Here is an idea for introducing an element of randomness into the game to change the game experience for everyone.

In the process of performing missions, and perhaps even battles. Introduce the chance of a random discovery. The chance can be very small, perhaps 1 to 5%. The discovery can be either beneficial, or detrimental. I suggest a bell curve. It can have 2 aspects... a) basic small discovery b) level based discovery (indicating the experience necessary to recognise what was found)

I would suggest also for the first 5 levels or so, that there be a strong beneficial aspect to these discoveries, with the likelyhood trending toward neutrality by level 21. This would be to encourage new players.

Here are some things I was thinking of:

a) Basic small discoveries.
Beneficial:
- 10-100 research points
- 1000 - 10000 credits
- mineral discovery
- low level artifact

Detrimental:
- trap detonation, shield hit
- dark smugglers steal credits
- dark smugglers steal cargo
- dark smugglers hack research points

b) Level based discoveries.
Beneficial:
- secret missions vs the dark smugglers
- more research points
- exotic matter or higher level mineral discoveries
- political favor for finding a lost important document or item.
- more credits

Detrimental:
- dark smuggler credit viruses that drain credits for an indeterminate period of time (to the player at least, but definitely a limited time period)
- dark smuggler research espionage ... same as credit above
- massive detonations which could cause severe damage, or even destroy shipboard components.

The suggestions above are of course only to give an idea or trend, and can be expanded on. The point being of course, that these things could change the course of a battle, or change a players plans or timing. It creates a situation where not all things play out according to the plan. Usually, but not always...

I revived this thread because this could be a nice addition to the game.

for example, let's say you're scanning for planets and you have let's say a 47% chance to scan a planet but you fail and you instead find something else. like maybe an escape pod that has a date bank in it providing X amount of research points, or you could go all star wars with it and have two ship bots in the escape pod. haahaha.

people don't really have much of a reason to scan for planets unless they've done a lot of chart purging or don't have anything good to colonize.

so why not add another element to scanning so people will have more of a reason to scan the galaxy and see what's out there?

because no one likes to scan. it gives very little xp and rewards very few good planets. i would still like to see the escape pods and derelicts show up on the battle tab in NPC slots. as for effects, it might be cool, but i think i would get annoyed by the detrimental ones. if im KILLING the NPC then why would they be able to steal something from me? i like the self-destruct idea where your ship takes 4x damage or something, but the raiders make no sense. if your ship is destroyed, then where are you gonna go with my stuff once your on my ship? unless they have spaceships built into their spacesuits, theyre screwed. as for scanning tho, i think it might be cool to find new super bosses like massive rings from HALO that give amazing rewards, or rogue sentient planets that give out 10x production with no level cap restriction on recieving resources. i also like the chance to get bonus research off of some ships.

I like the idea of adding the random good encounters or events even the not so good ones as well
+1 to this

at the very least add some beneficial things to find
like a stray energy cube that someone lost when their ship was totaled, or a container of minerals found through the same reason.

the reason for adding stuff during scans is that if you're scanning you're not ONLY going to be finding planets, you'll eventually find other things too, whether it's good OR bad.

+1 to this! I love this idea! We can only scan planets with scanners but if we could scan something different, such as an NPC, artifact, etc, it would be great for this game. These discoveries might have to be rare for balance. Maybe some extremely rare discoveries could be added such as a Terraforming Device, Planet Flux, etc. Great addition!

I truly enjoy the idea of finding things while doing a scan.

Even if its finding rare NPCs that can only be found by scanning.

Scanning could yield artifacts, minerals, and research points.

Scanning could also reveal random "parts" that could be implemented into the possible legion base idea, mission requirements, etc.

+1 +1 +1

I like the idea of finding things when scanning As for what started this thread don't really like the idea of random good and bad stuff happening.