You ever feel the urge to make a mark, to send a message to the whole world in as loud a voice as you can, to yell out to the stars "HERE I AM!"? To message call the very gods themselves to bring their doom upon you, because you can take it. Or maybe you just want to leave a peaceful, happy life unharassed by explosives or the whippersnappers with their new-fangled orbital bombardments. Maybe you want exclusive rights to your planet, because you just know that if anyone else were to see the genius of your work, they would be so stunned that they'd fall in and their guts would clog the gears. Well, I am glad to present to you, beacons! Devices which can do all that and more! At it's core, a beacon is just a device for displaying information to the world, some of this information is just coded in the form of planetary laws that allow you to ensure that nobody comes down and ruin your carefully-planted petunias with antimatter grenades and doomsday weapons. Others might call in pirate fleets to orbit your planet, attacking anyone who comes in or out, including yourself. Beacons require continuous power supply to run, if it runs out of power, then the beacon will do little other than be in the way. These beacons simply have a message on them that can be read by other players, or it can change the color of your planet's dot on the solar system/galaxy map. They come in different varieties with different energy costs. The first one is a message that is read when your planet is scanned, it is very cheap and easy to run, essentially a repurposed or re-repurposed SOS message. It won't help much with people trying to find your planet though. The second tier of beacon is a device that allows you to send a message before anyone even scans your planet, making it somewhat easier to find people who wnat to be found. A variant of the tier 2 beacon is one that can recolor your planet's dot to something else, so that instead of having to say "I'm at coordinates 33461,590412" you can say "i'm on the planet that's bright pink on the map." much easier to spot and reach. you have to pick one for how much power you give your beacon, if you want both, then you'll have to power your beacon twice as much. Tier 3 beacons allow for you to not only color or message the planet that you're on, but the system that your planet's in as well. This beacon type requires lots of power to maintain, so the player must be pretty well-to-do to be powering one. Again, you can color change or message your system, but you have to give it a crapton of power to do both at the same time. Certain beacons give information about the laws of the system, ensuring that anyone who comes down to your planet will know that certain features are disabled, and, since the beacons carry weight in the intragalactic bureaucracy, nobody will be able to break these laws, due to a secret, oppressive brainwashing regime. They can ban any block from being brought in or made on the planet (though ones made by the terrain generator will still be there) They can prevent certain items or classes of items from being used, such as no outsiders may use heavy weapons (But the owner can set the rules so that he can. . .) One could also disallow people without the code or direct permission to land or teleport to the planet, so that you can have some space to stretch your legs. Pretty much anything one can think of a logical or funny reason to change something that is normally allowed. Each law requires energy, so if you want 30 billion laws, be prepared to use a lot of fuel really fast. This is by far the most commented-about beacon type here, and there have been some misconceptions. -- This beacon doesn't affect mobs/NPCs, only players. Mobs usually operate outside of the law and NPCs have certain permissions because they're not going to go on a mass slaughtering rampage very often. -- it does have a GUI that allows you to ban certain classes of items, such as heavy weapons, grenades or whatnot, or you can ban specific items by selecting them from a searchable list, and you can ban certain stats of items, a gun that deals over 100 damage can be banned, or a weapon with an "explosive" tag on it or has a slow effect can be banned. All for a price, of course. + Something that i'm considering for beacons of law is should a banned item simply be unusable on the surface of the planet, or should it be nerfed until it's usable on the planet? For example, a beacon might say that no weapons that deal over 100 damage are allowed and no weapons that root someone in place (but slows are allowed) a freeze-ray gun that deals 186 damage and freezes enemies would on this planet become a gun that deals exactly 100 damage and slows enemies by 50% but doesn't freeze them. This way a gun that you think is really cool-looking and badass doesn't have to be switched out for something less impressive, but it would also result in anyone too powerful being at exactly 100 damage and a slow effect. Would this also buff too-weak guns, if you had a law that said no guns that deal less than 30 damage are allowed and your newb-pistol deals 8, should this be buffed to 30? that might make for some really neat arena scenarios, if guns that deal less than 100 damage get buffed to 100, and more than 100 damage gets nerfed to 100, a complex and expensive set of laws might make a completely standardized arena, where anyone can