Ideas for more enviroments. What do you think?

[rawls]

What I really like are encounters in special enviroments like asteroid fields or near stars (solar flare), because they add an additional challenge to a fight and can cause great chaos. Yesterday Justin wrote in a thread at reddit that he wants to add more environments and that he will probably add pulsars and planetary defense systems. Since then I am constantly thinking about interesting environments that could be interesting to have in the game. Here are some of my ideas, what do you think? Do you have different ideas?

Weapon test area
Besides an encounter with an (enemy) ship the player gets a message where he is informed that he jumped into an weapon test area and that there is an ongoing test. Of course he is advised to leave immediately because the test can't be aborted. A countdown will be displayed. Hopefully the player has upgraded his engines so the FTL loads faster...

After the countdown has ended there are different outcomes possible:

-->The test wasn't successfull

• nothing happens
• something really bad happens (the nearest star/planet explodes --> fire/asteroids )

-->The test was successfull

• but they underestimated the power of the weapon -> something terrible happens
• but they overestimated the power of the weapon
• everything went perfectly as it should which is still bad for every ship in the sector

There also could be some strange testing site for scientific experiments...

Bio hazard
An area that is home of some strange tiny lifeforms. Once the player opens the airlocks these lifeforms will start spreading inside the ship like a gas would do.

There could be different kinds of them:

• some could damage/disable systems (ion damage)
• they could consume a certain amount of power depending on how many of them are inside the ship
• maybe some infect a given species. (if one is lucky they infect only mantis during a boarding event.)

How to detect it?

• Upgraded sensors (lvl2?) will warn the player of the danger of opening the airlocks.
• Upgraded sensors (lvl2?) will show the distribution of the lifeforms inside the ship (maybe somehow like missing oxygen is indicated or a lamp is blinking inside a contaminated room)
• Not upgraded sensors will only warn the player if they already entered the ship and the concentration is over a certain threshold.

How to get rid of it?

• Venting the ship in an normal area
• The O2 System could have some biofilters that filter them out of the air over time. An upgraded O2 System increases the rate
• Crewmembers could be instantly infection free if they enter the medbay

Gravitational field
The jump leads the player near a massive object. If the engines are disabled the strong gravitational field will pull the ship towards the star/planet/other object. Due to the increasing strength of the gravitational field the hull of the ship will be damaged (or something different happens).

Minefield
Well... If you enter a minefield you will think very fondly of asteroids.

Wrecking yard
This is a place where old ships are scraped. Could work a little bit like the astroid field with the addition that unlucky ships could collide with more massive objects (ship parts). But there is a chance to find something valuable or some havoc causing boarding drones that became self aware.

Radiation
Could do something to systems and/or crew if the shields of a ship are down. Haven't thought this through yet.

A combination of different enviroments
Why not combine a nebula with a solar flare event or make some weapon/science tests inside a wrecking yard? This could lead to even more diverse threats for the players ship.

I posted this at getsatisfaction, too.