Nebula Mechanics

Burnside

Master endo
Joined
Aug 23, 2019
Messages
308
#1
Some thoughts thanks to talk with @NorthTop @JetWarriorGames and @legoprodigy (I hope those are all the correct user accts on the forums).

Orbital Nebula: these are large long-term clouds of semi-volatile gasses that have coalesced inside of Eos' sphere of influence, dense regions inside of nebula can be corrosive, lightning storms can spawn in them as well, even out to the lighter periphery. Orbital Nebula form the large navigation hazards on the map and hide all sorts of unknown bounties inside of their domain.

Solar Nebula: these nebula spawn as small accumulations of interstellar gas and can grow to immense sizes if prevailing conditions (read: procedural weather RNG) allow, solar winds, planetary and lunar gravity, and even some large and powerful hyperlanes create motive forces that force Solar Nebula into motion and can cause them to grow, merge, or disperse depending on celestial conditions- especially strong conditions can even push these nebula faster than the best starship. Nebula can become ionically charged by long-term solar exposure or through interaction with radiators and thruster trails and turn into Thunderheads, roiling energetic clouds that disperse concentrations of electrostatic energy in massive arcing bolts of lightning, with large Thunderheads being more prone to rapid and unpredictable lightning- if they become dense enough Solar Nebula can also turn corrosive or thermally active, endangering any ships and structures they happen to move into.
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#2
More in terms of how the nebulae effect (corrosion) should be applied to ships:
IMO best way would be making it invisible static or slow-moving particles that spawn certain distance from the ship and despawn upon contact or when too far away from the ship.

That way you can actively protect ship components by proper ship design (i.e. thick plating in front, retractable equipment, ect). And proper behaviour (flying mostly straight, avoiding sudden direction changes)

Ship speed should affect applications as well - some places can require going slow, some going out asap.

Some nebulae could also apply effect by shooting raycasts at ship from all angles, or simply make the particles move fast. Those would require vastly different approach, as you need protection from all directions.


Trying complex airtightness is IMO doomed to fail. There is so many ways of assembling plates and doors that grid SE-style approach won't work. And everyone who ever debugged large SE build to find the single leak know it's also frustrating.

It would also punish player not proportionally to their mistakes. Small hole should bring small internal damage, not doom the ship to loose pressure and melt.
 

Burnside

Master endo
Joined
Aug 23, 2019
Messages
308
#3
free-floating particles or "voxel cloudlets" might be a better approach than simulated gaseous airtightness checks, I like that- as for raycasts, maybe some kind of transition potential between the particles and/or certain ship systems, so instead of being directly targeted all the time you also need to worry about getting caught between particle-to-particle rays, which would be the more frequent, scenic, and thematic threat- direct targeting is always kind of annoying imo
 
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