Modular Vehicles + Vehicle Assembler.
Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2016 8:17 pm
Greetings. I'd like to suggest a following addition to the game.
Excluding trains, right now you can only build two types of vehicle - the car and the tank. You can craft them by hand, instead of having to use some sort of machinery. I think this aspect can be expanded in an interesting way.
First off, any vehicles would have to be built in a special building - vehicle assembler. This is just a placeholder name. This building would solely be responsible for crafting vehicles.
All vehicles would be made up of several module types. You'd select those modules in a vehicle assembler GUI and they'd affect raw materials needed to assemble the vehicle. The module types would include Chassis, Control Method, Engine and Equipment/Weapon. Below are several examples of modules I've thought up:
Chassis:
Wheeled - Same as current car. Can only carry light equipment.
Tracked - Current tank. Can carry one piece of heavy equipment (like cannon) and one light equipment (like machinegun).
Control Method:
Manual - Current one - the driver has to be physically in the vehicle for it to operate.
Remote - Vehicle can be operated from a distance. This can be useful for assaulting alien nests from the safety of your base. The trade off is that you cannot embark on this type of vehicle. Depending on developer choice, actual remote for controlling those vehicles could be either in form of an item, or a "control tower" building, which you'd have to enter. Additionally, while you could only directly control one vehicle at a time, additional ones could be controlled by issuing simple commands like "follow", "go to" or "attack". Obviously, they'd all shut down as soon as you quit remote control. Also, vehicles controlled remotely would suffer penalties to statistics (damage, resistances), justified by the driver having more difficulty controlling a vehicle indirectly. For this reason, penalties would be higher the more vehicles you control at one time. These penalties can be mitigated by appropriate research.
Computer - Computer controlled vehicles cannot be controlled directly, but can receive orders from the player. They're essentially controlled like units in an RTS game. No further input is required after telling them what to do. While most flexible, this method is most expensive and vehicles controlled in this fashion are largely inferior in skill to a human driver, suffering from massive penalties to their statistics.
Engine:
Combustion - Current one.
Solar- Instead of burning combustibles, the vehicle runs on power from its batteries. They can be recharged very slowly by the solar panels, or by some external means (Proximity to a pole? Roboport? Dedicated building for charging vehicles?). For balance, electric vehicles would have much less range compared to combustion engines.
Fusion- This one also has batteries, but the internal reactor has massive power output, allowing more prolonged usage than the solar variant (this is effectively the same concept as with power armor). High cost associated with building this engine type prohibits using them en masse.
Equipment:
Cannon
Machinegun
Flamethrower
Rocket Launcher
Laser (Can be made to be only mountable on electric vehicles)
Transport Chamber - Sacrifices equipment slot for extended inventory capacity, essentially making a truck. If it's a tracked vehicle, it would still have a light weapons slot for a light weapon to defend itself.
Mobile Roboport - Can launch construction robots, in the same manner as player's power armor.
Combat Roboport - This vehicle can launch combat robots. May be pointless in manually controlled vehicles, as player sitting inside already has this ability. On the other hand, the vehicle can do this automatically when aliens are in close proximity, so it depends.
Of course, added offensive possibilities would have to be balanced either by making biters stronger and more aggresive, or by ensuring that penalties for remote and computer controlled vehicles would make stronger, human-controlled tanks still a viable option for attacking alien nests.
Excluding trains, right now you can only build two types of vehicle - the car and the tank. You can craft them by hand, instead of having to use some sort of machinery. I think this aspect can be expanded in an interesting way.
First off, any vehicles would have to be built in a special building - vehicle assembler. This is just a placeholder name. This building would solely be responsible for crafting vehicles.
All vehicles would be made up of several module types. You'd select those modules in a vehicle assembler GUI and they'd affect raw materials needed to assemble the vehicle. The module types would include Chassis, Control Method, Engine and Equipment/Weapon. Below are several examples of modules I've thought up:
Chassis:
Wheeled - Same as current car. Can only carry light equipment.
Tracked - Current tank. Can carry one piece of heavy equipment (like cannon) and one light equipment (like machinegun).
Control Method:
Manual - Current one - the driver has to be physically in the vehicle for it to operate.
Remote - Vehicle can be operated from a distance. This can be useful for assaulting alien nests from the safety of your base. The trade off is that you cannot embark on this type of vehicle. Depending on developer choice, actual remote for controlling those vehicles could be either in form of an item, or a "control tower" building, which you'd have to enter. Additionally, while you could only directly control one vehicle at a time, additional ones could be controlled by issuing simple commands like "follow", "go to" or "attack". Obviously, they'd all shut down as soon as you quit remote control. Also, vehicles controlled remotely would suffer penalties to statistics (damage, resistances), justified by the driver having more difficulty controlling a vehicle indirectly. For this reason, penalties would be higher the more vehicles you control at one time. These penalties can be mitigated by appropriate research.
Computer - Computer controlled vehicles cannot be controlled directly, but can receive orders from the player. They're essentially controlled like units in an RTS game. No further input is required after telling them what to do. While most flexible, this method is most expensive and vehicles controlled in this fashion are largely inferior in skill to a human driver, suffering from massive penalties to their statistics.
Engine:
Combustion - Current one.
Solar- Instead of burning combustibles, the vehicle runs on power from its batteries. They can be recharged very slowly by the solar panels, or by some external means (Proximity to a pole? Roboport? Dedicated building for charging vehicles?). For balance, electric vehicles would have much less range compared to combustion engines.
Fusion- This one also has batteries, but the internal reactor has massive power output, allowing more prolonged usage than the solar variant (this is effectively the same concept as with power armor). High cost associated with building this engine type prohibits using them en masse.
Equipment:
Cannon
Machinegun
Flamethrower
Rocket Launcher
Laser (Can be made to be only mountable on electric vehicles)
Transport Chamber - Sacrifices equipment slot for extended inventory capacity, essentially making a truck. If it's a tracked vehicle, it would still have a light weapons slot for a light weapon to defend itself.
Mobile Roboport - Can launch construction robots, in the same manner as player's power armor.
Combat Roboport - This vehicle can launch combat robots. May be pointless in manually controlled vehicles, as player sitting inside already has this ability. On the other hand, the vehicle can do this automatically when aliens are in close proximity, so it depends.
Of course, added offensive possibilities would have to be balanced either by making biters stronger and more aggresive, or by ensuring that penalties for remote and computer controlled vehicles would make stronger, human-controlled tanks still a viable option for attacking alien nests.