Good Morning Empyrion Galactic Survival players. Long time player, first time forum member. As the title suggests, I want to see if the community is interested in getting Race Track POI's placed into the game by the developers/players? I've seen a few players developing their own tracks (not many) but iam sure I can't be alone in wanting to race (Mario Kart style). I think a multi player server with these POI would be quite cool and provide a new aspect to the game. I mean we all love grinding/building and showing the zirax no mercy (As we bring the walls of their collectives empire down around them!!). but sometimes you want a can of veg, a sunset and to leisurely drive around testing your HV while killing innocent creatures. What better way to test your HV creations than on a race track against each other (of course Weapons and Shields are allowed). What does the community think? Yay or Nay?
It's not ridiculous for an SV race track in a specific civilian-controlled system. An HV-based one would be more difficult since terrain obstructions would get in the way. Making these tracks functional on the other hand would be much harder and would probably require a dedicated scenario. I'd guess it would need to use the PDA system set with triggers into rings, gates or marker POIs that flag when a player passes through them in order (no dialogue). But racing against NPCs would be impossible. It would be easier as a single POI, but then you run into size constraints. Not so much in class size but in the size of the physical POI. Too big of a POI has generation issues.
That's a fair point. I didn't consider that aspect in respect of the POI/NPC side or the potential size the POI would need to be. To be honest I was thinking more along the lines of a structure for a multiplayer server. As the fun would be racing and fighting other players along the track. Good points.
I'd been thinking recently about running a race, so I'll dump some of my thoughts here. Most types of racing will be at speeds that can't be contained in a single BP. So I've been playing around with BPs that are modules which are used to define the course. Posts, rings, curves, ramps, etc. Emissive textures are a must in space or night. Lights and flares cut out too quickly for a racer to see at a distance. One race I want to do that will fit in a single BP is a hover bike dirt track similar to Super Off Road. Will probably try one with gattlings allowed. Get extra use of the track by having multiple heats or qualifiers. Have some garages handy so racers can repair and tune builds in between rounds. Clear rules are required. What structure type, cpu tier, max thruster size or count, max amount of fuel, max generators, min or max weight, etc. This can help define the character of the race and change the balance between engineering skill and driver skill. Races can be quite different if fixed weapons or turrets are allowed. You can even have different rules to create different classes of vehicles. This is particularly useful for team races. I loved doing cat and mouse racing in Project Gotham Racing. Each team had a mouse that was restricted to a lightweight and slower vehicle that is the mouse. First mouse across the finish line wins. Second team member is a cat that can have faster and heavier vehicles. Cats don't count for crossing the finish line, but they can hunt other racers to inhibit their progress or run interference for their mouse to protect them from other cats. I haven't found a good way yet to automatically track laps and checkpoints. I feel like a mod should be able to help with this, but dont have a solid lead yet. If only the light sensor could trigger an event with the IEntity that broke the beam. From there I could update a leaderboard, warn racers if they missed a checkpoint, and update screens in the racer's vessel with their standing. Man, this could be a lot of fun. It's the kind of thing that can inspire shipbuilders and provide competitive play with minimal resources on the line.
To address the actual question, I dont think the developers should make a racetrack POI. They have plenty on their plate. This seems more like a task for the community the take on. I'll be sure to post my BPs to the workshop if they turn out to be fun.
