• Instead of hiding the phenomena in 'hard' USSs, have the ship slow down even more and smoothly transition from SC to normal cruise, sort of like when slowing down from orbital glide to normal cruise, in order to improve the feeling of a system being one coherent entity.
• Add pulsars/quasars/magnetars. When approaching them while scrolling on the Galmap, they would maybe pulse, or jam their local surroundings, or disrupt/glitch the route plotter (unable to plot, taking detours, showing false target systems that leave you dropping from hyperspace literally between systems). Those pulsars/quasars/magnetars would be visible from quite far away in the skybox as immensely long plumes of energy. Dropping in a system with one of those, we would be placed very very far from it. The plumes would be immensely long (1Mls, 2Mls, w/e). The danger would be extreme. Only tanked ships (special protective modules/hull upgrades) could get close to a degree, and with smaller distance, more valuable scans and data, better payouts. Potential HUD glitching. Crossing the plumes would be an insta-kill (or the way to Raxxla).
• Add those rogue planets already. Findable with skills, not
just blind luck.
• Add comets. Could be scripted events, even, for example you drop in a system and immediately a comet passing nearby --that you can't see in SC, ofc-- causes your ship to veer of course or even drop out of SC. As it stands I doubt comets could ever happen out of a USS, but even if, don't make them like the megaships which are going full throttle while not actually moving an inch........ Have those comets racing across the system, with the possibility to catch up to them, scoop their trail, maybe even harpoon one, slow it down (<insert minigame here>), finally stop it and blast it for potentially very rare data and minerals/metals. Or if big enough, land on it, bookmark it, plant the tent and find it again later on.
• Add asteroid showers. Even for show, that would give us one more opportunity to see *stuff happening*. If actual asteroid showers, place some rare stuff inside and we'll race the buggies to find where it crashed. Make 'em create unique geological features.
• Add supernovae, in the form of complex system-wide gas clouds (100,000ls across, 200,000ls, more?). The core, very dangerous, pulsing with the early remnants of the star, or a more regular NS/BH, again only approachable with an aptly fitted ship. Depending on how soon in the supernova we are, we could SC out of it and witness its development both in SC and normal cruise. Some pockets in this huge cloud would contain rare gases (for different purposes and payouts), while others would be very corrosive and would require the pilot to asap (no sleeping/afking at the wheel!). I'll let you imagine how gorgeous the views could be with colours gradually changing over time and location. Stars/planets/moons would be either vaporised if too close (extreme heat, very thick fog, body disappearing from the game after a while), or simply bathed in the dynamic clouds (dynamic skybox texture and moving coloured fog when landed on a surface). Over the course of weeks or months, the supernova could become a new stellar remnant.
• Same principle for forming planetary nebulae.
• Ditch the neb/pneb templates for more variety. If same model, change colour, if same colour, change model. Some would be dangerous (gases, radioactivity, etc.). Different types of neb/pneb would be recordable in the Codex. Give information on chemical composition using maybe new sensors.
• More random interstellar gas clouds across the galaxy, similar to Coalsack, etc.
• Add fake X-ray/UV/radio filters (or others) to allow explorers to find, with
skills, certain types of stars or phenomena from far away. Make use of the galactic dust to hide stuff from the filters. Or have one filter give one piece of data regarding the location of a star/phenomena, but have the other sensor blocked by the dust, or disrupted by a magnetar in the vicinity, or something. Of course these filters could be used all the time and while flying, not only accessible as a separate screen/menu that requires to stop the ship or w/e. Guess it's too late now but add to that a 'fog of war' and exploration would have been very different. More engaging and immersive than scrolling the Galmap for PNs or browsing through sector masscodes, I suppose!
• Make the larger ships more likely to be damaged by phenomena (higher mass and size -- higher stress during strong gravity phenomena like quasars, that sort of thing), to make medium ships more relevant (instead of just being nimbler to fly). Obviously heavy combat ships would be even more likely to take damage, and take more damage.
• Make BHs actually black and scary. A few fast-orbiting moons and planets would be cool (Mitterand Hollow²). Landable too, for cool shots. Also,
whispers accretion disks.
• Sagittarius A* could be extremely bright and have several stars orbiting it extremely fast, making any approach a suicidal hazard. Try zigzaging between the stars with a Conda. And ask your crew mate to keep an eye in every direction while you try to stay alive. You would need to filter out the light to actually see the black hole. Another solution would be to have a bubble of the systems around Sagittarius A* orbiting it fast enough that their location changes over time, and jumping into one, you could miss it and find yourself millions of ls away from the star.
• Make space black. Systems with a BH as primary only should only be lit by ambient galactic light, which I suppose should be much less than it is now outside the core? Systems with a BH as primary and an actual star as secondary should receive light from that star. Introducting radio navigation when the system is basically completely pitch black (BH on the galactic edge).
• Reduce the hollow around stars in the skybox, outside the bubble. And fix these skybox stars that 1) appear in stacks in several places in the galaxy, 2) are almost all identically looking (size and color).
• Make the space dust not-brown.
• Make the galactic disc not beige.
• Have different patterns of coronas for main sequence stars. Some should be ejecting matter, experience eruptions, making any cute M class star a potential killer and cool photo shot candidate. Hotter stars, make some of them angrier. Give the regular, nobody stars some
character.
• Add those close binaries feeding off each other already.
• I understand the idea behind having the ship simulate an audio environment, but 1) the farther the cockpit from the engines, the least I'm expecting to hear them (especially on large ships); 2) I'd love to be able to activate an audio neutralization soundwave to mute the engines/supercruise noise and on the other hand toggle a tunable astronomical body sound converter (mouthful) to "listen" to a specific type of body while flying the ship. Thus adding another kind of skill that could be used to spot right away something we look for, without having to halt and go through yet another independant screen/menu that repeatedly interrupts the flow of piloting the ship.
• Total fantasy: add a User Music folder option to play music files sound-processed to sounds as if they were played inside the cockpit. With sound processing varying depending on the size of the cockpit. I'm sure the audio team would have a blast setting that up!
• Lots of key bindings... Some of these features (filters, sound etc) would ideally be integrated in the HUD. And it would be nice to be able to interact with those using a pointing device (mouse or controller stick) or the free view mode + highlight element and activate command.
• Make the sysmap and galmap at least look like they are somewhat part of the tools in the ship. Their role is intradiegetic but the way they're implemented is awkwardly extradiegetic.
• Make multi-crew relevant in exploration. Let the FSS be used while the ship is flying, let the Galmap be accessible and the route replotted on the fly, let all those exploration tools (filter etc.) be usable, SRV drivable, Codex browsable, Sysmap operable as well. Maybe some of those are already in place, I haven't checked because I don't do multi-crew, because there is no point for me.
It's over! Please pardon the rambling. Slow day at work
