Aethrwolf
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Posted - 2008.05.24 12:27:00 -
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All kinds of things that could go to Exploration, I thought it would be cool to find an ancient stealthed warp gate or its equivalent to a hidden system, the gate would require archeology to decipher its operating language and hacking to access, possibly even a use for some of the technology that you cant sell to reactivate, but once you spend the time/materials on it you would have pw protected, exclusive (at least until someone else found and hacked the gate you spent so much time and effort on) access to a small solar system. Once you had the gate functioning again, the only way to find it would be for someone to scan you down while you were using it, Knowing there will be shots taken at the idea, I have a few ideas to balance it.
1, gate has limited activations per day
2. requires players to fuel it every use
3. something like a 10 minute activation time, owing to our imperfect understanding of the technology requiring us to charge the systems for every use.. we dont know how the safely idle its generators, or something.
4. perhaps we cannot get full function out of the stealth systems causing the gate to be easily found for a few minutes time at random intervals (thinking 2-3 times a day here)
5 password changes randomly requiring us to re hack it for every use
6. the massive surge in power when you activate it causes it to show up briefly on everyones overview in the system every time you use it (just long enough for an alert player to select it and warp to it) once you are within 10km its easily detectable
any one of those or a combination would mean that your "private" star system would be found eventually, and no longer be private.
As to the system you find, thinking not more than 1-2 planets with a couple of moons a piece, 1-2 asteroid belts with maybe a rare ore rock occasionally, rats that dont have bounties as know one knows wth they ARE. maybe an abandoned station of odd design for you to figure out (more arch/hacking)
I dont want to suggest something that is a game breaker, eventually someone is gonna catch you going there or find the gate some other way, cahnces of scanning down the location would be tiny, but better than before you fixed it, as there are active systems to give off emissions, now. A careful player could possibly drag out his/her sole access for a while, but eventualy someone will find it. (theres another idea here- bloodhound drone.. small, stealthed, attempts to follow and report on a ship's location chances of a successful track go down quickly the farther the drone has to follow, and it cant leave system, only report on the last location of the target. a chance to lose track of the target every time it warps)
If you keep the systems that can be found this way very small, you should be able to run "several" off a server cluster. make sure no more than one gate spawns in any given system
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