Random thoughts Thread - 3079

Hello,

Just some ideas I have had while playing:

• Put stuff in the crate bushes that grow all over the place. It would give people a reason to bust them up if they find an occasional prize . I like how they grow in the buildings now.
• RPG (rocket launcher) like AMOK would be cool. They parented the player camera to the front of the missile and give some minimal controls + a "Missle CAM" HUD. It was a lot of fun trying to hit things around corners, and chasing things around with them. For the "Level up" on this type of missile would be better maneuverability, and later the ability to break into multiple warheads before impacting. On the game-play side, you have to be somewhere safe to use them, because you loose all your player controls while maneuvering the rockets.
• Heat seeker rockets with dampened "Track-to" actuator. You have to "lead" your targets, or the rockets will over shoot, and miss. Make so we find and buy these 1 at a time so they are special .
• FOOD. You can have a reason to blow up trees and bushes! You get food. Also can have NPC's like mine-craft. Cute, and ready for the slaughter. It would add more "life" to your world. Making exploring new areas interesting by the life forms you find. You can also add vending machine blocks... that way when you build them, you can have food that heals you and regenerates after time. Could even have them randomly give snappy sales pitches for the products you buy. "Slurg! Now with 10% less radiation."
• Romance. We can get married to aliens, and cross breed. Then you can see neat new creatures that you create together. Make so you can sell them for medical experiments and slaves if you need extra credits.

More alien species would be interesting, maybe some that use different weapon sets or no weapons at all (with all kinds of biological attacks instead). The game clearly could use more enemy variety.
Camera guided missiles might be a balance problem, they'd have to be quite powerful to be worth the effort. Since enemies are fairly homogeneous and you don't need a cam-guided missile against things like the gunships or fighters and demons are immune to ranged weapons I don't see a real niche for cam-guidance in the current content. Maybe with some additional species adding heavy creatures or ground vehicles that could have a use. The most popular cam-guided missile is UT's Redeemer and that thing has insane firepower but I'm not sure any targets would warrant using such a big gun. Yes, the gunships would but they're big blocks that hang in the sky, not exactly something that needs precision missile guidance to hit.
I don't see any point in slow-turning heatseekers, those would only be warranted as a close-to-dumbfire option if we had a huge variety of missiles but as it is you could just have an unguided missile for that purpose. On the other hand a limited ammo heavy missile could be useful for dealing with gunships but might counter their threat too well (provided it's very strong which would again be a must so the weapon is worth buying ammo for when everything else is infinite ammo).
Should people really bust crates up? That sounds tedious. If there's something that's easy and beneficial then players will do it and complain about the tedium, as the Arcen guys say. I think that may already be a problem with how some of the stats in 3079 are increased (seems only overloading your energy boosts your energy capacity, that's not something you'd do normally but something you'll specifically grind).

stinkytaco wrote: Romance. We can get married to aliens... Make so you can sell them for medical experiments and slaves if you need extra credits.

Yes... how... romantic...

More alien species, wildlife, and enemy variety would definitely be a plus. Would like to see more vehicle types too. It'd be cool if the gunships had sides and didn't just blast everything in sight. Unless we're saying that they're all demon controlled, then i guess it doesn't matter. (just read a post by phroot on where these are from... kinda doesn't make sense though. Why are you killing each other? I know! I'll kill everyone! That'll stop the fighting!). I'd still like to see the other factions have more vehicles that they (and players) use. Now a really cool thing would be the ability to go inside those big gunships and go room to room killing the crew. Don't think you could go wrong with adding procedurally generated bunker complexes either.

Not sure about the guided missiles though. I'd be content with something that can blow through buildings that's not a bouncy ball. Perhaps a heavy hitting weapon that has more range than the current heavy gun. You could balance it out by making it take a huge amount of energy so it's not abused. Speaking of abuse...

KDR_11k wrote: I think that may already be a problem with how some of the stats in 3079 are increased (seems only overloading your energy boosts your energy capacity, that's not something you'd do normally but something you'll specifically grind).

Yeah, this... I'm guilty of abusing this a bit myself. All you have to do is make one of those medical/energy stations (or find one) and then just find the crappiest, fastest, energy hogging gun you can find and just shoot at walls, heal, and then repeat. Very, very, easy to abuse that stat. Almost to the point where I'd say that it's broken.

Actually, I'm not really sure that I like the leveling method in general. Basically, wouldn't it make more sense to level based on success and/or use rather than failures? I mean, stamina rises through use, as does strength. Why do the other skills require failure? Seems backwards to me. It works fine I suppose for engineering, but applying the "failure state method" to stealth also makes that skill easy to abuse. In other words, phroot needs to find a way to make all skills level like, say, firearms. You don't just need to fire your gun, you also have to hit something with it. Also, you maybe can see a problem there (I think it is anyway) in that levels are all gained differently. Some are based on failure (stealth), some on success (firearms), and some on use. (strength, stamina) I honestly didn't understand how things leveled until I read the wiki. A large part of that confusion was due to the fact that there was no consistency in the way that attributes/skills level.

