Open Space Suggestions

[ORCA1911]

I’ve been collecting a lot of suggestions players would like to see, most of them didn’t feel like posting them so i took some liberty to write them down over the past few months. I’ve got a semi-long list which i would like to share so if you like anything on it let me know in the comments, upvote it etc.

 

Also if you have a banger idea yourself, feel free to post it here since this will act as a collection of ideas for OS improvements, just try to be concise, without walls of text for a single idea. Keep in mind the more complex the idea is, the more time it will take to implement it (if it’s possible to implement it of course), so try to stay within the margin of what the game could handle (or go nuts with it, either one is fine with me lol just trying to give some pointers here for those interested).

 

1. New Jump Gate Design

 

The casual jump gate design are bland at best whereas some other gates look far cooler in comparison, for example this gate looks cool as heck:

 

 

Designing a new casual gate should be fairly easy and would be a nice change to the ones we have had since OS began.

 

2. New Transport Ship Design

 

The current ship design is heavily outdated but there are several designs already out there that can be used right away.

 

  OLD

 “NEW”

 

So far everyone liked this ship design for transport ships (the ellydium one is also a good pick, main goal is just “upgrade pls”).

 

3. Small Docking Ports/Hangars/Markets/Refineries

 

 

There are a lot of huge objects in Open Space that can be converted to small hubs that can offer various features like:

• docking - same as docking to a station but you get to continue where you left off

• refining ores - either for free or at least less credits than in the workshop to entice activity in OS

• contracts - missions in that sector that aren’t listed in the daily missions menu with various difficulty levels and reward etc

• trade - trade hub that has lower minimum prices but you have to pick them up there (being shown in main trade list is debatable but treating it as a black market would be fun)

 

Example of a hub in OS:

 

Additional examples
 

Spoiler

 

The easiest way to develop mini stations would be to tie them to their faction counterpart main station to make the overall development faster. Best part of the idea is the ability to attach stories like retaking the abandoned sectors, repairing broken stations after the invasion and all sorts of other stuff that will keep the players entertained.

 

There are unique places just waiting to be a part of something more than just floating objects.

 

4. Mystery places/Puzzles

 

 

Places like these offer a unique feature to add secret passages and puzzles for players to get unique prizes such as the sonic screwdriver, flux capacitor etc. Maybe hide valuable boxes that can be found with the spatial scanner would also be exciting as a side quest to find since some boxes spawn inside objects anyways. #burn 

 

5. Free Experience Points

 

Missions for experience in Open Space could be free experience instead of regular experience points so they can be used for ships we want to level up but can’t play yet due to the under-development of said ship. Taking for example a frigate into open space to obtain the exp points is a tedious job, same could be said for a weak ship on lvl 1. It may be more enjoyable to have less exp points per mission but of the free kind instead of the exp points you can only transfer via GS.

 

6. Farming Resources

 

A couple ideas were constantly discussed when it came to resource farming in Open Space, here are a few of them:

• The danger level should correlate to how much you can get from an asteroid/transport in one batch.

• Transport ships should always drop something, never nothing, and depending on the danger level it should scale from ores, to refined ores and in the end common parts.

• Each sector should have a drop-down menu when you hover over it on the map showing the list of possible items or ores with a percentile only for ores showing how likely one specific ore is going to drop in that sector from asteroid mining.

• Boss spawns that provide rare materials in a limited amount (per day or week).

 

7. Alien Portals

 

 

To make things more interesting, the only way to get to Inverter, Otherworld and other alien places would be to use the temporary portals to jump to them. It would be a set of insane difficulty alien maps where there’s an abundance of common materials for people to farm as long as they stay alive and some rare materials. Optional treasure maps for said sectors (payout being lightcells, monocrystals, xenocrystals etc).

 

Let me know if these ideas are YAY or NAY and write up some of your ideas too so i can add them to the list here.  

Splashing out!

[57482536]

Transport raids uhhhhh

I think all of this is a GREAT update to open space ,refining ore and trading post sounds good. :3

 

[90431966]

Taking missions and drops out of PvP zones would be a treat.

 

Mission transports shouldn’t have drops. I’ve already seen players blow up mission transports for no other reason than to be jerks, giving people an incentive to do it is just asking for trouble.

 

I do like being able to heal NPCs, I hope that stays as a permanent feature.

 

I do like or am okay with most of your ideas.

[ORCA1911]

Transports are quite protected now due to those jerks, nice reminder tho.

[DaCookiez]

Hey, lots of good ideas!

My 2 cents:

 

1. the jump-gates should point 360 degrees to the neighbouring systems, like an arrow which has the name of the system on top of it. It would make it easier to know in which direction to warp. Now, you have to check all the gates, to see the name and then warp. If you don’t check all, you risk warping to the wrong gate. The small indicator should point something like “abc” —> “def”, meaning the current system, jumping to the next;

2. there should be more types of transports. Small size (like the ones there are now), average and large ones, that could have maybe 20, 30 or 50 guards? ”)  Imagine how it would be like to fight all the pirates in Water Harvest at once ”) Of course, the drops would differ: small drops from small cargos, large drops (credits, exp, resources) from large ones. 

