Living space ship game
this would be nothing like vega conflict (hopefully no sorry unity isn't working right come back later messages)
the core of the game is you start out with a living ship, you only get 2-5 ships.it avoids many issues plaguing the other kixeye games. as opposed to new hulls every few months and retrofits and things like that. the hulls would be highly upgradeable. essentially start with a scout ship, and work your way up into any ship you want and beyond, with never changing hulls. meaning the hull is improved into a better hull. can add weapon slots, specials, armor, and add as many as you want with the limiting factor being capacity. having 50 weapons firing once doing 5 damage, is the same as 1 weapon with 50 salvos doing 250 damage.
and equipment is built, scavenged and looted. which you refit the ship to put on it. so would always have a ship being refitted.
as opposed to vega conflict and battle pirates. you don't have a base, you wander around, can dock at space stations, there can be player/alliance bases, can dock at planets. this would be more a FPS as opposed to strategy. seeing you use 1 ship at a time, this will draw in different player styles and types. for example traders, more FPS type players, while keeping the strategy player base, sure some RPG and fantasy players.
So what you do is have a dozen or so minerals, the harder to get, the more they cost. for example a trader of a high level and fighter of a high level wont want to go out and mine low level junk. they will get low end players to do trivial tasks. the game would have coins in it obviously, for repairs, speeding things up. as opposed to the other games where the people 30-50 levels above you farm you, they would seek your help to further there ambitions, folding you into there groups more as opposed to annihilating you. what would happen is the whales would not want to have whale only alliances, because that means they need to do the junk jobs. and for example if you make weapons in mass quantity to make money, if you have no one to buy them, what good is your weapons?
weapon design and the equipment should be like the ships, for example you take a regular missile launcher, change out the warhead to have uranium damage, switch out the electronics so that it seeks targets better. upgrade costs would go exponentially higher per upgrade. so for example when you upgrade capacity to take your 50 ton ship to 60 tons may cost 5k resources, to go from 60-70 tons might cost 50k, from 70 to 80 tons might cost 500k resources. so making a 15k capacity ship might take a few years and trillions of resources. one thing would be at a certain point keep the low end resources constant and upgrade the higher end resource cost.
capacity and cargo would be one in the same, its total ship tonnage whether cargo or equipment doesn't matter.
what this means is you can have a super battle ship, can have a carrier, can have a stealth ship (sub), can have a fast attack boat. each area alliances would carve up, have the asteroid belts were new players can hide and mine in, where density is to thick for big ships to follow. allow for cloaking bases, so you get pirates, and all sorts of people.
you could import many ideas possible even code from other games, or the ideas. trading would play a much larger part in the game. for example the new players would be able to get resources in the interior of asteroid belts not accessible to big ships, so a larger player may have 5 large ships and be unable to get them resources, but still need them. that is where alliances come in handy. players can make highly advanced low tonnage ships (sea wolves type ships or predator subs)
having highly specialized equipment you could have light weight equipment at very high levels, it would cost a lot, they may spend a billion resources per weapon. it would not be cheap or free. and tons of time for that ship in dock. so it wouldn't be the more resources the bigger the size, you could keep the same size and the efforts be spent making things more efficient. its cheaper and easier to make your ship bigger, but condensed your ship is harder to hit, likely faster. so benefits to small ships also that are a high level.
weapon accuracy would be determined by electronics level, speed of target and size of target. so 5 speed and 100 size is 100% hit rate for example if its 10 speed at 100 size, the rate may fall to 25% if your electronics suck. if the ship is 15 speed and 100 tons, your accuracy might only be .1%. on the other hand if its 10 speed and 1k tons your accuracy with that same weapon might be 80%. so accuracy would be based off your electronics, the enemies tonnage and speed. electronics would only go so far, for example if your launcher was unable to fire longer range missiles, nothing a electronics package can do about that.
as opposed to battle pirates, the specials would be more like tactical mods, seeing the specials are applied right on the weapons and armor.
when a ship is destroyed it regenerates itself at a base once it limps back home.
each ship would have thousands of upgrades (speed, turning, defense against certain weapons and specials, capacity, weapon slot additions, same with armor, tact mods, stealth, shield mods) and pretty much have no caps. you would only be able to have 1 ship repairing and refitting/upgrading at a time.
With this systems the players are in a real alliance, where if a base is destroyed that could mean 10-50 of your members are looted. it ties people together more, has ground to defend and protect. you have alliances which are friendly and let others trade, other closed off military alliances, some mercenaries, some dictators, all different groups would form based off what the players wanted to do in them groups. some alliances may be nomadic and have no bases, use planets and other alliances bases, basically would be a functioning system with a real economy and diplomatic relations. but in the end it keeps the kixeye style of game with some of the best pieces of all its game, made into something new and different.
Like!!
Extremely impressed with the idea
Fire crystals, they are use to make ships resistant to fire, and deal fire out (in guns and warheads), can be upgraded in the engine to shoot out a fire trial, which will burn perusing enemy ships. They are mined in very dense asteroid fields, in very close proximity to a star. Toss in a few fire beast monsters. provides very minor help when flying into suns.
Cloaking crystals, They appear at the far end of systems in comets. They are used to cloak your ship, and the more you upgrade, the higher level of a cloak you have. So level one crystals on your armor might only make you visible, if a person is within 1/4 the map away.
Ice Crystals, are in farther out asteroid fields (same as the fire crystals) Provides a little help when flying into a star.
Corrosive crystals, are in the intermediate asteroid fields (same as the fire crystals)
Explosive crystals, They are found in monsters, they are for increasing engines, weapons and warheads.
