Forums » Suggestions
Ion storms are weak. Need something more fun.
Ion storms only do one thing. Irritate people.
They're not dangerous, they just slow you down by a minute or so. Pretty pointless.
What I'd rather see is fast moving (and I mean FAST moving), dense asteroid field that we have to navigate through. It would be something that would most likely result in ship damage and occasionally death to those who don't pay attention and fly well.
And sometimes there could be bots chasing after you (who also run the risk of crashing into meteors).
But, I also have ideas for the ion storm to make it more "challenging".
The ion storm could be surrounded by a crazy electrical cloud with lightning bolts shooting out randomly (which could hit you at any time and cause damage). As well as bumpy steering and your radars go in and out of a static fuzzyness.
They're not dangerous, they just slow you down by a minute or so. Pretty pointless.
What I'd rather see is fast moving (and I mean FAST moving), dense asteroid field that we have to navigate through. It would be something that would most likely result in ship damage and occasionally death to those who don't pay attention and fly well.
And sometimes there could be bots chasing after you (who also run the risk of crashing into meteors).
But, I also have ideas for the ion storm to make it more "challenging".
The ion storm could be surrounded by a crazy electrical cloud with lightning bolts shooting out randomly (which could hit you at any time and cause damage). As well as bumpy steering and your radars go in and out of a static fuzzyness.
...crazy electrical cloud with lightning bolts shooting out randomly ...
technically: the asteroids are equippend with invisible ion turrets and they randomly shoot at each other.
technically: the asteroids are equippend with invisible ion turrets and they randomly shoot at each other.
I wonder where you've been hanging out, since all storms, by definition, are chock-full of Hive bots. I'm thinking either Deneb or Sedina, the only places so far where you can have empty storms.
By the way, those storms are intended to be more annoying than really really dangerous (that's the job of the Hive), and to throw a smidgen of uncertainty into the trips, specially when pirates are after you.
As for the fast-moving field, though cool to see, I'd wager it'll be kinda difficult to implement, and since there's already a ton of stuff on the to-do list of Guild, it could be a while. Similar ideas have been suggested, like comets traveling through sectors and stuff, BTW.
By the way, those storms are intended to be more annoying than really really dangerous (that's the job of the Hive), and to throw a smidgen of uncertainty into the trips, specially when pirates are after you.
As for the fast-moving field, though cool to see, I'd wager it'll be kinda difficult to implement, and since there's already a ton of stuff on the to-do list of Guild, it could be a while. Similar ideas have been suggested, like comets traveling through sectors and stuff, BTW.
It would be interesting to create sectors with really dense asteroid fields, but not necessarily in every ion storm. A lot of people would probably become annoyed watching thier hard earned ship full of rare ores crash into the side of an asteroid. Im not saying this is a bad thing, but it shouldn't occur too commonly.
Its always been interesting in space movies how they always have to carefully navigate an unrealistically dense amount of rock. Perhaps in the game there could be small planets that have been broken up. In reality, asteroids are spaced VERY far apart.
*Wow, someone actually mentions my comet idea, and I'm only a 1-week newb!
Its always been interesting in space movies how they always have to carefully navigate an unrealistically dense amount of rock. Perhaps in the game there could be small planets that have been broken up. In reality, asteroids are spaced VERY far apart.
*Wow, someone actually mentions my comet idea, and I'm only a 1-week newb!
> since all storms, by definition, are chock-full of Hive bots.
Care to wager on that, Jex? Storms can occur in any 'roid sector (bar station & WH sectors), including the MANY 'roid sectors that don't have Hive bots.
Once DELIVERATOR and the new economy stuff is done, ion storms will be a lot more fun, as a storm w/ Hive bots on a trade route will cause the demand for that route to go up, as the NPC traders won't be getting through, which will cause DELIVERATOR to send more NPC traders on that route, and may generate some missions to clear out the storm sector so the route will be safe again.
