woeful plume
💡 What is motivating this suggestion?
The space combat is fun and exciting, given the variety between breach pod types and ship variety. However the variety of ships and pods are rarely leveraged, especially so with a lower player count.
💡 What is your proposal?
Allow entering raids in Pods. Ships become a more premium ability in the game. and offer the upgraded pods in the market and as craf-table.
Have all purchased ships include free gear. Just as the rust bucket included a P08 + ammo + pouch rig, all ships should have loot spawning each raid comparable to the cost of the ship. The better the ship, the better the raid spawned loot
💡 Exactly and specifically, what should be changed and how?
- remove the rust bucket from being a free ship.
- allow choosing to enter raid with a ship OR a breach pod. The standard breach pod is always available...a.k.a. the new rusty pod.
- Allow crafting pods, just as there are craft-able ships.
- All raids will have at least one breach-able POI.
- Captain can only invite crew to their Squad/Team if they equip a ship. If they equip a pod, they can only run solo. Or Join a team with a captain equipped with a ship.
This, encourages purchasing ships for team play. Just as there is a $ cost to start a guild, there is a $cost to run as a team. - Have more "AI" ships flying around with raiders in them, IN RUST BUCKETS. So you can't tell real player from a bot until you breach.
- Have "AI" spawn in breach pods, and look for player ships randomly.
Loot Airlocks:
On Maps that are "Breach" only, i.e. Mining Frigate / Merchant Ship etc.... Add a special Airlock, that is opened by keycard hidden on the Map, either on an AI Raider/Raider Boss etc... or inside a combo safe on the Map, that can always be found and used to open the airlock and take out a Random Ship (with some loot). Once the ship is entered and undocks, it is one-way, you cannot re-dock to the POI, as it is a Breach only POI.
With both AI flying rust buckets (making it harder to distinguish player from AI) and other types of ships, as well as the custom "Loot Airlock" to take out a free loot ship from a Breach only POI, there are plenty of opportunities for someone with no $$ to acquire a ship. And because ships have to be purchased, and there isn't always a rust bucket available, more people will flyout with a variety of ships or look for ships to steal to keep stocked up, thus encouraging space combat. In addition, without having a ship, players won't be able to go to the Dock-only POIs, like Navy and Space Port, which will encourage players to acquire a ship in order to access the better loot POI areas. It may also prevent new players from entering maps that are geared towards more experienced players due to the more aggressive AI.
Ship Combat changes.
- light armor ships can be breached anytime, like rust buckets and other weak/cheap scouts/interceptors etc....
- medium armor ships can be breached once the ship health is below 50%, maybe show the engine on fire in space to signal it is breachable.
- heavy class armor ships can be breached only when disabled.
- Heavy Breacher Pod can always breach any ship regardless of ship health.
New Ship Weapon:
- Ships that have attack drops. i.e. You can purchase a payload of 1-3 drops.
- Drops can be: a cluster of space mines, or a flak turret, a rocket turret etc...
- You could make your own "capital ship" scenario by dropping your turrets and parking your dreadnaught, luring prey...
- Whomever is "Captain/Pilot" of the ship that activates the drop, gets the "kill" from any dropped Turrets/Mines that kill a marauder, same as if a player drops a mine and gets a kill.
Breach Pod Combat Changes:
When a breach pod is "defeated", it isn't an instant death, it triggers a final "kamikaze" mode. This mode activates a 3s countdown to detonation with a blast radius of space mine. Players have a small 3s window and 1 boost to attempt to breach or extract.
tight marsh