I had this idea a while ago that debris fields should be a bit...better.
Firstly, they should be rather large, several km across, and should appear after wars, civil wars, and AX combat zones, and contain many many delicious manufactured materials, and a few data points to scan.
However, they should also be protected by the controlling faction, with mines, and patrols.
Higher grade materials are, for gameplay reasons, closer to the centre of the field, and the entire field in inside a big mass lock.
The idea is, you need to sneak inside the field, keeping your heat down, avoiding mines, and patrolling ships, to get to the good stuff.
Using limpets, weapons, and boosting, will instantly attract patrols. These ships are basically ATR level dangerous, but their scanners are crap, and in the debris field, can only detect ships at 500m or less.
The mines are also incredibly lethal, some sort of seeking uber reverb shock nukes, that will basically obliterate anything they touch.
Setting off a mine (assuming you survive) will also attract patrolling ships.
The idea then, is entirely stealth gameplay, mostly for small ships!
Your aim is to sneak around, manually scooping materials, without being detected. Proper skillful gameplay.
Dropping heatsinks will cause patrols to come and investigate, but you can use this to your advantage, to distract them to go grab some goodies.
Materials around the outer edge are easy to collect, but the difficulty ramps up for G4-5 materials near the center, with more mines and more regular patrols.
Non-ax debris fields should contain high amounts of grade 4-5 manufactured. While AX zones contain the same, but also have Thargoid materials to claim too.
Ideally the debris fields wouldn't be farmable, much like geological sites. So you need to go from one to the next. There would be plenty of debris fields in a post war system though, and plenty of materials inside.
The whole idea doesn't make much logical sense (like, why is it guarded so well?, why is the good stuff in the centre?), but it would be incredibly fun gameplay.
A similar surface version could exist too, vast debris fields guarded by ships overhead and sentry's, and you need to sneak your SRV in, avoiding getting too close to any sentry's.
Thoughts?
Firstly, they should be rather large, several km across, and should appear after wars, civil wars, and AX combat zones, and contain many many delicious manufactured materials, and a few data points to scan.
However, they should also be protected by the controlling faction, with mines, and patrols.
Higher grade materials are, for gameplay reasons, closer to the centre of the field, and the entire field in inside a big mass lock.
The idea is, you need to sneak inside the field, keeping your heat down, avoiding mines, and patrolling ships, to get to the good stuff.
Using limpets, weapons, and boosting, will instantly attract patrols. These ships are basically ATR level dangerous, but their scanners are crap, and in the debris field, can only detect ships at 500m or less.
The mines are also incredibly lethal, some sort of seeking uber reverb shock nukes, that will basically obliterate anything they touch.
Setting off a mine (assuming you survive) will also attract patrolling ships.
The idea then, is entirely stealth gameplay, mostly for small ships!
Your aim is to sneak around, manually scooping materials, without being detected. Proper skillful gameplay.
Dropping heatsinks will cause patrols to come and investigate, but you can use this to your advantage, to distract them to go grab some goodies.
Materials around the outer edge are easy to collect, but the difficulty ramps up for G4-5 materials near the center, with more mines and more regular patrols.
Non-ax debris fields should contain high amounts of grade 4-5 manufactured. While AX zones contain the same, but also have Thargoid materials to claim too.
Ideally the debris fields wouldn't be farmable, much like geological sites. So you need to go from one to the next. There would be plenty of debris fields in a post war system though, and plenty of materials inside.
The whole idea doesn't make much logical sense (like, why is it guarded so well?, why is the good stuff in the centre?), but it would be incredibly fun gameplay.
A similar surface version could exist too, vast debris fields guarded by ships overhead and sentry's, and you need to sneak your SRV in, avoiding getting too close to any sentry's.
Thoughts?
