From reading this post by koonschi about introducing hangar blocks as early as Titanium tier:
We want to make hangars available earlier soon. Hangars should be available earlier (thinking Titanium) since fighters already are anyways.
I understand this, but I'd like to beg you to reconsider, due to my experience so far with the game.
When I had an Iron ship, I was chafing at the limits of my solar panels until I scrounged enough Titanium to build a generator.
When I had a Titanium ship, I started encountering shielded Xsotan, and I started going out of my depth to gather Naonite for my own shield.
When I had a Naonite ship, I'd entered a warzone and began to see AIs using carriers in sector invasions. This motivated me to go out of my way to gather Trinium so I could build my own hangar.
Now that I've got a Trinium ship... there's nothing like that to look forward to. Just material upgrades. Sure, they'll be better, but they won't be new.
My suggestion is that, rather than rolling all these tech blocks down to be almost immediately available, introduce a new tech with its own gameplay elements in each material tier. Just like the way the weapon variety increases. It's an excellent extra initiative to drive the player forward. This was the impression I got reading KS update 9.
Perhaps Xanion can unlock cloaking or coolant1 blocks, Ogonite adds spinal weapon mount blocks2 or internal factories (maybe for fighter replenishment?), and Avorion introduces some otherworldly and bizarre feature you've wanted to include but couldn't justify.
1Coolant blocks:
I think I've seen it requested here before, but a block similar to the turret lock block which slows overheat / boosts cooldown of a turret built on it, at the cost of energy
(So I can fire that cannon more than once per battle :D).
2Spinal / Broadside weapons:
Spinal-mounted weapons have definitely been a common request, but I think I've worked out an interesting implementation of them. Simply put, a spinal-mount block is a block with a single active face (rotatable) and a minimum effective size, into which a player mounts a turret (still counting toward ship limits). The back and side of the spinal-mount block are low-durability, encouraging the player to build the ship around it. The front requires clearance to work, similar to a hangar.
The weapon is immobile but certain stats (damage, range, energy/cooldown requirements!) are amped up considerably by the scale of the block, turning the turret into a massive, slow-firing, long-range cannon.
Broadside blocks exist in my mind because I really enjoyed the combat in Rebel Galaxy. They work in a similar manner to spinal-mount blocks, with a little more complexity behind the scenes. Instead of a single barrel, a broadside block's active face is divided by surface area into a row of barrels along its longest axis, much like a thruster. Some slight mobility along one axis could be possible, allowing the broadside to aim higher or lower, for example.
A turret inserted into a broadside block will still have its stats boosted by the block's volume, but then also divided across the number of barrels (a far more aesthetic suggestion would be to link the turret to x barrel blocks, so they could be embellished with gun emplacements, like the sweet 40K ships made by Shieldmate and Zajc, but that would require some sort of wiring/linking system like that in Starbound or Gunpoint and I appreciate the complexity involved there).
This can function as a devastating cannon for that classic spaceboat feel, a defensive measure - mount an auto-fire chaingun in there and you've got a Battlestar-style wall of flak, or something else entirely - like a vertical-firing broadside mounted with seeker rockets for a missile swarm...
In-use colour palette:
I've recently discovered that I can drag colour swatches into the hotbar. This is a handy feature, but it's not perfect, particularly as it resets between sessions. When I'm building, I'm using the hotbar for blocks or prefabs, so I'd rather not clutter it with colours.
I also copy/paste a lot - need a light green wedge? There's one - copy, scale, place. So when I need to colour a new part... I have no idea what I've been using. What I'd really like is a little window that has swatches for the different colours currently in use on the ship (advanced feature: drag one colour -e.g. Eternal Salmon - onto one in the palette - Infinity Cyan - to repaint all Infinity Cyan blocks with Eternal Salmon.)
Material-based hangar lighting
The blue of the hangar looks nice on my blue-white Trinium ship, but it clashes a little with other colour schemes. Would it be possible to change the colour of the field depending on the material of the hangar?
Repost:
Ship-to-ship docking mechanics:
I posted this in the Design Fighters suggestion thread; it was relevant to koonschi's response but not much to the direction of the thread, so I'll move it here for tidiness.
There are a bunch of concepts that I'm looking forward to trying out when ship-to-ship docking is introduced - modular ships, detachable salvage pods, hyperspace frames...
But I've got some questions regarding what it will allow:
Will docked ships remain "on" - potentially linking turret / engine / thruster control, power, shield coverage, cargo space, etc. of docked ships?
This allows for modular ship components - undocking a cargo pod and connecting an industrial-sized self-powered shield generator in its place, without having to delete/rebuild modules when needed.
Will the docking feature utilise the existing dock block / a new single-surface block to set a dock point, requiring contact between a corresponding block on each ship, or just lock the docking ships together when in range? If it's the former, I'd like to suggest...
Being able to set orientation when docked - maybe have a polarised docking block - the top of the texture always connects to the top of its pair.