KDR_11k wrote: Should people really bust crates up? That sounds tedious. If there's something that's easy and beneficial then players will do it and complain about the tedium, as the Arcen guys say.

I made the floor of my house out of them... and it was such a pain to gather them. (one at a time ) Really needs to be an option with the construction tool. I definitely don't think you should have to grind for building materials. That's 80% of minecraft's gameplay right there. Granted it's only 1 type of block that behaves like this, but it suggests a direction of development that I think 3079 should abandon. I don't want to run around caves looking for ores that I need to make my uber-fort. I've got cash, sell me the blocks dammit. I'm a fighter not a coal miner. The emphasis should stay on fighting for resources, rather than making sure every nook and cranny of the underground cave is lit so you can grind in peace. If I wanted that, I'd mod Minecraft.

On a related note - Mining for gems. Maybe lose the part about mining for gems, make the mining skill just a "digging" skill, and change the name of the tool to "digging tool". It could be useful to have a tool that could dig holes in the ground with precision as opposed to blasting them. That way, they'd become a way to facilitate faster construction of underground bunkers, and safe-houses. You'd have to fortify the roof pretty well or go way down given all the terrain destruction.

Edited by: TheMcWopper

TheMcWopper wrote:

stinkytaco wrote: Romance. We can get married to aliens... Make so you can sell them for medical experiments and slaves if you need extra credits.

Yes... how... romantic...

Lol that was pretty funny.

TheMcWopper wrote:

KDR_11k wrote: Should people really bust crates up? That sounds tedious. If there's something that's easy and beneficial then players will do it and complain about the tedium, as the Arcen guys say.

I made the floor of my house out of them... and it was such a pain to gather them. (one at a time ) Really needs to be an option with the construction tool. I definitely don't think you should have to grind for building materials.

Actually there is a much easier way to get the wood blocks. In fact i get so many that I don't want I generally sell them or chuck them cause they keep filling up space in my inventory. Capital ships will drop 4 items whenever you kill them and quite often one of the items is a stack of wood blocks. Also, the way I get most of mine is from stealing. When stealing you will, fairly often, get wood blocks, and if you make a note to steal from every enemy in a building you will end up with a few stacks quite possibly. Every person in the game seems to carry anywheres from 0-5 items roughly, in addition to whatever weapon they they are using. I'm not sure but I suspect whenever an item stolen is wood blocks they come in quantities of 2.

Edited by: Vimp

Lots of ideas flying around in this thread

I can tweak the energy stat boost, so when you reach a certain stat with a weapon, you won't gain any more energy points. This should keep it from being abused to "unfair" levels...

Still pretty grindy though because causing a life support brownout isn't something you'll do much naturally through gameplay. Perhaps successful attacks with weapons that have a high energy requirement compared to your current capacity could do the boosting instead of running out of energy.

That kinda already happens with Firearms increases. When you have a firearms increase, with a successful attack, your energy cost to shoot weapons is decreased a bit (since firearms not only increases weapon damage, but lowers weapons energy cost).

Vimp wrote: Actually there is a much easier way to get the wood blocks. In fact i get so many that I don't want I generally sell them or chuck them cause they keep filling up space in my inventory. Capital ships will drop 4 items whenever you kill them and quite often one of the items is a stack of wood blocks. Also, the way I get most of mine is from stealing. When stealing you will, fairly often, get wood blocks, and if you make a note to steal from every enemy in a building you will end up with a few stacks quite possibly. Every person in the game seems to carry anywheres from 0-5 items roughly, in addition to whatever weapon they they are using. I'm not sure but I suspect whenever an item stolen is wood blocks they come in quantities of 2.

Really? I never seem to get them while stealing.

Phr00t wrote: I can tweak the energy stat boost, so when you reach a certain stat with a weapon, you won't gain any more energy points. This should keep it from being abused to "unfair" levels...

Wait, do we skill up in certain weapons now? Or is that planned?

Phr00t wrote: That kinda already happens with Firearms increases. When you have a firearms increase, with a successful attack, your energy cost to shoot weapons is decreased a bit (since firearms not only increases weapon damage, but lowers weapons energy cost).

Didn't know that about the firearms skill. I thought it just increased the damage, so it seems like the wiki is a bit vague on what the skills actually do. Thanks for the responses Phr00t.

Edited by: TheMcWopper

A random, minor suggestion after playing a bit..

Fort Takeover quests are great because you aren't given a quest marker directed you to a specific fort...you get to seek out one to takeover on your own.

However, on the quests where you have to go pick up an item laying out in the field, the quest marker points you directly to the item... which makes the quest less interesting to play, in my opinion.

What if the item was somewhere within a 100 meter radius of the quest marker, so that we had to search for it? Sometimes it might be easy to find, but other times it might be at the bottom of a lake or on top of a tree, or in a mining pit or something, thanks to random generation. Anyway, I think it would be more interesting if we had to search a little bit for the item, rather then just heading straight towards a HUD marker.

Edited by: tangoliber

I really like that idea -- items actually need you to find them, instead of being right on the marker