kingmakeress
Commodore
With all these great Wing Commander remakes going on and motivated by the recent thread about the Gemini sector by @Wedge009 , I thought I should add some ideas about Privateer. To avoid a potentially very long post, I have split them in categories with a brief explanation for each idea. As a general rule, but by no means a rigid one, I have tried to extend existing game mechanics or add ones which were considered or implemented but dropped during development.
Ships:
Space opponents:
Missions:
Maps and navigation:
Please feel free to add ideas and/or discuss the above.
Ships:
- I really love the Centurion, but I believe it is slightly overpowered with its four guns and two missile/torpedo launchers. So maybe Orion should get besides her strong shields a unique attack advantage. Maybe a scaled down/early gun cooler to be able to fire more blasts from the heavier guns, say at 1.2 or 1.5 times the original fire rate. I really like the ionic pulse cannon, despite its slow travelling bolts, so I would like to find a use for it. @Bandit LOAF you are the Orion expert, so thoughts are welcome.
- Adding a stormfire cannon would be fun, especially for the Orion which can carry additional rounds compared to the Centurion as it has more internal space. So mounting a stormfire in the single external fore hardpoint of Orion with a considerable number of rounds would make sense in the context of Orion being a mercenary gunship. Ok, Talons may well evade it and maybe Dralthis to some extent, but everything else .. After all why waste stormfire rounds on Talons?
- Additionally, there can be a third, more advanced and considerably more expensive repair droid which can actually manufacture a small number of rounds for stormfire when not busy repairing the ship. Maybe in Righteous Fire, but I could also see that in Privateer. Also the player should have the necessary material aboard, perhaps iron or tungsten and gems. So there is an additional incentive for visiting the numerous mining bases scattered throughout Gemini.
- As for Galaxy, well not my favorite ship. Even for
Ultimate(is that a pun on Ultima?) sugar runs I use Orion and just use afterburners to get past militia patrols in Humboldt. I guess it is ok for merchants, but remotely controlling the upper and lower turrets, at least partially, from the cockpit would offset to some extent its size and lack of agility. It is not a fighting ship, but it should stand a chance against four or five Talons. - There may be modifications reducing the radar cross section of the player's ship, roughly equivalent to an ECM pack 3.5.
- Inspired from Peleus, there may be radar jamming devices used by capital ships giving to the player static up to 20% of the time. There may be smaller such devices used by larger ships like the Galaxy or the Orion giving static 10% of the time.
Space opponents:
- Ok (former!) Governor Menesch sold myriads of Talons to pirates and retros, but why not some of these Gladius too? Or maybe some Broadswords used as pirate semi-capital or scout or coordination ships along with some Galaxies in the same role, after all we have seen the Black Rhombus.
- Also it would make sense that the retros occasionally fly Orions and Centurions as heavier fighters, after all they are in the open market.
- Miggs flying a Talon? No. I mean I doubt he can efficiently fly a Centurion, but at least for prestige he and his associates should fly ones.
- Also Miggs should have more friends with him, hoping to intimidate Brownhair, though I doubt be really wants the artifact.
- For immersion reasons, some of the pirate, militia, and Confederation crafts should be randomly damaged indicating a tough patrol.
- In the Fariss and Humboldt quadrants in particular, the player could randomly meet pirates doing business with dirty cops, so Brownhair has to eliminate ships of both factions. These can be plot missions alternativenly.
Missions:
- In addition to system patrol missions, there should be system wipe missions aiming at eliminating all hostilities. These should be more likely to appear in smaller systems either closer to the Gemini frontier or to pirate bases.
- Defend base missions? Why not also an obliterate base one? Captain Goodin may well pay you to devastate a pirate base, giving strong vibes of the final Venice mission. After all, they are many of them in Fariss and in Humboldt quadrants, so one can be chosen at random. For this you will need at least five proton torpedoes and strong guns, ie ionic pulse cannons or plasma guns.
- Turrets on asteroids around pirate bases armed with lasers or mass drivers. It would make perfect sense, especially in conjunction with the above.
Maps and navigation:
- As the player flies in the various systems, the hidden points and the asteroids are marked in Brownhair's star charts. This would give a sense of accomplishment to the player.
- If the player buys the entire star map pack, then the maps for the quadrants other then one the player currently is may contain random errors.
- If the player lands on a pirate base, then it is marked on their star maps. In subsequent militia or Confederation contraband check, these altered maps will show up and the player is marked as a pirate by that particular patrol as if they were carrying contraband.
- On pirate bases, random fixers may sell treasure maps which may or may not be hoaxes.
- Alternatively these fixers may offer random upgrades to the player's ship. Some may be temporary e.g. a Mace missile or thrust enhancement, whereas other may be permanent but not game changing e.g. tweaking the power generator to give 5% or 10% more energy.
Please feel free to add ideas and/or discuss the above.
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