A plethora of ideas, Yugi style 3.0 (when will it end?!)

[Yugi]

Same as my previous two ideas threads.

1) St. K's planet dockable - According to the timeline, a planet in St. K's is habitable, so I'm assuming that there are people there.
How about making the planet dockable/landable? It could be a good prelude to developing landable planets in later versions (though I'm willing to bet George is adding landable planets in the next version...). It doesn't have to be anything fancy - pretty much like a mix between the Corporate stations, Commonwealth Dry Docks, and Commonwealth residentials.

2) Another (possible) wreck solution - How about when you exit a system a percentage of the wrecks in it is randomly decreased?

3) Contaminated fuel - How about having contaminated fuel rods, that when used (you can't tell they're contaminated), your reactor must use extra fuel to purge the contamination from wherever the fuel is stored, meaning you have less than before you used the rod(s)? Like when food is rotten or tripe in Nethack.
Original idea by Sproaticus and Fossaman

4) Jumping weapons - This sort of thing is found throughout RPGs and action games - a weapon that fires a beam that hits one ship, then jumps to another but does less damage, and again and again depending on how many jumps you allow it.
This has been suggested (possibly by me and others) before, but I believe it's worth bringing up again.

5) Domina cure for radiation - Well, that pretty much says it. A domina power that cures radiation. It's be handy, and probably will be the lowest-level power.
Originally suggested by Dorne

6) Betting at the Arena Maximum - It'd be cool if you could bet on fights in the arena, at probably a 1:2 relationship - if you bet 1000, you get 2000 back, If you bet 5000, you get 10,000 back. If you win, obviously.
You might even be able to bet on yourself!
If you do bet on a fight (other than your own) then you can make the bet, and then you have to wait (much like at the Corporate Trading post when waiting for your order), and when the time ends you go and see if you won.
If you really wanted to, George, you could make it so that we can actually watch the fights, but that might take some difficult coding (or not - just put two enemy ships together in the arena and watch them fight).

7) Auton damage - I think that friendly fire to autons should be decreased somewhat - it gets annoying when you keep killing your own autons. A good excuse could be shield frequencies or something.
Originally suggested by Sero

8) Experimental stuff - There are several items in the game that are described as being experimental, right? How about a special system littered with wrecks of ships with experimental devices that are damaged or something, and a modified commonwealth fortress that will send you on missions to test the items? This seems like it would be a more plausible way to get experimental stuff than just randomly finding it.
Of course, you can't check out of the proving grounds with the experimental weaponry on board... unless you have a smuggler's hold... or bribe the exit guard.
Completely ripped off from what Fossaman and Sproaticus said

9) Superfreighter mission - Y'know the Commonwealth Fortress superfreighter mission? I think that the superfreighter should be armed with a relatively weak omni missile launcher. Nothing fancy, just slightly more than it's current slam cannon.

10) Auton recall order - I think we should be able to recall autons when they're not needed - they are pretty fragile, after all.
I also think there should be a few more types of autons - stronger ones.
Originally suggested by Ponkan

[goat not sheep]

Just to amke things EXTREMLY short...I will say i agree with all...EXCEPT:
2) What happened to the wrecks?

)4 I don't disagree..i just want to say I suggested this! Yay me!

9) No...it makes things a lot easier.

[OddBob]

2) Another (possible) wreck solution - How about when you exit a system a percentage of the wrecks in it is randomly decreased?

Wrecks. Are. Not. Broken.
I like my wreck caches and battlegrounds.

Does everyone have OCD and need space (and forums...) to be immaculately clean?

[goat not sheep]

It shows thAT A great battle has fallen here...and sometimes gives me a few memories.

[TedStudley]

Although, If you're trying to scavenge stuff from the wrecks, it can get kind of annoying going back to the same ones over and over again. What about an option in the menu when docked that allows you to destroy the ship? Like planting explosives or setting off a self-destruct.

[Yugi]

Hey, that's a cool idea - your ship has a self-destruct, why not others?

[goat not sheep]

Some ships do have a self-destruct. They just don't activate it. And...teddy...have u used an akan at all? Or a WMD weapon?

[Yugi]

Some ships do have a self-destruct. They just don't activate it

Yes, I know - my question was rhetorical.

[TedStudley]

Yeah, I first found out that you could blow up ships with those yesterday, but what about in the early stages of the game, before you get those weapons, or if you don't want to go around with one as your weapon? You should have a way around it, and it probably wouldn't be too hard to add a self-destruct button to a wreck.

