Gravity wells countering SPEC is an important mechanic because it both prevents you from fatally colliding with planets at 97C before you have time to react and making interceptions very simple to execute. You only have to fly towards the thing you want to reach, the gravity-spec mechanic does the rest.Boaal wrote: Gravity wells were HORRIBLE. I barely had any idea what was going on. My ship would just stop at random, and it was frustrating as all hell. As for being pulled out of spec by enemy craft – God yes.
The problem is that random traffic was greatly increased in 0.5.0 and so auto spec was added and spec interception was effectively removed to compensate. These two changes have made spec travel a pointless, boring cutscene.
Better solutions are:
1) Make traffic more concentrated-- bigger transports moving in formations instead of sprawling lines between destinations.
2) Readable and accessible in-system map showing nearby traffic clusters so that they may be more easily avoided.
I'd imagine they'd be deadly gravity traps that would serve as a nearly system-wide navigational obstacle and hazard. Reaching other wormholes in the system would require circumnavigation. Also, they'd be the source of understandably time-limited rescue missions, for high acceleration craft to recover the crews of larger craft falling into the black hole.Black holes would be interesting; I think they’d be rather hard to implement gameplay wise, though. There’d have to be some hefty thought on how they worked.
Exactly.Asteroid belts, ships wrecks, etc would be brilliant. Dog fighting around scenery is a lot more intense than just space – you have a lot more to think about, a lot more to work with,
In addition, stations, during docking and launch approaches could provide this kind of gameplay as much as asteroids and capships. One of the bugs that prevents this from happening is how touchy stations are about you hitting them by accident with low yield weapons.
Also ship accelerations (and governors) are turned up way to high, as has been brought up before. This makes combat maneuvers around even the most colossal stations overly difficult, mostly ineffective and not satisfying.
These two imbalances prevents you from fighting opponents in and around stations, which could otherwise be a quite awesome thing.
Indeed. Nebulae would go even further with this mechanic. Within nebular systems, you'd be especially vulnerable to ambush, as radar range would be distinctly more limited within them.I’m all for a lessening of the Radar scale, too. It does tend to take away a giant chunk of the suspense, the unexpected and the danger, if you know everything there is to know the second you get to a place.
I think (but am unsure) that model was replaced by fendorin. It was never canon to begin with, just some legacy art.Did anybody else think of the big ‘pyramid within a pyramid’ Rlaan things?
My experience is exactly the same. And the gaps only grow worse. A Clydesdale is like what, 80 billion credits or so? There's no realistic way to achieve that much money in the game, so why even have it for sale to the player in the first place then?I get bored and disheartened after another few missions because the gap is so ridiculously large.
It is something I've brought up in the past as well. In part because you can already do it, but in a convoluted way. You can buy a large transport, and then purchase as commodity cargo, fully operational vessels (as long as they take up less room than the available cargo space of course). Then in space you can launch them from your mother ship, aircraft carrier style, and they function as AI driven escorts that you can also take direct control over. It's a very nice feature, but why do you need a clumsy carrier as a go-between for owned, not hired escorts?Another thing is, once again this comes up, if I have my own self-built fleet of captured ships that do what I tell them to, whether it be 'follow me around the universe and protect my arse' (this would be great for hauling cargo) or 'Stay here and guard this system' or whatever, then I still, even if they're just a bunch of trashed Hyenas which I haven't had to funds to patch up yet (assuming I didn't sell them), feel like I'm making a significant gain and a significant step forward. This does somewhat relegate hired help to the back benches, but I feel that it's a more than fair tradeoff in the cause of a more enjoyable, less intimidating game.
As for hired escorts, they are far, far too expensive for what they actually deliver. Their prices must also be lowered. With economical fees, they won't be put on the back bench.
Being able to capture vessels is I great idea as well, I agree. I foresee it being suggested quite a bit, after such a time as the walkable interiors feature is implemented. Since boarding and taking direct control through force of another vessel seems like a logical next step. Then further out, when it becomes possible to own and build stations and colonies, the ability to construct your own vessels in your factories will be a logical feature.
But for now, simply being able to have the ships in your regular fleet, fly with you under an AI pilot, who doesn't disappear or cost you cash, should definitely be an implemented feature, ASAP IMO.