Missions with Harder Searching of the Pilots
Posted: 2022-Mar-31 15:38
This post in nutshell: There are many ways how to make finding pilots harder and requiring more attention.
Mission with Harder Searching of the Pilots
If we sum up the previous post, the player can discern the target type by the normal radar, by mountain relief radar, visually by presence and color of the light (the green beacon; the turrets shine blue but I suggest that some may be masked to various degree), or visually by the shape of the object. I don't know whether this list is complete: for example, one can discern a crashed ship by landing near and seeing whether a pilot starts running.
So I suggest that either the nature (for example ore deposits) or Jaggi can impair (make difficult) any of these identification methods. Any combination. Some methods completely, some partly...
For example, the Jaggi can place a decoy (false imitation of a crashed ship) with exactly the right green color beakon and intensity; this decoy will look somewhat like a crashed ship (discernable by careful observation), but can be easily discerned if the player looks at the mountain relief radar.
Etc. Simply, any combination is IMHO conceivable (althought a mission would be difficult if *all* were impaired). I believe this can be a topic for several interesting missions, each with different kind impairing of identification methods.
Methods Requiring Player's Attention
This will probably not be appealing to most players, but I can imagine that the radar can give a very limited information which the player has to intensively process (to concentrate much on it) to find the pilot - so he must split the concentration while fighting the turrets and fighters. This might make the game more intense and engaging.
For example the radar would indicate (clearly or hazily) the distance of the pilot (nearest pilot in any direction), but not the direction. The player would have to fly an intelligent pattern that would give him some clue about the direction - for example "if the distance doesn't seem to be changing, then my heading is probably perpendicular (at a right angle) to the pilot".
Or the player would be limited to moments when the radio broadcasts a moving message "Help me, I am afraid" or so - and the player gets a limited info about pilot's direction (heading needed to find the pilot) and must notice this information quickly before it disappears. This can be combined with all other ideas here. Also with the idea right bellow about an acoustic radar; there I imagine a regularly repeated acoustic information, but here it could be an information in unexpected moments and the player must pay some attention to notice it. (Well, maybe this is already a too wild idea...)
Or, in some missions, the only output of the radar would be the sound. Let's say that each object detected by the radar is represented every five seconds as a sound of two consecutive tones, the second tone +5 to -5 semitones higher (lower) than the first one, which corresponds to "target at 5 o'clock" (150 degrees right) to "target at -5 (that is, 7) o'clock" (150 degrees to the left). If the pitch of the tones is similar (or the same), then it means that the target is roughly (or exactly, respectively) ahead.
The length of the tones might indicate the distance of the target, the volume could be the degree of confidence (see my post about imperfect radar) that it is a target at all (and not an ore deposit) and the color of the tone would indicate the target type. This can be combined with ideas A) or B) in the same post.
I would like it very much, because the more senses the player has to use, the more intense the experience. And the customization and difficulty switches would let the player set this "acoustic difficulty" independently from other game aspects, because a musician will be able to detect far smaller nuances (and with far less concentration) than a hopeless musical antitalent. So the player could set the clarity of acoustic difference between turrets and pilots (see "A" in the post about imperfect radar), the tendency of the radar to identify unreliably ("B") and also the density of occurrence of false targets.
Endless combinations are thinkable, for example a good or mediocre radar (as we know it from 1.0.0) for enemies, but the pilot locations can be detected only by the acoustic radar. Etc.
The point would be that finding pilots draws so much concentration/attention that fighting enemies and piloting during it is (reasonably) hard.
Mission with Harder Searching of the Pilots
If we sum up the previous post, the player can discern the target type by the normal radar, by mountain relief radar, visually by presence and color of the light (the green beacon; the turrets shine blue but I suggest that some may be masked to various degree), or visually by the shape of the object. I don't know whether this list is complete: for example, one can discern a crashed ship by landing near and seeing whether a pilot starts running.
So I suggest that either the nature (for example ore deposits) or Jaggi can impair (make difficult) any of these identification methods. Any combination. Some methods completely, some partly...
For example, the Jaggi can place a decoy (false imitation of a crashed ship) with exactly the right green color beakon and intensity; this decoy will look somewhat like a crashed ship (discernable by careful observation), but can be easily discerned if the player looks at the mountain relief radar.
Etc. Simply, any combination is IMHO conceivable (althought a mission would be difficult if *all* were impaired). I believe this can be a topic for several interesting missions, each with different kind impairing of identification methods.
Methods Requiring Player's Attention
This will probably not be appealing to most players, but I can imagine that the radar can give a very limited information which the player has to intensively process (to concentrate much on it) to find the pilot - so he must split the concentration while fighting the turrets and fighters. This might make the game more intense and engaging.
For example the radar would indicate (clearly or hazily) the distance of the pilot (nearest pilot in any direction), but not the direction. The player would have to fly an intelligent pattern that would give him some clue about the direction - for example "if the distance doesn't seem to be changing, then my heading is probably perpendicular (at a right angle) to the pilot".
Or the player would be limited to moments when the radio broadcasts a moving message "Help me, I am afraid" or so - and the player gets a limited info about pilot's direction (heading needed to find the pilot) and must notice this information quickly before it disappears. This can be combined with all other ideas here. Also with the idea right bellow about an acoustic radar; there I imagine a regularly repeated acoustic information, but here it could be an information in unexpected moments and the player must pay some attention to notice it. (Well, maybe this is already a too wild idea...)
Or, in some missions, the only output of the radar would be the sound. Let's say that each object detected by the radar is represented every five seconds as a sound of two consecutive tones, the second tone +5 to -5 semitones higher (lower) than the first one, which corresponds to "target at 5 o'clock" (150 degrees right) to "target at -5 (that is, 7) o'clock" (150 degrees to the left). If the pitch of the tones is similar (or the same), then it means that the target is roughly (or exactly, respectively) ahead.
The length of the tones might indicate the distance of the target, the volume could be the degree of confidence (see my post about imperfect radar) that it is a target at all (and not an ore deposit) and the color of the tone would indicate the target type. This can be combined with ideas A) or B) in the same post.
I would like it very much, because the more senses the player has to use, the more intense the experience. And the customization and difficulty switches would let the player set this "acoustic difficulty" independently from other game aspects, because a musician will be able to detect far smaller nuances (and with far less concentration) than a hopeless musical antitalent. So the player could set the clarity of acoustic difference between turrets and pilots (see "A" in the post about imperfect radar), the tendency of the radar to identify unreliably ("B") and also the density of occurrence of false targets.
Endless combinations are thinkable, for example a good or mediocre radar (as we know it from 1.0.0) for enemies, but the pilot locations can be detected only by the acoustic radar. Etc.
The point would be that finding pilots draws so much concentration/attention that fighting enemies and piloting during it is (reasonably) hard.