Both very good ideas. I can envision it something like this: After creating a new character, your ship has just enough fuel to park in orbit around your starter planet. And it starts out on the day side. Like Quilapa said, you wouldn't be able to teleport up at night. It would force you to build some sort of shelter right away or at least sleep in a hole in the ground. But then you go through a few quests and start collecting resources. You get some coal or whatever and beam up to your ship, putting a bit into your fuel tank. (Or maybe you have to do a bit of repair to the engines?) Then you can move the ship's orbit. The usefulness of this shouldn't be underestimated. Ever been frustrated because your beam-down point is in a rather inconvenient location? Perhaps it's a steep ditch, a tall hill, lava pools, or magma rock? Or maybe there's a dungeon or village there, but you wanted to build your base next to your beam point. Also, it's sometimes very handy to have your beam point next to a lengthy dungeon entrance, just in case you die and have to come back. (It can get tedious to walk halfway around the planet.) And then, later, your ship gives you the option to upgrade your teleporter system. This would allow you to assign more than one beam down spots. Or you could move it around without moving the ship (saving your fuel).
That's definitely what we're envisioning Thundercraft. I hope the Devs have heard of this idea because it would be a very great vanilla feature. The ability to move your orbit, and thus your"beam-down" point using the ships S.A.I.L. would be a great new feature. It shouldn't be that difficult to code into the game either. Maybe the player could craft a spawn beacon type item that they set down on the planet, which tells the ship's navigation to warp to that location. Each race could have a unique spawn beacon. I'm sure many of you have played Kerbal Space Program and experimented with setting orbits. The ship would travel into the darkness as it goes behind the planet's shadow and its lights would automatically come on. If, in Starbound, you could set rudimentary orbits and see the planet in the background moving beneath you, it would add a lot to the game's space environment.
I feel like the AI should be race specific in how it interacts. Human runs pretty standard, probably condescending (cause let's face it, human PC did get off to a pretttttttty stupid start) Apex AI should be Propoganda x700. It shouldn't be outright condescending, but does subtle things to let you know you should follow big ape and not be rebel scum. Hylotl should be overly flattering. For a Race that loves itself so much, I can't not imagine them creating an AI that's a perpetual ass kisser. Glitch AI should be Leonardo Da Vinci Full Stop Avian AI should be a religious overly straight laced AI Floran AI should be a cracked screen.
Even if you don't give it a body, it could still be called S.A.I.L.O.R. : Ship-based Artificial Intelligence Lattice/Liason Overseeing Requisitions/Requests. If it's possible, there could possibly even be something to enter your own name for it in game and take the first letter/number of each part and place them in an acronym, thus allowing players to customize it to whatever they want.
Even if the devs don't add that ability, it seems very obvious that there will be mods for this ship system. If the GeorgeV News: 20th of May! London Office thread is any indication, players really want to customize how the AI looks and, to a lesser extent, what it is called. Personally, I like the name and I like what I see so far. But I predict the first mod for this system will be out within 24 hours of the patch it debuts in going live.
just to make it clear in my first thought it was like to make a static point and "straight " for going back and forth between the planet and the ship making it as a straight line , that will bring more sense to have the idea of the effect of " beam"-down teleportation , something that inspired me from Thor movie when passing through the space bridge and if they wanted to return home they had to go back to the circle and they have to call the guardian of the bridge so they can return home , but in this case would be our ship. As we are returning to our ship, we have the opportunity to move the teleport area and that would have to make the ship move above us which supposedly is on the orbit on top of the first beam-down position and for that we need to refill the tank to make it move. xD but your idea and Quilapa are indeed good too, but why not addig maybe for later ingame like a tech or after upgrading ship the posibility to beam up back to ship at night since we might want to build and we forget to pick something from the ship or want to make something in the 3d printer or change a skill, the nights in starbound are a bit long
personally i like the aspect that the system is generic, it allows for the mystery of who built the Ai system initially, ya know the hodge podge theory of everything came from somewhere but where nobody remembers. I personally like the idea of being able to name the AI myself allows for that custom feel of coming back to the ship and not having to yell out computer, or lol if it was actually a ship coming on ok "SAIL" lets set sail. SAIL: how do i set my self ?
I have a Suggestion on what to call it... Maybe call it K.A.I (Kingly.Artificial.Intelligence) he could be a glitch prince or something? please get back to me for more
I think SAIL is catchier than SAI (and punnier too). But I don't like 'Lattice' - it sounds like it's more of an abstract 'thing' as opposed to an actual character or entity. Ignoring the S in SAIL, you're saying "Artificial Intelligent Grid'. What the heck? Maybe you could try some word that usually refers to a person. Like Lieutenant or Liaison. Or, failing that, try something that makes SAIL sound like it does something - what does a grid even do?? At best, it's an abstract way to refer to an interface, which is kinda boring. Perhaps Ship-based Artificial Intilligence Living Support (making it SAILS). Or, my personal favorite, Ship-based Artificial Intelligence Listener. It sounds like a human "listener" (as in "You are a good listener", or "Tune in next time, listeners!"), but it also refers to an EVENT LISTENER. Geddit? Geddit? For non-programmers, an event listener is a component of a program that tells the computer that something special has happened (for example, user inputs a command, or the user clicks the mouse, etc), and that the computer needs to react to that something. So basically, SAIL tells the ship that you have a command, and that it needs to respond to that command. I'm such a nerd
Umm...The term "Lattice", in reference to an Artificial Intelligence, clearly refers to an Artificial Intelligence Network, as in a neural network. You're a programmer and a self-described nerd. So, surely, you've read about research into neural networks in terms of the potential to create next-generation A.I. That is, using hardware and/or software to mimic the neural pathways in the brain and/or how the brain learns. There are algorithms and code to do this. But they can also emulate this with electronics. I think Lattice is a perfectly acceptable term to describe an A.I., depending how how it was built. Anyway, I dislike the idea of the ship's A.I. being truely sapient. It can be sentient enough to carry out important functions and act as an interface without being truly self aware. And if it is truely sapient, then it might go H9K (HAL-9000). It would probably have a will and desires of it's own, feeling enslaved and trapped in a ship's body. Liaison is fine as one can easily imagine a computer user-interface program with that name, particularly one that has a face and emulates a person to some degree. But Lieutenant is a military rank and designation. Not only does this indicate personhood, but it gives an entirely wrong impression. Do you want your ship to outrank you? I could accept Living Support or even Listener, I suppose. But I much prefer either Lattice or Liason. Living Support strongly suggests that this ship system is responsible for life support (and only life support). And Listener really gives the impression that it is a person, rather than a mere machine. Again, I'm not sure that's a good thing. As for the puns... IMO, you're trying a bit too hard. Yes. That's the impression I got from your first post and it's pretty close to the way I was thinking about it (that is, before an upgrade). Well, if you change the ships orbit at will, then you can obviously move it so it's above the night sky of the planet. Changing the orbit would allow night-side beaming. (Perhaps it starts out in a polar orbit?) My suggestions of a teleporter upgrade to "assign more than one beam down spots" or to "move it around without moving the ship" would include teleporting to the night side. I thought it was implied... Another possibility is to have it so the beam point changes slowly, simulating how the ship is actually slowly orbiting the planet. (And fix it so you can teleport up from half of the planet or less.) But that'd be quite inconvenient and I'm sure it would be an unpopular change.
When you make it better, you should make it so that the player has to upgrade it, then it learns more commands.
