Invent your own environmental hazards

[Mikeshadow]

Zoltan Star - a green star that releases pulses that act in the opposite way to Pulsars; both ships temporarily receive an additional level of energy to affected systems (even pushing them over the cap if they're already fully charged), whilst ships with Zoltan shields also have the shield meter recharged (you'd mostly meet Zoltan pirates around these)

Ow... Aw... I hope the pulse only refill 1 or 2 Zoltan shield bar, otherwise it will be a pain if you meet a pirated Zoltan bomber. I will cry if i meet one Zoltan type ship in the Zoltan Star hazard while playing a boarding ship with no shield damaging weapon.

[stylesrj]

Hyperreactive Dust Cloud - when in these storms your reactor temporarily gets fully charged, regardless of how many systems you have active. However, having any one system at full charge for too long causes it to short circuit; doing 100% damage to the system (with equal hull damage), stunning/causing fires in the room, and ionizing it until its repaired (meaning it will still be inactive for a little while after you've fixed it). Systems near to blowing start sparking and bustling with green electricity as a warning. Possibly make it so that laser/ion weapons in these events also get hypercharged; each point of system damage is replaced by one level of temporary energy, as if a zoltan was stood in the room...

That's gotta suck if you haven't upgraded your Oxygen at all.

Alien Spider Nest - whilst at the beacon, you are regularly boarded by alien spiders through open/un-powered doors and breaches (basically anything that acts as an entrance). The spiders act like fully-leveled mantis, have high health levels, and take reduced damage from oxygenless rooms or fires. (Usually acts against both ships equally, but enemies love to use hull piercing missiles...)

As long as you avoid a hull breach, those giant alien spiders would be a joke.

-------------------------

How about a hazard like this:

Cloning Pod Testing Ground

The background would be several blue stasis tanks or something and act like an asteroid field in design.

At regular intervals a pod smashes into your ship and unloads a crazy, confused clone if your shields are down. The enemy ship will most likely have a clone bay, so every time one of these clones come onboard, they'll respawn back on the enemy ship and thus make their vessel harder to board/damage.

You can use Cloaking or Defence Drones to avoid the cloning tanks smashing into the ship and they won't be revived on the enemy vessel. Would be really bad for shieldless runs however but they won't deplete Zoltan shields on impact either. Not that it matters since enemy ships would be unaffected by the results anyway.

[Mikeshadow]

Ooooh, fun. I always like things that seem beneficial until you're in the wrong situation

What about a situation which gives you benefits and danger?

Only 1 thing I can think about.
Highly Magnetic Planet
You are in the magnetic field of an inhabited planet. This abnormally strong magnetic field locks your ship system(System power is halved), but protect you from a nearby star and pulsar.(Of-course it also affect enemy)
Which means that this hazard can pair with OTHER hazard. Have fun when you in this place with an asteroid field.

[stylesrj]

Highly Magnetic Planet
You are in the magnetic field of an inhabited planet. This abnormally strong magnetic field locks your ship system(System power is halved), but protect you from a nearby star and pulsar.(Of-course it also affect enemy)
Which means that this hazard can pair with OTHER hazard. Have fun when you in this place with an asteroid field.

Does that mean the opposite can occur as well? The enemy ship's power is halved, but protected from the other hazards while you suffer the effects of a pulsar/asteroids/solar flare?
Or is it because the fact that you're essentially fighting in a hazard at full power while the enemy isn't means an easy win for you?

Heh, what if it was a choice. "You're flying too close to a sun" "Look! There's a nearby planet with a high magnetic field! You can protect yourself from it there!" or you can choose to brave the few fires on the ship

[Gencool]

That's gotta suck if you haven't upgraded your Oxygen at all.

You'd just have to toggle it on and off constantly. Not sure how it would work with things you can't turn off. I imagine the ship would automatically turn the non-operatable systems down/off to protect them (so when they start overheating, you loose one level in said system until it cools down, rather than having it explode - really sucks for those with level 1 piloting...)

As long as you avoid a hull breach, those giant alien spiders would be a joke.

Maybe, but if you had a lot of fire on board and had to vent it...
It's sort of a twist on the breathable atmosphere thing; the atmosphere makes it impossible to vent out intruders/fires, but makes breaches relatively harmless (so long as you repair them before you leave). The spiders make breaches terrifying and forces you to question yourself every time you're about to open a door.

