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Re: Mod Ideas

#211
Tower Defense in Space
As a big fan of Tower Defense, especially while eating Pizza at LAN-Parties i like the idea of Tower Defense.

Mobs have to reach some Checkpoints/Nodes before attacking the "heart" (Space Station).
The usual different types of Towers (Damage (Instant/Delayed (e.g. rockets) / Long Term) and effects like slowing down, paralyzing, attacking own troops should give enough tactical possibilities.

Challenges will be limiting paths in 3D-Space, so it is possible to maze. And Navigation could be difficult.
:D
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Re: Mod Ideas

#212
Alright, while reading today's devlog update (April 30th, 2018), I saw Josh mention Death Sticks, which I assume is basically cigarettes, and had an idea. Fair warning, this is kind of morbid.

Basically, the idea can be summed up as: Criminal Empire Mod. You'd run a criminal empire, mostly involved in producing and selling narcotics in order to make a profit. People in colonies would have a chance of becoming addicted to one of your drugs, which would produce a fairly constant source of revenue, with a chance of that pop either dying or getting clean. You'd be able to design drugs with certain levels of addictiveness, side effects, withdrawal effects, stuff like that. On a meta level, these qualities and other like them would effect the probabilities of things like the chance of a certain pop trying your drug, the chance of that pop becoming addicted, staying addicted, and so on.

Aside from creating drugs, you'd of course have to create supply chains and production facilities in order to produce, ship, and sell the product. All the while, you'd have to contend with both the law, who could be actively searching for you and your operation, and other criminals, who would like to usurp you or just steal your stuff, and they of course wouldn't be punished by the law for doing so, unlike in normal gameplay (I assume).

I suppose this idea could be expanded pretty far, maybe with competing criminal empires each trying to get as many "clients" as possible while fighting with each other. There could be other products, like illegal black market weapons, and things I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about on this forum. Maybe some sort of underground assassination contracts, that would work like bounty missions (which I'm assuming there will be) except illegal. Basically just imagine what any TV criminal empire does... I'm not actually sure what that is, I don't watch a lot of TV.

I also had the idea that a lot of the code for designer drugs and their effects on colony pops could be repurposed for creating genetically engineered super-viruses. Instead of addicting pops and creating revenue streams, it would just kill them, with an added possibility of infecting other pops as well. I'm not sure why you'd want to do this, but I suppose if you wanted to be really evil it might be fun.

Anyway yeah, that's my super morbid mod idea. I'm going to go think about what I've done now. I also realize that this of all things is my first post ever, so that's an accomplishment.
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Re: Mod Ideas

#213
Welcome to the light dear lurker :) glad to have you here.

It's totally fine to discuss the less savory aspects of human behavior here, provided they relate to the game (however, we've had problems with some who want to be revolting just for the shock value, which isn't okay). For example, I have advocated for NPCs to be capable of committing genocide and war crimes, as it's both realistic and gives an opportunity for players to fight the Evil Empire :angel: or be the Evil Emperor himself :twisted: . And it makes possible morally grey areas of behavior, as perhaps the only way to save your empire is to have a scorched earth retreat, slaughtering any of your own people you can't get out in time just to ensure the enemy can't get them.

I personally think it would be pretty fun to try becoming Pablo Escobar, selling that fine Colombian Space-Sugar, being completely ruthless in my ascent to power :lol:
I imagine that if not in vanilla, a mod will make criminal empires that are willing and able to produce and sell addictive drugs, kidnap people/objects for ransom, put out hits on competitors and "uncooperative"(read corrupt) authorities, let alone build the infrastructure any major organization can be expected to construct.
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Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can
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Re: Mod Ideas

#214
I just wanted to add a few more Ideas I've had recently.

Dynamic Finite Universe - There is a finite universe with 100 systems, some of which connect to each other through unstable wormholes, but all connect to a single hub system through indestructible jumpgates. In single player you play only the AI, but in Multiplayer, you can play with your friends or found a community. The Finite universe begins empty, excluding each player who starts with the control of a single system. When all 100 systems are full, a new jumpgate appears at the hub and connects to another hub, doubling the size of the universe to 200+2. When that fills up, 400+4, 800+8, etc. This means that regardless of the community size, be it 5 people or 500,000, a finite universe grows to fit its needs.


