Wow, I'm glad there's so much feedback! Let me address a few things.
1: I didn't change the thread title. Whoever did? Ha. Ha.
2: My
entire angle on FS is that it should be fun to play. This doesn't mean I'm throwing realism right out of the window. But this is a game - not real life. Nebulas might not even be visible if you were in one in real life - but in the game they are and it's a lot more fun that way. I do not for one second expect people to debate this as "thats not very realistic" because I don't care. These suggestions are there because I thought it'd be neat / fun / open new options to mission designers etc. Nothing more. Now that we’ve established that…
To some more specific stuff:
3: Galemp, in response to your points:
“I don't understand; do you mean targetable, or what?”
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.
“Not necessary, IMO. How often are you going to be using multiple suns?”
Good point, but if not for that then perhaps to illustrate distance? It’d be darker in deep space than it would be when you’re fairly close to a sun (say the distance from Mercury to the Sun) Make sense?
“Easy to do; glowmaps support ANIs. I've made a pulsating Sathanas glowmap ANI that does just what you're talking about.”
Fantastic. Some people are right, I’m not on top of everything that’s been done. I just scrawled ideas on some paper and transferred it all directly to this thread.
“Simple. Set your ship's afterburner recharge rate to zero. You start the mission with it full; once it's used up you're out of luck.”
I don’t mean that entirely… I believe the Wasp had its normal speed, after burner and *then* it had its pod for uber-fast speeds. That’s not currently possible I don’t think.
“Everybody complains that TAG missiles are useless, yet we get requests like this...”
True, but TAG relies on the mission designer allowing for it to work… this would be automatic in the AI so that the only thing you’d have to do is fire the weapon – the AI would do the rest.
“FS2 already has a better system. Should you have damaged comms, incoming transmissions are garbled; if you have damaged sensors, your radar goes static-y; when your weapons are damaged you get malfunctions. You've never noticed this?”
I never got that damaged
“The amount of shudder would be miniscule and certainly not noticeable. Do you see a real naval battleship shudder when it starts up its engines? No, of course not. Those inside the ship near the engines would certainly feel something but externally the effect is negligable.”
Suppose so!
“This would require model changes that I doubt anyone would bother to take the time to do.”
It *is* aesthetic… like several other things here. But it’s an idea… heh.
“I can't say navigating through a mobile asteroid belt sounds like fun, though...”
But you know it would be really
“Eh? You don't find the corona enough?”
No. I actually mean blurring that effects ships /anything else that are infront of these strong light sources. It needn’t be strong bluring.
“This is a stretch. To actually affect your fighter's performance the consistancy of these fields would have to be as thick as water! Under such conditions propulsion and shipbuilding would have to be completely different, not to mention the plausibility of such a dense field without a significant gravitational source. In other words, it's not physically possible.”
True, but then let me put it another way. Atmospheric flight
“Have you ever been in a car with a backup proximity sensor? It can get really annoying. Now imagine that sort of thing on EVERY side of your craft. Best to leave this one out.”
Hmm.. could be – or perhaps as an option. I really want to get the feel of being in the cockpit into the game, that means all kinds of badness going off when you’re “in trouble” so to speak… heh.
“ The targeted subsystem is already marked with a box (or diamond) on your main screen...”
I need to play the game some more. *Hangs head*
“Neat effect, but by the time you're close enough to the event horizon you're screwed anyway.”
I’m not going for realism… but I suppose this is a rather big (and possibly not very important) debate.
“I disagree; the missile models are the size they are to make them visible and (for bombs) killable. I see no real harm in the current missile sizes.”
Hmm… personal taste thing. It just seems kinda stupid (from time to time) to see bloody huge ordinance leaving a rather small fighter. Ho hum…
“Seems far too complicated and dangerous (for compatibility) with too little gain.”
Could well be… another one of those “it’d be nice as an option” jobs.
4: FRED2 – The ever useful.
I do not count FRED2 as an acceptable way out for a lot of the ideas. I agree that it’s an incredibly powerful tool but just like the beam-free-all tag, it’s a lot of time and effort to input some of the commands into FRED2 to do what you want with it. I actually know about a few of the things that are possible with FRED2 and still posted points about them because, in my opinion, they should be included as default with the engine as opposed to something of a hidden battle to implement / check with FRED2. It is just me being lazy but I think overall it’d make the additions a lot more accessable if they were included as default instead of known only to a few.
But that’s just me. Continue to pull the ideas apart and see what can be done!
