content(planet attributes) Add more attributes to planets for more diverse mission content

[petervdmeer]

Problem Description

Some activities can only be done on some planets, like wintersports can only be done on planets with snow, and hopping from building to building is more feasible on planets with a lot of buildings.

The game data files currently don't provide a lot of automatically parseable details on the planets, so missions need to be a bit generic. I would like to have more attributes to allow content creators to put more flavor in missions.

Related Issue Links

This issue was already predicted

Desired Solution

Add more attributes to planets to describe their characteristics. For example:

• atmosphere - Has a breathable atmosphere comparable to earth. Not to be used for planets where being outdoors is unsafe (due to lightning or other reasons) - Can be used for outdoor tourism jobs (if the planet also has a tourism tag).
• no atmosphere - Has no outdoors atmosphere at all; not breathable, not unbreathable. Just no outdoors atmosphere whatsoever.
• lightning storms - Has a significant amount of lightning storms. Can be used for missions where the players spaceship gets damaged.
• ecumenopolis - A planet that is 50% or more city/urban. - Can be used for colonization and migration jobs (since people typically don't colonize towards crowded planets).
• mountains - Has significant mountains. Relevant for sports like winter sports (skiing, snowboarding).
• forested - Has very significant amounts of forest. Crash landing outside the spaceport would unlikely be doable in an open field.
• "regular gravity" - Has (near) normal 1G gravity compared to earth.
• "strong gravity" - Has a significantly stronger (think 2G) gravity compared to earth.
• "weak gravity" - Has significantly (lower) gravity compared to earth. - Can be used for missions where tourists go to low gravity for new sports (high jumping experience, cycling with "air/helicopter-bikes").
• oceans - Has large bodies of water on the surface.
• "ship construction" - Indicates that the planet has a shipyard that actually constructs ships. (So that missions can specifically aim for planets with a shipyard.)
• "weapons construction" - Indicates that the planet has a location where ship weapons are constructed. (So that missions can specifically aim for locations where weapons are transported from.)

Alternative Approaches

Keep missions very generic.

Additional Context

I expect that we might need to add even more attributes in the future, but I feel that that is acceptable, because story-telling is a significant part of the game.

[Hecter94]

Would this primarily be for plugins? My understanding is that if a content creator wishes to create a new mission that would only make sense to offer on specific planets, then the new attributes could be added alongside the new mission that requires those attributes.

Could you elaborate a bit on the benefit of adding the attributes now that we may never end up using?

[warp-core]

Would this primarily be for plugins? My understanding is that if a content creator wishes to create a new mission that would only make sense to offer on specific planets, then the new attributes could be added alongside the new mission that requires those attributes.

Could you elaborate a bit on the benefit of adding the attributes now that we may never end up using?

It's true that a plugin creator wanting to create missions/jobs that might require new planet and/or system attributes, but having some attributes, like the examples given in the OP, on stuff even if we're not using them yet may serve as inspiration for creators.

And, the skydiving job would be improved by having something like this rather than needing to manually identify any planets that should be exceptions and explicitly state them in the LocationFilter at the time of writing the mission.

[petervdmeer]

Would this primarily be for plugins?

No, for the vanilla main game.

My understanding is that if a content creator wishes to create a new mission that would only make sense to offer on specific planets, then the new attributes could be added alongside the new mission that requires those attributes.

I am a content-creator, and already created 2 missions that are related:

• As warp-core mentioned; the skydiving missions would make more sense when based on athmosphere attributes.
• The repulsor failure missions were originally considered as "lightning strike missions", but I didn't have the attributes to create them that way. I also thought of some other missions where the player hits a satellite or other ship, but that requires some attributes that tell me which planets have a lot of air/orbital traffic.

I also feel that the addition of the attributes is better done in a PR separate from such mission/job content.

Could you elaborate a bit on the benefit of adding the attributes now that we may never end up using?

I have quite a few other ideas for jobs as well:

• Jobs related to transporting people to wintersports activities (cold and mountains), might need a cold or temperature attribute as well.
• Transporting jobs from ship-weapons-manufacturer planets to ship-builder planets.
  • Pirate jobs related to those weapon shipments. (Pirates trying to bribe the player to redirect some transports.)
• Tourism jobs to planets with low gravity. (I'm sure people want to experience low gravity when they get the chance.)
• Sport athlethes wanting to train on a planet with high gravity and a good athmosphere.
• Watersport type of jobs (sailing, windsurfing, wave-surfing).
• Mission where the players ship gets hit by lightning (resulting in an emergency landing or something similar).