About Massive Environments

Ideas
1

You know about your Gravity Nullifier? The one that lets you orbit suns and wormholes?
Do you know about what it technically does?
If you don’t, let me remind you of it’s description.

"An artificial Lagrangian point generator which nullifies gravitational forces in real time.
A microcontroller array monitors and adjusts the point several hundred times per second
for that extra-smooth ride."

Well, even with it, your ship will move like a bomber. But that’s because it only adjusts the point several hundred times per second, not instantly. So, I thought of a somewhat different mechanic for Massive Environment Movement Speed to put that into work.

Your fighter’s minimum speed caps out at 50% (80% for bombers) of it’s massive speed.
When the ship stays still for a bit, the ship’s Gravity Nullifier is able to nullify the surrounding gravity around your ship more, and can temporarily increase your movement speed slightly beyond it’s massive speed. (110% of ship’s massive speed)

Stay still for about 3 seconds, and your ship will be able to move faster for a second. Staying still for longer does not let your ship move faster for more than 1 second.
(your gravity nullifier range only works for so far, you know?)

An extra thing: Make the Gravity Nullifier upgradable up to 5 times. Each upgrade reduces the nullifying time needed by 0.4 seconds.
(Before upgrade: stay still for 3 seconds, move faster for 1 second.
After upgrade: stay still for 1 second, move faster for 1 second.)

Maneuvering jets will increase your ship’s minimum speed cap by 6% per jet (so your fighter constantly moves at 110% massive speed, and your bomber at 140% massive speed, throughout the mission. The gravity nullifier doesn’t even need to work.)

A slight Alternative: Instead of a instant drop back to 50% from 100%, have it decrease gradually from 100% to 50%. In this case, increase the speed boost to work for 3 seconds, so the gradual reduction doesn’t affect too quickly. Can probably reuse Absolver Charging code for this way, too.

Please let me know what you think of these. Thank you.

Writer’s note: I wanted to make the massive environments have more attention to detail, as the Gravity Nullifier is supposed to work only several hundred times per second, so it has to nullify the surrounding gravity before the ship can actually move at it’s current speed, because it can’t nullify instantly.

12 Likes
2

This looks cool, I’ve already prepared my keys

1 Like
3

EDIT: this comment was added to the post instead. check “writer’s note”

1 Like
4

This mechanic is too complex to get across to the player clearly. Also, I get the feeling that dynamically modifying the spacecraft’s speed like you suggest would result in poor control, especially when controlling by mouse. You’d be moving at one speed and then suddenly the speed would drop (or the opposite, depending on how long you’ve been standing still).

8 Likes
5

Maybe a tamer version of it would work? Someway of making some sense to the “several hundred times per second”?

6

The far easier option would be to remove that phrase altogether :wink:

7 Likes
7

It wouldn’t be that confusing. As a new player, you’d easily get it after a few tries. Key words here are trial and error. Besides, it’s just one mechanic. There’s games that send you in purely blind despite being extremely comples (examples being COVID: The Outbreak and even Minecraft though it’s not that complex but eh), so I don’t see a reason on why this feature can’t be implemented other than somewhat poor control on mouse but it’s not that bad. Besides if this is implemented, new players will feel that the game actually has more than meets the eye leaving a much more positive impression.

In short, new players won’t face it very difficult to adapt to this change and in fact can make the experience slightly better. I don’t see a reason to not implement this.

3 Likes
8

but can it be in tutorial missions?

9

Is the tutorial mission in a Massive environment?

10

it can be, isn’t it?

11

Hol’ up, something ain’t right.

12

Yes, it exists.

2 Likes
13

3 KD

Nice.

14

No, it can’t be in a massive environment.

15

Hm. I have a way to make the massive mechanic more obvious to new players:
Perhaps instead of a temporary speed boost, it can create a “gravity bubble” in an area around your ship, where it can reduce gravity as long as you stay in it’s area? But if you move out of the bubble, the bubble will pop, and you go back to being 50% of max speed again.

To reform the bubble, stay still, and it grows until a specific size. If you move at all during the forming, it will stay as that size until it’s popped again.

The bubble will just look like a translucent circle. Enough to blend in with the background. No need for any crazy effects.

Or you can make it look like those gravity fields in Angry Birds Space/Star Wars

9 Likes
16

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.