Street's List of Probably Bad Ideas

[StreetCaptain]

I've got tons of half-baked ideas, and I'm gonna post them here so people can discuss how bad they are or something. If the thread doesn't get deleted, I'll probably post new ideas to this thread as well.

So here goes:

- Slipspace travel, like in the Halo universe. Basically quicker FTL or something, I dunno how it would be balanced, but it's just an idea.

- The ability to Warp through unexplored space, or at the very least be able to scan long-distance pathways between systems.

- Some sort of planet/starkiller weapon (EXTERMINATUS). It should be super expensive to use, take hours/days to charge each use, and should give off a massive power signature while charging that can be detected across the galaxy.

- The ability to properly access and modify the mission orders of ships in other systems/sectors

- Basic and Advanced options for the Designer (Making ships is seriously hard, man)

- More superstructures, like Dyson spheres and man-made planets, and the ability to create superstructures.

- The ability to increase the amount of Officers a planet can produce. Only by like, 2 or 3, but having only 1 officer from a planet with a population of over 10k is kinda silly

- Automated construction of colonies/cities. Maybe you can save a layout, and have a big ol' ship carry materials and people, and tell an officer to build a colony.

- Dean's idea for the Q of tools affecting the output Q of certain processes

[StreetCaptain]

New Idea:

- The ability to have variations of one 'class' of ship that can be refitted into each other

[AnrDaemon]

"This like that" is not telling anybody anything. Please actually explain what you mean/how your envisioned feature would work.

---

New Idea:

- The ability to have variations of one 'class' of ship that can be refitted into each other

Already possible or planned to be possible to reallocate internal space of a ship. (Calling @Deantwo )

---

I've got tons of half-baked ideas

Please bake them first, and post a separate topic for each idea.

- The ability to Warp through unexplored space, or at the very least be able to scan long-distance pathways between systems.

There's no blocking or anything to stop you from doing that.
What's the problem?

- Some sort of planet/starkiller weapon (EXTERMINATUS).

Not going to happen.
And see previous topics on "expensive".

- The ability to properly access and modify the mission orders of ships in other systems/sectors

Load them to your ship, modify and send back.

- Basic and Advanced options for the Designer (Making ships is seriously hard, man)

Complain to Haxus, he got this idea of "full 3d designer" hard into his head.

- More superstructures, like Dyson spheres and man-made planets, and the ability to create superstructures.

Highly questionable. Why? What gameplay purpose they would serve?

- The ability to increase the amount of Officers a planet can produce.

No. If you need more officers - go colonize more planets.

- Automated construction of colonies/cities. Maybe you can save a layout, and have a big ol' ship carry materials and people, and tell an officer to build a colony.

Pre-planned cities were suggested already, but largely got shot into the head with advent of new style buildings. You can literally build an entire city out of 3-4 buildings and call it a day.
Which does not make any sense, not entertaining at all, and leaves more challenges to the designer, than serves any gameplay purposes.

[StreetCaptain]

"This like that" is not telling anybody anything. Please actually explain what you mean/how your envisioned feature would work.

---

New Idea:

- The ability to have variations of one 'class' of ship that can be refitted into each other

Already possible or planned to be possible to reallocate internal space of a ship. (Calling @Deantwo )

What I said is not currently possible. What I am asking for is a way to change the amount of stations of berths inside a ship, or possibly even completely adding, removing, or otherwise changing rooms in the existing internal geometry. 

For example, you like the chassis of a ship you made. So, you have some resource-gathering focused variants, as well as some exploration or combat variants. Same exterior hull, but different station, berths, and maybe even rooms. Well, let's say you have two dozen science ships, but want to change them into your more combat-focused ship? Right now, you cannot do this, since refits only alter the theoretical volume inside the ship allocated to different modules.

[AnrDaemon]

Ships in SoH are resource, not a luxury.
Get used to it.

[StreetCaptain]

Please bake them first, and post a separate topic for each idea.

I thought forums were a place to discuss things. I posted them all here because I'd rather not spam the forum with a dozen different threads, when all my ideas could easily be discussed in one place.

There's no blocking or anything to stop you from doing that.
What's the problem?

The problem is, having to stay logged on during travel makes what should be an eight hour journey into one that takes multiple days. If I had the path already 'explored', my AI officer could do it on their own anyways, so it should make no difference.

Not going to happen.
And see previous topics on "expensive".

And why exactly not? With high material and labor costs to build (therefore making it something you would have to dedicate most of your empire/alliance towards for days), with perhaps even a possible limit on how many can exist at one time, it would be an extremely useful bargaining chip when it comes to war and diplomacy. The looming threat of a massive super-weapon is also a great motivator for alliances to come together, and would likely be the spawn of many great stories.

Load them to your ship, modify and send back.

I'm saying there should be an easier way to do this.

Highly questionable. Why? What gameplay purpose they would serve?