Asteroid Shields - Ships and perhaps Space whales can improve their armor/defenses by harpooning small asteroids and encasing themselves in a protective shell of rock. This means Asteroids (at least these asteroids) need to be destructible. However it makes asteroids useful for more than mining or ballistics. :)


Time Artifacts - Occasionally a battle between "ghost" ships will appear temporarily. These transdimensional ships move extremely slowly compared to normal ships, perhaps 1/1000 normal speed. These ships are be outfitted with advanced or unusual technologies that players and NPCs can research if they get close enough. However this can be dangerous, as any ship that touches one of these ghosts instantly disappears into that other dimension permanently. This is almost certainly a very bad thing, as these ghosts whose universe you are now in will be hostile to you, and they will be far stronger than you. So High Risk, High Reward research.


Complete Starter Spacer City - This will probably have to incorporate a number of smaller mods, but the goal is to have a Spacer city with so much to do that a player could spend their entire game in the city, and never need to leave it. By a Spacer city, I'm not talking about Josh's Trailer park idea, but a collection of normal (but specialized) Space stations positioned close to one another within a "Spacer City Zone". This city should be as complete as possible, Including Habitats/Private housing for NPCs and the player, multiple markets, shipyards, industrial assembler yards, research universities, headquarters/outposts of different factions, defense platforms, news broadcasters, an Arena/Stadium/Hippodrome/Sambadrome, a casino/arcade to play various minigames, a resurrection/cloning facility, defense platforms, military bases, warplanes, jumpgates, and public art/park habitats/etc. as well as a grand prix raceway that starts and ends in the city but goes around the system. This city template should be modular and allow for people to add different mods to enrich their city.


Minions and Battlebots - Remembering the Creature Training mechanics from Black&White 1, you can create and train minions and battlebots with positive and negative reinforcement. Minions are for governing/managing your assets/realm, while Battlebots compete in an arena or serve as a wingman/bodyguard. Unlike hiring/contracting these minions and battlebots are fully controlled and guided by you. However if you are too generous or negligent with your reinforcement, they grow lazy and behave poorly, while if you're too harsh they can rebel against you.


Space Maze - Taking the idea of Space terrain to the extreme, these systems have enormous "walls" of plasma or technobabble that create many obstructions for players to navigate and hide in. These would be excellent for a game of Laser Tag in space :D


Warp rail cities - In addition to the Concentric pie slices for ships to travel along is an outer shell extending along the length of the rail where a large ring station can be built. These can connect to each other and can potentially encase the whole length of the rail. It would be entirely possible to have one of these extend across a whole system from 1 jumpgate to another as a sort of tubular safe zone.
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Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can
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Re: Mod Ideas

#215
All of these are slick, unsurprisingly.

However, this one got me thinking:

Hyperion wrote:
Thu May 03, 2018 6:01 pm
Minions and Battlebots - Remembering the Creature Training mechanics from Black&White 1, you can create and train minions and battlebots with positive and negative reinforcement. Minions are for governing/managing your assets/realm, while Battlebots compete in an arena or serve as a wingman/bodyguard. Unlike hiring/contracting these minions and battlebots are fully controlled and guided by you. However if you are too generous or negligent with your reinforcement, they grow lazy and behave poorly, while if you're too harsh they can rebel against you.

What if drones could be programmed? That is, what if there were a simple programming language within LT that could be used to write code that is downloaded into drones?

You'd outfit your drone with whatever kit it could accept. Then you'd write, test, and download into that drone software that tells the drone how to use its features.

This gets even more interesting if one of the components of a drone is hardware for communicating with other drones. :D

Another nice feature might be to allow the coder to package particular kinds of functionality as a module that can be copied to other players... or sold to NPCs inside the game. (Although I'm not sure how pricing would be determined.)

The obvious use for this is basically the old Battlebots idea. But the non-combat features of drones creates lots of other possibilities.

Other than the time and effort to create something like this, one downside I can see is that it doesn't satisfy the "NPCs can do what the human player can do" goal. (I'm assuming no one is going to write a mod that tells NPCs how to design software.)

