Small Immersion Improvements

[Vivalas]

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.

[Yurk Embassy]

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.

To be fair, I feel like that might do a disservice to the "everything that is there has a purpose" vibe SoH has, in addition to causing more lagging (optimisation is vital for such a thing to be even envisioned, in my opinion). There could be a way to bring a bit more liveliness into our spaceports, though. Empires used to rely on trading ships, commanded by Officers who had a pre-defined, automated mission that they would execute again and again; they would simply buy specific goods on planets where the quality was decent, and bring them over to designated shipyard colonies, or directly over to the homeworld. It was vital, as resources used to travel through the planets of a same system only.

I'd suggest a simpler change: bringing back that restriction of resources not travelling between star systems could bring back genuine use to cargo haulers, and force empires to rely on traders once more. It would make officers useful for something other than warfare; trading lanes would be brought back to life, and you'd hear the occasional, satisfying rumbling of that one huge cargo ship that lands and takes off on and from your city, now and then. Although, the issue of automated ships being stuck in occasional limbos, would have to be addressed. I'm unsure as for how reliable officers are at the moment. But I feel like this necessity for a logistics network made the game feel very much alive. You could tell resourceful colonies and shipyards were nevralgic points to your empire, just by staying a good 30 minutes in one of these cities.

Helicopters flying between cities of a same world, or small transporters travelling between your space station and cities, would be a great sight to see, though; after all, if NPCs are able to man helms, why not small vehicles (which is why I'd also tend to agree with your point about fighters)? But there again, civilian trafic for the sake of aesthetics may cause unnecessary lagging if not backed up with the proper level of optimisation.

[Neils Iyssada]

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.

Haxus is all for simplifying designs, so I don't think it would be that useful (nor doable).
It could be something like sub-consoles for slaving crew to each console, or adding a new "crew" console. But it shouldn't be too much crew or it will be overly complex and lag out / waste some space of the server.

[Wincil]

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.

To be fair, I feel like that might do a disservice to the "everything that is there has a purpose" vibe SoH has, in addition to causing more lagging (optimisation is vital for such a thing to be even envisioned, in my opinion). There could be a way to bring a bit more liveliness into our spaceports, though. Empires used to rely on trading ships, commanded by Officers who had a pre-defined, automated mission that they would execute again and again; they would simply buy specific goods on planets where the quality was decent, and bring them over to designated shipyard colonies, or directly over to the homeworld. It was vital, as resources used to travel through the planets of a same system only.

I'd suggest a simpler change: bringing back that restriction of resources not travelling between star systems could bring back genuine use to cargo haulers, and force empires to rely on traders once more. It would make officers useful for something other than warfare; trading lanes would be brought back to life, and you'd hear the occasional, satisfying rumbling of that one huge cargo ship that lands and takes off on and from your city, now and then. Although, the issue of automated ships being stuck in occasional limbos, would have to be addressed. I'm unsure as for how reliable officers are at the moment. But I feel like this necessity for a logistics network made the game feel very much alive. You could tell resourceful colonies and shipyards were nevralgic points to your empire, just by staying a good 30 minutes in one of these cities.

Helicopters flying between cities of a same world, or small transporters travelling between your space station and cities, would be a great sight to see, though; after all, if NPCs are able to man helms, why not small vehicles (which is why I'd also tend to agree with your point about fighters)? But there again, civilian trafic for the sake of aesthetics may cause unnecessary lagging if not backed up with the proper level of optimisation.

I would disagree I don't think it would have a disservice to the "everything that is there has a purpose" vibe of shores of hazeron I don't think the lag would be that much of an issue with optimisation I wouldn't see the point of the restriction of resources not travelling between star systems that stuff can be automated with a broker I would rather use a broker to that and not be forced to use a cargo hauler if I were to play the game i would be unfair to force empires to rely on traders and force that restriction of resources not travelling between star systems. I don't see the point of that.

[Deantwo]

Ship Servicing

I have always wanted some sort of scaffolding to appear around a spacecraft while it is being repaired or upgraded. Since the ship can't do anything while the repair timer is going, it would be nice with an outside visual indication too.

NPC Starships / Civilian Activity

Helicopters flying between cities of a same world, or small transporters travelling between your space station and cities, would be a great sight to see, though; after all, if NPCs are able to man helms, why not small vehicles (which is why I'd also tend to agree with your point about fighters)? But there again, civilian trafic for the sake of aesthetics may cause unnecessary lagging if not backed up with the proper level of optimisation.

Haxus has said that a spacecraft being commanded by a NPC officer consumes as many server resources as a player does doing the same activity. So likely not something you would want to just spawn without actual purpose.

