So anyway I decided to make a topic about planetary missions because there’s a lot of potential there, in my opinion.Yes, the weapons are being balanced, new wave mechanics are being added, I’m not blind. So anyway, we have these planet types:
- Alien Worlds
- Terran Planets
- Gas Giants
- Artificial Satellites
- Barren Rock
- Inferno
Now, of course each of these types should have their own mission styles. And so:
Now, the abomination that you see below this text is the diagram that shows the different types of missions available on a terran planet/alien world. Of course, I’m assuming that Alien Worlds are recolored Terran Planets, with a different colored atmosphere and ocean, but I’ll have to know iA’s thought process on developing those planet types.
So anyway, methinks that first you need a Heat Shield to make an entry into the planet and access missions from there. In fact, I think Heat Shields should have 3 levels, that goes something like this:
Level 1: Enter orbit around Hot Planets
Level 2: Enter atmospheres of normal planets and orbit around stars.
Level 3: Enter atmospheres of Hot Planets.
Of course, changing the UI costs keys too, so we shouldn’t devise more ways for people to spend keys. Anyway, yeah, first you have to play an Atmospheric Reentry mission to get in the planet. About clouds, they probably could obstruct vision in some areas which would be a cool mechanic.
From this point, you have two ways of approaching things:
- Fly missions over the planet, basically, you move parallel to the surface.
- Fly missions through the planet, which means that you move, well, through the planet.
By flying missions over the planet, you have the surface in the background while chickens make your life hell. The surface can be land or ocean. Depending on how close you are to the surface, clouds may or may not obstruct your vision. Heck, you could even swim ocean missions with the ocean floor in the background. No interaction with the surface in this type.
Flying through the planet was basically what we have been doing in CI5: directly interacting with the surface, and finding your way through the planet.
For ocean missions, there could be an item called watertight hull, that allows you to access missions below water.
And then there are the dry caves and wet caves. These are pretty self-explanatory. I think that while the generation of missions shouldn’t generate a new cave each time a new mission is played. I think that there should be a fixed system of caves, while the route and chickens spawned should vary. It would also be cool if we could transition from dry caves to wet caves.
So basically, most of the possible mission types on planets have been covered. So, some planets can only have some of these types because the Environment affects it that way, like this:
- Inferno: Dry Cave, Atmospheric Entry, Surface. All weapons heat up 20% faster.
- Gas Giant: Atmosphere Entry and Deep Atmosphere missions. All “physical” weapon projectiles are 10% slower, while and Energy Weapons are boosted with a 5% damage buff.
- Artificial Satellites & Barren Rock: Only Surface Missions. No effects, but special enemies can appear on these missions.
- Alien Worlds & Terran Planets: Atmospheric Entry, Surface, Wet and Dry caves, Underwater missions.
- Frozen Worlds: All projectiles are 10% slower, but Overheat rate is also decreased by 25%.
- Electromagnetic Worlds: All energy based weapons are given a 25% damage buff.
And it’s time for generation of the actual terrain itself. The first one I want to tackle is the caves, because the others are much more straightforward.
A while back @kokokokos suggested an idea for missions in caves.Planetary missions generator My suggestion for it is not to completely randomize the caves each time you go inside, but rather have a fixed system of caves, for example cave_1, cave_2, cave_flood_1, and cave_flood_2. Now, cave_1 branches off into cave_flood_2 and cave_flood_1. cave_flood_1 in turn connects to cave_2, which in turn branches off to cave_1 or cave_flood_2. Basically, this png.
It seems quite simple, but for example you could have a level that starts in cave_1, leads to flood_1, leading to cave_2 , leading to flood_2. From there, most others are straightforward. A zoomed in version of the planet’s heightmap can serve to be scrolling behind for flying over missions, while a separate surface map would need to be made for, well, surface missions.
The one problem is that while the episodes were realistic about the size of the spaceship in relation to planets, in CIU most ships are nearly a tenth of the size of a planet. And of course, the whole matter of orbital physics in the game anyway, because planets on inner rings should travel faster than those on the outside. So, what do you think?
- More realistic size and proportions
- Keep it the way it is
- idk
0 voters
- We don’t need planetary missions.
- We need planetary missions.
- Conflicted opinion.
0 voters
You wouldn’t be able to see it as close, though. The texture would not withstand so much zooming.