In getting back in game and having to relearn 3d design, and also seeing the comments at how unfriendly the designer is to those needing to learn it for the first time. I began thinking of the Mr. Potatohead method of taking a hull and plugging in the accessories. Because most players are casual at heart and prefer to just throw something cool together and go have fun. ("dammit Jim, I'm a gamer not an engineer!") 

Obviously it should be a little more involved than that, but not by a whole lot. It would mean more work for Haxus on the back end, developing the tools and methods that designers would use and building a set modules for players to start with. But on the front end I think it could remove many of the frustrations new players have in space flight and could possibly increase retention.

Ships could be broken down into two Larger module categories, Exterior and Interior. Those would again be broken down by object type. Everything would be kept in a library accessible in the designer via drop down list. Other modules and assorted parts could be published to a "Library" section in the Exchange and downloaded to our individual libraries.

Ship interiors would consist of prebuilt rooms with paths, voids, obstructions and what not  already there. Rooms could be snapped together using the docking mechanic idea Haxus was toying with. Bridge/Cockpits could come with prebuilt frames outside so exteriors can be built to fit. (I foresee making making the bridge modular, and unique, being the most difficult part)  Lift system would work the same except that a door designated for the lift would be built into the room and then a lift could be chosen from the library to associate with it. 

Interiors could be finished any way the architect pleases, empty, or with any variation of consoles and accessories added. Door "plugs" could be used to close off unused doorways, removing unneeded paths and voids. Parts and accessories could be further divided between ship parts (consoles, beds, game tables, etc ) and permanent décor. (ambient geometry)  Later you can still pull stuff out of inventory and place it where you like.

Exteriors could consist of anything from a completed hull, to a completed section of hull ready to be snapped to another completed section, to as small as a single panel used in building a larger section of hull. Hull panels could be manipulated by snapping them together and sculpting with restrained push/pull commands. Hull accessories would be categorized much the same as interior and placed on the hull where needed or desired. This would allow the user to select entire section of hull by selecting full panels as objects rather than one face/vertex at a time. 

It would have a separate room in the designer, files used should have a different file type beside .soh. Upon entry users could choose to either start with the interior and build a hull around it, or start with a hull and fit an interior to it, or take finished sections and snap them together, ...or simply grab a finished ship and fit it out as desired. Once completed users would refresh obstructions and finalize the design making it useable in game.

I would also like to see animations get fleshed out to make adding landing gear, ramps and vtol engines more intuitive.

As users get familiar with the program they may begin to appreciate the more intricate features associated with the designer as a whole, while new users would still be able throw together (or simply grab) a useable design and get playing. 

Architects would still have the full functionality of the designer and would still be able to build fully unique designs.

I tweaked a couple of Haxus's BP's that were on the exchange and published them and a couple of my own. Does that make them available to other Starship players?

I decided to give Starship a try in preparation for Shore's coming back. 

I had stepped away from the camp before Targoss arrived to kill a critter then went and grabbed a beverage, when I got back Targoss and I were both dead. I decided to just gather up some resources and get started started instead of restarting the Tut. When I logged in this morning I decided to go ahead and test the tut anyway to find that there was no dialog to double click and restarting the story did not bring him back.

Silver lining is I get to start with a Targoss skin suit ;)

Currently if you build an Airport Terminal in a city, it will default to having the name of the city as part of its name when replying to hails, "<city> Airport Terminal".

If an Airport Terminal is not part of a city it simply default to "Airport Terminal". This can make it hard to distringish between multiple non-city Airport Terminals.

It would therefore be nice if the Airport Terminal would default to adding its world's name to its name, "<world> Airport Terminal". Maybe adding resource zone number too, but I don't know if that is all that important.

Right now we simply have to remember to manually rename the Airport Terminal, which is mostly annoying when we are forgetful.

This is mostly an issue when colonizing minor worlds with the Colony strategy.
See: hazeron.com/wiki/index.php/Colony

More incentive for interaction would be more beneficial I would would say that a small universe size would froce player interaction but not really encourage I think reason a to interact with other players would be better then forcing them into a cage together I would think exploring other solar systems to find does rare resources would encourage exploration

Some math people might find interesting. Assuming every galaxy is a height of 40 sectors, and using an average system density of 24 systems / s



Total system count: 1,724,064,000 (estimated)

One thing I remember whenever I started a new empire was getting absolutely curb-stomped by powerful empires within a week of first starting out. Since the neutral zone is getting removed, maybe players who are less interested in PVP can start out in areas with greatly diminished fuel and resources, so the bigger and more fuel consuming starships would starve out. I don’t really know much about fleets because I rarely reached the interstellar phase, but that’s my pitch.

Now that Haxus is back and is in a development spirit, I figure it wouldn't hurt to have a thread with some small ideas to make the game feel a bit more alive. Perhaps some of these have been offered before or discussed, perhaps they haven't. I figured I would throw my 2 cents in and allow others to do the same if they have similar ideas in this thread.