But there's still a few things I'd like to see change for ion storms:
* One single exit point in a storm, that's the same for all ships
* Ionized ores: ore mined in ion storms is marked as ionized, and sells for more $$$
* Ion storms currently never occur in station & WH sectors, this exception doesn't make any sense to me, and IMO ion storms should occur in all non-empty sectors, including station & WH sectors.
Previous threads on ion storms:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11420
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11127
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10251
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8851
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8568
Care to wager on that, Jex? Storms can occur in any 'roid sector (bar station & WH sectors), including the MANY 'roid sectors that don't have Hive bots.
Once DELIVERATOR and the new economy stuff is done, ion storms will be a lot more fun, as a storm w/ Hive bots on a trade route will cause the demand for that route to go up, as the NPC traders won't be getting through, which will cause DELIVERATOR to send more NPC traders on that route, and may generate some missions to clear out the storm sector so the route will be safe again.
But there's still a few things I'd like to see change for ion storms:
* One single exit point in a storm, that's the same for all ships
* Ionized ores: ore mined in ion storms is marked as ionized, and sells for more $$$
* Ion storms currently never occur in station & WH sectors, this exception doesn't make any sense to me, and IMO ion storms should occur in all non-empty sectors, including station & WH sectors.
Previous threads on ion storms:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11420
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11127
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10251
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8851
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8568
I agree with everything beo says except the following:
--"and IMO ion storms should occur in all non-empty sectors, including station & WH sectors."--
just remove the bold, underlined text to make me agree.. storms in empty sectors would be the perfect camping grounds for non-hive Npc pirates.. or even real PC pirates.
--"and IMO ion storms should occur in all non-empty sectors, including station & WH sectors."--
just remove the bold, underlined text to make me agree.. storms in empty sectors would be the perfect camping grounds for non-hive Npc pirates.. or even real PC pirates.
Eh, I gotta disagree spellcast. A) that would make the occurance of ion storms completely random and unavoidable and B) running into an ion storm in an empty sector with nothing there would be even more aggravating.
sometimes ion storms should be unavoidable
making them unavoidable is fine by me phaser... especially as I said... they would be great places for pirates to hang out in (NPC or otherwise) Obviously right now it would be annoying.. but if a random percentage of the storms had pirates....
the goal of ion storms was to make travel less routine and more dangerous, having them restricted to sectors with stuff in them makes it possible to avoid them entirely.. most traders probably have navroutes plotted for most of the major trips that completely avoid asteroids by now.
I know I do.. and mine are 4 character names that i can enter just by hitting a single button that opens a prompt command. (I sorted them by system 2 letter code for WH in, 2 letter code for WH out, crossing sedina from latos is LAOD.. the other way is ODLA.. etc etc)
as i enter the WH to the next system on each leg of my journey.. I just load the route for the next system while my turbo-lock is on. (I still have to manually plot my course to the stations, havent come up with a good, simple naming scheme for them yet.. I have some of the more common ones listed tho)
anyhow.. my point is that you dont get much more routine than that, which is umm bad.
(I actually dont even use my navroutes anymore.. havent for a few months now because it WAS so routine.. no excitement.. and I kinda missed the storm music.. :) )
the goal of ion storms was to make travel less routine and more dangerous, having them restricted to sectors with stuff in them makes it possible to avoid them entirely.. most traders probably have navroutes plotted for most of the major trips that completely avoid asteroids by now.
I know I do.. and mine are 4 character names that i can enter just by hitting a single button that opens a prompt command. (I sorted them by system 2 letter code for WH in, 2 letter code for WH out, crossing sedina from latos is LAOD.. the other way is ODLA.. etc etc)
as i enter the WH to the next system on each leg of my journey.. I just load the route for the next system while my turbo-lock is on. (I still have to manually plot my course to the stations, havent come up with a good, simple naming scheme for them yet.. I have some of the more common ones listed tho)
anyhow.. my point is that you dont get much more routine than that, which is umm bad.
