2022-01-13 FYI

[Oggal]

Haxus, it is wonderful hearing from you! Can not wait to return Hazeron again. I was wondering if it would be at all possible for you to post a download for the designer so we can begin preparing for the new universe?

Hopefully this doesn't get buried in the hot debate of f2p vs p2p vs Box Universe vs everything else. (Which, just my 2 cents, should be taken to a separate thread.)

Again, access to the designer for us who did not get starship access would be wonderful! Both in preparing our own empire designs. And preparing a slew of designs to provide new and returning players who rather not use the designer.

[Rockinsince87]

Sounds like your doing alright Haxus, glad your ok!

[Norm49]

Hi,

with the new studio we can make invisible solid wall, we can also make not solid but visible wall in a ship or a building. Haxus please fix this. This completely kill boarding and boarding was really fun. Also if a new player face this in a ship it will be a complete game killer for him.


Thanks

[Booterror]

If no one else is going to say it, I will:

Sieg Syndicate, I guess.

[jakbruce2012]

Welcome back Boot. I'm not so sure we should bring Syndicate back too soon. There must be a strong supply of opponents first, otherwise we burn out the competition, and source of fun. However, there must needs testing of the new combat mechanics when they are implemented.

[SailorJerrys]

Welcome back to the fold, Haxus! Glad to hear things are clean and tidy for you, a healthy and made home is a good way to be clear of stress.

I'd like to bring my own thoughts to the table regarding SoH, and approach from the mindset of a more casual player. I started playing way back when the buildings were tile based, back in what .. 2013/14? And from the standpoint of a young adult, disappointed in Spores lackluster end game, and a sci fi geek, I adored every minute of exploration in this new gigantic world. I remember flying rockets to other planets even when I had ships just because it was fun to fly a rocket.

Anyways, I picked up the game again after it had died and became pay to play, but ended up stopping because I had other things to deal with in the real world. When I came back again I had learned it had gone down, and I was honestly devastated, cause it was and still is one of the only sci fi games that REALLY scratches just about every itch I've got in the barest of senses. And I don't even mind the visuals, I play ASCII games for fun and get lost in the wor(l)ds. (See what I did there?)

When it became free again, I messaged a few friends who played with me back in 2013 and we dove right back in, excited. Things had changed, and the ship designer was ... Infinitely more complex. But, we enjoyed building colonies, trying to make them as pretty as we could. Thematic, tidy, organized... We played it more like a city and colony builder and manager, and we enjoyed it that way!

Honestly... I never met any other players, ever, but I was always afraid to, because I knew about groups like the Toucan Empire and the Syndicate, Weltreich, and I didn't want to feel forced to pick between losing everything and being vassalized just because they knew how to wage wars and I didn't. It's like the Sword of Damocles, you want to approach other players and try to roleplay two empires interacting, as if playing Stellaris, but you're worried they're going to turn out to be stronger, fiercely aggressive, and just curb stomp your empire that you've spent months building, just for the lulz...

I know you're going to say I sound more like a fit for Starship... Probably not wrong, I'd play the hell out of Starship honestly, I spent the entirety of last year hoping to see a sign up sheet. But I'm not opposed to player interaction, I just don't like feeling hopeless in defending my virtual property.

With that being said, I look forward to dropping in again when the servers are launched once more. If Patreon is used, as a server owner myself, I'd happily chip in a few bucks to help with running costs. If it's subscription, hopefully not too steep, but I'd likely pay anyways, I just know it would keep away a lot of potential players, who unfortunately may not last forever... But at least people could potentially explore the beautiful world that some of us have come back to several times in the span of what... Almost two decades? That's what matters most, right? The experience and joy of a new world.

That's all I really wanted to say, there's a lot of discussion going on, and I'm sorry this was so long winded, but I wanted to get my own two cents out, as a lurker who none of you likely know about or have even spoken to at any point. And if anyone recognizes me .. Hey! Nice to see y'all!

To join a friend you just have to join their empire and recall. You should spawn at their capital or one of their cities.

Would this still allow us to be our own species? Or would it make us theirs?

And also, just clear up my previous comments, I do plan on joining an existing empire for awhile in the new universe. I'm hoping to learn combat ship design meta, and experience some player interaction and diplomacy for the sake of having a better chance of more interesting gameplay when I DO finally meet other empires with my own.