I've had this in the back of my mind for a while but the greatest allure I have to games like this is the immersion. SoH always offered this epic story and sci-fi universe to me, and the feeling of exploring it with the few but otherwise still very lively players this game has always keeps drawing me back. The classic sound of the pager, for example, and the scale of the game world. To add on to this are some small things that I think would make the game more alive. This might be a stream of consciousness thing where I come back and add more, because I've probably forgotten some, but if Haxus finds room in his development schedule for these things it could be neat.

Cargo / Ship Servicing

This is something almost every sci-fi game I've ever played has left out somehow and is for me the most immersive. I've been playing Sailwind a lot lately and the immersion of loading your ships by hand with crates always makes it very engrossing and interesting. While that of course may get tedious and isn't quite the suggestion, it could also be a neat addition too.

Basically my idea is for NPCs to work on ships while they're in port or at the factory pad. When you load cargo maybe a guy walks back and forth with a crate prop from the ship (at the "easiest to implement" end, and at the other end maybe guys can be driving forklifts or operating cranes, although both of these implementations have their own challenges. I've always found pathfinding into ships to be a bit difficult, especially if you have a ramp, but maybe a cargo area in your ship where the dockworkers walk and "drop" their crates (it despawns in their hand) would be neat. Games like Elite Dangerous always fail at this level of immersion, which perhaps it's a niche thing only I enjoy, it's been in the development plans of a lot of space games and has always been glossed over.

Similar to this is more stuff for ship servicing. Maybe when you get repairs people with wrenches lie about under your ship and walk around and do things on top and on the outside. When you get fuel maybe a simple polygon tube is extended by a worker to to either the ship or a special "fuel port" point if the ship has one defined. Maybe when you order a ship cleaning or extermination there are NPCs actually going and doing the deed. The existence of NPCs in the game world has always been rather immersing so this has always been on the back of my mind.

NPC Starships / Civilian Activity

This is another area the game could be livened up a bunch, if not where the most impact could be had. Often your spanning galactic empire feels a bit unalive, unless you have players working with you. There is already ship landing code and often unused space ports in your city, so why not have NPCs flying around ships between your planets? Would be very satisfying and rewarding once you get to that point in the game. A few default built-in ships could be used for this, but having the player also be able to design a ship for use for this task (with some restrictions of course) would add another layer of customization. Similarly but perhaps more difficult would be having NPCs walk, drive, and commute around the planet. Planes flying between airports, ships between seaports. Performance is probably an issue here, but if the performance impact of these simple commuting NPCs or NPC starships could be mitigated it could maybe be a worthwhile addition.


Ship Maintenance / Fighter Wings

Another issue where I think immersion suffers a bit is with the crew requirements of larger ships. Ship crew complement really only depends on the number of stations you have, so for very large vessels it is quite possible to have massive ships crewed by 10-11 people. I think a solution to this is implement a maintenance requirement that scales with volume of the ship, perhaps in a non-linear fashion. So smaller ships can be crewed by just you and maybe one maintenance person, whereas larger ships will have droves of NPCs walking around fixing things. A "maintenance panel" could be added to faciliate this walking around, with the caveat that it only "covers" a certain radius of the ship around it, so you'd need to place lots of them spread evenly about the ship with corresponding access tunnels in order to have maximum maintenance coverage for larger ships. This fits the star wars / star trek vision well because both franchises have scenes where the business of ship life on larger ships is apparent, with officers and crew scurrying about doing various tasks.

A complementary idea to this is to have fighters be usable as offensive or defensive weapons without needing players to fly them. Fighters are a cool staple of sci-fi, and having the ability to say, maybe recruit 3-4 fighter pilots per planet, in a similar limiting mechanic similar to officers, would be a neat addition to combat. Having squadrons of fighters buzzing about in larger engagements would be epic and definitely pick up on some cool tropes.


Hazeron is an awesome game and I think we're all overjoyed it's not dying anytime soon. Performance always seems to be a continual limitation but if there is ever room for these types of improvements to bring the game to life in ways that other games never touch on, it would be really awesome.

I am in the process of bringing the Shores of Hazeron servers back up. Their new home is currently being prepared.

Reconstruction of the server rack is also needed. The computers have been sitting cold in my barn, right where I dumped them a year ago. If the equipment still works, we'll be good to go.

That is all moving along. Servers will probably be back up by the end of February.

If the game wasn't played for around a month, upon joining a message appears from crew that time's up for self destruct, even though no order for it was given.
First time this happened, I heard explosion upon loading in. My ship had around 10% hull health. Still had fuel, but no crew inside. Ended up falling on a house and staying here.
Second time this happened, ship was in the orbit. No response to system hail. Probably same thing happened, but without corrosion.