Search the Community

I’ve been referring to the settled systems as a star cluster, but it occurs to me that if dlc and mods add new groupings of stars we’ll want to have common terms to differentiate between the parts vs the whole. Terms smallest < largest systems < asterisms < constellations < sectors < < open clusters < regions < globular clusters < quadrants < galaxies < dimensions/universes < multiverse What is tricky is that sectors seem to lack official definition outside of media like star trek (about 50 systems avg in 20ly blocks). Also cluster vary between open 10s to 1000s of stars and globular 10,000s to 1,000,000s+ of stars. As sector has the most utility for political groupings rather than scientific groupings, it probably makes more sense to refer to new chunks of stars as new sectors and to refer to all stars in jumpable range as our local cluster with stars that are somehow in new star maps as other clusters (say in a new section of the galaxy reached by wormhole rather than grav drive). Furthermore, sectors could be used to create more legible star maps as system factions mods play a stronger role over time in system travel etc: The UC sector, the Freestar sector, the Crimson Fleet sector, the some new mod sector, etc. In turn, the vanilla settled systems may constitute a cluster, distinct from say a dlc cluster or an ambitious mod adding multiple sectors. Region and larger may not be needed, but region should refer to groupings of clusters around features, say nebulae or spurs of the milky way or the galactic core, and of course quadrants are just quarters of the galaxy. Not sure there’d be debate about terms like sector vs cluster, but I figure better to be sure everyone gets on the same page early to avoid confusion or clashing around naming conventions down the line. I know I was unfamiliar with asterism, a shape of stars more simple than a constellation, so perhaps that at least will be of use to people. A mod adding a polygon of systems would be adding the blank asterism. If people are working on similar mods (say dealing with spacer dominated space) they may wish to place adjacent asterisms to form a constellation that is part of the existing spacer, or whichever faction, sector.

There are a lot of great mechanics from FTL that would be fun if we could find a way to get them into starfield. Already good threads on things like fuel, fleets, etc, so I want to focus here on ideas for autopilot, manual repairs, crew, weapons, and defenses. Autopilot The hardest thing to implement, but one with the most interesting applications would be real autopilot in docking and combat. The ability to move around a ship while the ship moves. Additionally, it would be great to be able to find or design autopilot defensive maneuvering patterns. This could then be coupled with things like manual turret substations. Manually controlling a rear turret while crew or autopilot move the ship. If the autopilot system is damaged, manual docking may be required. Manual Repairs In survival mode (assuming we’re getting one), it would be great if only exterior systems can be auto repaired by drone and the player must direct priorities. Other systems, hull breaches, fire, etc must be repaired manually by crew or the player. It may be possible to lack materials for repairs and be forced to take chances with surrender or S.O.S. If out of repair drones it would be great to be forced to spacewalk a repair, or at least risk a crew member to do it if too hard to mod spacewalks. Crew It would be great if crew could go mad, turn out to be spies, get knocked out or killed under fire, consider cannibalism if stranded in deep space with broken comms for extended time, etc. Bring a little Sunless Sea/Skies in. It might be nice to allow the player to operate different systems and include minigames for optimal operation. On a larger ship, maybe keeping the shields up is the most important task, or if running from a hoard if pirates, maybe one needs to carefully overload the engines. More situational ship tasks might greatly increase immersion, particularly of designed with VR in mind. Computer cores could also play a more important role in target acquisition and autopilot with hacking and cooling as operation improvement tasks.Basically, the larger the ship, the more vital crew and systems should become over piloting alone. Weapons/Defenses I’d love to see adaptations of all FTL weapons/defenses and rare unique ships that need to be found and scuttled to reverse engineer them. Also, interested to see better stealth, distance, mines, etc mechanics for games of cat and mouse in space. Perhaps some more nebula locations with low visibility where limited scanning techniques may be the only way to see or be seen at range. Maybe nukes and anti nuke devices. Maybe very long distance rail guns and long distance jammers. So much potential for interesting trade offs.

I'm currently working on an update to my premiere mod You Are SPECIAL which adds a slew of new perks, adds skills, and adds traits to enhance anyone's experience, made to be compatible with most mods, you can use it with almost any mod setup you want (Specific incompatibilities will be added as development continues) I've made this post to use as a sort of devlog so that anyone who may want to track the progress I'm making can go here. So far, I've outlined 7 potential perks to add/improve:

Is there something special about adding mods to Subnautica (i.e. is QMods Manager required) or is it the same as every other Steam game? Unfortunately it's been too long since I added or edited mods for Steam games. So far QMods does not have a Mac version.