compete at any time and have all the right gear. It'd also be neat if those laws could be changed on the fly, mid-fight. These are beacons that can cause certain things to happen, such as one might be able to call a pirate fleet to declare this place their homeworld. They will attack anyone not in the fleet, which probably includes the beacon maker. It'd be nice for bounty hunters, it would prevent these pirates from roaming onto other planets, and it could serve as a strange defense mechanism. event beacons can be key to summoning various bosses throughout the game. Also grouped under event beacons are beacons that allow the community to grow, increasing its size with intentional and continuous player intervention. A teleportation beacon will set the location where you teleport in from it's default middle of nowhere to right on top of the beacon (which, if given enough power, creates a really pretty beam of light out the top, making your entrance all the more dramatic). This could be useful in PvP applications, move your spawn to a giant deathroom with 30 billion turrets and locked Tiytanium doors and locked Tiytanium walls, and the place is secured. However, drop pods could still get in and ruin your day if you're unprepared. I made another thread about these two technologies, which can be found here. Beacons would allow for some very interesting PvP scenarios, and a few rules do apply to them. 1) conflicting beacons completely disable each other: If there's a beacon that says no to heavy guns (except for this guy) and another that says no (for everyone) to them, then since one guy is allowed to have heavy guns and not allowed to have heavy guns at the same time, then both beacons disable, continue consuming energy, but don't enact their laws until one is destroyed. 2) The deeper a beacon is in stuff, the more energy it takes: If a beacon is really deep underground in an impenetrable fortress of Tiytanium, then it's going to have a very high energy cost, somewhere like 5-10 times the power that it normally takes, this prevents people from just making a box of indestructium and calling it good. The generator doesn't have this feature, but it will need to be accessed regularly. So there's two points a PvP team could take out. 3) a powered beacon creates a really pretty column of light and shows up on scans/world maps: It's hard to hide something that's sole purpose is to throw out information to the stars, so there's multiple ways to find it, a ship scan will show you where it is, as will simply walking around until you find a beam of light shooting out from where it is. 4) Beacons are unbreakable with a pick when powered, however, they do have a health pool, so you shoot at the beacon, it's health is pretty considerable, and it can be healed (unless that's banned). This will make going against a beacon less of a mad dash and more of a strategic operation. 5) Not so much as a rule as a satisfactory thing: If a beacon is destroyed, it explodes really prettily, an announcement made to everyone on the planet, giving the victors a sense of victory. If intelligent societies live on a planet, they may or may not have a beacon. They might take the form of an SOS message, laws from a specific society or city, or pirates with the balls to want to be found. Other towns/cities might not have a beacon but want one, and if you give them and power a beacon, the community might grow. This thread is connected to and referenced in two other threads of mine, one about ship-planet interaction & drop pods, the other about various ways to use energy.
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Yes, nice idea, although somehow too powerful, if you can change laws which the maker don't have to follow. But other stuff, nice. I would make the beacon extremely resistant to damage, so that anyone could enter the planet and try to disable or destroy it for good. (Disabling would be easier) Maybe a hostile person could reprogram the beacon, or sabotage it, so that it may act the exact opposite of the intended way. Of course for only a "short" period of time, maybe based on the tool that was used to so.
Yeah, I think that it's a bit strong in its current iteration and would sap PvP. Maybe only certain laws can be specific to one player or group of players, and when you use that property, you have to start paying a lot more energy in order to keep the law up. Larger, more invasive laws will affect everyone. However, the planet interface will tell you everything about any law on the planet, so there's no risk of you landing on a planet and not being able to do anything. unless you weren't paying attention. I was thinking of adding a PvP section on conflicting beacons. If you have two beacons on the same planet, one that causes one effect, the other saying something mutually exclusive (YES to explosions, NO to explosions) it would default to no law, except in the area shortly around the beacons (like maybe a 100 block distance, to prevent permanent harm to a base.) This would cause two bases that would now have to duke it out for control of the planet. Once one beacon has been disabled, then a conflicting argument can't be made, at least not for a few days.
You could have the laws only on your home world. It would be ok if the people could read the laws and stuff before you go onto the world and then if they go on that's their own fault.
