"Unlockable" landing sites#1045
Some landing sites could be blocked by something on the surface, for example, let’s say big boulders/rocks (even though I guess a Drillship wouldn’t have much trouble digging through that), and you wouldn’t be able to surface there. The landing site would have a different icon, indicating that it’s unaccessible, and if you still try to click on it you’d get an error message. To “unlock” it, you would need to first walk there by foot on the surface, and use some explosives to blow up the rocks (kind of like Satisfactory).
These sites could be a bit more advantageous, for example by being a lot closer to a village or a mine, or by being surrounded by resources, or by being at the top of a big hill being an ideal position to scout the surroundings and defend your ship.
This would reward players for exploring the map and interacting with it, by giving them advantageous points to surface. And if we stick to the rocks, it would also give a unique use to the explosives, making these sites accessible only at T2. It doesn’t have to be rocks, though ; it could be anything that requires a player to go there on the surface first, and remove it by attacking it or exploding it, or maybe even just press ‘E’ on it. The main idea is to get players to go there. It’s also not impossible to have different things blocking different sites. It might be a rock on this one, a cog structure on another, etc… all requiring a different approach to “unlock” the site.
I guess the sites could also become locked again. For example, the rocks could come back after an eruption or two, or have a % chance of reappearing. If it’s a COG structure blocking the site, then that structure could be rebuilt eventually, etc.
It would be neat to have in coop, but I see this being very interesting mainly in PvP. You can wait for the other team to unlock it, so it doesn’t cost you anything and you can take advantage of it, or do it yourself whenever you want, but the other team will be able to use it as well.
Once we have the boarding drones this would be possible. There was an idea, where player has to free landing site in Laser Device caves by first surfacing in boarding drone, taking out a COG drillship and only then surface with his. Maybe the landing site unlocking would require player to be present at the site first, do some sort of “scanning / measuring” to ensure the site is safe and ship can land there. Only then the drillship will add it to its computer and can proceed landing sequence.
the boarding ships could also allow players to cheek a landing site to see if thetre is room for their ship ( could be a problem with large ships in small areas that only have 1 landing site )
Why would anyone use the boarding drone to check if there’s room to surface, when it’s already indicated on the travel map, and you have the periscope to do the same thing without taking any risks ?
New landing site may only have room for small drill ships not long ones.
What ? Assuming your comment means “there could be new landing sites that make it so larger ships can’t surface”, the answer is obviously no. Why would that be a thing ? Why would upgrading your ship come with such disadvantages, that doesn’t sound like an upgrade at all. It makes no sense, speaking of game design.
But that wasn’t even brought up once anyways, why and how would you mention that ? How does that relate to anything said previously ?
When pvp servers come it could be strategic small and fast ships can sneak into some places others cant it would also give players just starting a needed advantage whrn against larger ships
I seriously think there are other ways to make sure small ships stand a chance against larger ones. This just sounds like it would punish players for upgrading their ship, which makes no sense.
Plus it’s hard talking about pvp when we don’t even know how it will work yet, for all we know players might not be able to join midgame, so technically no one would be supposed to be severly outmatched in terms of ship upgrades.