(After searching the forums to make sure this was not a complete repost of something already made, I have decided to make this post.)Teleport Beacons (This would work best on a multiplayer server) Picture this: You beam down to a planet, and then after exploring, you find a wonderful spot you would like to build a base or town. After building some stuff, you beam back to your ship to grab some supplies, and when you beam back down, you are at the starting point of the planet again, a long way away from the building spot. This would be alright the first few times, but it would quickly get repetitive and boring, so you decide to make a teleport beacon! Teleport beacons are small, bright, glow stick like things that set the landing point for a planet. There could be multiple beacons, all with different colors, with a choice on the on-board navigator's screen as to which one you want to beam to. These beacons would also have varying looks according to different races, this would have no effect on the ability to use the beacon, but would allow for more unique looks. Say the humans have an airport style triangular one, the Apex have futuristic holographic displays, and the Florans have a colored, glowing orb set in a fiddle-head. The beacons would most likely have to be above-ground, possibly with a more expensive, underground version of it. *edit* The regular and clan beacons would have no limits, however too many could cause confusion, so now I have decided you should be able to NAME the beacons as well as change their color. You could also have maybe *edit* up to 20 *edit* personal beacons per world, which would have 2 set colors different from the public beacons. The personal beacons would allow for hidden bases, with instant beaming to them to prevent people tracking down your base's location, and stealing your stuff. It would be awful to constantly have to hide yo' wife and hide yo' kids from intruders. The personal beacons possibly could not be set within say 100 tiles from another, to prevent someone from placing their own in your base. The personal beacons would also be unbreakable to anyone but the placer, and server administrators of course. *EDIT* Thanks to a point brought up by dunggabreath, I decided that fully private beacons are a bad choice. Instead the private beacons are password protected, a short 4 digit code on a keypad that can be accessed by the ship and saved to the planet's data. The code is set by placing the private beacon and interacting to it, which brings up a keypad GUI, where you type the code, then click accept (It will give you a "retype password" prompt to make sure you don't type it incorrectly, because once you place the beacon, you must know the password to remove the beacon). Once you set the code, you beam up to your ship, and access the navigation panel, where a little collapsible tab off to the side containing beacons is clicked, which opens up the list of the beacons. You scroll through the beacons until you find the "Private" section is, and find the color of the private beacon you want. You click the private beacon and it will ask you to input the password set for that beacon, and if entered correctly, the ship will store the beacon as a teleport location, which is used by clicking the beacon to highlight it, and then clicking the main teleport button. *EDIT* A good idea that I got from reading plaYer's post was that there should not be limits on the beacons, since that could ruin some ideas: So I thought maybe that PRIVATE beacons are more like, bank beacons, that you would put into a safe/hidden storage room, and only share with your most trusted allies (Or enemies, if you have a little "surprise" planned for when they get your "skillfully obtained" code.) *Edit* Thanks to player's suggestion, I have decided on ANOTHER type of beacon from private and public: Clan Beacons!(This is only if groups and such are implemented serverside) Clan/group/squad/flock/pod/murder beacons are beacons that you place in a place like a clan base, which would have some sort of special markings to symbolize the difference between the other beacons, and when you placed it, it would ask you to put the name of a group on the server. It would then scan for if that group was in existence on that server/existing on some sort of official clan list (or however the devs are going to make the group thingy work.), and if a group is found, it enables a sort of safeguard, that only allows members of that group to access it. This could be an incredibly useful things if someone is designing a battle arena on a planet (Yes I know PvP asteroids exist, this is for more interesting, player made constructs), and they want to be able to set up something like a spawn point, so that the player is sent to a clan beacon instead of just anywhere on the map they want. I could even see the Penguin Empire becoming stronger than ever with their new, top secret, nearly impossible to access, underwater Arctic base. That is all the stuff I can think of for these at the moment, and any feedback would be greatly appreciated. If anyone could try to make some pictures for these, maybe even a GIF showing the different colors/styles, that would be awesome.
This should be implemented in game, but what if you had a friend who wanted to see your base? Then they'd have to walk all the way from the starting point to your base, and then they wouldn't be able to place a marker for their teleporter. Try to remember that you will have jourisdiction over who joins your game, so intruders will only be self-invited. Other than playing devil's advocate, great idea!
Ah, you are right, I forgot about that... Hmm I am going to edit the private beacon idea a bit, to make it more friendly to that.
I like this idea. My imagination of this has always been: Place beacon Power beacon (when energy requirements are implemented) Set privileges who is allowed to use that beacon. Here are just 2 modes i can imagine so far. Whitelist and Blacklist Whitelist: Everyone is forbiden to use the beacon except those on the list. Blacklist: Everyone is allowed to use the beacon except those on the list. In addition not only individuals can be added to the list (through their player hash maybe) but also whole Clans and Companies (when those get inplemented). This way you can make a clan base or companies HQ and only those are allowed to join. Activate the beacon. Now when people go visit a planet, they see a list of all beacons that are available to them and can chose to either teleport to the planets original entrance point at x=0 or select any of the beacons. It would be a good idea to get a live overview about the surrounding area of the beacon the player can select before he goes down there to prevent griefing like spawning blindly into lava/acid. A limitation on how many beacons are allowed to place doesnt seem to be required. Just imagine a huge "Town world" where about 100 to 400 apartements are and everyone got his own personal beacon at home. A limitation would destroy such a world idea.
I see what you mean by the no limits thing. Reading this just gave me a good idea to edit the private beacons... again... yeah... Also, Tiy has stated that power is something that is really not going to be included at first, but might be added in a separate mode post-release. So I guess the post-release, energy version could be possible for the clan and private beacons, but not the public ones, since people would just shut down the power and stop people from getting where they need to be
I personally like this plan, where one can see the beacon so its not like "lol ur in a box surrounded by acid, have fun," troll-time, but i also think its funny to imagine a world where you can pick a room in a Planetary Hotel and place your beacon there. Who wants to partner up to make this a reality? Steam Name [Seru] Dunggabreath add me for Planetary Hotel.
