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+--- Thread: Adressing lack of threat, interaction with AI empires and ship interior design. (/showthread.php?tid=2967)
Adressing lack of threat, interaction with AI empires and ship interior design. - Ivan - 09-10-2023
To make Hazeron starship succesful imo, it needs to emulate what made Shores of Hazeron attractive in the first place:
- A sense of fear of being invaded and urgency to develop your fleet/colonies/empire to make it as unlikely as possible to be completely annihilated.
- The ability to meet other empires at various stages of develpment and interact with them. (Observe, spy, trade, assist, protect, invade, vassal, ally)
- Having easily designable ships with full interiors. Every player should be able to do this.
Basically there are two reasons why I lost interest in Hazeron starship alot faster than in 2014 Shores of Hazeron.:
1. Lack of threat and interaction with other empires, need for AI empires.
I know there is a thread about buffing the pirates, and I do agree with that, but I feel that is not enough to replace players.
It struck me that in Shores of Hazeron, you could basically do everything you can do in Stellaris, but then in first person. I don't htink there ever was any other game where you could really do this. There even was the looming threat similar to the Xenon from the X-series or Mass Effect's Reapers (in the form of the Syndicate :p)
To reach this, we'd really need some AI empires that can actually colonise worlds and which can either be friendly, neutral or xenophobic hostile species with whom you can interact in various ways through the diplomacy screen.
Right now you kind of can make this happen, by making different empires with different characters and have them form alliiances and/or fight eachother. This is dull though, due to the fact that you are the director, who decides who wins or loses, without any real feeling of fear.
Additionally, some extreme threat like the Reapers, Xenon or Outsiders would be neat. Some invasion that would only occur after some set or random time after you playing, or when specific conditions are met, and for which you have to prepare and build up a huge fleet, perhaps even ally with other empires. Just like in Stellaris. You could even just encounter them when you venture into another galaxy. (e.g. after you've visited 3 galaxies). It could be a part of the story aswell. They could maybe even be present in the mmo, if it ever comes back, appear periodically or as an event) and require players to cooperate to stop them.
The first person world of Hazeron , combined with the diplomacy/interaction features of Stellaris, would make this game be amongst the best 4x games that ever existed.
I realise programming AI that colonises, invades and in various other ways iteracts with player empires, is probably not an easy task.
If that is not possible, just periodic spawning of a hostile fleet that goes from system to system, would be nice also.
Without the game is fun for a while, but nowhere nearly as engaging as Shores of Hazeron was.
2. Interior design
Also, sorry, but have to say this again: the old ship and (similar)building designers were superior for interior design. Drawing rooms and room voids and associating room voids with door open states and pathing, feels a bit too much of a chore, to the point where, after designing 5 ships, I don't want to design any new ship interiors anymore, and because of that don't feel like playing the game anymore.
Just having two different interiors for ships is a bit dull, one for shuttles and corvette sized ships, another for frigates, destroyers and medium harvesters and haulers, I simply don't feel like designing a 3rd one for cruisers, battleships and carriers. I also still haven't finished a space station design.
It does not need to be the same as the old one, but just something where u can more easily draw rooms and just place doors, that automatically connect rooms. Adding floors one by one to buildings was neat.
Also in the old system areas were inaccessible, because systems were there. Right now you have empty, dead weight areas that are inaccessible, simply because you don't feel like designing interiors. The old placement of systems was nice, but too demanding on gpu. Instead it could just be 3D blocks that determine where systems physically are located, without actually drawing hunderds or even thousands of system modules. These 3D blocks were engines or weapons are located, would then not allow for hallways or rooms to be made in the exact same spot, to have an excuse as to why some parts of the ship are inaccessible. It made more sense and was similar to other 4x games where u need to place systems within the ship's hull.
Conclusion
Basically the lack of a threat/interaction combined with the interior design of ships and buldings is what made me lose interest to the current version of the game. If 2014 type of buildings and spacecraft interior design (or rather something similar, but more streamlined) would come back and there was something to fight and fear, I'd be alot more willing to play this again, and with a few exceptions, I think this would be the case for the majority of players and potential players. I think adding these features could mean the difference between a huge succes and failure for the Steam release of Hazeron Starship.
For reference: I played Hazeron starship for a little over 268 Hours. I played 2014 Shores of Hazeron for over 2000 hours in 6 months before it was taken down (I was unemployed at the time), and my total playtime until the removal of the old designer was around 5000 hours. Designing ships was fun, because even the most complex designs took a max of a few hours. Being afraid of Syndicate was fun. Being paranoid and having many distant backup colonies was fun. Being a vassal but scheming to overthrow the overlord was fun. Joining an alliance to overthrow the Evil Pony empire and blockading their planets was fun. Spending 50 hours on a single ship fiddling with voids, associating doors and pathing is not fun.