A good question would be related to the cargo’s hull: if you’re chip-free, there should be normal difficulty; if you have chips, it should be like in spec-ops, incremental. The question is what happens when you have both types of pilots, with and without chips, shooting at the same time ”) 

There could be alien transports too, easy to very hard to take down, but giving xenos or monos, or Elly part for ships, to upgrade them easier. Also, if the pilots use an Elly ship to destroy the convoy, the drops can be higher, maybe double? These cargos could be guarded by strong Thar’ga and/or have their hulls repaired by Waz’gots and so on. The strongest could be guarded by Ze’tas, why not?  

 

3. cargo drones visible to anyone, from everywhere in that system, not hidden behind all sorts of corners, objects or rocks. I don’t see the logic in hiding them.

 

4. new systems (with mixed difficulty) designed in such a way as to make it easier for pilots to upgrade ships. ATTN: this means the pilots should have LOTS of opportunities to test how the modules work, instead of simply shooting a compact group of pirates, like now. Maybe the pirates should get ‘smarter’, like in VsAi? ”) This could be a mix between the normal OS, pve maps and the Temple?

 

5. a new feature - wormholes. They could be accessible only under certain circumstances: for example, clearance level 10, or karma +3, or an extended hull or a spatial scanner (the yellow stuff). They could take the pilot to a new system, and you discover which one only after you jump ”) They would not expire and can be found based on a certain number of skills (and only skills). So you can be skilled enough to find one, but you need the above stuff to access it;

 

6. related to the new, very hard systems, i think it would be a good idea to be VERY hard, so that not a single player can shoot the pirates/aliens/whatever it has. With or without chips, those pirates could be shot only by teamwork - aka gunships, ECMs, tacklers, dessies, engi. Also, the drops could vary a lot, from credits to free experience, to monos or xenos, or even GS ”) The drops could be simple if pilots work together, or increased if they form a group/wing. 

 

7. a permanent list (in chat?) where you can see the systems where the boss comes, and the times it will be there.

 

8. when you get a module or weapon, a small pop-up window to show if you already have it in storage, and how many copies!! This is very useful, as it happens a lot to get close to the storage limit because you pick up useless stuff (thinking you will sell it) and then you discover 20-50 people sell the same object. Or, it could have a link to the price in Trade for the object.

 

9. Larger systems, with like 50km between 2 gates? Some players want to shoot very far. Unfortunately, the fun (the FUN!) was destroyed when multiple Horizon Modules were forbidden, so now pilots can improve range with chips. Or very large ones, with ~ 100km between gates? Travelling in these systems would give advantages. The list can be long ”)

 

Just a few thoughts ”)

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

[ORCA1911]

1-Dont quite understand it, do you mean the gate pointing to the location of the next sector?

2-The 20+ guards per transport part is somewhat impossible, apparently there is a limit to how many things you can put in one map.

3-I had the same idea not too long ago but it appears that them being invisible and in only some of the places is due to that exploratory nature of space, if you know where they are, good for you, if not, try and look for them basically. that means that this feature wont be changed anytime soon sadly.

4-That means developing a constant pve map in open space which is a lot of effort for reinventing the wheel since we have that in a way. Resource-wise its not a good idea, otherwise it would be nice to have.

5-Might as well rename my 7th point to wormholes then xd nice idea!

6-In a way we have that with the invasion of aliens and pirates these days, coupled with the experimental destroyer and the bunch.

7-Announcement board would be nice in a way, the chat spam is kinda annoying.

8-Thats a good point, ill add it to the list.

9-The sniping and kiting thing is always on the edge with abusing features so its highly unlikely to have such a thing available to us.

 

I’ll try to refine some of the suggestions and add some more soon, thanks for the feedback!

[DaCookiez]

1 - yes, the gate should point like some sort of compass, in order to help you save time locating the sector you look for. So, one gate could look like a hand-watch pointing the hours. Let’s say there are 4 neighbouring systems, one could be indicated at 3, one at 5, one at 8 and one at 10. That design could move around the display/gate if you circle around it, so the “hours” would change. 

3 - i got it, love the logic, for real ”) Had no idea about that

5 - partially, i was thinking of something more complex, maybe they could lead to simply unknown sectors, like new ones. What about having some temporary sectors, that last from 1 hour to 1 week? They could be accessed only by WHs, have all types of pirates/aliens and loot. If you’re good, you could get even the Plasma Burster, so making a new way of getting it, not only grinding or Tournaments :d  Some of these sectors could be shown on map, some not, they have to be discovered. It would be similar in a way to nr. 3, that kind of logic