Short-range tractor to dock neatly with an uncaptained ship - e.g. pressing F at 0.02km aligns and pulls the two docks together, rather than just locking them in place "near enough"
Commanding an AI follower to connect to a specific dock
Suggestion
ColdSpiral
Keep material-based tech unlocks:
From reading this post by koonschi about introducing hangar blocks as early as Titanium tier:
I understand this, but I'd like to beg you to reconsider, due to my experience so far with the game.
When I had an Iron ship, I was chafing at the limits of my solar panels until I scrounged enough Titanium to build a generator.
When I had a Titanium ship, I started encountering shielded Xsotan, and I started going out of my depth to gather Naonite for my own shield.
When I had a Naonite ship, I'd entered a warzone and began to see AIs using carriers in sector invasions. This motivated me to go out of my way to gather Trinium so I could build my own hangar.
Now that I've got a Trinium ship... there's nothing like that to look forward to. Just material upgrades. Sure, they'll be better, but they won't be new.
My suggestion is that, rather than rolling all these tech blocks down to be almost immediately available, introduce a new tech with its own gameplay elements in each material tier. Just like the way the weapon variety increases. It's an excellent extra initiative to drive the player forward. This was the impression I got reading KS update 9.
Perhaps Xanion can unlock cloaking or coolant1 blocks, Ogonite adds spinal weapon mount blocks2 or internal factories (maybe for fighter replenishment?), and Avorion introduces some otherworldly and bizarre feature you've wanted to include but couldn't justify.
1Coolant blocks:
I think I've seen it requested here before, but a block similar to the turret lock block which slows overheat / boosts cooldown of a turret built on it, at the cost of energy
(So I can fire that cannon more than once per battle :D).
2Spinal / Broadside weapons:
Spinal-mounted weapons have definitely been a common request, but I think I've worked out an interesting implementation of them. Simply put, a spinal-mount block is a block with a single active face (rotatable) and a minimum effective size, into which a player mounts a turret (still counting toward ship limits). The back and side of the spinal-mount block are low-durability, encouraging the player to build the ship around it. The front requires clearance to work, similar to a hangar.
The weapon is immobile but certain stats (damage, range, energy/cooldown requirements!) are amped up considerably by the scale of the block, turning the turret into a massive, slow-firing, long-range cannon.
Broadside blocks exist in my mind because I really enjoyed the combat in Rebel Galaxy. They work in a similar manner to spinal-mount blocks, with a little more complexity behind the scenes. Instead of a single barrel, a broadside block's active face is divided by surface area into a row of barrels along its longest axis, much like a thruster. Some slight mobility along one axis could be possible, allowing the broadside to aim higher or lower, for example.
A turret inserted into a broadside block will still have its stats boosted by the block's volume, but then also divided across the number of barrels (a far more aesthetic suggestion would be to link the turret to x barrel blocks, so they could be embellished with gun emplacements, like the sweet 40K ships made by Shieldmate and Zajc, but that would require some sort of wiring/linking system like that in Starbound or Gunpoint and I appreciate the complexity involved there).
This can function as a devastating cannon for that classic spaceboat feel, a defensive measure - mount an auto-fire chaingun in there and you've got a Battlestar-style wall of flak, or something else entirely - like a vertical-firing broadside mounted with seeker rockets for a missile swarm...
In-use colour palette:
I've recently discovered that I can drag colour swatches into the hotbar. This is a handy feature, but it's not perfect, particularly as it resets between sessions. When I'm building, I'm using the hotbar for blocks or prefabs, so I'd rather not clutter it with colours.
I also copy/paste a lot - need a light green wedge? There's one - copy, scale, place. So when I need to colour a new part... I have no idea what I've been using. What I'd really like is a little window that has swatches for the different colours currently in use on the ship (advanced feature: drag one colour -e.g. Eternal Salmon - onto one in the palette - Infinity Cyan - to repaint all Infinity Cyan blocks with Eternal Salmon.)
Material-based hangar lighting
The blue of the hangar looks nice on my blue-white Trinium ship, but it clashes a little with other colour schemes. Would it be possible to change the colour of the field depending on the material of the hangar?
Repost:
Ship-to-ship docking mechanics:
I posted this in the Design Fighters suggestion thread; it was relevant to koonschi's response but not much to the direction of the thread, so I'll move it here for tidiness.
There are a bunch of concepts that I'm looking forward to trying out when ship-to-ship docking is introduced - modular ships, detachable salvage pods, hyperspace frames...
But I've got some questions regarding what it will allow:
Will docked ships remain "on" - potentially linking turret / engine / thruster control, power, shield coverage, cargo space, etc. of docked ships?
This allows for modular ship components - undocking a cargo pod and connecting an industrial-sized self-powered shield generator in its place, without having to delete/rebuild modules when needed.
Will the docking feature utilise the existing dock block / a new single-surface block to set a dock point, requiring contact between a corresponding block on each ship, or just lock the docking ships together when in range? If it's the former, I'd like to suggest...
Thanks for reading. ;D
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