Gas giants are usually the uninhabitable places that you can never go unless on a space station. However, they could be done simply by abusing jetpacks and the insane amounts of wind that they normally have. And would make great hiding places for lost civilizations. They'd be designed as late-ish-game worlds, when you have plenty of energy and a really efficient jetpack. Deuterium clouds are fairly common up here, and you can harvest them while riding giant gasbags and dodging various light mobs. Occasionally you'll find updrafts that will hold you in place or rise slowly (despite having no solid ground beneath you). Descend deeper and the wind picks up, a LOT, you'll be shoved every which way down here, the flow is completely erratic, and you're just riding around on it. Enemies are more common and the giant gasbags don't come down here. It's a pretty scary place, and bits of meteor that broke up in the upper atmosphere will be flying around chaotically, which you also have to dodge. Or you can grapple on to it and mine it. A good gadget to have would allow you to see the flow of air as little arrows, this will allow you to at least try to predict how to travel up or down. Continuing deeper, the air suddenly becomes not chaotic and scary. at first you're relived until you look at a speedometer and realize you're travelling at hundreds of kilometers an hour, your ship is far, far away as soon as you touch down. The monsters here are scary, big and hungry, they're really tough to kill and drop some interesting items, (if there's a scanning mechanic, you can scan them to get information on high-speed aerodynamics, better jetpacks and the like.) There's a few interesting resources here, and the remains of ships that have long since fallen. Continuing ever deeper, the atmosphere gets thicker and calmer, eerily calm compared to the previous two levels. Light starts to fade out, and your vision starts to get really limited. The monsters here are attracted by your light, but turn it off and you're left falling in total darkness, unable to sense if you're about to collide with something, which would probably instantly kill you. There's several floating rocks around, suspended by forces unknown. The monsters resemble things from the deep ocean, they like to strike from nowhere, and knock you back so that you can't retaliate easily. Mining the rocks gives some interesting ores, and in the centers of large rocks there's sometimes a bit of alien technology, but mining it causes the rock and those near it to fall. You're going to have to leave very fast to not hit the core. Finally, reaching the core of the planet, you're finally on solid ground again, but now you're immersed in almost utter darkness, unable to see anything without all but the brightest lamps, and with those only a few feet ahead. you're going to have to fight off a number of automated guardians or traps while searching, and currently the surface is impossible to mine, trying to reveals a message about shielding. Exploring reveals a number of structures, and searching them will often yield an item that, when consumed, augments your vision or dispels the fog, increasing the brightness of your lamp and allowing you to explore and defend better. after a number of the afore-mentioned item, you'll be able to see fairly well, and eventually find a massive structure, which exploring reveals some prophetic pictures, images of you, in your armor, your name in signs and often associated with words of hatred. Whoever built this place knew that you'd arrive, seemingly thousands of years before you did, and absolutely hated you. However, the empty remains of a portal are a centerpiece to this temple, continuing through the world you should be able to find the missing parts and repair the portal. But it is unknown where it leads to. One thing I didn't mention was that you should probably consider investing in a pressure suit, that is if you enjoy not being a form of pudding. Also, could some beautiful person tell me how to have spoilertags that don't just say "show spoiler" on them?
Nice idea, I quite like it! It has been mention before somewhere through... But anyway some pictures would be nice!
I might as well as give it a shot, how bad can it be? If it sucks too hard, then I'll just not post it.
Heh. I like the Turbulence zone. Basically like being inside the tornado from Wizard of Oz. And yeah, anything under the Turbulence zone would require increasingly powerful technology to withstand the pressure at each level. I'd suggest the "Core" of Gas Giants should contain some of the most valuable ores and treasures in the game, but should be so high pressure that even the most advanced pressure suit can only allow the player to survive there for a few minutes (call it energy drain, structural integrity field, whatever). So the clock is ticking as soon as you hit the surface, grab your loot and leave, quick!
That would be interesting to have limited time at that depth before you have to go back to your ship and repair (expanding off of Tiy's durability mechanic, ensuring that if you know it's there you know how it works.) I was thinking along the lines of there being some basic loot at this zone, but the vast majority of the loot is after you repair the portal, then you start encountering some very interesting technology. I'm thinking along the lines of extradimensional engineering
Ever seen the episode of Cosmos where Carl Sagan speculates about life on gas giants? Complete with speculative artwork. The gasbags you mention, he calls "Floaters." Then there are "Sinkers," which are boring critters that spend their whole life falling and try to reproduce before being fried in the lower atmosphere. Then there are the more interesting "Hunters" that prey on the Floaters and would be the sort of predators you'd end up fighting most.
