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Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Printable Version

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Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Y'berg - 03-05-2019

As the title says, features and whatnot i came up during some boring metallurgy classes. Should be noted, I'm no expert of FLHook, or programming whatsoever, so i don't know how many of these could be plausible game wise.
  • Putting Discovery and/or freelancer on steam/steam workshop
This is probably the hardest one, since A: Freelancer's ownership rights are at MIcrosoft, so maybe not even a petition signed by the entire freelancer community would make it real. B: The mod might need to be optimised to steam workshop, which is a lot of work. On the plus side this should give a good amount of fresh blood the entire community

Now, let's get to the more reasonable ideas
  • Faction Tournament
Quite easy this one, since doesn't needs any programming magic. Factions (both indies and OF) go against eachother on fleet setups , where they compete with eachother. Rewards could be money, stuff, 3 magical golden wishes, whatever.
  • Tactical Cruisers
Based on aerelm's modular BW gunboat project, except that various parts should have different attributes (higher thruster speed, cruise or ability to anomaly scanner, shield regen/base hull etc) this would be a multirole combat or exploration vessel, with highly customisable loadouts, on the negative side, this might be a balancing nightmare, would need multiple different hull parts, and FLHook to grant the various attributes to the different modules.
  • Cruise Disruption Field Generator
The ship based version of the Cruise Disruption Generator avaiable for BC and upwards. This would make fleet fights more interesting, maybe the above mentioned tactical cruisers could get a mod to negate it's effects
  • Unstable Jumpholes
discovery works in a rather strange way, since (to my best knowledge) it doesn't really likes to delete system cells, so if one's removed, it just becomes unavaiable. With the recent addition of anomalies, there's a chance to make exploring profitable, by adding stuff to those cells, and generate random jumpholes, which are reset each server restart. I don't know if it can be done with a plugin automatically, or this needs to be done manually.

This should be it, feel free to discuss and add your own ideas on this thread, maybe the team can find it plausible, and pick it up.

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Corvoiri - 03-05-2019

In my opinion we should think about making disco visible to people. Right now the main issue with disco is the volume of active people, this is the most populated server and it reaches 70 people in crowded days and hours, and around 30 people most of the time.
One thing i learned is that innovation is the best pilar to focus on, and will keep disco in a fresh state. To do it i have a couple suggestions:

-Make exploration worth it: There are almost no systems to explore, nomad ones have literally nothing more than nomads, which most don't drop anything. We need actually unknown systems with unknown treasures!! More Uncharted spaces without rules!! Navigation hazards to make little ships inviable to make exploration vessels really worth! Exploration vessels with longer scanner ranges and some resistance to some clouds which scanner eficiency reduction, lets say 20k for stationary objects and the common 15k for players, 2k cargo scan. Exploration events for new/unknown technology/temporary resources in really big maps, 35k per square? That would be insane!!

-Make laws a little more flexible: Just like player owned bases, you can't construct anywhere without permission, hell i was even thinking building one in the independent omegas, but even those systems have faction-enforced laws which makes no sense due to the nature of those systems.
They are already hard to make and mantain, why can't we just give the house/controller faction a percentage of the winnings? Discounts for the house faction? That would make much more sense than a tax and would benefit both the faction and the player who will keep playing, and generating more RP. I suggest less pressure on this, but also limited zones where we can build them. Maybe 2 inside helium mining zone for example? Making them actually worth the time and effort while being able to make people help to maintain it.

-New game mechanics: Ships with a special function, like power plant inhibitors (like an EMP attack, draining power plants and limiting power plant outputs to 75% for 30 secs BUT, the attacker cannot move while charging and releasing), 120 sec charge? Special shields? Support ships giving special support like repairing weapons, shield generators, suicide ships acting as countermeasure flares or anti-missile/torpedo functions while being unable to counter light fighters.

-Dropping NPC fighters from battleships? A docking module with NPC fighters lets say 30 with player ships and shields, just like the 1M bar missions ones.

-Secondary effects from weapons. EMP weapons with EMP effects (venom, kinda, or powerplant limitation effects when hitting the hull directly).

-Torpedo only gunboats-cruisers.

-Automatic anti-missile/torpedo turrets? High refire rate with a probability to destroy them, they wont always destroy them!

-Light fighters dodge mechanics? a burst to one side with a 20sec cooldown, deal with newer fast missiles (that would be so fast paced!!)

These are only ideas, feel free to criticize any of them and tell me what you think too!

PD: I like the steam idea regarding to game visibility, but the game would have around 500 players and i have no idea which are freelancer's server capabilities. Unless you make various servers for the same freelancer world.

PD2: Ask for donations so disco can get freleancer's license to be able to publish on steam when we have enough people, that would be a huge step forward. I don't think microsoft cares in any way about freelancer since they canceled freelancer 2 project and never touched the game again.

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Kampanom - 03-06-2019

I would 100% sign a petition to get Microsoft to put the base game on Steam, and the petition should be advertised everywhere.
Microsoft should be appealed to to give the game a second chance especially considering that it could make it quite a bit of money. Gameplay-wise even a child could understand it, it's far from being a niche game, and it can potentially attract a lot of casual gamers.

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Corvoiri - 03-06-2019

(03-06-2019, 03:34 AM)Altzek Wrote: I would 100% sign a petition to get Microsoft to put the base game on Steam, and the petition should be advertised everywhere.
Microsoft should be appealed to to give the game a second chance especially considering that it could make it quite a bit of money. Gameplay-wise even a child could understand it, it's far from being a niche game, and it can potentially attract a lot of casual gamers.

This should be the main focus imo, with all mods adapted.
It would mean a huge work, but disco and other mods will see huge numbers. Steam has tons of people so all mods would be full in theory.

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - LaWey - 03-06-2019

EvElancer.

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Laz - 03-06-2019

As mentioned before, Microsoft literally doesn't have the FL source code anymore and couldn't help us even if they wanted to (It's not in their nature to be benevolent).

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - FGDireito - 03-06-2019

make it run on android so we can trade while on the phone?

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Erik-Kieber - 03-06-2019

Honestly... reroll back to 4.85 where disco was on its best but that will never happen so imo they might as well pull the plug. Nothing to fix here at this point.

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Corvoiri - 03-06-2019

(03-06-2019, 09:46 AM)Laz Wrote: As mentioned before, Microsoft literally doesn't have the FL source code anymore and couldn't help us even if they wanted to (It's not in their nature to be benevolent).

What about disassembling? Must be illegal regarding licenses, right?

RE: Brainstorming, aka ideas to improve discovery - Corvoiri - 03-06-2019

(03-06-2019, 11:16 AM)Erik-Kieber Wrote: Honestly... reroll back to 4.85 where disco was on its best but that will never happen so imo they might as well pull the plug. Nothing to fix here at this point.
If you are willing to bring ideas you are welcome, but please don't do the opposite Big Grin u like the game like everone else here! I'm pretty sure you understand mate