New Nebula Cloud

posted on November 24th, 2011, 2:39 am

One that increases ship speed by 30% while you are inside, and by 15% for 5 seconds upon leaving it, residual effect.

Why? The cause is something to do with how the nebula interacts with the material and energy of the ship. It increases the effects of energy flow, and reduces the weight and effects of matter. In essence, it is a ship on steroids.

In game. You could have mini highways. It could be one from home base to closest expansion, get that going faster. Or, it could be between two first expansion points. So, my first expansion, and my opponents first expansion as a nebula high way between them allowing for sudden attacks. Or just rarely used, but on longer maps, it helps to traverse certain pathways.

A funny one: In maps with lots of asteroid belts that you are forced to manoeuvre around, the nebula surrounds the edges of the asteroid belt. It would be like race car driving around a track.

I would prefer it do no damage, but sometimes nebulas do cause damage. Perhaps weapons are disabled while inside. You jump out of the nebula, immediately restoring weapons, while still give a 5 second 15 percent increase engine use for quick hit, and run.

posted on November 24th, 2011, 4:26 am

I've always been a fan of a Nebula (or any map object) that could function as a "ship highway" of sorts.  Whether it be called a "subspace corridor", a "slipstream", or "Yandonman's Wacky Speedway" I'm for it in principle.

  I see to recall this being brought up some time in the last year and the Devs respond with a positive.  I'm guessing we'll see things like this in the map redo; whenever that happens.


Nice suggestion

posted on November 24th, 2011, 5:02 am

hmm. i must have missed the suggestion when it came up.

i remember them, or at least of the nebula suggestion threads. everyone went into them thinking they were for nebula class federation. that's why I put cloud into the topic so that no one thought it was a new nebula variant.

posted on November 24th, 2011, 11:26 am

hmm. i must have missed the suggestion when it came up.

that's not a problem, plenty of suggestions get buried over the years in the forum.

i like the idea of channels at higher speed. nebulae with slower speed might be interesting as well.

Yandonman's Wacky Speedway

i prefer Ballistic Mal's Fairway

(i'm not sure anyone will get that pretty obscure reference from ps1 era)

posted on November 24th, 2011, 11:34 am

Like the idea  just think there may have to be a slight hull decay on ships using it to discourge abuse.

posted on November 24th, 2011, 11:43 am

Like the idea  just think there may have to be a slight hull decay on ships using it to discourge abuse.

maybe 2 seprate versions, one that does cause slow damage, and one that doesnt. or also a third, which does more hull damage.

so that map makers can vary the lanes. putting non damaging lanes in places that dont give much benefit. and more damaging ones in places that can be more useful.

posted on November 24th, 2011, 12:09 pm

Sounds like a good idea. I agree that there should be some sort of drawback - disabling weapons, causing damage, or draining special energy. Maybe the drawback could also have a residual effect for a few seconds after leaving the nebula.

It should work to give slower ships an advantage but not so much that the faster ships become obsolete.

posted on November 24th, 2011, 4:54 pm

Well, well... what do we have as dynamic properties for a ship?

Shield, hull, speed, sensor range, weapons, cloak, weapons range, shield regen. rate, hull-repair-rate, crew.

I think, we have many options left to play with - the only problem would be to describe them. Why would a ship be faster in a neb than in vacuum? Sure, its a game, but we also want to try to hold it on a 'universe'.

The numbers of nebs we have is a little low, we also have only one "good" neb - the rest is hostile. So one more 'good' neb would be great.

Another neb could be "ships inside are hidden" and nothing more. You can see out of them, but they cant see you.

posted on November 24th, 2011, 5:07 pm

Why would a ship be faster in a neb than in vacuum?

technobabble technobabbly babble babbly babbly babble.

thats why.

seriously that was the resolution to so many episodes of star trek, we can invent any crap we like for gameplay reasons.

let's try: "the nebula/zone contains superradiometrically isolated parametrallic particles which the ship can absorb to boost power to engines temporarily."

or: "there was once a type 47 supernova in this area, causing subspace inversion fields to form, which act to reduce the mass of the ship and allow the same power engines to move the ship faster"

if voyager's writers could do it every week then we can get away with a little of it to make the game more fun.

posted on November 25th, 2011, 6:09 am

What if it does hull damaged based on ship speed or ship size.

