TBerry
New member
I'd like to preface this by saying it's only a suggestion and I don't want to overtax the devs. Also, these wouldn't be NPC ships, but rather ship NPCs.
The way I imagined it, an NPC would ask you about strange sightings in the sky as of late, kicking off the quest. There would be references to those ships in old scripts/letters/whatever. You follow the trail and if you meet cetrain criterias (for example "survive 10 in-game days on this island without dying, or have a certain item, enter this area, etc.), said ship will appear. To distinguish the ship from normal airships, I imagine the ship could have parts that are not obtainable in the game, or the ship itself is impossible to build under normal circumstances.
These encounters may range from sightings (not interactable), to finding the wreckage, to having to engage/defend yourself. The general gist of these encounters is "survive to tell the tale" (you would very rarely sink that ship, because replayability/other players encountering same ship). You report the encounter to a certain NPC of the Explorer's guild, and get your reward.
Examples:
The Hail Anne-Mary:
You obtain a map that marks the alleged crash site of an old passegnger ship called the Hail Anne-Mary and a strange artefact, that apparently has something to do with the ship and the crash. Near the crash site, you encounter a woman that acts rather strange, but doesn't react to you in any way. When you enter the ship, you see a skeleton, donning the same clothes as the woman you encountered earlier. You go explore the wreck, and come into the machine room. You examine the core, you find out that it is missing a piece. You look at the artefact, and find out that this must be the missing piece. Upon inserting and mending the part, the ship suddenly begins to rumble. You flee outside, only to see that the wreck is starting to take flight and that suddenly people start to stream back into the ship. The ship finally takes off and floats away down into the void. You are both amazed and creeped out, making your way to report your findings.
The Rat Ship:
An airship mostly made of junk. The Rat does not have cannons, but has a heavy machine gun and tries to drop or fling burning metal barrels out of a hatch at you that explode on impact, damaging the hull, or any part it comes in contact with. Her hull is made of 3 layers of junk and scraps, so directly hitting it does very little damage. You have to hit the barrels before the get shot or dropped to do damage, which will disable the hatches (or maybe you can use your repair tool to weld the hatches shut?), and damage the hull.
There is also a sniper (meaning a rifle barrel poking out of another hatch), or sniper turret that targets a random player running around on deck, indicated by a crosshair. The sniper tries to aim for the head whenever you stand straight up so the only way to shake it off is by rolling, swinging, or hiding behind something, As long as you don't get hit in the head (instadeath), the sniper will do little damage or miss completely. You can prevent the sniper from shooting by shooting at the hatch. Be aware that the sniper WILL target you if the hull plate is missing.
At the last phase, the ship will also try to ram you. At this point, you can just fire at will, until the ship retreats.
The Heidenberg:
A huge blip with heavy armor and big cannons that do massive damage. You can only damage the hull with heavy AA cannons stationed on the islands, which means one member has to remain on the islands firing the cannons, while the rest of the crew has to lure the enemy ship into range. Being able to use your grappling hook effectively is a must at this point, as the player on the ground has to hop from island to island fairly quickly.
The Heidenberg also deploys floating mines.
The ship will retreat once you did enough damage to hull and engines.
The Queen:
A massive war ship with humongous cannons that do devastating damage. This ship does not have an HP bar, and you cannot engage it. It can, however, engage you, and by engage I mean blow you into 1000 pieces. Your objective is to gather recon on the anchored ship while not getting discovered. The ship has several big spotlights, and one player has to make sure that your ship is not discovered by creating a diversion (for example by planting explosives) or even disabling one of the spotlights.
(This post took way longer than anticipated.)
I'd like to add that the ships would basically behave like enemy airplanes in any air combat simulator, obviously.
The way I imagined it, an NPC would ask you about strange sightings in the sky as of late, kicking off the quest. There would be references to those ships in old scripts/letters/whatever. You follow the trail and if you meet cetrain criterias (for example "survive 10 in-game days on this island without dying, or have a certain item, enter this area, etc.), said ship will appear. To distinguish the ship from normal airships, I imagine the ship could have parts that are not obtainable in the game, or the ship itself is impossible to build under normal circumstances.
These encounters may range from sightings (not interactable), to finding the wreckage, to having to engage/defend yourself. The general gist of these encounters is "survive to tell the tale" (you would very rarely sink that ship, because replayability/other players encountering same ship). You report the encounter to a certain NPC of the Explorer's guild, and get your reward.
Examples:
The Hail Anne-Mary:
You obtain a map that marks the alleged crash site of an old passegnger ship called the Hail Anne-Mary and a strange artefact, that apparently has something to do with the ship and the crash. Near the crash site, you encounter a woman that acts rather strange, but doesn't react to you in any way. When you enter the ship, you see a skeleton, donning the same clothes as the woman you encountered earlier. You go explore the wreck, and come into the machine room. You examine the core, you find out that it is missing a piece. You look at the artefact, and find out that this must be the missing piece. Upon inserting and mending the part, the ship suddenly begins to rumble. You flee outside, only to see that the wreck is starting to take flight and that suddenly people start to stream back into the ship. The ship finally takes off and floats away down into the void. You are both amazed and creeped out, making your way to report your findings.
The Rat Ship:
An airship mostly made of junk. The Rat does not have cannons, but has a heavy machine gun and tries to drop or fling burning metal barrels out of a hatch at you that explode on impact, damaging the hull, or any part it comes in contact with. Her hull is made of 3 layers of junk and scraps, so directly hitting it does very little damage. You have to hit the barrels before the get shot or dropped to do damage, which will disable the hatches (or maybe you can use your repair tool to weld the hatches shut?), and damage the hull.
There is also a sniper (meaning a rifle barrel poking out of another hatch), or sniper turret that targets a random player running around on deck, indicated by a crosshair. The sniper tries to aim for the head whenever you stand straight up so the only way to shake it off is by rolling, swinging, or hiding behind something, As long as you don't get hit in the head (instadeath), the sniper will do little damage or miss completely. You can prevent the sniper from shooting by shooting at the hatch. Be aware that the sniper WILL target you if the hull plate is missing.
At the last phase, the ship will also try to ram you. At this point, you can just fire at will, until the ship retreats.
The Heidenberg:
A huge blip with heavy armor and big cannons that do massive damage. You can only damage the hull with heavy AA cannons stationed on the islands, which means one member has to remain on the islands firing the cannons, while the rest of the crew has to lure the enemy ship into range. Being able to use your grappling hook effectively is a must at this point, as the player on the ground has to hop from island to island fairly quickly.
The Heidenberg also deploys floating mines.
The ship will retreat once you did enough damage to hull and engines.
The Queen:
A massive war ship with humongous cannons that do devastating damage. This ship does not have an HP bar, and you cannot engage it. It can, however, engage you, and by engage I mean blow you into 1000 pieces. Your objective is to gather recon on the anchored ship while not getting discovered. The ship has several big spotlights, and one player has to make sure that your ship is not discovered by creating a diversion (for example by planting explosives) or even disabling one of the spotlights.
(This post took way longer than anticipated.)
I'd like to add that the ships would basically behave like enemy airplanes in any air combat simulator, obviously.
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