Map Objects, The Return

[Dominus_Noctis]

posted on April 8th, 2012, 4:58 pm

Last edited by Dominus_Noctis on April 8th, 2012, 8:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Last week we discussed some miscellaneous concepts relating to resources, neutral stations, and untraversable zones. However, one major thing we haven’t yet covered is terrain.

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posted on April 8th, 2012, 5:14 pm

i love the idea of the space motorways.

and i like the idea of green nebs giving shields but taking crew, it means you cant use it repeatedly.

these are long term plans for the environment redo right? not for upcoming patches.

for now a stopgap measure could be to just make the current green neb give slightly less shield regen per second.

posted on April 8th, 2012, 6:23 pm

Awesomeness.  I am still holding out for moving asteroid belts. 

posted on April 8th, 2012, 7:43 pm

Hmm, interesting. I thought on similar ways for the green neb to be rebelenced. I thought of:
"You begin to pump in particles and transform them directly to the shields and support-systems, but in that process, you must deactivate your weapons, because if something is fired by your ship while transforming the plasma, the plasma may explode leading to the total destruction of your ship. While this may hold for the enemy weaponfire too, as long as your shields are up, these weapons would'nt hit the point of conversion - but if they hit you with shields down, say goodbye to your ship."

Losing crew is also a nice rebalance. I cant decide, what may be better.
The rest is cool Good work!

posted on April 8th, 2012, 9:32 pm

all sounds good to me  ,

so you wount be leaving in some old versions in, just replacing them?
will we be seeing a badlands type Nebula?
concept 3 sounds like the bad lands to me but im assuming its not

posted on April 8th, 2012, 10:26 pm

will we be seeing a badlands type Nebula?

Can you elaborate on what effects it might have?   "Badlands" nebula is a bit vague.

posted on April 8th, 2012, 10:45 pm

Will map editors be given a new nebula type to replace the loss of shields ones?  I'm sure that option would still be appreciated by some.

posted on April 8th, 2012, 11:28 pm

Can you elaborate on what effects it might have?   "Badlands" nebula is a bit vague.

same as the show really, oddly im struggling to find a video of it on youtube so i'll just post this pic

[img width=600]http://sandozean.de/blog/sandozean/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/badlands.jpg[/img][/url]

winding columns of highly dangerous energy that you have to navigate to survive while in the "nebula" or what ever you would call it. taking in fleets in formation would be a no no. onless you want to see most of them crippled/destroyed

posted on April 9th, 2012, 12:59 am

Hmm, well that sound a little difficult to implement.  Frankly the new nebbies here are changed to help avoid a lot of the problems that plagued nebbies so far.  Nebbies that cut shields are just too strong for Borg and green were too strong for Feds.  The damaging ones had no purpose so these new ones will likely make gameplay more dynamic .

  The Badlands Nebula in the way you're referring will probably just be a damaging one .

posted on April 9th, 2012, 1:01 am

If you made the badlands like 4 to 6 of the large nebbie size and it couldnt get any bigger or smaller it could be implemanted.

posted on April 9th, 2012, 1:35 am

This is perfect, absolutely perfect.  This is going to spice things up a ton, although it'll require all the maps to be reworked slightly.

Did you know that the original concept for Plasma Conduit had "highway" nebulas around the border instead of damage nebs?  Except I was forced to make them with mutara nebulas which were broken for Borg.

One thing I hope is that the asteroid nebula causes low enough damage that small and maybe medium ships can hide in them for extended periods of time.  I'm not sure if scouts should though, as that would make a gray-mode scout ridiculously hard to remove.

posted on April 9th, 2012, 3:03 am

Hmmm.

Well, I must say I approve of concept number 4. I came to the same conclusion for a nebula to then damage a cube and a scout with same ratio, bigger the ship bigger the damage, smaller the ship smaller the damage. I think this is pretty straight forward and well thought out.

However, I question the reasoning for the final concept. I think it may be understandable in some scenarios, but to some extent it feels off. We're saying that a Captain is going to order his crew into a nebula that will cause almost certain deaths throughout the crew.

In desperate situations, for instance no shields and a weakened hull with an enemy tailing you, for sheer hope to survive yes the order may be one the Captain is forced to make to increase repairs and allow a retreat.

In general though, it would make it that no captain would ever see the benefit of using a nebula as a sort of 'freebie' to take his shields from 50% to 100% when it meant the death of 1 or 2, or even more of his crew. Even a Klingon would see no honour in death within a nebula to conduct repairs. Perhaps the Dominion wouldn't have problems with this... Jemhadar and all would willingly die anyways. Borg obviously just wouldn't need it.

Of course, we are talking about a game. And as crew deaths happen and so forth, we can't just take out crew members dying out of the game. But I dunno.

I mean, their could be a research thing that gives inoculations to the crew and helps with the death rate or something.

And then, there is the balance. It might actually work. Maybe people only use this when it is really needed. If it costs crew, the nebula can no longer be abused.

I just think a game can withstand an advantage giving nebula for interesting gameplay. So I don't think it needs that sort of balancing.

  sort of on the fence with this one, but I think maybe a different approach might be useful. 

posted on April 9th, 2012, 11:21 am

Hmm, well that sound a little difficult to implement.  Frankly the new nebbies here are changed to help avoid a lot of the problems that plagued nebbies so far.  Nebbies that cut shields are just too strong for Borg and green were too strong for Feds.  The damaging ones had no purpose so these new ones will likely make gameplay more dynamic .

  The Badlands Nebula in the way you're referring will probably just be a damaging one .

perhaps it could be like concept 4, where it would do percent damage. but a severe amount instead of 10% it could be as high as 80-90% but if youre careful you could fly ships through it undamaged. so perhaps it would be safer for faster ships since they could move to avoid the swirling columns. and like i sugested the bigger the fleet you try to move in it the more likel you will loose some.

i wouldnt expect to see it on maps very often. but a cool addition to mix it up abit for map design 

posted on April 9th, 2012, 6:43 pm

Now, when mentioned... I think it is also very hard to argue, why a captain would send his ship into a neb that will cause the crew to die. The feds have escape-pods, just to save the crew and a self destruct to destroy a ship and use both of those thing together in "realistic" situations. The idea of crew-killing nebs is the anti-thesis to that.

Yeah, I think that should be re-worked too. Give it a shield-regen rate and better hull-repair rate, but disable the weapons and sensors. Maybe also drain special energy. But no crew loss.

posted on April 9th, 2012, 6:53 pm

Can you elaborate on what effects it might have?   "Badlands" nebula is a bit vague.

I agree.


In the shows it seemed that small vessels could navigate in the badlands almost effortless. Medium- or big-sized vessels however will be hit frequently by plasma-discharges.

I think the really small vessels like small destroyers, scouts, fighters, runabouts, shuttles (whenever and however they'll go into FO, if ever) should be able to hide in such nebulae, use them as passages or wait for an opportunity to strike.

Medium- or large-sized vessels should take damage dependant on size+speed, vice-versa to the Terrain Concept #5.
So an Intrepid might have a good chance to get away nearly undamaged, while an Avalon would come out with serious damage or never at all.