There is a large amount of energy being bounced around the plasma conduits.

Larger ships are better equipped to deal with that. So a ship that regularly goes 100, with increase 30 to 130 final gets a big boost, does minor hull damage.

However, a smaller ship that is designed to go fast but doesn't have the ability to deal with large energy spikes suffers a larger degree of damage.

For instance, a ship of 130 with 30% increase is now doing 169. Extraordinary speed, so it zips right through that nebula in no time, but it doesn't 50% hull damage (zero shield damage, shields would just get increase from energy surge anyways). Something to do with manipulation of matter, hull takes a beating.

This in itself would prevent abuse. It's a one way ticket. Early game, you just have destroyers. So if you were to send the destroyer through the nebula it would take 50% damage, or some high amount. If it then jumped out did a raid, and went back into the nebula to quickly get back home, you would risk the hull being destroyed. Of course, there would still be some repair in between. But in essence, just a deterrent as to not overuse it.

Fair?

posted on November 25th, 2011, 10:40 am

Why abuse? Just create the map in a way, that you dont need those tricks. I think 'olny' making it fast sounds fine. If you are just behind, you could also enter the neb to harass your prey.
50% hull damage is something I would never go in for.

Maybe you could decrease the sensor range by 50%, so that high speed combat is only good for short-range-ships, because long-range ships dont see them and the sensor range would be the same as weapons-range for short ranged units. Then this neb would make a lot of fun finding and hunting the enemy, striking, falling back, striking again but everything at high velocity.

posted on November 25th, 2011, 2:59 pm

Space kiss chase Liking that idea too. Maybe a beige neb that makes you move faster and take some hull damage per second of being in there and a barbie pink neb for short range tussels.

posted on November 25th, 2011, 5:32 pm

Well, the original idea called for no damage, but disabled weapons while inside.

Either way, seems like the suggestion has gone through before now, and was liked. Understandably, like myles was saying, kinda impossible to keep track of all the threads. At some point you get busy doing whatever, and can't follow things.

Just have to wait and see what the devs do with it or what they want.

50 percent hull damage might have been a little too high.

I dunno.

posted on November 25th, 2011, 6:14 pm

the damage would depend on the time your in that cloud i would guess so the question would be more like how long does it take for 50% damage to occur.

otherwise it would not matter how long your in the nebula and then the question would be how big the map maker makes the nebula if its profitable to go through. i imagine for a sphere 50% damage to get to the other side of the map 30% faster would be very usefull but to get only 1 field further its a waste.

posted on November 25th, 2011, 7:07 pm

Well, I was thinking 50% to get from one end to the other. Obviously, it would be a fairly long nebula. For instance, if it is a nebula that takes you half way across a map in 70% the time, it should chip away at you maybe. it wouldn't be 50 damage just to go into the thing, but say 10% hull damage per 20% of the nebula travelled or so.

I don't care if it does damage or not.

But it's only for smaller destroyer ships, and the only reason destroyer types would use them if it was to attack an enemy expansion. For example, if it was just a nebula that got you from your home base to your first expansion, only constructors would use it. But if its a nebula connecting you to your enemy, then your going to send raiders.

It doesn't do that much ship to cruisers and warships. Just little ships. If a scout were to use it, when it's already got speeds reaching closer to 200, extra speed would be a pretty fast scout. It would probably go through any normal nebula pretty quick, and for that, if we want a negative aspect built into the nebula, I was thinking either disable weapons, or what was suggested by others... hull damage.

But, I'm not that against a hull damaging nebula, because then borg would have something to fear. Right now, there's a disable shield which just gives borg huge advantage. If we make a nebula that does hull damage, even minor, its something to help bring down borg ships.

ha.. Weirdest thing, I had a dream about this last night. The nebula was made into a map, and it was a really long thin nebula, and so I went taq instead of martok, and used some chargh on the outside of it. As the enemy ships went through it, I just set my tractor beams on em. Destroying a fair number of ships with a dozen chargh. The tractor beam held them in place, and hull damage destroyed em all. It was a weird dream.