Patch When? #7 - Dev Diary - Hazards

[Antonio]

Art by @Kauket

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Hello and welcome to the #7 Dev Diary focused on Hazards.

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Overview

What is a hazard? A hazard is an object or area that, due to lore, roleplay or gameplay reason, presents a certain level of danger to the environment. The danger can vary from a mild inconvenience, such as low radiation damage, to instakill death zones, such as the inner sun corona. Other hazards include planet atmospheres, anomalies, mines, and gas pockets. In addition to dangerous highly-radioactive space, radiation is often used to describe hazards not supported by game mechanics, such as heat damage that isn't a sun corona, or dark matter, which is beyond our real-life understanding of physics to begin with.

Hazards in the live version of the mod are extremely inconsistent. Not only are there many locations where, for example, mines and anomalies do zero damage, but a conceptually similar minefield on the other side of Sirius works fine. The goal of working with hazards this update is to represent them more accurately in-game and introduce a consistency standard between similar hazards in different areas.

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Minefields

An attempted brute force path through the Alaska minefield.

Strict minefields are actually harmful now. No longer will it be possible to ignore a minefield like Zone-21 in a capital ship. Their damage per second is substantially increased, along with other parameters such as density. Note that this does not include hybrid asteroid-minefields, such as in Dublin or Omega-5. Those were standardized to remain relatively low on hull damage (as opposed to some doing zero damage) but high energy damage.

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Anomalies

A Corvo flying too close to the Tau-23 anomaly.

Another hazard not properly displayed are anomalies. While their interpretation is open, due to their unexplainable existence, we're going with the "dangerous" rather than "harmless" approach. All anomalies will be a proper hazard you can still study and research, though approaching one is highly inadvisable.

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Collapsed jump holes

A collapsed jump hole once connecting Edinburgh and Orkney -- effect by @Titan*.

Jump holes are an under-represented concept in Discovery in terms of their functionality. They are meant to be highly volatile and subject to collapsing and (re)opening, yet throughout history, it was either a 100% stable jumphole or zero trace of one. A newly introduced hazard will be collapsed jump holes, part of a jump connection overhaul of certain regions which will hopefully be covered in a future Dev Diary. Instead of completely deleting all changed jumpholes, we left some of them as collapsed, representing a once-existing connection between systems. Due to a strong electromagnetic field such jump holes are hazardous and should be avoided at all costs.

Not only are we introducing collapsed jump holes, but unstable ones as well. In other words, expect a few new snub-only jumpholes part of the above-mentioned jump connection overhaul, both for gameplay and lore reasons.

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Mazes

If one strays away from the recommended path in Kepler, death is certain.

Another concept appearing in this patch, going hand-in-hand with hazards, are mazes. Mazes on their own are not hazardous but provide a safe passage through a hazard. An example on the live version would be the minefield in Connecticut. The minefield is the hazard, while the buoys follow a safe hollow path inside the minefield. Similarly, certain systems will have mazes in combination with hazards next patch.

Some systems containing a maze next patch are Alaska, Kepler and Omicron Pi. Kepler is entirely engulfed by dark matter storms, as per the story flow of vanilla throughout Discovery. Rather than deleting it or making it inaccessible, we turned it into a maze-like instakill system full of hazards with safe passages, and valuables for those successful in navigating the harsh environment. Omicron Pi is a new exploration-based system with its own unique story, mazes, hazards, and gathering clues. Alaska has been transformed into a highly guarded minefield-surrounded maze system much more dangerous to trespassers than before.

All three are worth checking out and exploring to the last corner.

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Conclusion

The overall goal of this project is to make space more realistic and dangerous, while respecting the limits of game mechanics. In the future, there will be further fine-tuning of hazards. For example, we aim to represent gas pockets in-game as they are in lore - dangerous to capital ships but navigable by snubs. I'll also use this opportunity to encourage all of you to report any bug or illogicality with hazards once the patch drops.

Do you think a minefield is too harmless by being able to brute force it in a capital ship?

Do you think we missed an area that should have or be a hazard, like a strong radiation field around toxic debris?

