Hi there, I have many ideas about Universe Sandbox which I think would improve the game and the community around it.
First Idea would be allowing to toggle almost every physic based proprieties because, since US is a sandbox, we should be able to create our own rules Which is part of my second Idea.
It is very fun to play with realistic physic but it is also very fun to make experimentation with unrealistic physic.
Here are some example.
- What would the Moon or other celestial bodies looks like if it was at a certain distance, Like if it was at the same height as the Space station ( about 400 km ) without being destroyed by the Roche limit.
- The speed of light as the speed limit, It is fun and realistic to think about making it the limit, but it would be great to have a toggle button so you can mess around orbiting planets around black holes or what ever you feel like.
Second Idea Is to have a more advanced parameters about physic. Changing the laws of physic in general, not just having a gravity multiplayer. By that I mean that an advanced user could decide to change the laws of physic itself. Mess around with it ( ofc with the Reset to Default in case you break everything) will allow people to change almost everything.
But it might be very complicated to implement in the game. Which lead to my third Idea.
Third Idea It would be awesome if you were to make the game fully functional with Mods. The Steam Workshop is a great example of a growing community and is also a great reason why small games like Kerbal Space Program or Garry's mod and Minecraft are very popular.
It will allow A lot of different people in the community to modify the game and add their own content to a public view and might also help the developers with new Ideas and new content for free.
This is the support you guys should focus on very seriously because it will change your game and it will create a stronger community attached to it. If your game Team/Studio grow even larger, it could also be a new way to recruit new member since you already know what they are capable of and they already know the game and love it.
To be honest, a sandbox game is good but it don't last forever unless you bight up new content forever.
It would give a lot of benefit to you since different users could have created content that you can include in a future update giving you more time to focus on more important task.
Fourth Idea Being able to type on the in-game clock. It's fun to mess around with time but using + & - aren't very precise and sometime to get real time you need to mess around with it which is annoying.
Fifth Idea Adding a toggle to see the distance of the relative object to an other when you are adding it. By that, I mean that I want to know how far from the Earth I am placing the moon at. It is very useful to make precise solar system or creation.
Sixth Idea Allowing reversed rotation/orbit. Maybe It's just me who have problem but I didn't found out how to reverse the orbit of a planet/moon. it would be fun to crash things like this.
Seventh Idea Lighting improvement, It would be great to see the different effect of lighting like the Blood moon for instance which happen when the Earth Eclipse the moon. at the right angle and the atmosphere refract light etc etc..
Well, that's all I could think of at the moment, so I will update the post with more Ideas as time goes on.
Thanks for your time.