be equipped on larger player ships.

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>.> Is this really a good idea? Maybe max reactor mass if that's what you mean, but NOT max reactor power.

Why is there no way to view your ship's overall stats during the game, just like you can when selecting a ship? The only way to know my ship's armor size limit, for instance, is to restart the game and view my ship in the selection screen.

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Once again, this is easily doable, but only via an overwrite of the dockscreen

It would be sooo cool if armor segments could be designated to have specific effects when depleted:
- cargo segments would cause damaged cargo (non-equipped items) whenever hit after depletion.
- engine segments would reduce the ship's speed (damage to drive) when hit after depletion.
- reactor segments would create extra large explosions when hit after depletion.
- sensor segments could disrupt ship display like the defective visual ROM, or long range sensors like nebulae. These would be fixed over time after they are damaged.
- weapons segments could damage equipped weapons.
- shields segments could damage equipped shields.
Alternatively, instead of assigning this to armor segments, a new ship section could be created that controls where systems are located on the ship using the same start/span variables that armor segments use. Then taking damage in those areas has a chance (based on armor percentage, perhaps limited to below 50%) of damaging those systems - except for shield sections, which can be damaged regardless of armor or shield status in order to lower shields more easily with targeted strikes. This could create a whole slew of mission objectives besides just destroying or protecting:
- a cargo freighter is transporting sensitive, stolen cargo and your mission is to destroy that cargo, but not the freighter.
- a rebel ship is escaping and you must disable its engines and allow a boarding shuttle to reach it.
- intercept an enemy dreadnought and disable its sensors before it can reach the station.
- disable the dreadnought's weapons while you're at it.
- instead of spending tedious minutes repetitively blasting away at a powerful ship's shields, target its shield generators (Star Wars - Star Destroyer style) to bring them down and then target the ship's reactor for a decisive boom.
This could also make for interesting moments where you're struggling to protect certain portions of your ship from enemy fire, instead of just protecting the entire ship. Maybe your ship has a vulnerable reactor section and you need to keep it protected lest you explode, or perhaps the enemy ships are trying to disable your ship's drives. There could also be another window on the ship screen for viewing your ship's system locations (just an image, like the ship selection screen)

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script events and overlays :D

All ships should have targeting ROMs built in... Its no fun when you can't even target an enemy ship to find out what its called...

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I hate it when I can't get a targeting rom until I order one from trading posts in a level 7 system... it's so hard to obtain them D:

Cloaking devices make you invisible to ships with inferior sensors unless you fire weapons, then you become visible for a short time. However, they could require excessive amounts of power to maintain.

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overlays

Cloak field projector - ala the Arbiter unit from Star Craft. Have a flag ships that projects a limited cloaki field around it to hide all its supporting ships or vulnerable freighters.

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overlays with a heavy dose of scripting (and possibly more overlays)

Stealth devices make you invisible to long range sensors Is stealth restricted to armor? Should we be able to have stealth items? Stealth shield generators?

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I think you know the answers by now...

Improvements to scanners could allow detection of stealthy objects, and detect cloaked vessels (or mines!)

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And modify the above overlays so that this can be done...

Jump anchor prevents other vessels from escaping using a jump drive... assuming other vessels could use jump drives.

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I'm not sure, but I don't think AI ships can use jump drives

Interdictor - slows ships down around your ship. Slow down your enemies for easier targeting, or have your enemies slow you down, which would be highly annoying.

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you'd need to slow down projectiles too. see the "tractor beam" mod.

Nullifier - nullify the effects of an interdictor.

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overlays?

All ships should start with practically no thrust or top speed, and extremely minimal power generation, but come equipped with drive and reactor items. Why? Because I like it more when ships start with brand-name reactors, and having them come with equipped drives instead of built-in drives would allow for MUCH more diversity in drive items. Alternatively, drives should replace top speed and thrust instead of adding to it.

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not too hard to do, as that's pretty basic modding

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That's all I can think of for now.

[Aeonic]

A lot of things are "basic modding". However, they need to be built into the standard game, otherwise people will not create additions for them. Sure, it would be easy to replace the three starting ships with ships that have no built-in drives but equipped drive items, and it would be easy to make them use brand-name reactors. But everyone who creates a drive or reactor mod for the game is building it, hopefully, with the intention of it being balanced with the rest of the game, not with my modified version. Therefor every other mod that gets created will be incomparable with my mod.

The stuff that the game comes with is the standard. Everyone generally tries to make their creations computable with the standard. If you create a mod that changes the standard, other mods will be incomparable, which just sucks, so why do it? Unless you're making a complete overhaul of every aspect of the game.

When I say that changing the default drives for the starting ship will allow for much more drive diversity, that change has to be to the standard, otherwise that diversity is meaningless because any new drives that are created will be designed for the standard, not for the mod. Additionally, any custom-created player ships will not be designed for them.

[Arisaya]

oops! never realized that you wanted it to be included into the default setup [never said so in the post]

[schilcote]

You sure do complain alot (not that that's bad).

[Atarlost]

But in the case of drives the price of doing it your way is that drives become even more useless for the Wolfen and Sapphire because they don't stack with starting stats.

And the inertialess drive becomes even more useless because you can't turn it off and go back to your perfectly respectable (except on the freighter) starting drive stats.

Drives used to work your way and they were changed to the current system for a reason.

[Arisaya]

Alternatively, drives should replace top speed and thrust instead of adding to it.

>.< Just remembered that they already do that

[Aeonic]

Alternatively, drives should replace top speed and thrust instead of adding to it.

>.< Just remembered that they already do that

They didn't when I tested it. If that were the case, then it would be possible to equip drives that make your ship slower, but more fuel efficient. It would still allow for more drive flexibility though.

