I'd like Akua's flora to have a bit more colour and look a bit more alien. At the moment its look / theme is too generic for my tastes.
Eh, maybe. But unless the star is having a solar flare or other event, the suit should protect the player. Or be upgradeable to do so. I mean, it's a future space suit, some radiation protection should be built in as a matter of common sense.
Would be of interest to get some additional biome types added for customization, though some would require that renewable resources be looked at more closely (Jungle planet anyone) and liquid mechanics as well (I know ocean planets seem to be in demand from my forum reading). Instead of just rolling more text here lets list some planet biomes (and a couple specialty planet types) off the top of my head that can make life so much more interesting (and diversify the resource types to allow more complex building/survival aspects.): Jungle Planet Water Planet Gas Planet Shattered Planet/Moon Space Crystals (Frozen liquid/gases as asteroids is my drift here) Brown Dwarf (Energy harvesting anyone?) Black Hole (For those times your drunk and flying... not necessary but thought would be interesting) Comets (Think about it, most comets we know of are rich in resource, and heck could increase your risk here too for going after it.) I know there are more types people have mentioned but after studying for hours on end my brain functions are in decline. I would however like to point one thing out before I finish this post, and that is the customization of water/lava levels. I like how it can be done, but a precise numerical value would be even better (we have been toying with the idea of scripting our restarts to mod the files with the tides in RL for giggles). OK enough rambling, have fun!
I would assume at least some biome types would be created automatically via a procedural generation? Such as past a certain latitude/altitude, the generation checks for water presence, and if true, biome becomes snowy. I honestly have no true grasp of how procedural generation works, so just my 2 cents. Also, the planets do not need to be bigger at all (that complaint will go away with more of them). They are big enough as is. I would suggest they be further apart, and with rotation around the star. With size and distance variation, you could randomize (somewhat) their speed. Say, 3 days equals a season (if orbits are non-circular, or axises are tilted) and 4 seasons a year, thus total time for an orbit around their star would be 12 game days. The easiest to see problem that would be caused would be the issue of orbital bases. If a base does not move, (even if it is outside of a gravity well) then you have the potential to have a planet or moon drive into a space station and burn it up on impact. The solution would probably be to add a block to an orbital base which would lock it in orbit of a planet (if built within the gravity well) or a check that runs and prevents/alerts when base cores are placed in the 'line of fire' so to speak.
Terrain generator is capable of a lot more it just hasn't been messed around with because there so busy I would guess, but in the near future I would hope they start thinking about putting trees into the game, and do some work on the biome creation of the map generator so it can create cliffs and caves, tunnels and proper rivers. It needs to be capable of creating distinctly different mountain areas on planets, and some planets with oceans not lakes, also the water, place holder, still needs attention, water is pretty unrealistic in its present form. At the end of the day, the terrain generator, is going to be the one part of the game that will probably need the most attention over the longer term, map detail is very low at the moment and a lot of work is need to be done on this side of the game. All the planets bar the moon, pretty much generate the same thing with different plant and AI models , something that needs attention.
Great way of putting it and fully agree, though the generation is capable of so much more you would have to agree that a fine touch in the beginning of the data points to put into such generation will be important ^_^ I'm glad we have what we have so far, it's been phenomenal to get such a well put together alpha (ok pre-alpha) that it has produced quite a bit of entertainment, thought provoking ideas, and even something more to tinker with for me (a few of us here like to tinker under the hood of things to see what the big red buttons do lol!).
Personally, I can't wait to see what happens when they start to apply terrain generation to the asteroids.
Are they using NURBs for the terrain? I started digging out the back part of the crashed ship and am getting all kinds of problems. random spikes and sheets of terrain shooting out and massive holes in the terrain that I keep falling through. This is the kind of thing you see when you try to get too complex or certain angles without just the right settings when modeling with NURBs.
Probably. The terrain is just a mesh that's deformable at spline points. When you dig or fill the terrain, new points will be added to the terrain generator to refit the terrain mesh. If the deformation is too irregular you can't fit a smooth curve over the spline points so you get spikes or holes.
