[Suggestion] Travel Drive disrupting hazardous Regions.

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I had a random thought while playing this evening. We have regions where there are hazards. Some of these, such as those in The Void, are really quite dangerous in small ships. However, they're localised, and ships can generally navigate around them (AI) - or blast through them at travel speeds if you're the player lol. However, how about regions that disrupted a ship's ability to use its Travel Drive?

I'm thinking more remote systems, somewhat off the beaten path, so to speak. Such areas would be IDEAL for Piracy. Pirate Factions could utilise this, rather than relying on dodgy mechanic making ships stop when hailed. Which is what they do when transitioning to FLEEING, if that's their order. We still really need an IGNORE option here, but that's another topic.

Also, for the player, it would allow role-play opportunities. If such regions also blocked calls for help...comms disrupting if you will, there would be some FUN to be had. I.e. the Player would not suffer a rep penalty attacking otherwise friendly ships, UNLESS the ship got away to report the crimes. Distress drones might eventually make it to report the incident, but with no evidence... Equally, player assets would NOT notify the player they're under attack in such regions...

To a degree, this fits in to the "Exploration" side of things, something Egosoft say they are exploring (see what I did there?) for future updates. This is something different to discover, which can have a marked impact on gameplay and how we play. Ships travelling through such regions would need to be conventionally fast, and or have assigned escorts to deter piracy - something any AI-Controlled would-be pirate needs to be aware of. Venture through such a region ill prepared though...

I do think we need more varied effects with such Hazards. Older X games had sensor disrupting regions, what else could exist?

- Regular "corrosive" type regions as now. Depleting both shields and hull
- Hull eating areas - if you have shields, you're fine, but if you're forced into combat there... dangerous. Ion weapons are king here!
- Sensor disrupting areas and per prior games. You cannot see through the soup, and you cannot scan through it either. Surprises to be had.
- Travel Drive disrupting areas, as per this post. A ship entering such a regions sees it thrown out of travel mode, unable to re-engage.
- Comms disrupting areas, where Factions - and the player - temporarily lose comms / sight of their assets. When combined with the above... interesting!
- How about space that acts a little like the anomalies? Not from a teleport you somewhere random perspective, but just throw you off course, slow you down etc.

Space Geography - I know that's a contradiction, but you get my point - should have an impact on ships flying around. There should be reasons ships take a certain route other than just shield draining and hull melting as now. Mix things up a bit. However, ensure the AI knows how to avoid or navigate around it - or know it needs different load-outs to survive it. I.e. fast conventional drives and escorts.

I find the sector introduced in the Boron DLC very immersive. Ploting a safe route is cool, and having ships use it well now the AI can handle it is cool too. Constructing the highway here really helps reinforce Technology overcoming an issue too. I want more interesting places like this in the universe, more than the simple "go there and you'll melt, avoid it" regions we have currently. Something that adds gameplay options.

Can you think of any region effects that might be fun? Something that'd be an interesting find for the Explorer when first discovering newly-added sectors. While also being something to "Think" how to either exploit or make safer...

[vvvvvvvv]

However, how about regions that disrupted a ship's ability to use its Travel Drive?

My opinion of this idea is negative and I wouldn't want it implemented.

AI ships have difficulty navigating around obstacles. You also have next to no tool for controlling AI movement. You can't paint no-fly zones on the map, can't set up trade routes with exact flight path for your ships, and so on. So any sort of disruption zone like this will be an irritation you can do nothing about.

The game, the way it is right now, offer very little in form of roleplay opportunities, so this feature in this area will also add nothing. It will be all running in your head and not in the game. Very little is that the only acknowledgement you receive is sir vs ma'am and that's it. There's no reaction to your empire size, wealth, number of kills, trade rank, anything. There's reputation-related response, but they're really really subdued. So in all session it feels like you're the same faceless ghost as usual. Heck, you don't even have a visible body.

