The following is a design change that we are discussing. Please provide your opinion on this change to the game.

Problems this design doc is attempting to address

• Existing '+' (plus) items are each created manually in the balance sheets which is a lot of work, and their stats and balance are often not very well in line with other items and don't always come out right even after a lot of "massaging" of the balance formulas.
• End game players often don't have anything to build
• Lower tech items are almost always useless to the majority of the players
• We need a bunch more commodities for Prospecting, but those commodities should have some specific purpose

Unlimited Plus Levels

The basic proposal here is that instead of manually creating '+' items in the balance sheets, we delete all existing '+' items and add a new property to items, which would be "plus level". The default for an item is 0, and a plus level of 1 would be the equivalent of an existing '+' item. The stats for an item with non-zero plus level would be generated by code, and each basic item type would incorporate the plus level in some kind of overloaded function that returns item stats.

An item with non-zero plus level would be indicated in the inventory like "Light Laser+" or "Light Laser+3".

What exactly the plus levels do to the stats of an item would depend on the item type, but, for example, a plus weapon would probably be something like +5% damage per plus level, -5% size, and -5% weight.

New Commodities

There will be up to 10 new commodities corresponding to the new plus levels that the player will have to prospect. Each one corresponds to a plus level. I don't have names yet, but for placeholder, let's call them "Plusonium+", "Plusonium+1", Plusonium+3", etc.

Upgrading Items

In order to upgrade the level of an item, the player will be required to take some number of items of the same plus level and go to a special AI base where there will be a new tab for upgrading items. The cost to upgrade an item of plus level X to plus level X+1 will be 10 times the base cost in credits, a number of the same kind of item of plus level X equal to X+2, and a number of a new kind of commodity equal to the tech level of the item that corresponds to the new plus level.

For example, to create a Light Laser+, which, let's say, has a credit value of 10,000 credits, a player would need to bring 2 Light Lasers, 100,000 credits, and 1 Plusonium+. To make a Light Laser+2, he would need 3 Light Laser+'s, 100,000 credits, and 1 Plusonium+2. (Breaks down to 6 Light Laser, 400,000 credits, 3 Plusonium+, and 1 Plusonium+2.) To make a Light Laser+3, he would need 4 Light Laser+2's, 100,000 credits, and 1 Plusonium+3. (Breaks down to 24 Light Lasers, 1.5m credits, 12 Plusonium+, 4 Plusonium+2, and 1 Plusonium+3.) As you can see, the cost explodes pretty fast.

Mods on items being combined have a random chance to come through to the final item based on how many items are being combined. But they will have a slightly higher chance to come through to the combined item than not. If there is a mod on x of the items being combined out of n total items, then the chance for the mod to be on the combined item would be (x+1)/(n+1). For example, if you are combining two Light Lasers into a Light Laser+, and both are miniaturized and one is extended, then the combined Light Laser+ has a 100% chance of being miniaturized, and a 67% chance of being extended.

Advantage of the unlimited, code-generated plus levels

The two main advantages of this system would be that it would clean up our balance sheets a lot, and give us infinite sinks for hard-core players who want to keep upgrading their items.

The other advantage is that it lets us create a new meaningful commodity that players will want to find in order to upgrade their items.

Neuro-binding

The AI bases that offer the item combination should also offer the option to neurobind an item in exchange for 1 random item mod. Combining any NB items would make the resulting item also NB. Thus to maximize the mods on your combined item, you should NB the items that go into it. If some items that you are combining are already NB and some aren't, the combination code will automatically give you the free mods on the non-NB items just before combining. Combining all non-NB items will result in a non-NB item, so making your items NB will be optional.

Extra Loot

To make sure that all areas are still worth doing and that there isn't too much of an item-sink created by this system, we should add massive amounts more loot to boss drops, especially including slightly lower tech loot. So if a player is trying to build up a super-awesome tech 20 item, it would still be worth it to go do Olympus, because those bosses will start dropping a lot more stuff, including tech 20 items.

