I just had an interesting idea...

[dalolorn]

What would happen if you were to build a ship without engines or without piloting systems?

I think it's quite obvious where I'm taking this, so I won't bother with explaining the idea.

Edit: Player ship. Forgot to make that distinction.

[5thHorseman]

What would happen if you were to build a ship without engines or without piloting systems?

I think it's quite obvious where I'm taking this, so I won't bother with explaining the idea.

A player ship? It'd sit at the starting beacon with nothing to do. As a bonus, you'd never lose.

An enemy ship? It'd be a stationary space station like those in Captain's Edition.

[dalolorn]

I was about to say that you would eventually lose, but then I realized - you need both the engines and the cockpit to be capable of waiting for the Rebels to catch up.

Okay, substitute method: remove all random fuel rewards from events from the game through one method or another, and make the ship start with no fuel.

I'd love to see you find a flaw in that one. And before you ask, the whole idea is to have it stay put like a space station.

[Sleeper Service]

This could be a neat total conversion. The mission could just be to resist the Rebel onslaught, or something more subtle, like having the secret data on board and maybe gather enough scrap/things to get a ship ready to bring to the Fed base, kind of a FTL prequel... By heavily modifying the Rebel fleet events the station could be visited by all kinds of ships, Pirate raiders, Rebel inspectors or assault squads, civilian ships in distress that are looking for help, traveling merchants. Giving dummy augs and making a lot of use blue events could trigger some kind of progression through a storyline, while also increasing enemy strength. Enemies would have to be de-levelled, as you would remain in the first sector and they would not get stronger by themselves.

[BattleBee]

:!: This could be a neat total conversion. The mission could just be to resist the Rebel onslaught, or something more subtle, like having the secret data on board and maybe gather enough scrap/things to get a ship ready to bring to the Fed base, kind of a FTL prequel... By heavily modifying the Rebel fleet events the station could be visited by all kinds of ships, Pirate raiders, Rebel inspectors or assault squads, civilian ships in distress that are looking for help, traveling merchants. Giving dummy augs and making a lot of use blue events could trigger some kind of progression through a storyline, while also increasing enemy strength. Enemies would have to be de-levelled, as you would remain in the first sector and they would not get stronger by themselves.

Someone make this happen. I would love it.

[dalolorn]

Nice idea, Sleeper. Me, I'm thinking you could even fit the station with an FTL drive, so it's a prequel AND FTL itself.

[aaaaaa50]

:!: This could be a neat total conversion. The mission could just be to resist the Rebel onslaught, or something more subtle, like having the secret data on board and maybe gather enough scrap/things to get a ship ready to bring to the Fed base, kind of a FTL prequel... By heavily modifying the Rebel fleet events the station could be visited by all kinds of ships, Pirate raiders, Rebel inspectors or assault squads, civilian ships in distress that are looking for help, traveling merchants. Giving dummy augs and making a lot of use blue events could trigger some kind of progression through a storyline, while also increasing enemy strength. Enemies would have to be de-levelled, as you would remain in the first sector and they would not get stronger by themselves.

That's an awesome idea, but I'm gonna worry for your health if you try and make that one along with CE too. I guess you are the most qualified to put those pieces together, but a big mod like that would be another huge chunk of work.

[Metzelmax]

You can even give the player a shop... which ofc would give you the ability to buy fuel, which sucks. So all repair needs to be done by out of fuel events. And fleet needs to be turned off ofc.

Someone needs to make a DS9 mod.

[Kieve]

You can even give the player a shop... which ofc would give you the ability to buy fuel, which sucks. So all repair needs to be done by out of fuel events. And fleet needs to be turned off ofc.

Someone needs to make a DS9 mod.

Repairs wouldn't be too hard.
"A passing shuttlecraft offers to patch up your hull" (XX Scrap)
Or just drone-parts loot and a hull repair drone...

I'm sorely tempted to take a crack at this. Only problem i see is the same one Infinite Space deals with - forever stuck with Sector 1 level scaling.

[Sleeper Service]

I'm sorely tempted to take a crack at this. Only problem i see is the same one Infinite Space deals with - forever stuck with Sector 1 level scaling.

Yeah scaling and progression would have to be solely handled via dummy items and blue choices. That would probably all get really convoluted and make the whole thing less accessible.

Progression could look like this: All events possible events are just dummies that only have blue options available. The Player gets a dummy aug/item, (probably some meta thing like "Chapter One", would be hard to do this with story related augs that always make sense) that lets him trigger the actual event lists, in this case for chapter one. Chapter one events have a chance to give the player the "Chapter two" aug which lets you encounter new, upscaled events that have a chance to give you the "Chapter three" aug and so on... Progression in this concept would still be really random, which sucks.

Another way would be to sacrifice one of the resources (obviously not fuel) to create a fixed progression marker, like giving one missile for each successful event and start chapter two at twenty missiles.

In any case: The player would always have to be asked to cooperate with the mod. She/He should not triggering chapter one any more after he acquired access to chapter two to preserve balance.

So I guess the whole thing would be possible, but the implementation would look quite edgy and makeshift. And yes: It would mean rewriting a ridiculous amount of events and creating a huge system to make this all work. Also I'm personally not convinced that playing a station that can't dodge is so much fun in the end. Outside the events, gameplay would largely be the same.