I really like this idea. If the laws work as the main post says, It could be used in a massive PvP server as a deterrent to keep the enemy from using something. For instance, They can't use anything explosive until they locate and destroy or jam the beacon. Also, I think, the more restrictive the law, the more power is used.
Yeah, I think the law will require so much power, and you can add features that make it more specific, such as your guild is exempt from it, or you can add people who are exempt will make the beacon require more energy, which is multiplied from the amount of energy that the law originally uses.
I love this idea. Especially the beacons of law. I would assume they would be pre-generated beacons that you could choose that would change the game mechanics/options on that planet and apply to all things (players, creatures, NPCs, etc.). That would just be so awesome. Not sure I understand how they use power though...do they need generators or something like that? Does this mean that if I can sabotage the law beacon's power source, then I can change the law of the planet!?
I think it would be more, if you destroyed the beacon, and then rebuilt/placed it, then you could change the law. Or in the PvP instance, just destroy it. Disabling the power source would take the beacon offline though.
This sounds like a fantastic idea, especially with the law beacons. They could work for RPing a community, stopping other people from destroying everything you own for "shits 'n' gigs" and for keeping PvP arenas under control. I really hope this gets put in. By the sound of it I'd say that they aren't pre-generated, you need to build them and their power source. Yes, yes, maybe.
I'm not sure what you mean by pre generated, you can make them, and there's just one beacon a "beacon of law" that you can interact with, open up a UI for, and change what law(s) it uses. Some villages/cities might have claimed planets and have their own beacons, which you could sabotage if you wanted to, though expect some repercussions if you're caught. Yeah, the power comes from a power source, any of the generators that have been reccommended on this forum, from antimatter reactors to orbital solar arrays. Yeah, destroying a beacon will indeed remove the law(s) from the planet, so if you're expecting some PvP, plan ahead and erect some defenses around the thing.
Sorry, that was not very specific, you're right. What I meant was that the "laws" that the beacons of law exert over the planet would be "pre-generated". i.e., there are a set number of them and you aren't just coding your own (although that could be fun too). So for example you might have a beacon of law with the "no fall damage" law, or "no night" law, or something like that, but that the laws are already laid out as options to pick from when creating a beacon or that it will have one of those laws already attached if you were to find a beacon. Yeah, I think it would be cool to see a law that would prevent players from mining blocks that were placed by another player. Perhaps rockets and such might still destroy them, but you couldn't just mine your way past someone's locked door. The "no griefing" law...lol
Uhh... What. Night time is against the law? Taking damage insatiably the law? I think you've got the wrong idea. The laws are things that disallow the player form doing things, like in real life. Only the beacons force people to obey them.
I think that "no night/fall damage" would fall into the realm of geoengineering, where you can change that and much more. Laws are just that, laws, things that you could expect to be illegal, heavy weapons, destroying blocks (your greifing law would probably be a mainstay, and it has to be in to have a reasonable set of laws.) Laws cover non-natural phenomena, things that we make; whereas geoengineering covers natural occurences, such as rain/snow/temperature/fall damage/day-night cycles Beacons being able to do that doesn't make a lot of sense, and geogngineering is a much more difficult and consuming process, because the energy required to heat/cool/make a planet day is pretty astronimical (no pun intended). Geoengineering can do things that directly affect PvE balance, in Terraria, natural hazards were just about as dangerous as the enemies that might throw you in them. Laws rarely -- if ever -- affect mobs, as most mobs you're fighting are hopefully not law abiding citizens, or, if they are, they have a license to carry illegal-for-players weapons because these people are so much more predictable than players. While there is a GUI for the laws, (which has to be in there, or else it'd be a real pain to code and account for any spelling or grammatic errors.) it'd try to cover pretty much anything, you can ban individual items, and have presets for classes of weapons such as heavy weapons, explosive weapons, calldowns, etc. You can also make your own preset if you want, choosing weapons from a list, or select via properties, if you don't want weapons that can deal over 100 damage a shot, you can remove those; weapons with an AoE or slow, you can ban those; weapons that are above a certain tech level can be banned too, allowing for new players to get some action. I also added a bit of information to the OP, and have a mini-wall about a new idea.
Just got the Idea of some kind of "Spawn relocation" or Teleporting Beacon myself, and here you are^^ Allready discussing the issue. "Like That"