[Wess]

What I loved most about my time in SoH.

Building. It was awesome going from a stick to an Empire. We always play as a group so we would spread out across a planet at the time creating several cities. I think at the time everything was a "square" you just placed on the map.

You could enter buildings! I remember some even had machines you could actually use inside of them... it was very unique. Some of those buildings were many stories tall.

Vehicles. Having vehicles we could drive/fly, armor, boats was absolutely astonishing. To be able to drive threw a city you created.
Trying to land that damn rocket. We had so many laughs trying to get that thing landed, so many deaths. We played for hours fighting that thing, it was great.

Ship building. First ship we ever had was given to us by another group. We flew in -0- gravity, made our way to the bridge set down and began powering on the systems via buttons on the panel, we were totally lost. (This, this right here is what hooked us.) it wasn't much longer after this we were building our own. Like... minecraft blocks. Spent so many hours in that room building ships. Oh and you actually park your vehicles in the ship! Would even spin them around for you! I can't even tell you how many hours we lost in that game, so many.



Things we did not like.

Last time we played before all the updates an Empire had arrived.. Klingon's? don't bank me on that it's been sometime ago. We were not that old... week, maybe two? We had built what we could up to that point in defense and when they arrived, I guess a show of force they simply swept our defenses off them map in a matter of minutes. They landed in a ship almost as large as our city. They gave us two choices, die, or join. Needless to say it wasn't really a choice. After we accepted they gave us tech way beyond our ability and left us a couple ships far beyond anything we had. It was just confusing and unfun at that point, so we quit.

We decided to come back (we rotate games this is normal for us) so much had changed. The buildings at this point were some pink/purple squares with no interiors/exteriors. The unique easy to use minecraft like ship design studio had been replaced by some odd Blender style 3d program, we played with it for a bit but honestly we want to play a game not learn Blender 2.0. It honestly didn't even feel like SoH anymore. Half the game felt dumbed-down, and the other half felt overly complicated. I dunno, not sure what happened there. Needless to say we only stayed around for a few days and moved on.



My Suggestions..

Take another look at ship design. This should be a relatively easy process without any real major learning curves. This is a very large part of the game and should be open to everyone of all levels of experience. Blender is complicated and clumsy, Minecraft is not.

I think at the time the only one that had to Pay was the Empire leader? Everyone else played for free under a monthly sub paid by the Empire leader. I like this design. It keeps the empires in check. It makes the leaders of empires invested. It opens up a form of free to play for those who wish to play without pay. It keeps a form of income incoming so the burden of pay in not on any one person. It's a fair plan, and works with the game, not against it.

This may have changed already, but the last many times we started an Empire it took about 30 minutes to an hour to actually get friends in the Empire to play. Umm... was it the Capitol that had to be built? I don't remember. This needs to change. Friends need the ability to join in immediately together to play. I recall talking about playing this and passing it up more than once just because we didn't want wait to actually get in and play.

PvP. All I can say is this... If you force PvE to play PvP, PvE will leave, simple as that. Even if they attempt, as soon as it happens, they will leave. No offense, but I see a lot of the same old names with the same old ideas and quite honestly it hasn't seemed to work out very well so far. If this game is going to grow, this needs to be addressed. It makes little sense to cut out a large portion of the player base in an MMo. ~ My opinion

When you post the return of SoH I got immediate copy and paste in Discord. We can't wait to jump in again.

[Wincil]

The current ship designer is nothing like blender it's more of a dumb down cad program I wouldn't say that it's odd I really didn't get the point of that suggestion.

[Crabman]

Last I played the designers were unworkable and most of it was just imported 3d assets that stuck out like a sore thumb, if it weren't for the asteroid bugging out and not loading in I would have gotten blown up.
Same goes for buildings, I used Cities Skylines buildings with a billion polygons, the one friend I could get to try the game was stuck looking at a PowerPoint presentation.
The "Tour" slides are misleading in that regard, still showing the old designs.
Also, seems kind of bs as a concept that you have to map out what is "inside" and what is "outside", and even map out the ai pathing yourself, what??

[Systemicyco]

Simple request, no matter what you decide Haxus:

Put this beautiful game onto steam.