Hi ladies and gents!
I have a fairly simple suggestion that I believe would add a bit more dynamics to this frankly brilliant game by allowing for more combat tactics that don't involve flying in a circle until the other ship gets bored or smuggling illegal goods into a station by simply blasting your way through the entrance at full speed.
So in its most basic form, I figured it would be quite useful to be able to set up Module Groups (similar to Fire Groups) through the Module menu within a ship. Maybe in a similar sense so you can scroll through modules, even with couple of defaults such as "all modules on" and "all modules off". It's just an idea so obviously suggestions, additions, revampings (not a word) and criticisms are all more than welcome!
A few of the main reasons I feel this would be a cool little addition are as follows:
- SMUGGLING! This is the main purpose I'd find this feature useful for - everybody likes a bit of illegal activity now and again (especially me), but it's pretty difficult to get your ship so cold that it becomes more or less undetectable by those pesky security forces. I've tried a few methods and had an experiment here and there, and other than boosting my way at full boring speed, the most enjoyable and satisfying way of smuggling six tonnes of slaves into a fully guarded space station is by launching one's ship towards the entrance from 8km away, switching off the assisted flight thingymabob, requesting permission to dock, switching everything else off (including thrusters etc, anything that generates heat), waiting til you're a few kilometers out before dropping into silent running mode (not sure how much difference this part makes if I'm honest), and hoping to space god that you're not going to faceplant the wall instead of slipping unnoticed through the entrance. Obviously it's possible to flick the thrusters and the assisted flight oojamyflip on right before you decorate the space station with your brains and the slaves in the cargo hold, but it's a little clunky and feels like it could be smoother if you could just switch between module groups that you set up before the leap of faith.
- AMBUSHES! I promise I do partake in some amount of legal activities when I play this game, I don't just shoot people and steal other people. But I imagine that ambushes would be pretty fun. Picture this: you're aware that you're in a combat hotspot, somewhere deep in an asteroid field in the middle of gold central or something. But you wanna steal some loot. And you wanna do it sneaky sneaky like. So you switch your ship off in this asteroid field and lay in wait for someone to come innocently wandering in to what appears to be a completely quiet area, and then suddenly....KAPOW! You slowly switch on your ship, piece by piece, start charging those shields up, appear on their radar, realise your plan is foiled and then run away into hyperspace where the guy with the big gun can't eat you. Annoying, right? Would be a lot easier if you could just flick the "on" switch and go from more or less invisible to sudden threat.
- POWER MANAGEMENT! When you're frequently having to switch between power management setups while multitasking. For example, when you're mining away and picking up various bits of space rock, you don't really need all your gadgets running. Just the basics, like life support, shields, thrusters (obviously), sensors, mining lasers, and so on. It's unlikely that you'd need any lethal weaponry in that situation, and if you're struggling to manage your power and bits of your ship aren't working properly because you're trying to run the whole thing off a 9V battery, you have to switch off some of the more combat focused modules. However, when a pirate comes tearing up behind you at full speed with a pair of equally trigger happy accomplices, you have to manually scroll through the list, switching off the mining lasers and refineries just to get your guns back on, all the while trying to dodge asteroids despite the fact that your head is turned solidly to the right, and then you realise you accidentally switched your shields and thrusters off and hit a massive meteor in your panic because you weren't looking where you were going and you forgot to mirror signal manoeuvre.
- HIDING! You know it would be super awesome to be able to evade every single interdiction you ever encountered without batting an eyelid, but what would be more awesome? Failing to avoid the interdiction and then SNEAKING AWAY! It would be pretty sweet (especially for smaller and less combat equipped ships and players that are playing alone) to be able to provide themselves with efficient (yet risky) radar cover. If you get caught in an interdiction by a massive fella with thirty guns attached to his ship, you have no chance. You can't get away, he's kitted out to the teeth. It's like David and Goliath, only Goliath fires lasers from his eyes and David is made of soggy paper. So the only route out would be to try to cut off the signal on the radar. With some efficient timing and clever evasive manoeuvres, it would be cool if it were possible to sort of turn a fight around into a sneaky getaway by doubling back past the assailant and quickly flicking everything on the ship off. I mean, if you're dead meat anyway, you might as well use your smaller size and higher agility to your advantage, right? And presumably if you're floating around in space looking for a little ship that's just vanished from your radar, it looks like you're going to be looking for a long time, because the last time I checked, space was fairly big. PLUS (big plus), this adds a little dynamic to the fight - if the small ship managed to successfully disappear from the radar, it would potentially be safe if the larger ship couldn't see it. However, this also means the smaller ship wouldn't be able to see the larger ship either...so it's a case of whether the small ship wants to risk turning on the radar sensors again and being caught, switch the whole lot on and make a hasty dash for it, or just lay low in deep space for a while and let the whole thing blow over.
So that's pretty much the idea summarised as best as I could manage. I more or less just typed from the top of my head so if it doesn't quite make sense I do apologise!
I hope people can add to this idea! I also hope I haven't nicked anybody else's idea - I haven't had a chance to scour the forums yet so I've just signed up and posted this thread for the consideration of any and all who come across it.
I wish everybody the best of luck with not getting sucked into the nearest white dwarf!
