Patch When? #7 - Dev Diary - Hazards

[Antonio]

Might I suggest buffing the damage at the Kyofu Burn in Hokkaido? Been too long since it was actually dangerous

The problem with flat open space radiation zones is that they exclusively harm snubs and don't do anything to caps. If we buffed the Kyofu to burn all snubs at a moderate rate, caps would just use it to escape into when attacked, kind of how we had it with the gas pockets before the hazard changes (a cap would ignore gas clouds' damage and laugh at the snubs, while it should be the other way around inRP - see 80 years war). We took care of the gas clouds issue by making it take away all your shields and core, which is way more impactful for caps, though there is no such mechanism for radiation sadly.

It's also why quite a few people were annoyed at the radiation fields in Earhart/Uncharted 3. The radiation doesn't do anything but annoy snubs gameplay-wise. In my opinion, the way to deal with radiation is to either make it a full danger zone instakill for everyone, with a buffer zone as a warning, or no instakill token radiation for inRP sake. The only exception to this are snub only systems, like Copernicus, where the radiation is carefully tuned for snubs and it works solid so far based on the feedback received.

If we had something like % damage based radiation, we could do wonders. Sadly, as the saying goes, the technology isn't there yet.

Edit: I am not too big of a fan of making strong radiation on regular traversal paths. Like for instance, realistically speaking Omega-41 would be way more hazardous than it is at the moment, but it's an important connector system and there would be nothing good or fun gameplay-wise losing 30 nanobots on a VHF passing through the system, while feeling nothing in anything larger than a freighter. In such cases I'd rather have safe passage zones, and instakill zones. Even then I'd be a bit hesitant to do it in important connector systems.

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