[goat not sheep]

How...would you activate it? The computer is dead...so hacking is impossible...are you going to dock on the wreck and press it? In such case...you'll kill yourself...as well as the wreck...which is completely pointless.

[Karl]

Self-destruct devices have been known to have a time delay...

And there's always remote detonation.

It's sci-fi, man! Just about any ability we want to have, we can make a technological excuse for.... (It's kinda like having magic, only with more logic and physics involved.) And blowing up wrecks isn't magical, or even that difficult... you could do it with today's tech if you wanted to.

[OddBob]

Back on the UTF somewhere, the same solution to this "problem" (note sarcasm and quotes, I can't even begin to understand why you think this is broken, but I'll play along) was proposed, but it was a tad different, and I actually liked it.

You can buy explosive charges at Tinkers or CW stations, or wherever, and plant them on whatever the heck you want. If you just buy charges they are time delayed (time is your choice). You can either buy a remote detonator or proximity fuse and use these instead. They're not really for destroying wrecks, rather for making improvised bombs and strapping them to mules or bumping them toward stations or for laying traps/boming a tough station, but they of course will destroy wrecks and anythign else in the way when they go off.

So you enter the wreck field and you put 18 charges (they come in various sizes, these particular hypothetical ones are equivalent to micronukes) in a corsair, slap a remote detonator on there, and then, when you're ready, se the detonator and blow them up. Boom. No wrecks. The bugs are gone now.

[Karl]

I can't even begin to understand why you think this is broken...

It's been explained already multiple times... I guess if you don't ever use the minimap... or loot wrecks... or dock at stations, you might have a trouble understanding why wrecks, as they currently exist, are an annoyance. (Note sarcasm.)

You can buy explosive charges...

Yeah, having charges to use has been proposed multiple times. That seems like a good solution, if implemented properly. I think the most ergonomic way is to have a "skuttle wreck" option appear onscreen when you dock at a wreck with explosive charges in your inventory.

[OddBob]

I can see the problem here, but here's the deal: how often do you encounter a huge wreck field with over 500 ships in it? Once every two games? Three? Provided you aren't deliberately creating the field, in which part you deserve to loot them manually because you're wreck farming.
I never ever destroy wrecks and the only time I get a field that gets in the way is if I camp Charon, and one Xeno/Ranx/Dwarg/Ringer showdown, which I didn't mind at all because of all the free loot that I got from looting four ships (the only four out of the hundred destroyed which had anything valuable)

Generally I see a lot of people arguing for removal of wrecks because they're thinking about Ferians or Charon, but this is a very small part of the game. Think about the rest, where you have usually less than 100 wrecks systemwide. You can't tell me that every time you pass a solitary wreck or four that it's annoying.

It's been explained already multiple times... I guess if you don't ever use the minimap... or loot wrecks... or dock at stations, you might have a trouble understanding why wrecks, as they currently exist, are an annoyance. (Note sarcasm.)

I like it when pirates hide in wrecks in my minimap and I wish they would be programmed to do it intentionally. It's a nice surprise to counter the tedium of autopilot.

I remember which wrecks I've looted, and only loot wrecks which have good stuff in them. Most (ship) wrecks are not worth docking unless you like to trade in damaged armor or weapons. Wrecks do not contain random loot, except for certain capships. Generally, the only ships with good loot are capships and some gunships. You will waste a Shuriken's woorth in fuel and ammo docking with every wind slaver to try and find an intact one.

I have targeted docking.


Yeah, wreck removal makes Ferian farming easier (well, for others, I personally loot as soon as I kill one and never loot already dead Ferians, and it works perfectly) but at the cost of knowing where you've been, memories of past battles, discovering the remains of a battle you had nothing to do with, and hiding in/behind said wrecks.

By the way, the above argument is actually against automatic random removal of empty wrecks when you're not in system. Yes, I know you didn't suggest it. I'm arguing for fun.

I don't care if we get demolition charges, I like them.

If and when we get a real AI that has dynamic battles happening when patrols encounter each other and when pirates prey on freighters and we start getting these wreck fields in every system we will have a problem (provided they don't just get destroyed in the crossfire)
that needs more than player intervention (and we have Gaian Processors, the same wreck eating ability can be added to Salvagers to quickly fix this problem)

[Burzmali]

An old game called Star Command had it right. If you over-killed a target, it was destroyed, but if it was only disabled, you could board and capture it, then tow it back to your HQ for salvage money. If people hate wrecks that much, we can always lower the chance that a ship leaves one, that ought to simplify things