Happy spacefaring,
Todd
I have a fairly simple suggestion that I believe would add a bit more dynamics to this frankly brilliant game by allowing for more combat tactics that don't involve flying in a circle until the other ship gets bored or smuggling illegal goods into a station by simply blasting your way through the entrance at full speed.
So in its most basic form, I figured it would be quite useful to be able to set up Module Groups (similar to Fire Groups) through the Module menu within a ship. Maybe in a similar sense so you can scroll through modules, even with couple of defaults such as "all modules on" and "all modules off". It's just an idea so obviously suggestions, additions, revampings (not a word) and criticisms are all more than welcome!
A few of the main reasons I feel this would be a cool little addition are as follows:
- SMUGGLING! This is the main purpose I'd find this feature useful for - everybody likes a bit of illegal activity now and again (especially me), but it's pretty difficult to get your ship so cold that it becomes more or less undetectable by those pesky security forces. I've tried a few methods and had an experiment here and there, and other than boosting my way at full boring speed, the most enjoyable and satisfying way of smuggling six tonnes of slaves into a fully guarded space station is by launching one's ship towards the entrance from 8km away, switching off the assisted flight thingymabob, requesting permission to dock, switching everything else off (including thrusters etc, anything that generates heat), waiting til you're a few kilometers out before dropping into silent running mode (not sure how much difference this part makes if I'm honest), and hoping to space god that you're not going to faceplant the wall instead of slipping unnoticed through the entrance. Obviously it's possible to flick the thrusters and the assisted flight oojamyflip on right before you decorate the space station with your brains and the slaves in the cargo hold, but it's a little clunky and feels like it could be smoother if you could just switch between module groups that you set up before the leap of faith.
- AMBUSHES! I promise I do partake in some amount of legal activities when I play this game, I don't just shoot people and steal other people. But I imagine that ambushes would be pretty fun. Picture this: you're aware that you're in a combat hotspot, somewhere deep in an asteroid field in the middle of gold central or something. But you wanna steal some loot. And you wanna do it sneaky sneaky like. So you switch your ship off in this asteroid field and lay in wait for someone to come innocently wandering in to what appears to be a completely quiet area, and then suddenly....KAPOW! You slowly switch on your ship, piece by piece, start charging those shields up, appear on their radar, realise your plan is foiled and then run away into hyperspace where the guy with the big gun can't eat you. Annoying, right? Would be a lot easier if you could just flick the "on" switch and go from more or less invisible to sudden threat.
- POWER MANAGEMENT! When you're frequently having to switch between power management setups while multitasking. For example, when you're mining away and picking up various bits of space rock, you don't really need all your gadgets running. Just the basics, like life support, shields, thrusters (obviously), sensors, mining lasers, and so on. It's unlikely that you'd need any lethal weaponry in that situation, and if you're struggling to manage your power and bits of your ship aren't working properly because you're trying to run the whole thing off a 9V battery, you have to switch off some of the more combat focused modules. However, when a pirate comes tearing up behind you at full speed with a pair of equally trigger happy accomplices, you have to manually scroll through the list, switching off the mining lasers and refineries just to get your guns back on, all the while trying to dodge asteroids despite the fact that your head is turned solidly to the right, and then you realise you accidentally switched your shields and thrusters off and hit a massive meteor in your panic because you weren't looking where you were going and you forgot to mirror signal manoeuvre.
- HIDING! You know it would be super awesome to be able to evade every single interdiction you ever encountered without batting an eyelid, but what would be more awesome? Failing to avoid the interdiction and then SNEAKING AWAY! It would be pretty sweet (especially for smaller and less combat equipped ships and players that are playing alone) to be able to provide themselves with efficient (yet risky) radar cover. If you get caught in an interdiction by a massive fella with thirty guns attached to his ship, you have no chance. You can't get away, he's kitted out to the teeth. It's like David and Goliath, only Goliath fires lasers from his eyes and David is made of soggy paper. So the only route out would be to try to cut off the signal on the radar. With some efficient timing and clever evasive manoeuvres, it would be cool if it were possible to sort of turn a fight around into a sneaky getaway by doubling back past the assailant and quickly flicking everything on the ship off. I mean, if you're dead meat anyway, you might as well use your smaller size and higher agility to your advantage, right? And presumably if you're floating around in space looking for a little ship that's just vanished from your radar, it looks like you're going to be looking for a long time, because the last time I checked, space was fairly big. PLUS (big plus), this adds a little dynamic to the fight - if the small ship managed to successfully disappear from the radar, it would potentially be safe if the larger ship couldn't see it. However, this also means the smaller ship wouldn't be able to see the larger ship either...so it's a case of whether the small ship wants to risk turning on the radar sensors again and being caught, switch the whole lot on and make a hasty dash for it, or just lay low in deep space for a while and let the whole thing blow over.
So that's pretty much the idea summarised as best as I could manage. I more or less just typed from the top of my head so if it doesn't quite make sense I do apologise!
I hope people can add to this idea! I also hope I haven't nicked anybody else's idea - I haven't had a chance to scour the forums yet so I've just signed up and posted this thread for the consideration of any and all who come across it.
I wish everybody the best of luck with not getting sucked into the nearest white dwarf!
Happy spacefaring,
Todd