Although this is long, please read! It's logical and I strongly doubt that you won't like it. During my time of viewing the new upcoming space mechanic, I thought that instead of JUST merchant ships, there will be more aggressive ships, like pirate ships. This will lead to my idea: ship battles. There's guns on the player's ship so why not put them to use! The better class the ship, the more fire power. As you read this, you may think "what happens if my ship gets destroyed? Will I lose everything?" I thought that instead of losing your whole ship, as on my ship I have EVERYTHING on there, aswell as its personalised for me, your ship and you will return to the nearest space station, or maybe there could be a ship yard space station. Your ship and everything that's inside it will not be lost, just teleported to the nearest space station. That could be one of the penalties. Another penalty could be losing the ship modification currency you have earned, which leads me to another mechanic. There can be an illegal dealer that owns his/her own space station, that you will be able to teleport into. Like in Ratchet and Clank 2. You will be able to buy ship parts/modifications to go on your ship like guns, protection, etc. These will be automated or can become stronger that can be operated by you or your crew members! Making crew members vital. Even a small thing like fuel efficiency or a larger fuel tank aswell as faster ship modification can be bought there. But there will be a different type of currency that's used for these modifications which you will be able to scavenge off destroyed ships. This currency will be the reward to destroying enemy ships. Once the enemy ship is destroyed, you will be able to enter it and scavenge some loot on board, aswell as finding this new currency. An alternative way of getting this currency could be the player being the aggressive character. The player will be able to attack and destroy merchant ships, but this will lead to the merchants in the area to be aggressive towards you, like aggravating a village's guards. This will mean more frequent attacks. But for some assistance, nearby pirates may realise your aggressive manner and join you, like a crew member, but instead a ship following you in space. If you don't want merchants to be aggressive to you, you can do two things: turn on your pirate "buddy" or fly far away and leave your pirate buddy. Aswell as the pirates being able to be your friend, you can do the same with merchants. Near a space station, if the player fends off pirates near the station, they may receive merchants to be their "buddy." One of my last ideas for this will be that you'll be able to do missions for a specific space station, like destroying pirate ships or similar, and get rewarded. It'll be like completing quests in a village. The player can be rewarded with usual reward bags and this ship modification currency. The last idea is that the difficulty of the ships will be dependent on the types of stars. So the weakest ships will be found on gentle stars. Then slightly harder ones on temperate stars, even harder on radioactive stars and etc. The harder the ship is to destroy, the better loot and more currency. Anyway, that's enough to say and I thank anyone that reads this long suggestion. I reckon this will make the game so much better and more interesting, as not everyone is friendly in space...
I just saw the post that ignitelight made on ship battles. But this idea has the same kinda concept, but mine and ignitelight's posts are different!