A Dyson sphere would theoretically be able to collect massive amount of energy, and send that energy to any city within the system (or neighboring systems, or even sectors) as long as it is set up to do so.
An artificial planet would allow you to generate another world in a system. Specifically, it would allow you to create a habitable planet in a lucrative system that otherwise would not have one.
Also, things can be cool for the sake of being cool. Not everything has to serve an immediate gameplay purpose.

Ships in SoH are resource, not a luxury.
Get used to it.

And as a resource, I should be able to modify them depending on their purpose, instead of having to buy/build another damn ship for combat, when I have a otherwise perfectly good one sitting around.


As a side note, your elitism is noted. Rarely have you actually tried to discuss a single topic, instead instantly shooting them down with a 'get fucked' attitude. You aren't being critical, you're just being an ass.

[Deantwo]

I've got tons of half-baked ideas, and I'm gonna post them here so people can discuss how bad they are or something. If the thread doesn't get deleted, I'll probably post new ideas to this thread as well.

It is always recommended to make a thread for each topic. In its current form this thread is more about the fact that you have a ton of half-baked ideas than the ideas themselves. It is easier to discuss ideas when they have their own thread, and it leads to fewer misunderstandings and off-topic discussion like this.

- Slipspace travel, like in the Halo universe. Basically quicker FTL or something, I dunno how it would be balanced, but it's just an idea.

More FTL options were mentioned by Haxus a year ago or so, so he has something planned in this regard already.

- The ability to Warp through unexplored space, or at the very least be able to scan long-distance pathways between systems.

This is already possible while you are online on the ship. And given discussion we has on Discord and in-game I know you don't mean that. What you are asking for is for officered ships to fly through unexplored space without an avatar onboard.

As it was explained in-game by Haxus himself the other day. This won't happen, ever.
If officers/AI can travel through unexplored space without an online avatar onboard, all empires with make countless ships just exploring and generating countless systems for no reason.

Imagine an one-man empire building a thousand ships and send them all on automatic exploration missions throughout the whole universe. Now imagine a thousand one-man empires doing it. The servers would litterally catch fire.

As a reference, Haxus has said in the past that an officer cause the same amount of server load as a player.

- Some sort of planet/starkiller weapon (EXTERMINATUS). It should be super expensive to use, take hours/days to charge each use, and should give off a massive power signature while charging that can be detected across the galaxy.

Destroying worlds or even whole solar systems is a bad idea. I mean one thing is having to worry about being invaded at any time by a fleet of massive ships that you can do nothing but throw sticks and stones at, but having an enemy that can just blow you out of the game in one bit with no work on their part is just boring and stupid.

Also in a game with infinite resources, nothing is expensive. The only factor is time and amount of industry you have the will to build. The biggest ships can take around 30 days (or more?) to construct, if a planet/star-killer was to be expensive it would have to take several months of ACTIVE work to construct.

- The ability to properly access and modify the mission orders of ships in other systems/sectors

This isn't too bad of an idea, but low priority since we do have a method of doing it already.
We could have a mission creation editor that doesn't require you to be on a ship, but a lot of mission orders require that you are on board the ships, such as interacting with sensor contacts, specifying celestial bodies, interstellar travel destinations, and so on. So it wouldn't be as useful as being on the ship anyway.

- Basic and Advanced options for the Designer (Making ships is seriously hard, man)

Been suggested before many time. Haxus will be adding more easy to use options as the designer is expanded on.

- More superstructures, like Dyson spheres and man-made planets, and the ability to create superstructures.

I did suggest O'Neill Cylinders a while back, and others have suggested everything else many times over. Maybe some day.

But as Anr mentioned, there isn't much purpose to them, apart from the awe.

- The ability to increase the amount of Officers a planet can produce. Only by like, 2 or 3, but having only 1 officer from a planet with a population of over 10k is kinda silly

As already mentioned above, officers are expensive server resource-wise. Also limiting it to size of your empire is a fine way to do it. You have to maintain that empire in order to keep the officers, and enemies can do real damage to your fleet capability by capturing your worlds.

That said, Haxus was toying with the idea of changing the this a couple years back, but no good ideas have been made on how to limit it that is better than the current.

By the way, as far as I know you can get both a fleet and a company officer from the same habitable world.

- Automated construction of colonies/cities. Maybe you can save a layout, and have a big ol' ship carry materials and people, and tell an officer to build a colony.

Sounds like it would take away most of the current gameplay. Until there is something else to do in the game, I don't see the reason for this. You can always just ally yourself with a player that likes to build cities.

- Dean's idea for the Q of tools affecting the output Q of certain processes

I don't feel the need to say anything about this.
Link: Upgrading the Q of resources, #7

- The ability to have variations of one 'class' of ship that can be refitted into each other

I doubt this is worth the trouble. You can't turn one ship into another ship, simple as that. Doing so would require the two blueprints to be almost identical, or way too many checks would have to be made to check if they are identical enough.