Really, this is just a dumbed-down version of the creature training AI in Black-and-White, which was a great game.
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Re: Mod Ideas

#216
Reading the mod ideas I have a feeling that as soon as LT comes out my grades will drop because I'm going to be playing the game and then making mods (assuming of course it comes out while I'm still at university).
A life well lived only happens once.
Seems deep until you think about it.
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Re: Mod Ideas

#217
Never fear, more mod ideas are here! :geek: :monkey:

Interstellar zones & drifting systems - We know that systems can have zones in which various objects can spawn or effects implemented. I wonder if we could do the same at the interstellar level. Imagine if you will, that like in real life, systems drift like a cloud of particles throughout interstellar space. The recent innovation of flow networks for the economy may have another place in this stellar drift, though the specifics would depend on implementation. Interstellar zones would remain static, but they would apply different effects to any systems that drift through them. What effects these are could range from higher ore regeneration rates to global speed multipliers, more/less unstable wormholes to more/less systems with pretty nebulae skyboxes. The possibilities are near endless and would be a serious attack on the war against sameyness.

Groundhog System - The movie Groundhog Day, apply it to a system in LT. The system is locked into a time loop by a number of creatively named "Time Locks" Some of these need to be destroyed, some have a puzzle minigame to unlock them, some need to have resources brought to them. Until all Time Locks are broken, you cannot leave the system and every 4 real hours (or if you die), the system resets. It is definitely possible to unlock all the time locks within 4 hours, but may take several attempts as you have to figure out where all the locks are, and then in what order they need to be unlocked to do them all in the time limit. As an added difficulty there could be several additional dummy locks, which are suspiciously easy to unlock, but have no effect on whether or not you get out :twisted:

Stalker - You are being followed. Someone has placed a hit on you and there is a mercenary out to get you, and they will not give up until one of you is dead. You must switch callsigns and identity beacons, blend in with crowds and hide from this unknown hitman. Eventually you will be able to identify your would-be killer, and you can either attack them outright, or place a hit on them, or get your allies who owe you a favor to do it, or join a faction and if/when the hitman attacks you, it's counted as an attack against the faction and they have the whole faction turn on them :D

Scavenger Hunt - Every so often there is a Scavenger Hunt event. Several dozen tokens have been placed throughout a couple systems. Players and NPCs can go to the starting Station to join the hunt for these tokens. Participants must find and return them to the Starting station before the time runs out. Whoever returns with the most tokens wins. Even if you have the most tokens, if you haven't returned them to the station, you lose. The winner receives a nice big prize. This would be a fun exploration activity, but would be significantly easier for professional explorers than amateurs due to their having better sensor equipment.

Pokeverse - Pokemon, but better. It's possible to research and create Pocket Universe Containers, each of which contains a small, empty system. You can go around space and spawn wormholes into these pocket systems that will grab anything in range and pull it into it, be it asteroids, ships, or stations. You must perform research on these Verseballs :ghost: to increase their capacity, wormhole size & duration, and deployment duration. You may travel into these systems and construct various facilities for mining, manufacturing, ship training, and enemy pacification to gain both portable infrastructure and minions. However, construction is limited to the materials and ships/stations you have put into it. These pocket systems are only destroyed if the Verseball itself is destroyed. Like with pokemon, you may deploy ships contained inside, however they have to return to the Verseball within a given time before your control over them fails and they become neutral or hostile to you. Ships inside gain XP which multiplies their health and damage, and can gain XP through combat in a deployment or training within the Verseball.

Yes, you may capture your enemies in a wormhole, but they will still be hostile, and unless you have sufficient pacification facilities inside, they can and will try to escape.

White noise - If you like this one, you hate your eyes :P This is mostly a graphical mod. Basically, every texture except the UI is white noise. The skybox noise remains static while ships, stations, asteroids and other objects shift and can only be seen by their noise pattern moving across the screen :twisted: . As this will make detection much more difficult, this severely reduces the scanner capabilities so the AI doesn't really have any advantage either.

