04-17-2024, 07:58 AM
Like many of you, I feel that the empire is quite empty of life, and I'd love to see more activity, especially with spaceships.
There's nothing like gazing at your space station and seeing dozens of spaceships coming in and out, right?
Right now, this isn't really possible, though.
Sure, you can do that manually with actual starships and crews, but you can't get enough ships to make that scenario happen unless you've fully colonized a ringworld (which is kinda tedious). Besides, even if you've got like 20 trading ships, considering the size of it all, you could maybe have 3 or 5 at the same place and time?
We have brokers with automatic shipments.
We have a system to trade.
We also have blueprint models for ships.
Why not have the broker act as a kind of special "spacecraft factory" and generate a small, low-poly cargo ship, taken from a select list of blueprints, spawned with an AI crew that follows a simple trade route loop?
To make it even more "bustling", it could also be done for any interplanetary trading (if it's not too taxing on the CPU/GPU)
Here would be my suggested changes:
- Brokers now require a cargo ship to run their shipments between systems (+ planets?). The ship can be selected from any valid "trade ship" blueprint. The ship will spawn at the broker once the shipment is ready, along with an automated crew.
- The ship's roster is not changeable, nor its mission (set based on the shipment orders). The ship will follow the trade route as a normal ai-run ship would. Every ship has a simple "travel-to X -> move to space station/airport -> deliver cargo -> refit & refuel -> despawn or return to destination with or without goods" mission it will complete without interruption unless attacked or the shipment cancelled.
- A new type of ship is now available: cargo ships. These ships require a considerably lower poly count and have their size limited. They also require a certain storage mass/total mass threshold to be passed. They require resources to build just like any other ship. The ships' speed is based on the design.
Other cool gameplay benefits:
- Shipment arrival will be a lot clearer now, and each successful shipment will have a satisfaction to it (instead of being just a numbers refresh)
- Pirate attacks can finally be more meaningful (once they are reworked I guess). With smaller, weaker ships, it will make pirate-cleansing a worthwhile activity for the bored player.
- There will be a true meaning to overextending empires, protection, guerilla warfare, economic war, sieges and blockades. Players will have to expand their military fleets to patrol precious shipment lines, giving a natural expansion difficulty to counter gigantic yet "empty" empires.
- Distance can be more of a serious factor in expansion, instead of just hunting for the highest quality of resources possible, even if it's over 100 parsecs away.
Problems/criticism I thought of:
-It would put too much pressure on the hardware, resulting in lags and stuttering.
With a very low poly count and lowest-Q textures, this might be ok? Since they are not meant to be interacted with up close unless in cases of attacks, this should minimize system load.
-It makes the game unnecessarily more difficult or complex.
I would say that the gain in "aliveness" would be worth the complexity here. Any system feels dead until you acquire a massive fleet, which is endgame stuff. How many players who RQ the game due to all the bugs and unnecessary difficulties would keep playing if they saw a few little shuttles going back and forth between their early colonies? I know this feeling is what has kept me coming back to SoH like a relapsing crack addict for years!
-Furthermore, it wouldn't require any extra work from the players, since it would all be automated. It would only require the selection of a cargo ship blueprint at shipment setup, that's it.
It will only add frustration as shipments run out of fuel, get attacked, atmodive or sundive. We have enough frustrations!
For sundive and atmodive, nothing to do here but improve the code. Should be fixed at some point.
For fuel and attacks, I see this as part of the gameplay. As in "game" and "play", not "work". Trade routes are essential to any empire. I see this as a critical part of the whole experience that most players are looking for.
Well-managed shipment lines with the right designs should never run out of fuel. As mentioned earlier, attacks on shipments will add an interesting aspect to all kinds of expansion and warfare.
-It's too complex to implement.
As I see it in my mind, it would only require:
- creating a new spaceship category with a few criteria for eligibility
- tweaking the broker to add a spacecraft factory tab, only allows construction of cargo ships, make it require a small spacecraft spot, as the ship spawns automatically load a crew with a looped mission, despawn on mission end.
Add a few custom lines like "deliver to a space station first if there's one, if not then airport", basic defense/surrender script against attackers (I think that's already in the code anyway) and voila - should be on!
-It's good, but it's low prio, will probably never get considered
IMO it's one of these low-hanging fruits that have a lot of potential to uplift the game experience at very little cost. Honestly I only see fixing common bugs and finalizing proper AI empires as having a higher prio. I think this would make a great next step afterwards.
Oh, and making the designer simpler/working with presets more easily. That too.
