Still loving the clouds as “terrain” for systems, and the 3 we have are good baselines to make travel a little interesting everywhere, but I think they can be pushed a little further to be really interesting more situationally. Currently whichever faction controls a system doesn’t really matter much, the early game is fringe/monolith/cabal ships no matter what and reputation bonuses aren’t that noticeable. Why not let the things these factions would be doing affect the areas they control?
#Faction Clouds
twin cloud
Fringe: Scrap Clouds / Debris Field
Crashing ships together for their designs leaves remnants around, and they gather together like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I see this as a lower level of Ion storm since fringe is usually early game, where debris hitting the ship periodically damages parts in the direction of movement, but only when moving, and can be blocked with shields or armor. It could also spawn loose common resources inside like steel and coils, either ambiently or when debris strikes a ship. This would give some incentive to be inside and not make it a total death trap like the ion storms, as well as gently helping with repairs if you have time to stop and recover. Bonus points if these generate in small patches, often focused around ship graveyards or asteroid fields
Cabal: Solar Winds / Space Currents
Ever since nebulas were announced to be in development I have been advocating for some kind of pushing effect that makes navigation less mindless. These are pretty cut and dry, it’s a cloud that pushes you with a constant force scaled by the percent of the ship inside like the others, and could be used to aid or hinder movement. Ideally these would generate in long thin streams with the push direction matching the direction of the line, so you could ride them to speed up travel, or cut across quickly if they’re in your way. Bonus points if surface area is taken into account like the debris clouds so you can build wide sail ships to surf the cosmic rays.
Monolith: Smog Clouds / Pollution
Monolith is the industrialized one and they don’t treat anyone well, least of all the environment. There’s been clamoring for a cannon counterpart to the electron cloud, and I could see this being it. Bigger explosion radius and greater fire chance for everything inside due to the reactive chemicals being released, and a moderate increase to shield damage due to the thick smoke interfering with the projectors. Don’t ask how they can go through 3 meters of solid steel but not a loose gas. My initial thoughts were something about increased drag or lowered thrust, but that would absolutely get you pummeled to death by unavoidable extra damaging missiles and not be fun. This mirrors the scrapped no-shields electron cloud and makes piercing more effective for cannons without removing all counterplay. Ideally these would generate equally near combat sites and bases, since I’ve heard talk about trying to keep nebulas out of mission areas. This feels minor enough to not need that.
Imperium: Fallout Clouds / Test Sites
Here’s the wild one. Being later-game, this would serve to speed up the drawn-out slugfests huge ship fights can be. These clouds are horrifically irradiated (coz nukes, obvious). Reactors can soak it up for highly increased output, and extended battery life in all parts, but staying inside will slowly corrode your whole ship like the ion storms did before the lighting strikes were implemented. Ideally the buffs would linger for a moment outside the cloud, so you could dip in and get out for a brief boost without having to weaken yourself much. It’s still bad terrain to linger in though, so they ought to partially replace ion storms so the entire system isn’t choked up. Bonus points if it rapidly fills capacitors at the rate of a small reactor, so you can build for it similarly to how capacitors are used in the electron clouds.