Ideas for Quests and Items
 

While making my mod, I kept coming up for ideas that I thought would make fun items and quests. I thought it would be interesting for everyone to share their ideas, and maybe future modmakers - or the game developers - might create some of them in the future!

Here are a few I thought of. Having looked at the guidelines, I think they are all possible.

- "Force Field" - a system item that adds to shield strength, but also acts as a short-short-range weapon

- "Cloak sensor" - grants hypervision (you can see cloaked ships in combat)

- "Blink Thrusters" - grant short-range space folding like Zorg fighters

- "Scavenger hunt" - a quest where one item takes you to another planet, in exchange for an item that takes you to yet another planet... etc.

- "Puzzle" - a quest where you need to bring a number of items together at the same time, perhaps to the same place. Perhaps you could assemble these into a new special ship or something.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

Weapon ideas:
- "Mine Launcher" - slow moving projectiles with long life, but detonate large, perhaps on proximity?

- "Fractal Gun" - point defense - that uses three stages of projectile, each splitting in two or three (branching out)

- "Chain Lightning Gun" - using three stages - each stage / impact produces two weaker lightning beams that use the "homing" flag to find other targets

- "Flak Cannon" - produces large, slow, short range projectile clouds that block beams and missiles before being destroyed

- "Scanning Beam" - In Star Trek, the Federation scanned for cloaked vessels using some sort of energy grid. Perhaps some sort of wide angle beam, super fast, that does almost no damage - but blankets the area in front and reveals cloaked ships by the impact effects. Probably would also knock out any missiles.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

Some kind of semi organic technology wich takes over ships (planets?) and has to be stopped has alway floating around in my mind. Of course that means a second ship model for EVERY implemented ship.

If i find the time, perhaps.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

I was thinking it would be cool to make a game alteration where all of your ally ships become boardable hulks when they are destroyed and when you board them you retrieve the ship and all of its items in critical condition. The explantation for this would be that your captain is some sort of godly mechanic, capable of repairing anything. The reason for the mod would be so that you can enter riskier fights without having to be concerned about losing points for lost allys. It would open up battle to a completely new kind of combat strategy. The only problem is you probably can't make the reward for boarding the ship dependent on the ship and its components.

Another mod (though probably a pain in the arse to create) would be to give every single ship in the game (kawangi etc) the possibility of being a ship that, once destroyed, becomes a boardable hulk and can be retrieved as a new ally ship. Sure, the balance of the game might be thrown off a little on occassion but this game was never about balance anyway.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

"Structural integrity field" - gives ram-reinforcement capability to hulls (I forget what the FLAG name is for this)

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

"Replicators" - a ship with a fighter bay that produces itself! If done reasonbly slowly, this could represent a nanobot replicator-type vessel (like on Stargate), or a larger vessel that can hold a "gate" open for backup vessels. Could easily get out of hand or crash the game, I imagine...

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

What if you had a quest where if you found all the small ships on the map, you could form a larger ship not unlike transformers or a million other cartoons/anime? Don't know if that's even possible.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

well, you could set variables in quests that give "component" ships to the player... and a quest that looks to see you have all the user variables set that are necessary (e.g., "head=true", "leftarm=true", "rightarm=true" etc) and gives a new ship when all are together...

But I don't think there is a quest command to REMOVE an existing ship from a player fleet, which would be necessary. i'm sure there's a way, but one of the game developers would have to share that.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

Sounds like it's almost possible. If you find out it's possible, let me know, please. Thanks.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

An "upgrade station". first, it requires a quest item - a key or something for trade. Second - it will look for items that you have and swap one for the next, better item.

For example, if you have the "hyperfilter array", it will take that away and give you the "signature projector". Or a beam type weapon, or a projectile weapon, or the repair systems, or the sensor systems.

With random quests with the same KEY, you could make it random which technology gets upgraded.

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

Couple new ideas.

1. When I'm playing, especially a large map, I come across many alien fleets that I cannot befriend or beat down at the time. I generally write down the name of the planet, aliens and approx number/size of ships. Otherwise, I have to try and remember all these things or return to those planets later on, possibly wasting time.
Can a mod be made so when you click to view a planet, it will show the radar screen and alien names? Or something to that affect. This would make things sooo much easier. You can view items on explored planets, why not alien fleets on planets you've been to.

2. Some may not agree with this next one, but you don't have to use it if you don't like it.
Quite often, I have a weak ship with me who can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help. YOu cannot always get these ship to retreat quickly enough. Other times, I don't even want another ship with me anymore, but don't want to get them killed and still want the points for them at the end of the game. So...
Would it be possible to make some sort of 'docking bay' at Epsilon or some random planet; whatever. This would allow you to 'drop-off' ships who join you during your game. Then you could just pick them up when you had better items, needed more cargo space, or wanted to end the game.

Whoever made it this far, thank you for having the patience to read it all. :-)

Re: Ideas for Quests and Items
 

For that matter, a "loot dropoff" at homebase... if you fill your hold, you can leave loot/tech/items at Hope or wherever, and anything there you get credit for at the end of the game... it makes sense.