Kimimaro Uchiha
Undead Doom Legion
3
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Posted - 2013.07.15 14:28:00 -
[2] - Quote
After watching some videos about exploration in EVE Online, I decided to brainstorm some ideas for how it could work in Dust 514. I'll also post some ideas for mining, but that's been talked to death, so that part will be limited.
Exploration:
Exploration can be initiated from either a planet-side outpost or from an orbiting war barge. Upon doing so, you select an expedition vehicle (ExV) from the list and use it to deploy probes. There are two kinds of ExVs: Ground ExVs which can only be deployed from outposts, and Aerial ExVs which can also be deployed from the war barge. Probes deployed from a GExV are limited to a certain range around the outpost. GExVs come in Light and Heavy varieties. Light GExVs can travel farther, but can't carry as much loot back, while Heavy GExVs can't go as far but can carry a lot more. AExVs, on the other hand, can deploy probes to any point on the planet. They carry less than either GExV.
Upon scanning with the probes and selecting an exploration site to travel to, you end up in a proceduraly-generated location to explore. You can bring a party with you, but a small anomaly might not be enough for a large group to split. You start out in the selected ExV, but can leave it behind (and in fact, probably should when you reach a site of interest). You can leave the area by simply traveling far enough into the redzone (which doesn't kill you in this mode).
Just like in space, there are several kinds of exploration sites. They'll be obvious to EVE players, but I'll explain them for non-EVE players:
- Surface Anomaly: Basically the planetary equivalent of cosmic anomalies in space. A simple encounter with waves of enemy NPCs.
-Rader Site: Indicates active electronics. You can hack computers there to obtain blueprints for manufacturing, among other things. These are usually lightly guarded by pirates.
-Magnetometric Site: Indicates abandoned man-made structures. You can salvage the ruins for blueprints for advanced equipment or even the equipment itself. There are usually pirates or drones here.
-Gravimetric sites: Hidden mining sites that are popular spots for pirates to ambush unsuspecting miners.
-Ladar Site: Raw gas vents or minerals that can be processed into boosters. These spots rarely contain pirate bases.
Upon acquiring your loot and taking it back to the ExV, you can leave with your loot. If you die, however, you spawn back at the outpost or war barge unless you brought a CRU on your ExV or a drop uplink.
Mining and Exploration Equipment:
-Excursion Dropsuit: Low armor and shields, but high CPU and PG and lots of slots for fitting modules. One sidearm slot and no other weapon slots, but a large number of equipment slots for the equipment that miners and explorers need.
-Storage Module: A low slot module for carrying salvage and mined minerals. Comes in both dropsuit and vehicle varieties.
-Mining Laser: A piece of equipment for mining minerals. Can be used as a weapon, but isn't very effective.
-Salvager: A piece of equipment used to salvage usable items from wrecks.
-Drone Launcher: A piece of equipment used to launch mining drones. (I'm on the fence about whether there should be other types of drone launchers.)
-Active Scanner: Not an original piece of equipment, as it's already confirmed to be in with the purpose of finding low scan profile players, but it could also be used to help pinpoint loot once you reach an exploration site.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? |