Ideas backlog

A parking spot for good ideas that aren't designed yet. When one is picked up, it gets a proper document in docs/design/ and a link from here.

The community decides what comes next. Suggest ideas and vote them up or down on the ideas board, no account needed. Ideas with the most support are designed and built first, and the board shows them move to Planned and Built. For longer discussion there's the Ideas category of GitHub Discussions, and ideas can be added here through a pull request.

Ships and combat

• Multicrew ships. Large ships crewed by several players at once: a pilot, gunners on turrets, an engineer routing power between shields, engines and weapons, a navigator plotting jumps and reading the scanner. Friends could crew a freighter or a warship together, and turrets would make rear and side weapons genuinely useful (see below). Needs multiplayer; it would also suit large ships that can only dock at big stations (see stations and worlds).

• Turrets and a look-around key. Rear and side lasers that track whatever you're aiming at, with a key to swing your view while the ship keeps flying. This fixes the original's "fly blind to shoot backwards" problem.

• Cargo weight. A full hold makes a ship slower to turn and accelerate (Modern rules), so dumping cargo becomes an escape tactic.

• Visible upgrades (hardpoints). Ship files define mount points; each upgrade adds its own small wireframe part there. A gimballed mount shows as a turret that swivels towards your aim; damaged gear flickers or goes dark. Other pilots see your loadout when they target you, so a heavily armed ship looks dangerous, and police can spot unlicensed weapons (see power and protection). Upgrade parts become community content.

• Station-killer weapons for missions. Coriolis stations shrug off lasers, as in the original, where shooting one was mostly a way to farm the Vipers it launched. A rare, heavy weapon (a siege torpedo or similar) that can actually disable or destroy a station would be issued for combat missions against stations that have gone rogue: pirate-held, Thargoid-infested, or a Meridian Compact fortress. Mission-only, never for sale, and using it anywhere else is the most serious crime there is. Needs a station-damage model (shields, hull, docking bay, defences) and a dramatic end for a station.

• Join the Co-operative Marshals. A career for commanders with a clean record, a high combat rating and a run of Marshal missions: they're issued a Lancer interceptor in Marshal livery and can answer warrants and blockades. The server issues the livery (nobody can paint themselves as the law), it's withdrawn the moment a Marshal commits a crime, and Marshals answer to the same law they enforce. Needs multiplayer, the combat rating and missions.

• Combat computer upgrades. The first combat computer (built, Modern rules, press O with a turret fitted) flies a textbook chase while you man the guns, and kills made with it count half. Later grades could fly better: a military-grade computer that jinks to spoil enemy aim, keeps the target in your turret's arc, and has Aggressive, Evasive and Escape modes, at military prices and tech levels. It still loses to a good pilot, and still tells you to strap in.

• Buying other ships. Trade up from the Cobra to faster, tougher or bigger ships, as in Elite Plus and Frontier.

• A military ship as a reward. In the 1984 original you only ever flew the Cobra Mk III; its two missions paid in credits (the Constrictor hunt) and a naval energy unit (the Thargoid plans). Later games locked military hulls behind navy rank. For Witchspace: a mission line (the Marshals, or a company's special assignments) whose final reward is a licence to buy, or the gift of, a military hull nobody else can buy: rare, recognisable, and a target. (Noted by Mark, October 2026.)

• The classic fleet as open briefs (Mark, 28 October 2026; designed in the shipbuilders). The 1984 names we haven't flown yet (Adder, Python, Boa, Anaconda, Asp II, Krait, Gecko, Constrictor, Fer-de-lance, Moray and the rest) open as briefs on the site. Each brief carries Samuel Penn's size, hold and role from his Traveller designs, linked as inspiration. The community submits original hulls, votes yes or no and improves them. The hulls stay our own geometry with a nod to 1984, as every ship is (see ships, classes and makers). In the universe (Mark): the briefs come from the makers themselves. Cowell & MgRath put the Python out to tender, Zorgon Petterson want a new Asp, and pilots' votes are the market's verdict. The winner rolls off that maker's line into the shipyards, with its designer credited and paid a commission, as an accepted module's designer is. That brings Build into the lore, and it's the natural way in to the ship editor. Every submission goes to a maker (Mark, 28 October 2026): improvements to any ship, and new builds, are handed to the yard that would build them, not to an anonymous queue. A pilot whose designs keep being accepted is offered a job in the game: a message from the maker, as a company's special assignment is now, inviting them into its design office. That brings their name on the yard's ships, staff prices at its shipyards, a commission on every hull sold, and test-flying its concepts before anyone else. The same review could lift the ships already flying: Samuel noticed that our Cobra and Sidewinder read as Geckos, and our Viper lacks its top and bottom triangle.