Gravity Arena - Ships have their own gravity well, and will pull on each other with exponentially increasing force as they get closer to one another. This is by team, so your own ships won't pull on each other. If two ships collide, both are destroyed, but create a wreckage the sum of their masses to be an even stronger well on the others. As the gravity well extends across much of the system, ships give away their position, and a cluster of ships on the same team will be that much more obvious. The last team standing is the victor.
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Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can
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Re: Mod Ideas

#218
Hyperion wrote:
Sat May 05, 2018 5:25 pm
White noise - If you like this one, you hate your eyes :P This is mostly a graphical mod. Basically, every texture except the UI is white noise. The skybox noise remains static while ships, stations, asteroids and other objects shift and can only be seen by their noise pattern moving across the screen :twisted: . As this will make detection much more difficult, this severely reduces the scanner capabilities so the AI doesn't really have any advantage either.

Hmm. What if you flipped this -- how about a mod where everyone has lost all their visual sensors, and have to rely on the ship's scanner to "see" for piloting and interaction with the world?

The scanner functionality might have to be amped up a bit for this to be usable.

Alternately, a way of looking at this is that all normal frequencies in the visual range are blotted out. You can still put images on your main "screen" (basically, your computer's monitor), but they come from your ship's scanner taking input from outside the normal visual frequencies and mapping it to the visual frequencies. For example, applying a filter to the scanner that shifts ultraviolet radiation down in frequency -- that way anything that emits ultraviolet radiation would become visible on your main screen. Do this with several sources that emit radiation at different frequencies (ships, stars, asteroids?, planets?, warp rails, etc.), and you could get a picture of what's around you, but it would look really peculiar and might have some different behaviors than standard visual frequency radiation.

I don't know why this idea is so appealing to me, but it is.
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Re: Mod Ideas

#219
I do like that, however doesn't the AI already only "see" via the scanner?

However being able to remap different parts of the spectrum onto your screen to see the world differently and perhaps be able to detect something that would be otherwise undetectable (or much more difficult at least), I really like that. If you combined this with stealth mechanics :D , where your stealth is only for a certain range of the EM spectrum, your ship might be invisible in the optical range, but you glow like a star in infrared... and only through research can you hide yourself on a wider range of the spectrum, but like with other tech, it's mostly tradeoffs and only occasionally do you get closer to true invisibility. :D
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Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can
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Re: Mod Ideas

#220
tbf i totally expect all the stuff thats visible on your screen to be filtered by your sensors regardless.

If your sensors cant see it, why should you?

Hyperion wrote:
Sat May 05, 2018 5:25 pm
The recent innovation of flow networks for the economy may have another place in this stellar drift
How would the way AIs reason about market movements change the impact of environmental changes?
(Assuming it doesnt move the system out of the stable range of their predictive method)
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Re: Mod Ideas

#223
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
Sun May 06, 2018 6:30 am
if a mk1 eyeball sees it before a specialised sensor suite, the sensor suite is a piece of crap

I get what you mean, but I think you might be conflating two different functions of the old eyeball.

You're certainly right about visual range/acuity -- we can only see out so far. To see further, we need electro-mechanical augmentation: things like telescopes and CCD cameras and filters for various frequencies. No disagreement with you here; if the eye of the person in the cockpit can see something before a sensor can, that sensor is not well-optimized for space.

But the human eye is also bounded in frequency range -- the "visual" spectrum. In this area, the eye's actually pretty sophisticated, with internal features optimized for seeing both a pretty good range of colors (in good lighting) and movement (in dim lighting). It's this capability I'm interested in dialing back on our ship's "viewscreen" in order to emphasize the non-visual-range energy sources and reflectors.

Maybe that wouldn't be fun. I don't know. That's why I'm interested in trying it, just as you're free to suggest mod ideas that interest you.
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Re: Mod Ideas

#225
So I think I found how to make a wormhole generator, smash 2 special energy vortices at each other and get something like this. :monkey:
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Challenging your assumptions is good for your health, good for your business, and good for your future. Stay skeptical but never undervalue the importance of a new and unfamiliar perspective.
Imagination Fertilizer
Beauty may not save the world, but it's the only thing that can

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