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What I percieve as necessary.


Lurkily

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I've said some of this before.  Here's a codified list of what I think is necessary.

 

  • Hinges need the 'dynamic thruster' treatment.  Increase speed, decrease speed, activate.  Speed can be negative, to reverse direction.  They also need a limit for movement range, so that missile hatches don't tear themselves off your ship just by opening too far.
  • For rovers, some sort of terrain grabber so that thrust against the ground isn't the only way to gain traction.  Curiousity doesn't need rocket engines.
  • A 'timer' or 'clock' logic is needed.  As things stand, I cannot find a straightforward way to make a sequence of events, which must occur in order or with a specific delay, (open a hatch THEN fire TNT missiles) in an autonomous drone.  I have about six ideas for rolling (not wheeled) drones and leapfrog drones and flip drones and walker drones that are all ridiculously complicated to make autonomous without being able to program sequential actions.
  • An altimeter would be really really nice.

[Directional sensors need a "Width" setting.  Increasing the width of the beam should reduce maximum range, so that a full 360 degree sensor is possible, but has a ridiculously small coverage. (Inverse square law.)  A 1-dimensional line should have a ridiculously long maximum range.  This will make it a lot easier to find a balance between coverage, and needing forests of sensors.

  • sensor blocks that can be 'paired', and provide the direction/range to its  paired block.  Formation flight baby!  I want a drone interceptors flying interdiction for a bomber wing!
  • Fuel and energy and logic all need to be severed when connections are severed.  Logic has a wireless block, and you might have wireless energy (with limits), but every drone should require separate fuel reserves.  Not only does this make construction more interesting and demanding, it eliminates 'cheaty' drones (energy/fuel satellites that stay with Nimbatus, or detached combat drones that are not attacked)
  • Detached parts need to be attacked by the enemy.  Since pieces are never destroyed, have enemies attack anything that has both energy production and consumption, or both fuel production and fuel consumption, with a preference for producing/consuming blocks.  This will make any group of parts that has any remaining function a target, but allow enemies to ignore defunct and broken drones, and prevent them from pounding on armor as a decoy all day just because you put a tiny solar cell and a motorized hinge on it - they'll focus on functional components instead of targeting armor.  Yet, if you armor it right, you can still make effective decoys.
  • More autonomous challenges.  I would like to see maneuvering challenges.  Hide-and-seek challenges.  Mining challenges.  Require the creation of a drone that can explore and find ore deposits from all corners of a complex tunnel system. (A maze runner.)  Have a 'runner' drone, and require you to keep pace with erratic maneuvering, and stay in range.
  • We absolutely need some kind of solution to provide ship rigidity. 
  • Reconstruction.  I love TNT missiles, but they're almost useless without the ability to rebuild them.
     

 

My suggestion for terrain grabbers: I want harpoon guns with spring connections and a fire/release terrain control, reel in control, and a reel out control.  Because it's awesome, that's why.

 

My suggestion for timer/clock/sequence logic: My suggestion is a block similar to 'impulse' that only triggers once.  Input, delay time, activation time, and output.  On receiving the input, it waits the delay time, outputs for the activation time.  Once activated, it cannot be reactivated until the delay and activation is complete.

 

My suggestiong for rebuilding: My previous suggestion was a 'nanite factory' that produced X nanites per turn.  Have it split the nanites it makes between all connected parts that have damage to themselves or any child part, or a destroyed child part.  Have THOSE parts divide nanites between every connected part with a damaged/destroyed child part.  Thus you can rebuild parts, but taking damage slows down all reconstruction, and widespread damage isn't easy to recover from, requiring you to divide the production of nanites between many parts.  Drone construction becomes important here, because part connections can dictate which parts have greater or lesser repair priority.

 

Only detached ship parts that aren't connected to any other part should be considered 'destroyed' (with the exception of TNT) to prevent rebuilding things that are still functional and operating.  Every part of a drone on the opposite side of a 'detachment' block should be destroyed, to avoid These 'destroyed' parts should eventually vanish from the map somehow, harmlessly self-destruct, to prevent a build-up of trash on the map.

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All good ideas.  Some of them are probably already in the works.

 

I would like to see maneuvering challenges.  Hide-and-seek challenges.  Mining challenges.  Require the creation of a drone that can explore and find ore deposits from all corners of a complex tunnel system. (A maze runner.)

 

  Yes, yes, very yes.  Some more challenges would be INSANE.  Imagine a planet with 5 or 6 different challenges.  Even larger than current planets.  Maybe a heavily defended "Fort" or "Satellite / Station" in orbit that you have to destroy.

 

  Don't forget tho, this is pre-alpha, and not really representative of the final game.  I doubt they would finish the game with this small amount of missions.

 

  Oh, I particularly like the sensors idea.  I think this game could do with some more in the detection area.

 

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All good ideas.  Some of them are probably already in the works.

 

I would like to see maneuvering challenges.  Hide-and-seek challenges.  Mining challenges.  Require the creation of a drone that can explore and find ore deposits from all corners of a complex tunnel system. (A maze runner.)

 

  Yes, yes, very yes.  Some more challenges would be INSANE.  Imagine a planet with 5 or 6 different challenges.  Even larger than current planets.  Maybe a heavily defended "Fort" or "Satellite / Station" in orbit that you have to destroy.

I was thinking more of like the sumo and battle arenas - have some specialized arenas or missions that require autonomy, that require smarter behavior and guidance.
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