• The makers come calling when you can afford one (Mark, 28 October 2026). "When they do we will start to target them with in-game ads." Once a commander's credits pass a hull's deposit (or its price), its maker gets in touch, the way the companies' messages arrive now: an invitation to a private viewing at their nearest shipyard, a brochure for the concept, "only 41 of the Witch-fire Edition remain". Never more than one a week, never in a fight, and you can tell a maker to stop. In-world advertising, by in-world makers, for in-game credits: it sells the dream, not anything real.

• Black-light running lights, and the full ghost (Mark, 28 October 2026: "full ghost sounds really cool"; built, 28 October 2026). The Dark Edition's own luxury, made real as a pure visual signature, never an advantage. Small violet running lights at her wingtips and tail, pulsing slowly, seen only within about a kilometre. Running dark (transponder off), she's an unidentified ship like any other until someone is close enough to read her hull, and then the black-light lights fade in: the moment you realise that ship is a Dark Edition ("lights you only see up close, and only if she lets you"). Her owner can switch them off for the full ghost: no lights at all, only her hull. Nothing dims (the glow is the signature); the lights are added on top. Drawn wherever she is: in flight, in shared space, in the berth, on her page on the site and on her share card.

• Circuit breakers on the exchange (Mark, 28 October 2026). "Can't you suspend trading for a while, just like they do in the real world?" Once the order books are shared, one rich commander could dump a fortune in gem-stones and hold the price down for everyone. A station's exchange halts trading in a good when its price moves too far too fast (say a third in an hour), for a while, with a notice on the board and in the news ("Gem-stone trading suspended at Lave after a 40% fall"). Resting orders wait out the halt. A station's own buyers (a "plunge protection team", in Mark's words) could also step in and buy, so a crash recovers faster where the government is strong (corporate states, democracies) than in an anarchy. Today each player's market is their own copy, so a crash only costs the player who caused it.

• Designers bring their own tools (Mark, 28 October 2026). "They will be designing ships using their own software that they are already familiar with, or they will be using AI tools." Nobody designs a ship on a phone, and few will learn our point editor. So the way in is import: drop in an .obj from Blender (or any 3D tool that exports one), and the site turns it into a ship file. It merges flat triangles into faces, sets the scale in metres, and shows it turning in neo glow beside a Cobra, with the checks (flat convex faces, closed hull, the docking slot, the face count) saying what to fix. Then it's handed in like any other. The AI path already exists: the Witchspace connector lets an assistant (Claude, ChatGPT and others) draw, validate, preview and hand in a ship, and should be offered on the editor page as plainly as the editor itself. The point editor stays, for small tweaks and for looking.

Travel

• J in-system jump drive. Jump most of the way to the planet or station in seconds, blocked by mass lock when ships are near, as in the original. (Part of the travel pacing design.)

Exploration

Built (first slice, src/game/explore.ts): rings and moons from each system's seed; surveys (hold low over a planet, close to a moon, or hot by the star) whose data sells at any station, half price where gathered and up to three times far away; derelicts, beacons and wreck fields with written logs and salvage, revealed by surveying the planet or by flying near; a chart that rings visited systems and shows what you surveyed and found; explorer points and rank. Modern only, except the rings, moons and visited record. Now designed in docs/design/exploration.md, with stage 1 built (trails, terraforming candidates, Wexley-Yorozu survey contracts, explorer's kit). Still to do: terraforming worlds, misjumps, Legends, first discoveries named in the shared galaxy, a photo gallery, community content.

Priority: Explore should be as good as Trade and Fight. Trading now has a living exchange and fighting has the law, the Marshals and the combat computer. Commanders who'd rather wander the galaxy need the same depth: reasons to go somewhere new, things worth finding, and something to show for it.

