It seems to me that one of the biggest weaknesses of the game is searching through the random encounter USS points. It just feels a bit game-y and random. And irritating. I suspect there are all sorts of reasons why it's the way it is. It's a first draft, the server system makes it hard to create real persistence etc...
So how about having a:
TRAFFIC SCANNER
Rather than having USS points just popping up, you can search for them using a Traffic Scanner which shows the paths of spacecraft through a system. Something like an animated version of this:
It would be interesting in its own right, bringing the systems to life, and would require a bit of thought and detective work from the player.
You could maybe tell if something was a trader of security ship if it was moving simply between stations:
Smugglers and ships that were wanting to avoid the cops might look like this as they tried to avoid direct trade routes:
Pirates and bounty hunters, preying on traders might show up like this:
Explorers, visiting remote moons and planets would look like this:
etc... etc...
So how would this help with USS points? It seems to me that these will only occur where ships have come out of supercruise. Wrecks would appear where a ship has been pulled out of supercruise and destroyed. Cargo might be found where pirates have been at work. Artifacts might be dropped by ships in deeper space etc... So the scanner would also show points where ships have left supercruise, either to go into hyperspace, interdict a ship, mine, form a funeral procession or whatever.
The USS would now be represented by markers that could be targetted from the UI:
By looking at the behaviour of ships before they enter or exit supercruise you'd be able to make an educated guess as to what you might find at a USS. You would have to literally search for things, but the player would also have to some work to interpret the paths taken by traffic. It would feel a bit more meaningful and alive.
Ideally, this would be based on the real movements of players and NPCS, but I think it would also work as an entirely procedurally generated "sketch" of movements in the system. Perhaps you can only access it when you're in a station, perhaps it only reflects the last day's traffic, or perhaps it's a continually-updating model of the actual movements of real spaceships.
Does this sound good? It could also be extended in all sorts of interesting ways.
So how about having a:
TRAFFIC SCANNER
Rather than having USS points just popping up, you can search for them using a Traffic Scanner which shows the paths of spacecraft through a system. Something like an animated version of this:
It would be interesting in its own right, bringing the systems to life, and would require a bit of thought and detective work from the player.
You could maybe tell if something was a trader of security ship if it was moving simply between stations:
Smugglers and ships that were wanting to avoid the cops might look like this as they tried to avoid direct trade routes:
Pirates and bounty hunters, preying on traders might show up like this:
Explorers, visiting remote moons and planets would look like this:
etc... etc...
So how would this help with USS points? It seems to me that these will only occur where ships have come out of supercruise. Wrecks would appear where a ship has been pulled out of supercruise and destroyed. Cargo might be found where pirates have been at work. Artifacts might be dropped by ships in deeper space etc... So the scanner would also show points where ships have left supercruise, either to go into hyperspace, interdict a ship, mine, form a funeral procession or whatever.
The USS would now be represented by markers that could be targetted from the UI:
By looking at the behaviour of ships before they enter or exit supercruise you'd be able to make an educated guess as to what you might find at a USS. You would have to literally search for things, but the player would also have to some work to interpret the paths taken by traffic. It would feel a bit more meaningful and alive.
Ideally, this would be based on the real movements of players and NPCS, but I think it would also work as an entirely procedurally generated "sketch" of movements in the system. Perhaps you can only access it when you're in a station, perhaps it only reflects the last day's traffic, or perhaps it's a continually-updating model of the actual movements of real spaceships.
Does this sound good? It could also be extended in all sorts of interesting ways.