It certainly sounds good, though the mod part hurts my brain.

extra loot
will that mean i will come away from oly with a station kit and an andaman drone bp? i wont mind as long as this is ADDITIONAL loot

Is this AI base gear only?

does plutsonium+55 drop ? where is the limit ?


Anyways it will not work as anticipated because:
the limiting factor will the the plutsonium, and therefore it is nto a credit sinc.
Since we have a limiting factor we wont be using that feature on any gear according to the amount we got, but instead well jsut use it on the best gear.
To avoid that youd need to make the Plutsonium drop overproportional.. and then it doesnt make sence as limiting factor in first place.

The plusonium, or whatever it ends up being called will not be a drop. It will be mined from asteroids and prospected from planets. So there is in effect infinite amount of it. The limiting factor will be the items that go into it. This is designed as fundamentally an item sink that allows players to get really awesome items.

What about plus ships? Also, are you saying this would work for absolutely anything?


So if I had 6 normal Kidd Energy Grids, I could make 1 Kidd Energy Grid+2?

The current design does not have a way to upgrade ships. I'm not sure if it should work on augmenters or not, but it would work on every basic item type and probably some others as well. So definitely yes on all weapons, energies, shields, radars, engines, tractor beams, and scoops. Probably yes on shield caps and shield chargers. And either undecided or I'm not remembering other item types.

What about drones or fighters. I feel like if there were upgraded version of them then the lower tech drones might be more viable as someone could just upgrade them to be semi on par with their higher tech counterparts and the same goes for fighters. This would help the lowbie players who may not be able to acquire the more expensive gear for their class and so can just upgrade the gear they already have.

Deffinately an interesting proposition. How would you go about a player selling the item to another player, or a player selling via a shop?

Will the current + ships be included in this?

Extra loot is all well and good, but what about classes like seer, sniper and speed demon who have practically no hull space and rely on cashing in their gear after each dg?

well if its based on item value etc Thumbs up..
i find the Plusonium part piss anoying but i guess it adds some spice to it, and without it i guess it would get out of hands way too fast.
But serioly plz plz plz.. balance the stuff in advance.. nothing worse then pissing off people who start oinvesting their stock of gear into a certian direction, and then getting it nerfed for whatever reason.

Please include everything;
Weapons
Energies
Hull Expanders (+ tiny amount of % hull and/or -weight)
Overloaders
Tractors
Scoops (scoop radius!!!)
Engines
Shields
Radars
Drones
Fighters
Cloaks
Warpers
Non-sticky inbuilts (when they come)!
Diffusers (give them -10% fail rate for breakable diffusers per level, and cant be AI base diffusers probably (yes volatile diffusers, i mean you)
Shield Chargers
Capacitors
Tweak Generators (- a few % seconds and a few seconds each level)
Aura Generators
Missile bays
Fighter bays
Solar Panels
Drone Overloaders
Travel fields (careful with this one, +3 speed increased 5% less resist removed)
Controlbots/Combat Controlbots <<< Important
Ship-based factories (-size?)
I think thats just about it!
I might be missing a teeny tiny item, maybe.
Edit- Oh, and no bases.

The one thing i dont get why you try to narrow the upgrade potential down, by telling us what the boni will be of the "+ versions".
Totally unflexible system.
Especially when it would naturally make sense to give us the option ot decide what to improve.
And btw we already have such a system implemented, the mods.
Similar we could have Light Laser +3xdmg +2xrange +2xlowersize.
Only the way the how the excessive egar is used as commodity needs to be adjusted.

Scoopy slaves, the ability of slaves being able to scoop your drops means you don't really need a massive amount of hull free on your main ship. I have about 50 free hull when DGing, possibly less depending on gear...however my Shrimp+ has 1.5k free

bad idea, unless you want a generation of twinks.