Before implementing disruptive obstacles I'd rather prefer more "positive" content. More tools, more sectors, etc. Features that let you DO things and not those that restrict you. For example, ability to land on planetoids, or having system orreries or galaxy map would be much more fun for me than this.

[Raptor34]

No to corrosive. It's just going to be a PITA for no gain anyway. See The Void for instance, or the various AI issues with Avarice.
TD disruption is nice, but make it sector wide and keep it on an important route imo. In return the gates would be like 40-50km away, very close basically. After all, if you can't use TD, even short distances can be long.
No to comms disruption, because in practice all it means is risk free piracy and lots of annoyance.

[Scoob]

Do you guys really still see the AI having issues navigating the current hazardous regions in the game? For me, my ships traverse the likes of The Void and Sanctuary of Darkness (that's the new Boron DLC sector name, right?) without issue at all. That's with me present, riding along on one of the ships. OOS, obviously no problem at all. The only issue I had with the patchy corrosive region in SoD is when I built a station there. I placed it in a safe area, so it was totally fine. However, ships assigned to protect that station suddenly become totally oblivious to the danger, dying quickly after wandering outside the safe area. General travel though, not had an issue in ages, ships avoid the hazards just fine.

Having TD disruption sector-wide would work, some sort of "the star's radiation blah blah" type thing to lorify it. I just want something to play into the Piracy side of gameplay a little more, and give a little more variety. Currently Piracy is just plain silly. I mean, a ship of mine, travelling at thousands of m/s is hailed by a Pirate 30km away. My ships then STOPS, faffs around for a bit, before fleeing, often in a silly direction. Pirate catches them. Daft. I'm glad we can manually override that flee, sort of, by giving another order. I.e. when I get a "Pirate Harassment" message, I PAUSE, go to the ship, drag an extra order on its route and resume. Doing this means my ships WON'T flee - just like an Ignore setting would - and continues on its way perfectly safe. Piracy is silly, with ships placing themselves in danger, where no legitimate danger was present.

Anyway, having regions that have Pirate activity because the environment supported it would be cool. Be it sensor-obscuring regions where ships can be jumped and not call for help, or areas where travel drives don't work at all, with the Pirates relying on small, fast ships to harass civilian shipping while a larger pirate vessel closes. From my perspective, with the AI now perfectly competent when it comes to navigating hazards, it made sense to have more such areas as the AI had proven it can handle it just fine.

I just want that sense of "this is something.... different" when exploring, BUT not just have it as an empty visual spectacle, but add potential game play elements too. Both exploitable by the player and other factions such as Pirates.

Look, I'm not talking about placing some giant corrosive blob in the middle of Argon Prime or anything like that. Rather, interesting things in new, more remote sectors. If the player ventures out there, it provides new and different game play options. I personally like the idea of having a hidden Pirate Base in the middle of a large sensor-obscuring cloud. While sector traffic might be relatively limited because it's unsafe, there should still be some risk takers.

This sort of thing would need to be paired with AI tweaks, that's a given. There are AI tweaks that are needed NOW for other Factions to STOP them flying through enemy space. I proposed ages ago that Factions obey their own Blacklists too, so as not to do dumb things like fly through a Core Xenon sector as they love to do. However, there should always be risk takers. Perhaps the Pilot in question is confident that they can make it through, there ship is fast, or perhaps stealthy, so they have a go.

While the topic title mentions TD disruption, this topic is not all about that, but more about things in the same vein. Ideas for interesting things to discover while exploring, with further options to interact with them from a game play perspective. Egosoft want to enhance Exploration game play, so new things to actually discover are needed.

[vvvvvvvv]

Do you guys really still see the AI having issues navigating the current hazardous regions in the game? For me, my ships traverse the likes

I know if I put a ship in the void in point A and tell it to fly to point B, it'll happily plow through hazards and die.

Basically, the main issue for me is that nothing from the list sounds like fun.

For example, much bigger sectors with stuff in them and planets would be fun.

[Scoob]

I know if I put a ship in the void in point A and tell it to fly to point B, it'll happily plow through hazards and die.

