Attack of the Aliens!!!

[celu]

Cory,

After getting the awards I'm aiming for or getting too powerful or having my gigantic statue in front of the palace on every planet for being a living immortal hero, my captain(s), after loosing 12 legs, 9 arms, 24 eyes and 3 ears (more or less)...due to the vast void of space, turns suicidal mode. After 300 years of being a career captain, he realizes the shell he has become...the violence, the horror, the betrayal...are just all too much for him/her.

How about this Idea for an adventure...

Instead of just having random encounter with aliens or rumors of aliens on wilderness. Make the whole quadrant on Red Alert when aliens attack a civilized planet. reason being...we don't know, we just don't know.

Mission: if you choose to accept, acquire a contract from the faction being attacked that helps reduce hostility from all ships when encountered, even unfriendly factions (palace always open)

When you reach your destination, you get high probability of alien encounter. The more ships you destroy the less damage it will have on the planet. The longer the aliens are present the damage is far worse and wide spread.

The damage includes closures of palace, hall, dock. Damage to ships on dry dock. Exchange rates drop. buy=high, sell=low

When fighting aliens(or narvidians for that matter) maybe you can create easier ships to destroy (like small spawns) and have 1 or 2 mother ships/carriers hanging around. when the mother ships(s) are destroyed, mission accomplish.

The more aliens you destroy = positive rep. lots of em. I mean... they better.

Planetary recovery: You can help the planet to recover by supplying them with goods. Less money but positive rep.
Goods supplied will go towards rebuilding of specific area.
Example: Rations, vudka, spices = spice hall; metals, crystals, weapons, electronics, chemicals = star dock/military base; records, clothing, metals, plants = palace

I don't know how hard would that be to program but it seems like something that revolves around what we already have working.

How about it Cory?
Will this add dimension to our quests?

Another thing...
Has force fields not occur to you when developing this? I kept thinking about star trek and how the force field helps protect from laser cannons...but then again we don't have laser cannons ^^" never mind.

Maybe lasers and force fields are something to think about when ST2 comes out eh? *wink wink*

[Tenebrous Pirate]

I thought the quadrant went on red alert when Alchie showed up asking to borrow a DVD. Once he gets on your couch, you can kiss your beer good bye, and he is more difficult to get rid of than a tax lawyer. Did I mention he smells like cheese? ;-p

[HateSolstice]

I also want to see Will Smith make at least one cameo.

[oldalchemist]

Does anyone have a copy of Independence Day that I can borrow?

(I'm like the combined wish fulfillment fairy, here...)

[sebastian]

Netflix...

Did someone say cheese?

[Cory Trese]

I really like your suggestions for this new quest type. I did think about force fields -- I dunno, I'm a big fan of the gothic battlefleet / naval ship battle style, but force fields are def. part of the star trader's lore -- that is how HK torps and Void Engines are said to work

[oldalchemist]

Oh man, Cory, you've got to mod the Knife Class so that it's Slow Slow, but ignores force fields.

Force Fields could be like Armor, but it regenerates out of combat or in combat only on turns when you don't fire or move based on the rating of your engines.

Hey? When did I become a Templar? Do I get a sweet hat for that?

[Tenebrous Pirate]

Jun 3, 2011 11:24:55 GMT -5 oldalchemist said:

Hey? When did I become a Templar? Do I get a sweet hat for that?

Pfft, look at me. I'm a Hero now! Ooooh! HEROOOO!

I wouldn't use force fields as armor or as self-regenerating. I would have them be similar to the dune ones, but with an exception. They should be dampeners, that provide damage resistence. I think this type of thing would probably be easier to code too.

They could be more effective against torps than guns, to balance out how armor stops guns but not torps.

[sebastian]

Are guns... solid projectile shooting weapons? Or laser beams? We should have both. Armor for defense againts guns, deflector shields for the lasers

[slayernz]

I'm visualizing the weapons in BSG (re-envisaged). All of the ship to ship weapons were projectile in nature and left very big holes in armor plating.

[sebastian]

I remember watching starwars and thinking "if they'd just coat their ships with mirrors they woukdn't have to worry about them lazer beams..."

[slayernz]

Yeah, who needs shields when you have a bit of polish

[noesis]

Course Lasers don't have to be visible light and can just generate heat instead which would shatter and cut through a mirror or polished steel in milliseconds. - Point is Mirrors would actually be useless against military grade lasers (if they actually existed) - as mirrors generally absorb all light that isn't visible and only reflect that which is. Also most of the mirror/polish defense system would be negated due to flying through space dust and losing it's reflectiveness before the laser attack anyway & would need replacing every time you entered orbit even if it hadn't. Not to mention the extreme anti-stealth rating a ship covered in clean mirrors/polish would get - it would be like a flying homing beacon. I think shields would definitely be preferred to mirrors. For a start they wouldn't need cleaning or replacing from the scorch stains of entering an atmosphere. - I am male however so don't really enjoy cleaning at all (whether it be mirrors, windows, carpets etc) - so again Shields are better ! - I just wish I could have a shield on my computer monitors so I didn't have to clean them either

[slayernz]

Sure, mirrors in the traditional sense are less than effective against very small wave-length lasers, but so long as the surface is specular vis a vis the particular laserbeam wavelength, you should have reflection of the beam to some degree. Most current maser/laser/xray beams require some reflection methodology to help focus the beam.

Scorching the ship through re-entry is sooooo 21st century. Now that we have powered re-entry, planetfall doesn't have to be a random plummet at 25x the speed of sound. Instead, we have nice controlled descent, maintaining a pleasant 150F max. I've taken to strapping cloned chickens to the outside of the ship so that we can have supper when we've touched down. Ironically, the crew often perish shortly after in some alien trap, so it's kind of a roasted last supper.

As an alternative to trying to keep your ship really really polished (poor crew get rostered buffing duties), maybe you could build an outer-shell to your hull that is comprised of 100% fiber-optic tubes. Ha, any beam weapon gets automatically scattered into the harmless void of space. Again, apologies to crew who might be out repairing damaged fibers at the time <grin>.

[oldalchemist]

Why scatter it into space? Didn't you ever see Spaceballs? Just make the fibers U-shaped.

Also, chicken fat fires are going to totally ruin the mirror finish. My grill can attest to that.