(I actually dont even use my navroutes anymore.. havent for a few months now because it WAS so routine.. no excitement.. and I kinda missed the storm music.. :) )
I don't know how easily it could be implemented, but I like celery's idea of a dangerous meteor shower kind of experience. As it is, the bots are pretty easy to avoid, but you can avoid getting into an ion storm in the first place if you plan your course carefully.
I'd like to see ion storms be more dangerous, rather than removing them.
Double the bots, or give us rapidly-moving or tightly-packed asteroid clusters to fly through. Make us haul 10,000 m to the storm exit through swarms of deadly bots. Increase the ion sprites (are they sprites?) so that it's actually tough to see where we're going. Preferably all of these things thrown together.
If we know we're going to run into this kind of trouble when we try to jump through debris-filled sectors, we'll try harder to avoid them by making slight detours and two jumps instead of one. Isn't that the real purpose of ion storms -- not to annoy, but to give us a sense that we're dealing with 'real' dangers of space travel?
I'd like to see ion storms be more dangerous, rather than removing them.
Double the bots, or give us rapidly-moving or tightly-packed asteroid clusters to fly through. Make us haul 10,000 m to the storm exit through swarms of deadly bots. Increase the ion sprites (are they sprites?) so that it's actually tough to see where we're going. Preferably all of these things thrown together.
If we know we're going to run into this kind of trouble when we try to jump through debris-filled sectors, we'll try harder to avoid them by making slight detours and two jumps instead of one. Isn't that the real purpose of ion storms -- not to annoy, but to give us a sense that we're dealing with 'real' dangers of space travel?
how about a big solar flare goes through ion storms near the sun
Yes.
There's a problem with dense 'roid fields. Check out Pherona E-2 and you'll see what.
[edit]
For those who don't want to go to Pherona themselves: these are screenshots I just took in that sector. One is looking out into empty space, the other is from the same position, just turned around to look at the 'roid field. Note the numbers in the top left corner.
http://mandalor.homelinux.net/vendetta/screenshots/high-fps.png
http://mandalor.homelinux.net/vendetta/screenshots/low-fps.png
[/edit]
[edit]
For those who don't want to go to Pherona themselves: these are screenshots I just took in that sector. One is looking out into empty space, the other is from the same position, just turned around to look at the 'roid field. Note the numbers in the top left corner.
http://mandalor.homelinux.net/vendetta/screenshots/high-fps.png
http://mandalor.homelinux.net/vendetta/screenshots/low-fps.png
[/edit]
I see what you mean. So forget density, or use much simpler asteroid shapes like the ice crystals. I'm sure there's a way around the framerates. Fast-moving ice crystals would be just fine. Maybe fast moving 'ion crystals' even??
I personally would much rather see nebulas.
heheheee....
That said, more *incentive* to actually fight in roid fields would be good. Like if wormholes weren't on the outskirts of systems, but rather in the center of a fairly dense roid field. Beolach, those roids are higher-quality than most roids I see, and take up more CPU time. I think people's clients could probably handle this (/me points to http://images.vendetta-online.com/screenshots/dump0077.jpg ) type of roid better, and it would still be cool to warp in with lots of roids around.
heheheee....
That said, more *incentive* to actually fight in roid fields would be good. Like if wormholes weren't on the outskirts of systems, but rather in the center of a fairly dense roid field. Beolach, those roids are higher-quality than most roids I see, and take up more CPU time. I think people's clients could probably handle this (/me points to http://images.vendetta-online.com/screenshots/dump0077.jpg ) type of roid better, and it would still be cool to warp in with lots of roids around.
True, Harry, those 'roids are the most demanding type of 'roid, but a dense field of any 'roid is going to be more demanding than a sparse field. And you see in my screenshot how I'm below 10fps? That's on a pretty high-end machine: Athlon64 3200+, 2GiB System RAM, nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra 256 MiB Video RAM. Imagine what it'd be on a system closer to the minimum requirments for Vendetta.