Yet another 'thoughts and suggestions' thread

[darksider]

You might not think so but I actually don't like lengthy posts so let's get started
(Please note that I may - or may not - heavily edit this post if I get other ideas, or noticed better suggestions from other members here on this thread)


1. Meteorsteel dust should definetely have some minor but positive effect on meteorsteel armors, if you plan the game to be like NetHack.

2. I find the monopole dust pretty useless, due to one critical flaw.
This product should be improved.
(Still, I wonder why other members haven't mentioned this anyway...)

3. Making titanium plates from titanium ore at the tinkers is pretty pointless, in game-wise.
If this is intended it's ok, but titanium barricades could be much preferred, maybe?

4. There should really be some means to negotiate with stations you've angered.
Getting instantly killed because of just one misfire from a weak multi-hitting weapon is overly annoying, and it's not very logical that the black market guys are more forgiving.
And, there is an insurance company too! Why don't they sell some kind of liability insurance?

5. "Battleship farming" should somehow be stopped.
I suppose most players who finished the game can understand what I mean.
It's worse than the "pudding farming" in NetHack, because it can happen even if you don't want it.
And more than that, I feel that something is very wrong when I see those limitless number of wrecks crushing each other in supposedly vast and enormous cosmic space.
...Yes, I know this thing have been repeatedly argued, but anyway I thought it is worthy to note.

6. Key configuration!
Most popular roguelike games (Angband and its variants, Dungeon Crawl, ADOM, NetHack, and GearHead too!) have some means to customize keys to use or modify the keymap, or sometimes both. Why not in Transcendence?

[Betelgeuse]

2. monopole dust is useful for me due to I keep finding ion pass through crystals for some reason

4. As long as the liability insurance idea is great as long as it is expensive (make it so it wouldn't be profitable). The reason you get locked up it because it is so easy to make millions of credits off of destroying stations there needs some kind of punishment (maybe taking your ship away and giving you a nothing ship would work better).

5. only ships that may be to much is cap ships. Other types of ships need huge amounts of them to be a challenge and for them to fight each other (thats always fun)

6. There are some programs that can do this but it would be nice.

[Blinzler]

1. Meteorsteel dust should definetely have some minor but positive effect on meteorsteel armors, if you plan the game to be like NetHack.

Why? Simply put if you sprinkle iron shavings on an iron plate - do you get something more iron*y*? (no pun intended)
No offense, but I don't think this would make sense. But I'm open for explainations.

4. There should really be some means to negotiate with stations you've angered.
Getting instantly killed because of just one misfire from a weak multi-hitting weapon is overly annoying, and it's not very logical that the black market guys are more forgiving.
And, there is an insurance company too! Why don't they sell some kind of liability insurance?

I'm guessing here (due to the fact that I don't want to look into the game mechanics and stuff since the often kills at least half the fun), but that would probably require at least 2 tags ingame. One to mark you as hitting friendlies and one if you actually kill any.
If there's just one tag then this could easily be abused as Betelgeuse said above.
Still, even with 2 tags this could lead to abuse - e.g. you weaken a capital friendly ship/station enough, then pull some unfriendlies to finish your deed and loot.
I'm annoyed when I have the same problem of unintended friendly fire and the results but it seems the solution is a little more complex then it seems to be.
I'm still rooting for mouseaimed weapon-systems, since that leaves you entirely responsible for your aim or your lack of skill in it.

One thing that just crossed my mind:
Sometimes you get 2 opposing faction stations in close proximity together fighting and adding to the junkyard.
That can be fun & most likely profitable, too.
However - let's argue this point for a minute: How come there are two opposing stations so close in the first place? From my point of view this is very much unlikely since any faction is unlikely to let another faction build in peace in such close proximity. Even if you argue that both stations have been build at the same time it's unlikely since there would have been ships sent to prevent the enemy from getting on with their work.
Now one possible explanation would be act's of piracy, where one faction had two stations and one was captured.
Any thoughts?

[Karl]

4. The biggest source of friendly fire is your anti-missle turret. It's quite annoying to get stations mad at your for shots that you didn't even fire or aim.

How to fix that? Maybe classify that damage as "unaimed" and make it so that it takes a relatively large amount of unaimed damage before a friendly station turns on you.

[OddBob]

I think the best way to prevent friendly fire episodes is this: More than 10% damage is intentional or careless enough that you should get punished. There is no way the ICX will do this kind of damage; all station past the point you get it are basically immune.

The trick is now keeping track of who damaged what.