To me 2014-2016 Shores of Hazeron was the best game that ever existed. There's no other game that I have played more than that. My second most played game is Black Desert Online at 3783 hours, but that's only because it's a typical addictive/manipulative MMO that deliberately uses psychological tricks to addict players. It was not really fun at all. 2014-2016 Shores of Hazeron very much was fun.
I myself am trying to stop playing videogames, but I do want this game to be succesful. I hope that if I do start play mroe videogames again sometime, I can play a version of Hazeron Starship that has more of the things that, at least to me, made 2014-2016 SoH the best game that ever existed.
RE: Adressing lack of threat, interaction with AI empires and ship interior design. - Celarious - 09-11-2023
Agreed, 2014-2015 was the best time due to the threats and designers at the time, so something like visiting a specific dangerous other galaxy awakening some crazy threat, currently there's not much to do once you've got a warp ship
Problem is even just a single avatar colonizing a bunch of systems and exploring results in savefiles ballooning in size and performance dropping, so idk how possible it would be to have NPC empires
Also yeah I just can't be bothered with the new designer, I feel like it was added way too early, it should've cooked a lot longer before the old one was removed, currently progress on it is slow to the point where I don't think it'll ever get to the same level the old one was at, so it's better to have kept that old system until the new was actually somewhat complete
RE: Adressing lack of threat, interaction with AI empires and ship interior design. - Norm49 - 09-12-2023
The old disinger was what got me in this game. It been ask many time to go back to the old one or have the 2 one working together. unfortunately even if every one is telling Haxus the new disinger is too complicated he wont listen. Making a nice ship now take days, it is WAYS to long for a game to be enjoyably, for 99.99% of the player at least. It is nice to be able to make fourniture for the ship interior so it feel less empty du doing a large ship form scratch, it could take month. This is just never gona catch on.
I this around 2013-2015 were the best years. The game was fantastic, now it is more of a 3d program then an game.
RE: Adressing lack of threat, interaction with AI empires and ship interior design. - Ivan - 09-12-2023
Yeah you guys are right, the best time probably was until the end of 2015. I don't know if the game was even online in 2016. I just assumed it was around 2016 that the new designer was introduced. I only discovered the game near the end of january 2014 iirc. So for me it would be 2014-2015.
Also, yeah I forgot about the savefile size becoming enormous. Guess without some extreme optimisation, it means AI empires are indeed not viable. Maybe just a single hostile AI empire (perhaps the extreme threat), that doesn't colonise too much (or at all), but just attacks/destroyes/harvests or captures your worlds, so the savefile does not increase or even becomes smaller due to the AI empire's actions. Perhaps even have them become stronger the larger your empire becomes, to make it harder to become too large. (and give a lore explanation like large empires attract the evil harvesters)
Also the AI empire(s) or major threat could perhaps just be a roadmap goal. I do feel the designer should be simplified or reverted to the old one before Steam release. But reverting to the old one would perhaps be very demotivating for Haxus, as it would mean all the work he put in was for nothing. So I guess the ideal option would just be simplification of the new one. Or old designer for interiors, new designer for exteriors.
But if he were to just put 2014-2015 SoH back online and even charge 10-20 euro a month, I'd happily pay it. Or perhaps make a Legacy Hazeron Starship, with 2014 ship and building designers.
RE: Adressing lack of threat, interaction with AI empires and ship interior design. - Celarious - 09-12-2023
(09-12-2023, 11:57 AM)Ivan Wrote: Yeah you guys are right, the best time probably was until the end of 2015. I don't know if the game was even online in 2016. I just assumed it was around 2016 that the new designer was introduced. I only discovered the game near the end of january 2014 iirc. So for me it would be 2014-2015.
The first shutdown was in summer 2014 and then returned in february 2015, with the box where the game was super popular, and when the box ended a few months later the game kinda slowed down and people (including syndicate) left, then the new designer was added around the start of 2017 (dev started in late 2016), so the game was basically dead until the reset in 2020, this quiet period had literally 1-2 online average
also yeah seems the best way forward is to simplify the new designer to be similar to the old one, with the option to add crazy detailed manual stuff if you really wanted
but given that'll take lots of effort to do, I feel like just reverting to the old one until the new is comparable is honestly just the best way to bring people back
(legacy starship/SoH would be amazing too but I feel like that's a pipe dream, assuming haxus even has the old versions)
RE: Adressing lack of threat, interaction with AI empires and ship interior design. - Norm49 - 09-12-2023
Getting back to the old system or something close to it will probably help a lot with the save file size, and IA empire optimisation.