UnicornDalek

And Cornflakes uses *Logic* it's super effective. But why would said manifest automatically tell you who everybody else is whenever you look at them? Implants maybe? But humans like privacy most of the time.

I vote against steam, mostly since it breaks my computer for some reason.

I'm seeing ballon powered craft as very useful for anything inside an atmosphere but, its a balloon, it pops making it very vulnerable to anyone with a ranged weapon and hostile intent. since you know all they have to do is puncture the hull and you start venting and eventually go down. Though it would also make it feasible to dump excess stuff to lighten the craft to go faster to escape, which could be fun.

my worst nightmare... picking a name...

i think my dream would be to make the battle stations from the Troy Rising book series but ill probably end up as a technician and thats okay

so how far in each direction does the streak extend? because if its until it hits the edges of the universe, and the game has a significant player base then lines would just be everywhere in populated systems in a big mess on a sensor screen. and if a streak is being monitored would you be able to detect if the ship causing it is about to drop out of FTL? Also if all you see is the streak passing through the solar system it would be very difficult to tell exactly where it will drop out into sub-light speeds, but that might be balanced actually, since the attackers will attack and the defenders can predict whats coming but not precisely enough to set up an all destructive ambush.

I was catching up on like 10 stellaris videos on xpgamers and saw the DU video and also watched that, now i've spent many hours reading lots of things on this forum

"when writing this i had an idea about how to statisfy both of us: what if active FTL drives would produce a "streak" forwards and backwards along its current orientation, a streak you can detect "long" ahead of the actual ship (hours to days) when it passes through your sensor range? it would keep the free movement and give defenders time to react to incoming fleets from outside their systems without making sensor ranges in general gamebreakingly long. and for travelers into unsettled space it doesnt matter because theres no limitation on movement. for traders it would introduce a game of deception and a bit of luck to avoid being ambushed in unsafe areas, as fling just straight ahead could lead you to an ambush of someone who already came across their streak, but changing course could lead to you being detected in the first place when you wave around that beacon. maybe with a bit of an opening angle that aiming-a-bit-past-your-target is unfeasible." one thing i feel the need to ask about in this brilliant senario is: can you figure what is making that streak? otherwise there is no way to tell if its a single guy with antimatter bombs or a simple merchant i feel that attack fleets would be more obvious since there'd be a lot of streaks close together but the defenders could just place explosive mines on the exit point so that would mean enabling a way to exit FTL shortly before the assigned destination to avoid an ambush of the attackers and reengage from a slightly different angle which would then make it slightly more fair. does the size of the streak change with ship size? or mass? i feel the "streak" idea to be great but all it tells you for sure is there is a ship coming. that would necessitate essentially a welcoming party for every unscheduled ship that seems to be arriving which would actually make for an interesting gameplay mechanic since patrols would have more use