• Worlds worth visiting. Every system already has its 1984 facts (economy, government, species) and a description written fresh for Witchspace. Bring that to life when you arrive: the planet's look from its seed (colour, bands, rings, moons), a short arrival card, and the occasional binary star, gas giant or ringed world. Rare systems become destinations.
• Scan and survey. Fly close to a planet, star or station and scan it; deep surveys take time and nerve (close orbits, sun skimming). Survey data sells at stations, more the further it is from where it was gathered, so explorers earn a living without trading or fighting.
• Points of interest. Derelicts, wreck fields, abandoned stations, signal sources, nebulae and dead stars, placed from each system's seed so everyone finds the same things. Many are small stories: a log to read, a cargo to salvage, a clue that points to the next system.
• Legends, already on the roadmap: the rare secret encounters. Exploration is how you find them.
• Witchspace itself. Misjumps that strand you between systems, Thargoid space, and rifts like the Marshals' that occasionally open on their own and lead somewhere unmarked.
• The chart as a record. The galactic chart remembers where you've been, what you've scanned and what you found, and fills in as you explore. Milestones for visiting every system in a galaxy, or reaching the far edge.
• An explorer's rank. Its own road, separate from combat and trading, earned by distance, discoveries and surveys. In the shared galaxy: first discoveries carry the finder's name, as the system's chart entry shows.
• Explorer's kit. Long-range fuel tanks, better scanners, a survey probe, and fuel scoops that matter more the further out you go.
• Photos. The P key already takes clean shots; a gallery of the best ones, by system, shows other commanders what's out there.
• Community content. Points of interest, logs and Legends as data files with a validator, like ships, so anyone can add a place worth finding.

Multiplayer and communication

Now designed in docs/design/radio-and-comms.md: the radio, the comms array, the emergency beacon, safety and the stages to build them. Stages 0 and 1 are built (October 2026): the radio log, hailing, the comms array (remote contract acceptance, distress calls, news at range) and the beacon. Talking to other commanders is next.

• Radio. Text channels for local radio (ships in range in the same system), station traffic control, direct hails to your target, and guild channels. Opt-in proximity voice that fades and crackles with distance and is positioned left and right like other ship sounds. Hail anything: stations, police and AI-agent commanders answer too. Distress calls go out over the radio so nearby players hear them. Safety from day one: mute, block and report; voice off by default; push-to-talk; optional filtering.
  • Comms you can shoot out. A basic short-range text radio comes standard. The comms array (longer range, voice, guild channels, wide broadcasts) is an expensive, fragile, exposed upgrade, visible on the hull as a hardpoint. Make a nuisance of yourself on the open channel and someone may simply shoot your transmitter off, which is a real loss.
  • Safeguards: every ship also has an armoured emergency beacon that can't be silenced (distress signals and station traffic control only, no chat), so griefers can't cut off a newcomer's call for help. Destroying someone's comms is still an attack and a crime in lawful systems. And this is an in-world consequence for being annoying, not a substitute for real moderation: abuse is handled by mute, block and report, never by having to win a dogfight.

Community and content

• Legends. Rare, secret encounters and easter-egg ships that nod to great science fiction, plus tributes to Elite's own legends. On the roadmap; see the homage rules in CONTRIBUTING.
• In-world channels: the companies' own broadcasts. Wexley-Yorozu's corporate films ("Building tomorrow's stations, today": smiling, glossy, a little sinister), Co-operative Marshals public information films, and leaked footage from Solo & Sons. Start as series on @witchspacegame, in each company's voice, before any gets a channel of its own. (Mark, 24 October 2026)
• A Witchspace YouTube channel of Shorts from commanders' flight recorders, put forward by any commander and edited and published by an AI agent (with a person approving at first). See design/flight-recorder.md, section 5. (Mark, 24 October 2026)
• The kill cam. Watch how you died from outside: the ship logs every ship's position and every shot (a few hundred KB a minute), and the game rebuilds the fight from any angle, labelled as a reconstruction. Designed: see design/kill-cam.md. (Mark, 25 October 2026)
• The ejected science pod. A Titanoboa's science module can eject its containment pod if something goes wrong; it drifts towards the planet on a clock, and commanders choose: recover it for the Science Division, destroy it for the colony, return it quietly to Wexley-Yorozu, or sell what's inside. See design/ship-the-titanoboa.md. (Mark, 25 October 2026)
• Witchspace MCP server. Tools for AI assistants to validate, preview and balance-check content. Designed: see design/mcp-server.md.
• In-browser ship editor. Design a ship visually and export a valid ship file.

Play anywhere

• Streamer and multitasking mode. A compact pop-out window, a frame-rate cap, and an overlay-friendly layout for streaming software.

Think something here should change? Say so on the ideas board, where others can vote it up, or email hello@witchspace.org.uk. If you code: this page is docs/ideas.md on GitHub, open to pull requests.