Another option might be to give drives a variable that determines whether they replace or add to the ship's original drive stats. For example, a Titan 440 fusion drive might be a total drive replacement (replacing your ship's drive with a state-of-the-art fusion drive), while a tritium propulsion upgrade simply makes your base drive go faster.

You sure do complain alot (not that that's bad).

If people didn't "complain", nothing would ever get improved.

[Arisaya]

Alternatively, drives should replace top speed and thrust instead of adding to it.

>.< Just remembered that they already do that

They didn't when I tested it. If that were the case, then it would be possible to equip drives that make your ship slower, but more fuel efficient. It would still allow for more drive flexibility though.

Another option might be to give drives a variable that determines whether they replace or add to the ship's original drive stats. For example, a Titan 440 fusion drive might be a total drive replacement (replacing your ship's drive with a state-of-the-art fusion drive), while a tritium propulsion upgrade simply makes your base drive go faster.

You sure do complain alot (not that that's bad).

If people didn't "complain", nothing would ever get improved.

arg! forgot another thing: it only chooses the highest thrust value >.<

[schilcote]

You sure do complain alot (not that that's bad).

If people didn't "complain", nothing would ever get improved.

That's why I said "(not that that's bad)".

[BloodEagle]

[...]

Why aren't there any tools to change the long range sensor distance?

I'd love to see a device which allows you to see more (by zooming out, as it were) around you (say, 100 extra pixels/sensor level), rather than merely track the dots. There would probably be performance issues with this capability on older computers, however.

[...]

Capacitors could be used to store power in case of emergencies. These will build up power at a slow but persistent rate at no expense, and can be used to power a ship in case of emergency when the ship's primary power supply has failed. Capacitors typically do not generate enough power to run a ship for a prolonged period of time.

I.E., it would support life support and minor engine thrust (say, 10%) for a short time?

[...]

It would be sooo cool if armor segments could be designated to have specific effects when depleted:
- cargo segments would cause damaged cargo (non-equipped items) whenever hit after depletion.
- engine segments would reduce the ship's speed (damage to drive) when hit after depletion.
- reactor segments would create extra large explosions when hit after depletion.
- sensor segments could disrupt ship display like the defective visual ROM, or long range sensors like nebulae. These would be fixed over time after they are damaged.
- weapons segments could damage equipped weapons.
- shields segments could damage equipped shields.

I really can't see sub-system targeting working in Transcendence, as it's played on a two dimensional field. I suppose, however, that you could have core-armor and plate-armor: where plate-armor is what you currently install in the game, and a new core-armor system would guard your reactor. Systems (engines, weapons, shielding, etc.) could only be damaged once the plate-armor is depleted (exception for ion-weapons, of course), yet your ship wouldn't be destroyed until a segment of core-armor (exception for anti-matter/dark matter/acid/whatever weapons) is destroyed.

[...]

- instead of spending tedious minutes repetitively blasting away at a powerful ship's shields, target its shield generators (Star Wars - Star Destroyer style) to bring them down and then target the ship's reactor for a decisive boom.

A note: targeting shield generators is ineffective when you exclude the hand-wavium found in the movies, as shield generators are protected by shielding. For a comprehensive guide on Star Wars tactical mechanics, see Michael A. Stackpole's X-Wing series (part of the expanded universe).

All ships should have targeting ROMs built in... Its no fun when you can't even target an enemy ship to find out what its called...

Alternatively, you could have different levels of targeting. E.g., level one targeting (all ships would start with this) would allow you to target anything on the screen, level two targeting would allow you to target anything within two screens of distance, etc. Higher level systems could "record" ship data, allowing you to access it from your databanks (major code change?) later.

Cloaking devices make you invisible to ships with inferior sensors unless you fire weapons, then you become visible for a short time. However, they could require excessive amounts of power to maintain.

I would love to see it as a Domina power, I'm not sure what the implications towards the AI would be, though. It seems like it would require new AI code if the player suddenly stopped "existing" to them (do they retreat through the gate, do they patrol the nearest 'red base', do they just sit and wait, etc.?).

[...]

Interdictor - slows ships down around your ship. Slow down your enemies for easier targeting, or have your enemies slow you down, which would be highly annoying.

Hmm, I get the feeling that the Iocrym is going to become far more difficult to destroy if this idea is implemented.

[...]

--

That's all I can think of for now.

[obvious]My critiques/comments are in red.[/obvious] I've also found that my critiques tend to come off as being offensive, please don't take them that way.

[digdug]

All ships should have targeting ROMs built in... Its no fun when you can't even target an enemy ship to find out what its called...

just my little thought on this:
not all the ships are military ships that needs to target a foe, a trade ship just needs some docking sensors.

however I understand that a larger variety of ROMs, that allow different data to be read, could be extremely interesting.

[Psycholis]

k, i just thought of something related to all this. this is george's game, but could there be a way to include other developers? i know the modding thing works, but as previously mentioned sometime mods don't play nice with each other. if a few good developers all colloborated on the general project of transcendence, i think it would take some load off from george doing all the work and make the game more diverse. not sure how it works with other indie games, but i think it needs to move from just modding the core to actually implementing big mods (trans x-2) into the core game.

[Arisaya]

k, i just thought of something related to all this. this is george's game, but could there be a way to include other developers? i know the modding thing works, but as previously mentioned sometime mods don't play nice with each other. if a few good developers all colloborated on the general project of transcendence, i think it would take some load off from george doing all the work and make the game more diverse. not sure how it works with other indie games, but i think it needs to move from just modding the core to actually implementing big mods (trans x-2) into the core game.

taben was theorizing about what george is planning to do with the UNID's reserved for official mods and whatnot.