Hello,
I have just thought of an other mission type which could be interresting, in the same idea as escort convoy or defend starbase: There are some ressource to mine in the area. The winner is the player with the most of it in the end.
What would it require ?
- Some third team objects. Such as asteroids. (easier to start, as they don’t fight back)
- To tell to loot, I see 2 ways to implement it : either we can’t select the objects during the fleet configuration. We need 3 new orders : Loot (or mine); Protect “loot” (basically, you attack all ennemies trying to loot or mine the object); Retreat, with one cursor to tell how soon the ship should retreat (it is a combination of proportion of store room used, and damage of the ship), the ship leaves the screen, and the material quantity is scored.
The other way would to be able to select the objects on the deployment screen, and create a relation betweem them and the players ship (with orders, the way it is now in the game). Though It might not be in the philosophie of Cliffsky (for example, at present time, it is not possible to select ships of the ennemy) - Some new modules : storage, mining device
Winning conditions :(I know that Cliffsky would rather not add new winning conditions. That’s more things to permanently monitor…)
- The first player to have reach a given quantity of material
- All ship of one team are dead. The player with the most material wins
- All material to ne looted/minied has be take. The player with the most wins.
Different type of challenges can be imagined from that :
- Both player try to take as much as possible
- One player try to take a given quantity. The other tries to stop him.
Now, this idea can be pushed further, with much more coding :
- There is more than asteroids to be looted : it can ships from a third faction. They might fight back, try to escape, by friend with on the player or not (for example in a mission type such as “rescew the crew of the stranded ships”. But it might imply to complicated relations to code, the cliffsky might not want to do. Everyting in the threads related to escort and boarding would apply. Changing the name of the loots to prisonners, cargo, crew, diplomats, secret documents… and fiddle with the relation standing and type of vehicles to loot allows a wield variety of scenario.
- The mining/looting system can be refined : some ships would tow the objects to an other able to process them. That’s one more order : “Tow loot to ship X”. But I think that it is manageable and does not have to many complicated consequences. And that’s some more equipment.
- If “recon scans” where to be implemented, and if it was possible to specifically hunt for one type of equipment (much work to do that…), it would allow to specifically target those haversters, or those leaving with cargo.
- The loot might not actually be the main target of the mission, but some fuel used to power nasty weapons. This one can be pushed further too, with 2 new order type : supply good to X, and distribute good. The ships with “supply good to X” would fetch the processed fuel to from a ship with the order “distribute good” to the ships X.
What do I like in this idea :
- It makes more use of speed for big ships who will want to protect the harvester, or to move themselves close to the loot.
- It mixes some kind of “civil” activity with “military” one on the same battlefield, and adds a new level of strategy.