Ideas for upgrades in a space game

[Wattsman1111]

Alright, so I'm working on this spaceship flying around a galaxy type gamey thing and I have several ideas for upgrading your ship but I would like to cover lots of bases so you can have lots of options. For example I threw in the regular increasing your damage and armor, I've added other upgrades like increasing fuel capacity, HP, shields, faster shield regeneration, speed, increasing maximum speed... and so on. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas that I could add to it. Questions? Comments? Tangents???

Wattsman

[Flash Wize]

There should be an upgrade where you get it and then out of nowhere should appear 5 smaller ships to fight off enemies for you, as if they are under your command or something.

[Wattsman1111]

Very cool yes, maybe model it after the ship that could launch fighters in Star Control. But yes, gotta add that now, thanks

Wattsman

[mrpauly99]

hey wattsman, doing one of those too (if i can ever get round to finishing the flamin thing!). look forward to hearing the suggestions but i wont steal them all promise

[Wattsman1111]

Cool, good to hear someone else is working on the same type of thing. I've been writing down everything that I can possibly think of upgrading or adding on (a long list by now) and I'm worrying about the coding later . I almost feel sorry for my future self as I am setting him up for almsot certian doom with this project. But anyway, if you need suggestions or ideas mrpauly I'd be more then happy to post what I have thus far, maybe give some other people ideas when they read this thread down the line.

Wattsman

[kyled]

lol ideas, my space game has quite a few...
Missions,
specials ie cloak stealth etc detect cloaked enemies
Jumpdrive
Wingmen
Drones - those little ships that come out.
Ai communications
interactive map, ie able to attack the bases

just a few

[znoskieman]

Maybe some giant bomb that blows everything off the screen (except yourself)

[taxman_06770]

That's exactly what i was going to suggest Znoskieman, i deserve half the credit for that suggestion. :P

[pentru]

Originally posted by mrpauly99
hey wattsman, doing one of those too (if i can ever get round to finishing the flamin thing!). look forward to hearing the suggestions but i wont steal them all promise

working on a similar thing as well
right now it's still in early alpha stage - I'm planning on two modes -
1) arcade - where you get your upgrades in the form of pickups as you go
2) story based: where you have to travel from planet/base to base choosing what missions to get into and what to upgrade - (the pgrade could be similar to Tyran 2000 in the story mode....that's a good inspiration for things you can make you ship ungradable to..
this mode is more like the current commercial game "freelancer" (http://www.microsoft.com/games/freelancer/default.asp)

for the rest I agree w/ the prevously said upgrades...
for mine I got 6 different types of lasers so far (different powers)
a mega-bomb/missile that blows up half of the staff on screen
a wide continous plasma beam that has to be loaded as the player holds down a botton - the longer he holds the wider/more distructive the beam ...howevr once it reaches full load of the loader botton is not released in a couple seconds - the beam overloads and ship explodes..HAHAHAHHAH!!! that helps avoid the situation where the user holds the beam loaded to his convinience...hehehe
then there is the usual energy/armor and points/money.
this is a cool tread for people involeved in this kinda game - maybe we can all benefit -

paul
PS- right now I'm still working on the 3d graphics for the ships and animating them - as well as trying to workout the code for the arcade mode - I'll post later/