Do you have an entirely new idea for a hazard we could implement in the future?

Let us know.

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SNAC Montage Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Thruster SNAC

[Serpentis]

To be honest, as a numbskull idiot, I will surely die to these hazards, BUT, that's the FUN of it! I approve and think this is a great addition to the mod! Good one!

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Abadan and the Arcadia | Sergei, The lost | Feedback Thread

[TheSauron]

Not much to say other than it looks cool. Minefields and gas pockets and the like are long overdue for being made properly lethal again.

But the Kepler part of the post made me wonder. It is a transit system, and probably sees more trade traffic than Galileo by a significant margin. Does the instakill zone extend over literally the entire system (sans corridors for lanes and gates, of course), or is it more of a thing for locations away from the infrastructure? If the former, do pirates have easy pathways to reach the lanes from Nome and the Galileo JH?

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One MD Admiral

[LuckyOne]

Finally Sirius will feel wild and untamed again, and the space environment not just a pretty background.

To expand on this theme I'd like for devs to look into implementing dangerous NPC encounters that go directly for Ores / HPGs and Illegal commodities (the scan - request for drop cargo from vanilla). They can be put into systems and parts of systems that don't see a lot of players hanging about to RP with each other.

[Sally]

Kudos to Nyx for that cover art, that's wallpaper potential.

By the way, most GIFs throw 404s, I guess it'll be fixed in any moment.

Note that this does not include hybrid asteroid-minefields, such as in Dublin or Omega-5. Those were standardized to remain relatively low on hull damage (as opposed to some doing zero damage) but high energy damage.

Why though? These mines exist as a deterrent from bigger threats to move through and into areas of interests, warships and transports should get slapped hard by these mines so their damage should be strong enough to deshield and cause serious hull damage if you start crashing into several of them in a row, snubs and and freighters are smaller and agile and should be able to avoid them without issue.

[Leo]

Not much to say other than it looks cool. Minefields and gas pockets and the like are long overdue for being made properly lethal again.

But the Kepler part of the post made me wonder. It is a transit system, and probably sees more trade traffic than Galileo by a significant margin. Does the instakill zone extend over literally the entire system (sans corridors for lanes and gates, of course), or is it more of a thing for locations away from the infrastructure? If the former, do pirates have easy pathways to reach the lanes from Nome and the Galileo JH?

My guess is the gates may be disabled or destroyed due to the Dark Matter storm increasing in power rendering the system impassible as it is now. Although, I haven't play tested or anything, so this is only a guess.

Seems interesting. I'll be interested to see how it plays. I'll avoid suggesting any new ideas, however.

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You fear oblivion. Yet you forget. The universe remembers every atom of your being. Even dust hums your name in the dark.
Starlight Research Consortium | The Banished Legion | Astral

[Antonio]

Kudos to Nyx for that cover art, that's wallpaper potential.

By the way, most GIFs throw 404s, I guess it'll be fixed in any moment.

Should be fixed now, thanks.

Why though? These mines exist as a deterrent from bigger threats to move through and into areas of interests, warships and transports should get slapped hard by these mines so their damage should be strong enough to deshield and cause serious hull damage if you start crashing into several of them in a row, snubs and and freighters are smaller and agile and should be able to avoid them without issue.

Because of 1 reason only, which is also why we didn't play around with gas pockets - sever side desync. The mine/gas field needs to be manually aligned for multiplayer in order to not cause a desync, and it's an area I personally haven't toyed around with due to time issues because, from what I understand, you need to manually align them to the last pixel. I joined the dev team pretty late in the patch cycle, and other tasks took priority, but I'll definitely try to fine-tune this for a future update.

This doesn't matter for full minefields like Zone-21, but in Dublin or Omega-5 it'd be too harsh to snub players if one mine detonating 200m away instakilled you.

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SNAC Montage Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Thruster SNAC

[Nika]

Finally, Suhl and Puerto Rico will not be the only real hazards.

[Couden]

What about Radiation Hazard?

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[Couden]

Finally, Suhl and Puerto Rico will not be the only real hazards.

What's Puerto Rico?

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