***Still very much in the brainstorming phase, so feel free to suggest new stuff***
So I decided to push the limits of scripting and balance, and came up with this:
(The cockpit is subject to change - I was fed up with tinkering with materials for hours and just went with it as it was at the time... I'll probably find something better later)
///EDIT: new cockpit///
///EDIT2: the 'child' ship///
///EDIT: young guardian///
///EDIT: guardian (not yet fully implemented)///
It's a living ship, for use by the player.
The idea is that it's a ship that will grow in power as the player does, gaining new weapons and abilities. The ship's normal loadout isn't anything terribly fancy, and in fact looks a bit inferior in some areas to the stock playerships at first glance.
Propose current starting loadout;
-max 2 installable weapons [Looks like the freighter here]
-max 4 installable devices total* [Falls short of everyone here]
-starting cargo space 50 tons(?) [about on par with the sapphire]
-max cargo space 120 tons(?) [only beats out the wolfen by a little bit]
-speed .27c [a nice speed advantage, perfect for chasing down other fast gunships, only area where it soundly beats the others]
-max armor mass 7 tons per seg [only ahead of the sapphire, and not by much]
-25MW starting reactor [not too shabby here either...]
* - not including pre-installed devices
So in conclusion, it looks like a rather sub-par ship on the surface, as that lack of device space REALLY hurts, and the speed and starting reactor simply aren’t that big of a deal in the long run. The armor limit also looks uncomfortably tight…
But wait… What is this?
Your armor… is healing? How can that be? You don’t have patcher arms or a patch spider…
Suddenly you realize that there is a whole lot more to this ship than meets the eye.
This is the living ship, a ship that is capable of not only self-repair over time, but also a number of other feats, such as growing new weapons, UI modules, learning and more!
This ship can: (Current idea list)
- repair its armor over time [this ability increases with level]
- grow new weapons (cannot be installed/uninstalled- they take 0 slots and are virtual. They can be internally disabled to prevent them from taking up space when cycling through weapons) [a new weapon is granted at certain milestone levels]
- learn to target or display nearby friends and enemies, among other stuff [once again, granted with levels]
- grow a little ship that can be upgraded as well (basically like a wingman) [this is granted at level 10, which is the highest realistically attainable level] – (a literal mothership)
- improve its organic equipment by ‘feeding’ it items (different items have different levels of effect; ie, feeding armor to armor is optimal, but feeding it raw ores will yield a small improvement, though feeding it map roms will do nothing.)
~~~ Growing ~~~
The current proposed weapon list is: [from emergent level to max level of growth]
Level 1-3: Spike – fires a kinetic projectile. Comes already grown. (Essentially like a recoilless gun)
Level 3-5: Acid venom – fires a ‘generic damage’ projectile that applies a short-lived decay overlay to the affected ship [like the organic acid effect…]
Level 6-8: Ion Pulse – a fairly generic ion weapon, though with appropriate damage for its level
Level 9-11: Plasma arc – This weapon is the slowest to grow larger, but when fully grown, is a weapon to be feared
The natural weapons of this ship can be made more powerful by feeding them various things, ranging from longzhu's, enhancers, fuel, even consumables!
Armor can be installed like on any normal ship, though it can be healed by the ship; at first, this rate of healing is rather slow, but by feeding armor and fuel (or other items for less effect) to the organ that controls this ability, the rate of healing will be increased.
Your cargo hold will grow over time up to its maximum; its growth is proportional to the growth of other parts of the ship. You can also spend one of your valuable device slots on a cargo hold, but there are other things that your slots would be better spent on.
Your drive's thrust can also be grown over time; here though, the growth can be stimulated through feeding it fuel.
~~~ Learning ~~~
The ship can learn to display more UI information over time, starting out with a UI like a normal ship [probably with new graphics though], but eventually gaining the ability to display things such as enhanced visual, targeting abilities, health of other ships and the like.
Some skills learned are directly combat related; the ship can learn to tweak your shields to be slightly more effective against a certain weapon types for a short duration of time. It can learn to fire all the weapons on the ship (alpha-strike!) (though it exhausts the ship very quickly and consumes A LOT of power).
The list here is still under construction...
~~~More stuff~~~
~~~ Adventure Extension ~~~
Thank's to Betel, I got inspired to look into making an adventure extension...
~~~~~~~~~~~~More to Come!~~~~~~~~~~~~
