Cluster art ideas thread

Now, in areas where the Scrappers cannot go, say Epitaph, the wrecks just mount up. Imagine a cluster that decorates itself as time goes by?

I guess where I am going with all this is thinking about making the art less like decoration, and more like a reflection of the state of the stations or the cluster. Just an angle to brainstorm on.

This idea of art as a method of communicating the state of things has been around a while but this is the first time it has been said this way.

I wanted to start a thread to catch these ideas, because I expect we will all have them as we work on other features.

Some of the concepts to consider:
1. The art changes with the state of something in the game.
2. It conveys useful information to the player.
3. It could possibly provide the player with employment or support.
4. It links back into the game in self reenforcing ways.

The art does not need to meet all of those criteria, but the more it can meet the more it becomes a "feature" and less a "decoration". (I am not against decoration, but methods of transforming decoration into features is the whole point of the thread).

Here are a few more ideas to consider:

Station Population

Stations track population growth (or growth of wealth however you want to think of it). We modify the station models so they can accept more Modules. Different types of stations us different kinds of modules. As a station grows in people or wealth, the number of modules grows.

Once a maximum limit is reached, the station cannot grow. Instead, it splits off half, and starts construction on a new station. Thus our cluster is self replicating. Successful stations are ones that create new stations.

Initially, a station can suffer loss by being attacked. Damage to the station reduces the stations wealth. The player could inflict this damage by destroying station modules. When all modules are destroyed, the station is destroyed. We link the station growth into the meta game. Stations that have pirates preying on them suffer slower growth.

Consider this visual image, as the player travels the cluster, the safe protected stations will all have grown large and fat. The stations fighting on the edges of space will be lean and thin.

Ship Damage
I think it was Joco who was playing with the idea of ships dropping cargo when there were destroyed. Here is a similar idea. We create art that represents the destroyed "core" of each ship class. When a ship is destroyed, this core gets placed into the center of the sim, and is left behind when the ship is destroyed. We might also drop a ship system or two at the same time, in small, correctly shaped cargo pods.

These same "cores" become the wrecks that are found floating near battlefields and other locations. So the whole idea is consistant - ships get blasted, they produce cores. Cores are found floating in wreckage fields. Cores are recycled at scrappers and shipyards into new ships.

Those are my two major ideas. I expect more thoughts will come up as people play.

I know we have been tossing the Station growth idea around for a while. With our recent success on the capusule jumps, I am thinking that this would be easier to impliment than previously thought. We no longer really need to have totally modular stations. We could create a series of 'growth' sections (not unlike our capsule tubes) that can be docked to the station, and each other, dynamically via pog. Once these sections are designed, in a fashion that allows them to link together sensibly, we just need some code to track or represent the stations growth. I think this feature is very doable.

For the Ship Damage idea, it might be easier, and more attainable, to simply create generic 'wreckage' along with custom or specific avatars for systems, that could be placed after any ship was destroyed. If could get that working, then customizing the wreckage for each class of ships could follow.

We could create a series of 'growth' sections (not unlike our capsule tubes) that can be docked to the station, and each other, dynamically via pog.

This is basically what I was thinking. We start with something super easy. The growth sections are only modules. A module can only link to a station frame. Modules cannot attach to each other (this avoids a POG collision detecting nightmare).

The whole gantry/frame comes preconstructed in 1 piece with dockpoints for the modules, a pod spewer, and a pair of docking ports for ships.

Then you can use anything you want as the frame (as long as it has the module docking ports. We could use a huge asteroid, or the beanstalk, or a standard gantry frame.

The attachment and placement would be done by a POG object with an INI file containing the list of station modules to choose from. Different classes of stations would suppport different modules. For instance a Mine station would use Mining Rigs as modules. And a pirate base might use tiny scrapped together modules.

Tracking population/wealth is easy. That is 1 integer stored. No different than the fleets value that is in use today.

I can actually test the concept using mines. We needed a solution for putting mining rigs on the non-player owned mines. I can just use this solution. It turns out to be a bonus feature, because it will let the player kill off a non-player mine by destroying all the mining rigs. I guess that should have a pretty major reputation penalty. The station status environment code pays off again.