It is much simpler for you to just make a new spacecraft and store the old one in a hangar.

Alliteratively you can design your spacecraft correctly the first time, included all the needed berths, consoles stations, rooms, and whatever else. Then you can use the existing refit features to change the volume allocation.

[StreetCaptain]

This is already possible while you are online on the ship. And given discussion we has on Discord and in-game I know you don't mean that. What you are asking for is for officered ships to fly through unexplored space without an avatar onboard.

As it was explained in-game by Haxus himself the other day. This won't happen, ever.
If officers/AI can travel through unexplored space without an online avatar onboard, all empires with make countless ships just exploring and generating countless systems for no reason.

Imagine an one-man empire building a thousand ships and send them all on automatic exploration missions throughout the whole universe. Now imagine a thousand one-man empires doing it. The servers would litterally catch fire.

As a reference, Haxus has said in the past that an officer cause the same amount of server load as a player.

I mean, if an empire has so many habitable worlds that they can have that many officers, they probably aren't a one-man empire and likely have enough players that they could do this with the way unexplored space already works.

That aside, I'm not even asking for automated exploration here. I'm just asking for the ability to not have to be logged in. As far as I'm aware, AI cannot take the Officer berth, unless it's a demiavatar. So, what if a ship just has to have an avatar in the Captain berth, with the last known location being on the ship? I'm not even asking for a ship in warp to 'explore' every system it passes, I just want to have an eight hour warp take eight hours, not weeks.

Destroying worlds or even whole solar systems is a bad idea. I mean one thing is having to worry about being invaded at any time by a fleet of massive ships that you can do nothing but throw sticks and stones at, but having an enemy that can just blow you out of the game in one bit with no work on their part is just boring and stupid.

Also in a game with infinite resources, nothing is expensive. The only factor is time and amount of industry you have the will to build. The biggest ships can take around 30 days (or more?) to construct, if a planet/star-killer was to be expensive it would have to take several months of ACTIVE work to construct.

That's exactly what I'm saying. It should be a thing that an entire multi-empire alliance would have to dedicate weeks, even months towards. It should require so much time and resources to produce that it can't be mass-produced, and even then, there should be a limit on how many can be built in each galaxy. At this exact moment, I don't know how exactly this would be done, but that's a forum is for - discussion. I'm looking for people to ask questions and provide insight.

- The ability to properly access and modify the mission orders of ships in other systems/sectors

This isn't too bad of an idea, but low priority since we do have a method of doing it already.
We could have a mission creation editor that doesn't require you to be on a ship, but a lot of mission orders require that you are on board the ships, such as interacting with sensor contacts, specifying celestial bodies, interstellar travel destinations, and so on. So it wouldn't be as useful as being on the ship anyway.

My main problem with how it currently works is, when you're on the ship, and you add an order to go to another system, any following orbit/harvest/etc. orders will list planets from that system, instead of the one you - and the ship - are currently in. If you add orders over comms, any location-based missions can only designate locations within the system you are currently in, regardless of where the ship is, or is going.

By the way, as far as I know you can get both a fleet and a company officer from the same habitable world.

Last week I tried to load an officer onto a company ship while my Fleet officer was off doing harvester missions. In response, I got a message from the terminal saying the officer from this planet had already been deployed.
Otherwise, I now see the issues with this idea, and I mostly agree.

I did suggest O'Neill Cylinders a while back, and others have suggested everything else many times over. Maybe some day.

But as Anr mentioned, there isn't much purpose to them, apart from the awe.

A Dyson sphere would give you the ability to build one power-generating station, and link it to numerous receivers in the system/sector/whatever the best range would be. While the Dyson sphere itself would be expensive (both resource-wise, and time-wise) to produce, the receiving stations would work similar to airports, but they draw power from the Dyson sphere. This would mean you could just plop one down at a new colony, and it would give power to the colony without having a worker running some form of generator at said colony.



An artificial world would also take lots of work to build, and would basically allow you to put a habitable world in a system that did not originally have one. When building one, whatever player 'places' it should be able to set the planet's diameter (with limits), and would require use of a Genesis Device to populate the world with plants and animals.

It should be able to produce renewable resources, like food, plant fiber, logs etc. at a comparable Q to that of the average used in construction of the planet. Other resources like Ore, Oil, Natural Gas, etc. should not be available on the planet unless it was generated by the game (like a ringworld) instead of created by a player, as a pre-existing artificial planet could have been around long enough for these materials to become apparent.

Artificial planets would also be easily identifiable from certain characteristics. A few ideas would be perhaps a soccer-ball like shape (a 'sphere' made from connected hexagonal plates), potentially meaning the artificial planet is hollow (Maybe with a stargate inside?), or perhaps just massive metal cones periodically spaced around the planet.