I have always liked the idea of helicopters or space transports (or whatever other aircraft or space vehicles we will be able to design with the future vehicle designer) traveling between airports of a solar system. Even more so if we got a "flight path"/taxi service we can use to be flown between airports.

Haxus once mentioned that he wants to add trade ship encounters for when a player is in a system along a shipment trade route. Allowing us to plunder them if we want. Can definitely see more fun opportunities for encounters like that, such as marooned trade ships or repelling pirate attacks.

Ship Maintenance

Haxus is all for simplifying designs, so I don't think it would be that useful (nor doable).
It could be something like sub-consoles for slaving crew to each console, or adding a new "crew" console. But it shouldn't be too much crew or it will be overly complex and lag out / waste some space of the server.

I actually like this idea of needing worker bee crewmen. As long as it doesn't cost a lot of server resources to have the added crew, since I know a spacecraft with many many troops will cause a lot of lag.

The idea of generic "crew console" seems nice for this, so they don't just stand around. If not all crew consoles are manned the ship can get some performance penalties similar to how the engineering console works.

[danthemanisme95]

I've always been a fan of teu containers on mass drivers as a way to have inner system planetary trade be visualized.

These containers would be free from collision and would despawn at the atmosphere and spawn again in the atmosphere of destination colony.

[Chronovore]

Cargo / Ship Servicing

This would pair nicely with my thoughts on the space trucker experience:  https://www.hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2340

NPC Starships / Civilian Activity

This would be a cool way to visualize broker activity.  It would be neat to assign a ship or ship design to accomplish broker activities.  The performance would be a big consideration.

Ship Maintenance / Fighter Wings

Fighters being used as automated weapons would be excellent.  I see performance complexity here, but man, the visuals would be stunning.

[Rockinsince87]

All of these ideas are awesome. The universe feeling alive is awesome. It's something Hazeron is missing. 


As for ship maintenance, yes that is a powerful mechanic. I have a few ideas to add to this:
1. Make it a ship attribute that can be modified. Something with a slider in you can adjust in the designer. Call it reliability for example.
2. Assign a reliably factor for each system. This is really a damage multiplier.
3. Ship systems slowly (VERY SLOWLY) take damage based on reliability. More reliability less damage. 
4. Crew can maintain systems by using repair functions by taking spare parts out of the cargo hold and perform repairs using the service panels per OP suggestion. 
5. Add a tab/menu to the starship section that allows ships to have "repair threshold states in %". That way the crew is not running around all the time causing issues. 
6. add "Maintenance overhaul" as a function, tie to reliability. Measure it in days between spacedock/station/airport servicing.
   - This means that a ship must have a full overhaul every X days at a space dock, the time it takes to perform the      overhaul can be tied to the total volume of all ship systems, excluding hull value. 
   - Take the number of total days between overhauls and divide it in 4 parts. Take those 4 parts and use them multiplier states of degradation. 
   - ie: 90 days between overhauls. 22.5 days between each state.
   - Take each state and use it against the failure rate (damage taken)
      - So 4 states
        - State 1: 0.5 more damage taken
        - State 2: 1.0 more damage taken
        - State 3: 1.5 more damage taken
        - State 4: 2.0 more damage taken

[GaelicVigil]

A couple thoughts I had.

1. Slower Rocket Engines.
Rockets and rocket drive ships should not be able to zip around your solar system so fast. They should have a top speed much lower than the grav drive. I think it would be neat (and realistic) to experience a long journey to another planet in your solar system the first couple times.

2. Space Stations as planetary capitals.
It would add a ton of convenience if stations could manage (F10) all buildings on a planet, like a capitol can for a city. At the very least they should be able to manage brokers.

3. Wagons.
Yeah, we have livestock to ride early game, but a buildable wagon that could increase speed AND carry a limited amount of cargo would be amazing.

[Deantwo]

1.  Slower Rocket Engines.
Rockets and rocket drive ships should not be able to zip around your solar system so fast.  They should have a top speed much lower than the grav drive.  I think it would be neat (and realistic) to experience a long journey to another planet in your solar system the first couple times.

The game only has one top speed, and that is the speed of light. Everything is based on acceleration and you can definitely make a spacecraft that has faster acceleration than a space rocket. Newtonian physics likely won't be changed like that, and I doubt it would add to immersion to have a top-speed imposed on space vehicles.

What would help to achieve this would be bigger solar systems. Simply more spacing between the otbit zones and between the sun and the inner most orbit zone. The orbits are very close together and it makes it easy to see other worlds and travel to them is fast. But I wouldn't say it is a major issue, this is not KSP, not everything has to be perfect scale.