[Blinzler]

I don't know, never really paid close attention, but do your own drones care if something is in the path of their fire when they go after a target?
I sure do know that they don't give a hoot where I'm firing at, they regularly run into my fire...

[goat not sheep]

1. Meteorsteel dust should definetely have some minor but positive effect on meteorsteel armors, if you plan the game to be like NetHack.

Why? Simply put if you sprinkle iron shavings on an iron plate - do you get something more iron*y*? (no pun intended)
No offense, but I don't think this would make sense. But I'm open for explainations.

Maybe increased HP?

[darksider]

Why? Simply put if you sprinkle iron shavings on an iron plate
- do you get something more iron*y*? (no pun intended)

Then maybe just do nothing on them.
Simply, the 'no shield' tag on an already no-shield armor looks stupid.
But if it does nothing good then why do they sell such useless barrels anyway?
(I know sometimes commonwealth stations sell radioactive waste,
but even those worthless barrels definetely have a use!)
So I'd rather say c'mon! It's not ordinary iron but the meteorsteel
which somehow mysteriously weaken every sort of energy!

And, if you say it is of gamewise, then I assume you don't oppose the idea that some certain things should do something cool!

this could lead to abuse

I don't worry about that, since I don't think destroying (not just damaging) a friendly station and genociding all people inside can ever be compensated, and actually you don't need to destroy it for money, in exchange for your important supply line, when there are so many adversary ships to loot. Do you?

Actually, if you speak of 'abuse' here, seeing more than 30 Urak Destroyer wrecks in one screen and looting them - I think this is far more serious.

How come there are two opposing stations so close in the first place?

Possibly some more sophisticated map generation algorithm can prevent it,
though this alone won't stop the "farming".


By the way, I can't really say anything about those anti-missle misfire things because I usually don't use the ICX at all.

[Yugi]

Well, of course it is.

[goat not sheep]

But, what darksider is trying to suggest is that maybe meteorite dust has some kindof positive affect with worldship and/or metorite plates...

[Yugi]

I know, but it's as Blinzler said:

Why? Simply put if you sprinkle iron shavings on an iron plate - do you get something more iron*y*?

But if it does nothing good then why do they sell such useless barrels anyway?

So people can make meteorstel/worldship armor.

[goat not sheep]

So...it should have a tinker custom work use!

[darksider]

Some more radical ideas to twist the game, mainly from other roguelike games
(Not sorts of adding to the first post, though)

1. The 'penalty' star system
If you unnecessarily meddle with some very powerful Oracus worshippers,
abuse Domina's power way too much, use some cursed gems, or simply use a broken jumpdrive, you have some chance to be sent to the "evil" (or some hellish name, whatever) system, where is without any stations and infested with lots of mysterious enemies (generating evil clones of your own ship might be fun here), and you cannot use gems or the jumpdrive and usually you die here.
You have some chance of escaping from here using a stargate which is randomly generated somewhere.

This idea is a rather direct adoption from the "Abyss" feature in Linley's Dungeon Crawl.

2. Out-of-deapth mons... er, ships randomly generated
With very low probability of 1/200 or even lower, random enemy ships can be generated, regardless of the stations in the system or the level of the system. (e.g. an stray Atonement gunship in Charon, or a Sung transport or a Ventari destroyer before the arena, someting like that)
This will surprise a player, and can be (sometimes overly) challenging.
However, some of real nasties and unreasonable ships should not be generated (like the Worldships or Ares sentries.)

3. 'Ironman' option
Optional settings that make the game more difficult. Not much I can think of, though.
'Mute all sounds outside your own ship', 'No rader', 'All discarded items vanish' or 'Allow bounty hunters to randomly attack the player' maybe?

4. Invisible ship
Truly stealthy enemy ships, being perfectly pitch-black colored.
They cannot be found on the rader, be targeted, or be aimed with omnidirectional weapons.
Some more powerful version of visual enhancement ROM may be useful against them.

Oh, and one more about stealth; if you are properly armored with the cloaking equipment, how about that you cannot be targeted with weaker enemies' omnidirectional weapons?

[evilbob]

4. Invisible ship
Truly stealthy enemy ships, being perfectly pitch-black coloured.
They cannot be found on the radar, be targeted, or be aimed with omnidirectional weapons.
Some more powerful version of visual enhancement ROM may be useful against them.

Oh, and one more about stealth; if you are properly armoured with the cloaking equipment, how about that you cannot be targeted with weaker enemies' omnidirectional weapons?

this is pretty much moddable. "Stealth = 20" means ships don't appear until you're almost on top of them, so I suppose 30+ would be almost completely invisible.