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Environmental hazards


Miamato

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I believe that similar topic may be discussed somewhere in older posts, but...

 

The idea is to add parameters like Temperature, Radiation, random weather events. I know this is present in different games, like starbound, empyrion and probably many others, but it's also pretty logical step, especially if NQ is going to add more biome types to the game, that will correspond to existing planet types. 

I hope you agree that life is completely different on temperate planet and on burning planets that are pretty close to stars (to say nothing about the star itself), the same as for gas giants or cold planets where temperature is close to 0 K. It means that if some ships, with hull made from basic materials, are fine for flying inside atmosphere of temperate planet should not survive on fire planet, where temperature may melt the ship. So it would be nice if all the materials were dedicated to stand against certain environment and protect people and modules that are inside your ship or base. If your construct or space suit does not correspond to environment - it takes damage over time and can be destroyed in result. 

It would be logical that on gas giants (if they are added at some points) there would be endless storms that change how your electronics behaves, disable it or just make harder to operate without some special modules dedicated to negate the effect.

On fire planets you need fight with overheating and melting effect, along with some fire rains etc. The same when you are close to a star, it's not quite logical if you can approach to it on a tiny ship made mostly from iron. 

Probably it's hard to implement and maintain in terms of server load, but I think this will only add more realism to the game and increase variety of civilization created inside game world with their special approaches to survive on different planets. 

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45 minutes ago, Miamato said:

I hope you agree that life is completely different on temperate planet and on burning planets that are pretty close to stars (to say nothing about the star itself), the same as for gas giants or cold planets where temperature is close to 0 K.

I do agree, and it would add a lot of interest to the game. Say, for example, you were in a space battle near a space giant. You're losing badly, and your only option is to flee. With FLT down and only the gas giant in sight, you decide to head to it for cover. As you mentioned, electronics may go down, stopping you from sending a distress call. The majority of your systems are down, resulting in you being stranded. Likewise, other crazy events could happen on any planet, depending on the situation. It'd just be really cool if you crash landed on a scorched planet and you find yourself surrounded with lava and volcanoes. 

 

On the technical side of things, they could keep it simple, such as disabling systems, weakening blocks, or maybe, even cause voxels to break if the climate is too deadly. (Like a slow corrosion on a toxic planet.) Could be quite hard to implement though. 

 

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This also opens up to cybernatics to modify yourself to love better in certain climates. For example, you could have modules that change what kind of air mixture you need to breath, or what kind of temps you could withstand. We could potentially see people living on fire workds without active suit support.

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Just to addition to my initial post, such hazards may be used as a natural protection for your well adapted bases/ships from the intruders or unwanted guests. Having base resistant to heat deep under lava planet would help you to feel safer and true survivalist. On the other hand if you want to conquer/rob/destroy such base - it would be much more interesting.

Also as I know people would be able to build some power plants and probably not all of them should use clean fuel, but most powerful should be kind of fusion reactors or smth like it. If nuclear power ever exists in the game I would like to see some kind of heavy explosions/pollution/catastrophe just like in real world in case this type of power plants are treated incorrectly, destroyed or abandoned. So people would need to think twice when they build or try to destroy such type of structures as it may lead to a deadly changes on at least part of the planet. In its turn it would be theoretically possible to make the whole planet uninhabitable with incorrect actions. 

Again, I understand that this may never appear in the game, but we are here to share ideas until it's too late :)  

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Survival elements are planned for a much later patch but be aware that weather effects are very very hard to do due to the single shard nature of the gameworld: a raging thunderstorm looks different from space then on ground or from afar. So we won't possibly see that ingame.

 

Adding some elements is fine imho, but it should be balanced in a way that such survival mechanics don't get tedious and people get annoyed with them because it's something you just have to do but don't gain anything significant out of it.

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1 hour ago, Lethys said:

Survival elements are planned for a much later patch but be aware that weather effects are very very hard to do due to the single shard nature of the gameworld: a raging thunderstorm looks different from space then on ground or from afar. So we won't possibly see that ingame.

 

I agree that this may be hard to implement, but probably there would be some way to achieve it.

1 hour ago, Lethys said:

Adding some elements is fine imho, but it should be balanced in a way that such survival mechanics don't get tedious and people get annoyed with them because it's something you just have to do but don't gain anything significant out of it.

My initial idea was to add this to part of the planets, not all of them. So that people have more choices, in other words giving both casual and hardmode planets in terms of survival gameplay. And surely it was not about having some deadly weird stuff happening all the time all-around, but more like random or seasonal events that bring live into environment and its turn into players life. The reason is that playing sandbox games is really cool, but when you look at the environment around you for the first time - it's nice and shiny place, but then if you spend month in it, even having few different biomes - you may get bored, even if worlds are procedural generated you still know after some time what you can expect in the static worlds. Players actions can influence it,  change the scenery, landscapes, but again it would be more static environment.

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I would especially love to see these features appear in a future patch, and on especially rich undiscovered planets. That would be a great time to introduce some new ores or elements that can only be found on hostile planets (perhaps those ores and elements would be essential to the construction of equipment and parts to survive those phenomena).

 

Possibly the ores and materials found on those planets would allow you to weaponize those effects, for example a planet with highly radioactive areas might have an ore specced to allow craft and players to resist radiation, and an ore used to make irradiated ammunition or a static construct element that allows you to conceal a hex in a radiation cloud, or a bomb that irradiates a wide area for a period of time.

 

An area with tons of Volcanic Activity might have an ore that is very useful for mitigating heat damage and atmospheric entry damage, in addition to a powder used to make incendiary ammunition or furnaces that raise the temperature of a hex higher than normal characters can survive (or the reverse, increase the temperature of a very cold hex so that characters can be comfortable there).

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