Basically, the main issue for me is that nothing from the list sounds like fun.

For example, much bigger sectors with stuff in them and planets would be fun.

Really? I'm sorta surprised as I don't see that issue myself. Have ridden along on many a ship traversing The Void and Sanctuary of Darkness. I'm currently playing the v7.50 Beta, totally vanilla, so let me double-check, but I had no issues passing through the sector... except one time when I was flying myself lol.

Fair enough.

What do more planets add when there's no real gameplay associated with them? Bigger sectors, sure, but they're massive already, it's just that anything remotely interesting is focussed in a relatively small area. If there was content as travelled further out - and not this silly "Encounters" teleporting ship thing - then sure. I guess that's what you mean by stuff. Some sort of procedural generation for that sort of content might work, based off the game seed.

If exploration is indeed going to be one of the focus points going forwards, we need some reason to explore. No more, oh look, more empty space, oh look, the game just teleported some ships in for me to "encounter". Ships which immediately try to go back to what they were doing of course.

I want to encounter something different, something that makes me want to go "I'm going to set up a Station here".

[vvvvvvvv]

What do more planets add when there's no real gameplay associated with them? Bigger sectors, sure, but they're massive already,

In my opinion, sectors at the moment are tiny. If you have a high speed ship, you'll often go out of bounds before you reach 20 km/s. Another issue is when you begin to zoom you you sort of often can start seeing how someone painted the map with mouse. Looks like it, at least. For example, several "resource" sectors, like those in mitsuno is a perfect circle in the middle of nothing.


Always wondered about this red square, by the way.

We have Nopileous fortune which is decently sized, but then there's issues with the map which aren't great at displaying verticality. And, of course, the map breaks completely if you fly really far away. Would've been great if it didn't break.

I want to encounter something different, something that makes me want to go "I'm going to set up a Station here".

That's what planets or planetoids would be for.

For example, I'd be interested in building a station in one of those places:



But in practice this cannot be done. The map simply breaks at certain zoom level. First, fog stops working properly, then it just can't zoom out anymore and becomes unusable.

It isn't even possible to move a build plot to this point. And if you place a beacon, it'll be outside of galactic map bounds.

[Scoob]

Ah, yes, I'm with you there. That's what I meant, I'd like there to be something out there, as sectors are quite huge. Give me a reason to explore, not teleporting "encounters", real ones.

I'd like to see some sort of clue / trail to encourage me to head in a certain direction. Be it a distant object - like the HUB present in a certain sector - or other stuff. Like the static pieces like the Aqueduct, but there needs to be more to them. Or, as I think you're suggesting, have a Planet as the guide to interesting stuff. I've suggested in the past that those large, distant Asteroid be something, but I think you just explode if you get too close. We even discussed, in another thread, about the return of traditional Asteroid Mines for such objects.

While render ranges can be a bit short - they seems to have turned asteroids down in the v7.50 beta, judging by the pop-in I see now - we know they can set certain things to be seen at vast distances. So, visual cues can be present for the player to notice.

So, yes, give us a reason to explore. Perhaps we'll find an ancient defunct station we can restore, a pocket of super-rich resources, derelict ships etc. Plus of course, maybe hazardous regions to explain why something hadn't been spotted / detected previously. All this lends its self to Exploration. Discovering something just for the "Wow, that's cool" screenshot moment can be good. Though, personally, I'd like there to be a bit more to it at least some of the time.

I do think sector zoom level might be a problem though as you say. If there is a fixed max zoom out level, that it'd be a problem to go beyond, we need a way to pan our view of a sector. I.e. we'd some how "lock" the sector we're viewing, then be able to scroll around. Might be a tricky UI change, I don't know.

[vvvvvvvv]

That's what I meant, I'd like there to be something out there, as sectors are quite huge. Give me a reason to explore, not teleporting "encounters", real ones.

I'd like to see some sort of clue / trail to encourage me to head in a certain direction.

Now that sounds like it could be interesting.

Note how this is not a static obstacle, but something else.