VoidInsanity wrote:
Thats easy enough
New Sector =X+1
When X=Y Spawn Z
That way you can balance it by the duration instead of by how strong someones ship is. This rewards players for playing smart, exploring more, etc. Having something spawn that is as strong as you isn't that challenging, making it so you have to be ready for it is.
If you're implying that I use the current sector you're in, that will not work for this mod. You ship will never get past sector 1. If you meant something else, please explain.
The latest version, that is done, but I'm still testing, will move these "stronger ships" to the start of a new sector. If you meet the requirements you will have to fight them. Players (hopefully) will be encouraged to clear our the sector to increase their strength so that they will be able to defeat these ships.
I'm working on "features" to encourage exploration of the sector before moving on. The first of which will be these mini bosses. Once they start spawning you will want to be strong enough to defeat them. Meaning, explore as much as possible before hitting the exit beacon, which will spawn a mini boss once you reach minimum shield and engines.
The second "feature" is to reward players for defeating these mini bosses with a quest beacon. The beacon will spawn events to obtain either ship specific augments (the Colonizable Planet event) or Advanced Technology. Advanced Technology will simply be ship equipment (custom weapons) that cannot be obtained any other way. The main purpose of this is for when your ship is maxed out (or close) you still have a goal to further increase the strength of your ship.
Another advantage for using this functionality is that I can write events designed for a maxed ships, and trigger those events from defeating a mini boss. If you're strong enough to do that, than try this... etc. Thanks to Whale Cancer for his idea of using Quest Beacons to help scalability!
I think this will meet the "having to be ready for it" suggestion, but you'll have to tell me.
As for spawning a ship that is a strong as you... My goal is to spawn a ship that is stronger than you. This way, defeating it is more satisfying. One way I do that is equipping all Cruiser class ships (formally Battleships) with the Advanced Tech weapons mentioned above. So until you max your ship, and hunt down a full ship of Advanced Tech, the Cruisers should be (at least on paper) stronger than you.
I'm really excited for this version, I think it adds a lot to the game play, plus the new ships will add more diversity to your game experience. I should have it out within the next couple of days. I felt that extensive testing would be worth it this time.