Let me know your thoughts! Do you think it would work and should be next in line?
There's nothing like gazing at your space station and seeing dozens of spaceships coming in and out, right?
Right now, this isn't really possible, though.
Sure, you can do that manually with actual starships and crews, but you can't get enough ships to make that scenario happen unless you've fully colonized a ringworld (which is kinda tedious). Besides, even if you've got like 20 trading ships, considering the size of it all, you could maybe have 3 or 5 at the same place and time?
We have brokers with automatic shipments.
We have a system to trade.
We also have blueprint models for ships.
Why not have the broker act as a kind of special "spacecraft factory" and generate a small, low-poly cargo ship, taken from a select list of blueprints, spawned with an AI crew that follows a simple trade route loop?
To make it even more "bustling", it could also be done for any interplanetary trading (if it's not too taxing on the CPU/GPU)
Here would be my suggested changes:
- Brokers now require a cargo ship to run their shipments between systems (+ planets?). The ship can be selected from any valid "trade ship" blueprint. The ship will spawn at the broker once the shipment is ready, along with an automated crew.
- The ship's roster is not changeable, nor its mission (set based on the shipment orders). The ship will follow the trade route as a normal ai-run ship would. Every ship has a simple "travel-to X -> move to space station/airport -> deliver cargo -> refit & refuel -> despawn or return to destination with or without goods" mission it will complete without interruption unless attacked or the shipment cancelled.
- A new type of ship is now available: cargo ships. These ships require a considerably lower poly count and have their size limited. They also require a certain storage mass/total mass threshold to be passed. They require resources to build just like any other ship. The ships' speed is based on the design.
Other cool gameplay benefits:
- Shipment arrival will be a lot clearer now, and each successful shipment will have a satisfaction to it (instead of being just a numbers refresh)
- Pirate attacks can finally be more meaningful (once they are reworked I guess). With smaller, weaker ships, it will make pirate-cleansing a worthwhile activity for the bored player.
- There will be a true meaning to overextending empires, protection, guerilla warfare, economic war, sieges and blockades. Players will have to expand their military fleets to patrol precious shipment lines, giving a natural expansion difficulty to counter gigantic yet "empty" empires.
- Distance can be more of a serious factor in expansion, instead of just hunting for the highest quality of resources possible, even if it's over 100 parsecs away.
Problems/criticism I thought of:
-It would put too much pressure on the hardware, resulting in lags and stuttering.
With a very low poly count and lowest-Q textures, this might be ok? Since they are not meant to be interacted with up close unless in cases of attacks, this should minimize system load.
-It makes the game unnecessarily more difficult or complex.
I would say that the gain in "aliveness" would be worth the complexity here. Any system feels dead until you acquire a massive fleet, which is endgame stuff. How many players who RQ the game due to all the bugs and unnecessary difficulties would keep playing if they saw a few little shuttles going back and forth between their early colonies? I know this feeling is what has kept me coming back to SoH like a relapsing crack addict for years!
-Furthermore, it wouldn't require any extra work from the players, since it would all be automated. It would only require the selection of a cargo ship blueprint at shipment setup, that's it.
It will only add frustration as shipments run out of fuel, get attacked, atmodive or sundive. We have enough frustrations!
For sundive and atmodive, nothing to do here but improve the code. Should be fixed at some point.
For fuel and attacks, I see this as part of the gameplay. As in "game" and "play", not "work". Trade routes are essential to any empire. I see this as a critical part of the whole experience that most players are looking for.
Well-managed shipment lines with the right designs should never run out of fuel. As mentioned earlier, attacks on shipments will add an interesting aspect to all kinds of expansion and warfare.
-It's too complex to implement.
As I see it in my mind, it would only require:
- creating a new spaceship category with a few criteria for eligibility
- tweaking the broker to add a spacecraft factory tab, only allows construction of cargo ships, make it require a small spacecraft spot, as the ship spawns automatically load a crew with a looped mission, despawn on mission end.
Add a few custom lines like "deliver to a space station first if there's one, if not then airport", basic defense/surrender script against attackers (I think that's already in the code anyway) and voila - should be on!
-It's good, but it's low prio, will probably never get considered
IMO it's one of these low-hanging fruits that have a lot of potential to uplift the game experience at very little cost. Honestly I only see fixing common bugs and finalizing proper AI empires as having a higher prio. I think this would make a great next step afterwards.
Oh, and making the designer simpler/working with presets more easily. That too.
Let me know your thoughts! Do you think it would work and should be next in line?