I mean, sure that four-space room that's completely on fire is scary, but is it a horde of giant flame resistant spiders scary? If there were intruders, you could open the doors and let the spiders deal with them, but then you'd have to deal with the spiders - and you can't vent the spiders out.

You could make them -extra- scary by having them constantly clawing at the airlocks. Maybe the airlocks are, by nature, superior blast doors, so it takes a long time for the spiders to break them down, and the attacks would be random, so certain doors will hold for absolutely ages, but either way they're still gonna get in if you stay at that beacon long enough...

Cloning Pod Testing Ground

Love this, though it would need to be like PDS where it could target either ship or both, and you could donate what type of crew were in them and who's if any side they're on. So sometimes the pods could be a particularly nasty Mantis ship firing pods at you, but othertimes it's a nearby medical ship that blew up and is scattering random races which attack any ship they land on.

Even better, i'd love this to be an alternative system to teleporters. Something where you could fire crew at the enemy as if they were Battle drones, but you can only send one crew at a time, and would have to launch a special teleport missile to recall them (it's old technology, from when you had to have someone on either end of the teleporter to work it). They can be shot down or crash into Zoltan shields, but if they die they get cloned in the drop-pod system, so you could still have a medbay.
Rather than the system being ionised on use, you get a set number of pods (equal to the spaces in the room?) which would have to be re-built after being used. Same deal with the recall pod, so if it gets shot down/hits a z-shield you're really screwed.

Maybe depending which crew you load into it it has different effect on impact; Lanius breach, Rock start fires, Crystals lockdown, Slugs mind control anyone in the room they hit, Engies temporarily hack the room they hit, Mantis stun enemies, and humans are boring and uninteresting. Other than Lanius, the pod lodges itself in the room it hits so that your crew don't get stuck without oxygen.

Ow... Aw... I hope the pulse only refill 1 or 2 Zoltan shield bar, otherwise it will be a pain if you meet a pirated Zoltan bomber.

Yeah, it'd be like having a shield charge drone - the pulses would probably be twice as powerful but half as frequent.
But there's always the chance that the pulses would hit the enemy shield and give them a temporary extra shield layer, which would suck almost as much.

This has to be the most evil thing I ever heard.

Hehhehheh, I live to serve =D

[Gencool]

- because I'm evil...

[Mikeshadow]

Does that mean the opposite can occur as well? The enemy ship's power is halved, but protected from the other hazards while you suffer the effects of a pulsar/asteroids/solar flare?
Or is it because the fact that you're essentially fighting in a hazard at full power while the enemy isn't means an easy win for you?

Due to how FTL work it will affect both ship. Unless the game have some crazy coding that allow one ship to be inside the magnetic field while other outside, that should be fun to see.

[agigabyte]

Corrupted Engi Connecting Mind

Based on the Engi Conspiracy

You have to fight a Massive Dreadnought with 6 fighters, 4 shields, all Ion weapons, weak engines, and a full crew along with clone bay. There is an Engi fleet in the background which fires 4 Ion blasts every twenty seconds.

It only appears in sector 7.

[stylesrj]

Corrupted Engi Connecting Mind

Based on the Engi Conspiracy

You have to fight a Massive Dreadnought with 6 fighters, 4 shields, all Ion weapons, weak engines, and a full crew along with clone bay. There is an Engi fleet in the background which fires 4 Ion blasts every twenty seconds.

It only appears in sector 7.

Well there goes my speedrun with a Stealth Cruiser
Not that I was planning to ever do it. But imagine how much this could screw it up.

How about a hazard that disables all shields? Have we done that already?

Particle Field
Shields and drones are constantly overloaded with harmless projectiles slamming into them. They do no damage to anything but they ionise shields and disable drones and look really pretty. Enemy ships encountered will be packed with beam weapons.
Firing lasers will be difficult too as they might intercept a particle blast instead.

Or how about...

Solar Mirrors
Beam weapons don't work here - the place is covered in reflective mirrors that curve or bounce off beams harmlessly. The DA-SR12 will have a lot of problems here.

[Mikeshadow]

Solar Mirrors
Beam weapons don't work here - the place is covered in reflective mirrors that curve or bounce off beams harmlessly. The DA-SR12 will have a lot of problems here.

Imagine there is a Rebel Rigger that only have beam weapons jump into this place. I can Imagine how the crew rage so much right now.