I've been thinking about game balance and gameplay for awhile myself. I consider the current "balance" completely a placeholder and the game largely incomplete. I've got ideas for a mod and some stats on paper I've been holding off on until we get actual multiplayer.
Wars will be fought on two fronts: StarShips and infini-'roidminer. Need actual division between these, like smallarms being much more ineffective against metal blocks, and players being weaker against ship cannons even with armor. NO mining from a ship. Players must be exposed to collect resources, otherwise you'd end up with an invulnerable deathcube of a ship sucking up all the 'roids. More connections between the ship and the 'roids are needed: supplies. Fuel and mass driver ammo, lest deathcubes be indefinitely self-sufficient. This would force more competition between teams for 'roid control and encourage expansion beyond building a single deathcube or overkill-fortifications on a single 'roid and staying there indefinitely. Ships would effectively exist to ferry resources/players/supplies from an old mining operation to a new one, and serve as a platform to raid/seige enemy controlled 'roids.
As for infiniroidminer: Raiding and defending should be fun.
Small autoturrets, IFF, detection systems with player and team alerts, Team-only beacons, traps, smaller player inventories with less-portable processing/crafting combined with armored bunkers/bases to stash supplies with automated machines to process raw minerals, environmental hazards... etc. This should lead to centralized "vaults" to be defended and raided, with enough action elsewhere in a 'roid. Different asteroids types with different mineral distributions too, to encourage expansion and the transport of resources.
As for starships:
Docking/locking blocks to "snap" and "separate" bodies. IE two ships maneuver side by side, rotate close enough (need a good pilot and design) with slight auto-twisting of the body to fudge it once you're close enough. They could also be used to separate bodies, like a ship from a dockyard or a fighter from a mothership, or maybe a really complex multi-stage ship. Need automated shipyards for automated building and repairs, such that players can focus on the parts of the game with potential for action. Give it a saved ship template (would have to be player-built at least once, first) then dump in resources and watch it go or dock a ship with holes and watch it patch up. The actual block(s) that do this should be MASSIVE, both mass and volume, such that the only portable auto-repairs are on stations and genuine motherships. Need moving hydraulics that can be toggled with controls, that actually moves attached blocks. Probably similar internal logic to the docking/locking blocks, where it keeps track of sub-bodies within the parent body. This way you could have anything from complex doors, to firing ports, to... really cool transformers? Lots of things you could do. Heh, retracting engines and anti-cap cannons. Sweet. Like engines with force rating, the more mass it's moving then the slower it is given it's limited strength... ability to combine/stack them like with engines as well?
Ship weapons I figure should be based around the nature of the ships: bulky, slow, and awkward to maneuver. I figure:
-Fast moving, short ranged, weak CIWS pulse lasers good for shooting down torpedoes, sappers, and sandpapering a hull.
-Big, expensive, slower, medium ranged ship-killing mass drivers.
-Long ranged ship-killing Torpedoes-with-a-capital-T that prompt evasive maneuvers, combined with weaker spam-missiles to pacify CIWS.
-Ramming damage. Oh hell yes. Denser materials crumple stuff like aluminum and titanium, and an aluminum cruiser is vulnerable to a small iron ship with a crazy pilot. Good way to deposit a boarding party.
-MINES. Small, fast ship just outside of CIWS range dumps mines in the path of a moving cruiser. Or surround the entrance to your base with IFF capable mines.
-Ion weapons? Some kind of electronic warfare?
For both:
IFF for blocks. Team A places blocks, then Team A can drill them up easy. Team B takes longer to drill the same blocks.
I've got a lot of ideas for a game like this. Again, I would pay the dev 50$ to just open source it or ignore spin-offs and let people take off with this game platform.
edit:
Almost forgot, regarding existing game content: Centralized vs Decentralized power. As it is, wires being weak to damage and actually draining energy combined with larger power sources not being significantly more efficient than smaller ones makes me conclude there is no point to centralized power. A cruiser isn't as fun to shoot at when you can't disable it with a shot clean through the reactor. Wires need to be a little tougher than they are with no power drain, with optional power armor in critical spots at the cost of power drain, and the increased efficiency/output of larger/bulky power sources need to be enough such that it's important when thinking about how to power a bank of CIWS pulse lasers.
edit again: derp, almost forgot. REALLY need visible block damage.
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Topic: Corneroids (Read 108490 times)