Forest or Jungle planet with temperate climate to breath without helmet would be a nice addition but can up the difficulty to set it apart from Akua starting planet like adding hostile wildlife that attacks on sight and meat eating plants. And the forest/jungle planet can be the only types of planets to allow you to harvest real wood for a more detailed decoration blocks for bases and CV's.
Earth has many different biomes, I don't see why planets in Empyrion shouldn't be the same way. Sure you'd have your ice planets, etc. but akua should have jungles and ice as well depending on where you are at.
I would love to see many biomes on a planet but to what end. The only reason for the biomes is the distrobution of rare ores. Heat/Temperature have no effect on our space suit Water is not drinkable without a generator. Trees are useless as a resource If its just Eye Candy then One biomes planets are fine.
I think it would be better if there was a time delay when warping so you'd stay in warp for how ever long the distance is that you are going or something similar to this. A bit like in "pulsar lost colony".
Warp shouldn't be instant. especially in MP. In MP if you attack one lone ship you could be instantly assaulted by a faction. There should be some time needed before reinforcements arrive. I might accept short hops like planet to planet in the same system could be instant. but not interstellar.
& I wonder if we'll ever be allowed to actually Drill into the non-Sathium Asteroids to make Bases in them someday? My 1 1/2 cents here: http://empyriononline.com/threads/we-got-fire-ice-planets-how-about-lightning-next.4466/
More variety. More realism within ability. 1. Ice worlds with liquid oceans underneath the ice. (Giant monsters swim in the oceans) 2. Ice worlds with giant canyons/fissures, 5-10 meters across, 100-200 meters deep. 3 Add volcanoes to lava worlds. 4. Add black holes, nebulae, orphaned planets, maybe a deep space shipwreck, worm holes, ect... 4. Planetary environments based on their position in the solar system. Desert planets up close, ice worlds further out. 5. More variation in the rotation of planets to increase/decrease day/night cycle 6. Planetary Weather. This would be huge and would really add to the character and uniqueness of each planet. For example, dust/snow storms, planets where it rains all the time, electrical storms, volcanic eruptions, random meteor showers. Each planet would have its own weather patterns, some more interesting than others. 7. Add travel time between solar systems. Ideally, it would be 1-2 minutes to travel to adjacent systems. and 45-60 minutes to go from one edge of the galaxy to the other. Then if you had a galaxy with say 300 stars it would be a very massive environment. This would allow server admins to make a central PVE zone and have everything else be PVP. The further out you get the harder it is to get back to the PVE zone so the outer edges would be less populated but also more competitive. I think this would appeal to a lot of different players. While traveling between systems the ship could enter a separate, empty play field with warp graphics and the player would be allowed to exit the cockpit and walk around their ship. If they are not back in their seat and you have no other way to overcome the programming challenge just have them die. This could be cool. "Warning... exiting warp... Find a seat in 30 seconds"
Elite Dangerous has a fuel scoop yes. But how would ships made from iron withstand the heat from the surface of a star that will most likely melt your ship and fry you to ash's before even getting halfway to the sun to fuel scoop? To fuel scoop from the surface of a star you will need extreme heat shielding or your ship is going to melt and your going to fry. Not only that you will need radiation protection or your going to fry that way too. Also you will need so way to store the molten plasma to process into fuel once you scooped the surface of a star. Ether way two barriers to overcome is extreme heat and extreme radiation cause you have to be able to touch the surface or be vary near the surface of a star to fuel scoop. Even in Elite Dangerous you got a heat warning that the sun/star is about to melt your ship and turn you into a crispy critter.
Not sure how they would implement a black hole it has to be something that should be respected cause of the sheer power of it's gravity it distorts light around it. And getting close to it should pose a very big threat like stress warnings on your ships hull that the black hole is trying to rip your ship apart while trying to consume you. And if you get too close and get into the event horizon things will look very weird till the gravity kills you and destroys your ship.