High temperature crystals, They are needed in the engine walls, as the engine upgrades, also used in armor, to allow ships fly into stars, killing the monsters that contain them. (star are like onions the deeper in you go the more damage you take. These crystals slow the process (they do not stop it) in the base stock ship you start with.. the ship would last 30-40 seconds in the outermost layer of a star, upgraded armor will not make it much more effective, a matter of seconds, not a major amount. Also used when upgrading weapons barrels. A star has 10 layers, each layer 50% hotter than the last (100 seconds in layer 1, means 75 seconds in layer 2. layer 3, 56.25, layer 4, 42.18, layer 5, 31.6 and so on) point being by the time you hit the core in layer 10 your dead.
Dense Crystals, they are for strengthening the hull, strengthening armor, the best defense against explosive crystal weaponry. They are found in large monsters.
Energy Crystals, they are mined on planets, asteroids in all parts of space, and in all monster types. they keep ships, and buildings running. along with use in energy weapons, stealth ships reactors, and energy resistant armor.
Core Crystals, they are at the center of stars, they are the ultimate upgrade component for engines. To get to a core requires a heavy amount of upgrades of High temperature crystals. These core crystals can go for a mountain of money, they are used in very high end upgrades from planet defenses to advanced weapon systems. They can not be used in armor.
AI crystals, they are the brains for advanced weapon systems, They come off of certain monsters, which generally hide in hard to reach areas, these crystals help spot cloaking crystal lined ships and monsters.
Flying into a sun will take 2 minutes to get to the core, a few seconds to load the ship, than return so about 4-5 minutes. It requires a substantially upgraded ship to fly into a sun, the deeper in the core you go, the bigger and more monsters there are. If you get in a fight, you may die really quick when an enemy is taking down hull, along with the temperature.
Mining corrosive, energy, fire and ice crystals these are the lowest crystals, its for newbs, now that doesn't mean bigger players don't need them, but when you get a core crystal, and its worth 500k of an ice crystal, which one do you think they will go after? When 1 crystal is worth more than tens of thousands and more, its not a hard choice for players, for what they are going to go after.
Cloaking crystals, explosive crystals, Ai crystals, Dense crystals, High temperature crystals, these are the mid level crystals, where they would only be worth a few thousand of the low end crystals.
What this achieves is who is going to rob the newbs? when you casually killing a monster getting 2 mid level crystals, maybe 50 low level crystals.. why would you waste time killing newbs? going to get there 50 ice crystals? which may be worth 1% of a important crystal? The motivation to rob them is gone. you will want to hit the mid level player with 50 mid level crystals on board, which may be the equivalent of hitting several thousand newbs. The motivation to hit newbs isn't there, when they off load a few thousand low end crystals a day at the main planet, which you can use to upgrade weapons, armor resistance to certain attacks.
The established groups and alliances will take the interior areas near the star. The less organized and pirates, will take the outer area, where it is less organized, further from the star, the environment better suits the less organized, cloaking crystals, energy crystals and ice crystals so that they can evade enemies.
Each player doesn't own a planet, each sector should have 4-5 planets, using the battle pirates world map, so instead of 40-50 bases around a drac base, you have 2 planets in the fire zone, 2 in the moderate and 1 in the ice. (fire zone would be where the mining platforms are) The Drac base would be a star, you click enter on it, and start in a normal space zone (taking no damage), once you move in you start taking damage, with no way to repair armor in the star.
Armor Types, you have the basic using metal and Dense crystals which improve your armor amount. You than have modifiers to the armor like fire armor, ice armor, corrosive armor, energy armor, cloak armor. In order to stack multiple armor types you need to upgrade the primary armor, every 5 levels you can add another armor type, so at level 25 standard armor can have all 5 types of armor on.
Each upgrade costs more and more, so the first 10 levels may cost low level crystals, beyond that would require more and more mid level crystals.
So if you wanted Fire armor, lets say your ship has 100 armor points.
Level 1 armor would require 1 piece of metal, and 1 fire crystal per armor point (2% fire resistance)
Level 2 armor would require 2 piece of metal, and 5 fire crystal per armor point (4% fire resistance)
Level 3 armor would require 3 piece of metal, and 10 fire crystal per armor point (6% fire resistance)
Level 4 armor would require 4 piece of metal, and 20 fire crystal per armor point (8% fire resistance)
Level 5 armor would require 5 piece of metal, and 40 fire crystal per armor point (10% fire resistance)
Level 6 armor would require 6 piece of metal, and 80 fire crystal per armor point (12% fire resistance)
Level 7 armor would require 7 piece of metal, and 160 fire crystal per armor point (14% fire resistance)
Level 8 armor would require 8 piece of metal, and 320 fire crystal per armor point (16% fire resistance)
Level 9 armor would require 9 piece of metal, and 640 fire crystal per armor point (18% fire resistance)
Level 10 armor would require 10 piece of metal, and 1,280 fire crystal, 1 High Temperature crystal per armor point (20% fire resistance)
Level 11 armor would require 11 piece of metal, and 2,560 fire crystal, 5 High Temperature crystal per armor point (22% fire resistance)
Level 12 armor would require 12 piece of metal, and 5,120 fire crystal, 10 High Temperature crystal per armor point (24% fire resistance)
Once you put resistance armor on it makes upgrading your normal armor much more difficult, because you need all the pieces for your standard armor, and for the resistance armor, in order to upgrade your armor.
Really loving the concept here!
Just don't nerf if like your doing Vega....