Thoughts on patent nerf?

[Haxus]

I will likely remove patents entirely.

Can anyone make a case for keeping them?

[QuakeIV]

probably not

[dracotonisamond]

I will likely remove patents entirely.

Can anyone make a case for keeping them?

i cant say time based patents make a ton of sense in starship.
maybe material quality level minimums for certain tech kinda like the old TL system?

[Haxus]

Patents don’t need to be replaced by anything. I’ll just remove them.

This will also cause the distinction between different FTL drives to be lost. There will just be two FTL modules: wormhole and warp. Capability is determined by how much capacitor you have, as now. It’s just not further limited by the module “level”.

[Deantwo]

I will likely remove patents entirely.

Can anyone make a case for keeping them?

The only thing that was really useful about patents was the idea of hiding advanced technologies from the player before they have any chance of making them. For example such as not showing gravity-drive vehicles and components before the player had been to the moon and made a colony.

The main issue with patents however is the insane amount of them and how they are listed everywhere. I mentioned a few times that it might be better if patents were only researched at a university, that would clean up all other buildings a lot. But maybe to minimize the number of patents they could instead be made into more broad technology topics. For example you could have a simple "artificial gravity technology patent" that is then required by all gravity-drive items. The patent would be researched at a university or might even require a small story quest to be finished.

I really really like the idea of the "wormhole FTL drive patent" requiring you to do a little story quest where you have to pilot a prototype ship through a wormhole and back. The story quest could even double as a tutorial on how wormhole polarities work.

People love having the idea of "research", but it shouldn't be as complicated as the current patents.

This will also cause the distinction between different FTL drives to be lost. There will just be two FTL modules: wormhole and warp. Capability is determined by how much capacitor you have, as now. It’s just not further limited by the module “level”.

The old way of simply limiting it by a ship's capacitor seems fine I guess. Unless you would want some of the FTL levels locked behind a story quest or as loot from pirate encounters and exploration.

I would at the very least suggest getting rid of the wormhole P FTL drive, it has always caused more confusion than good.

[Haxus]

I play tested all afternoon yesterday with patents removed. It was a lot of fun. I did not miss patents one bit. Felt like a throwback to a simpler time. I loved it.

Will post an update after testing one more thing.

[gamerscd]

LOL i was just posting that i didnt see any patents into discord and found this post ;) this will be much more fun :P

My current most annoying issue is citizen/ population increase time, as this is solo now you dont gain citizens while the game is closed so it kinda forces you to keep the game open all the time to get to decent citizen levels....

[Deantwo]

Current bugs i noticed:
Manufacture lines sometimes stop producing stuff, timer freezes on 0:00. Have to restart game to fix
System info doesn't update after survey. Have to restart game to fix

Not related to this thread at all.

Please see this bug report instead as it might be related to your issue:
(Bug report) Hazeron Starship - After exiting design studio processes stop running

[ZombieOverlord9]

LOL i was just posting that i didnt see any patents into discord and found this post ;) this will be much more fun :P

My current most annoying issue is citizen/ population increase time, as this is solo now you dont gain citizens while the game is closed so it kinda forces you to keep the game open all the time to get to decent citizen levels....

Yeah finding the same thing its taking a very long time to build a decent sized pop per planet or new colony without leaving program running in background to let numbers tick up and hoping the program doesn't crash whilst its idling and you loose all program made during the idle.

  Could there be a way to making the game calculate the length of time that has passed during it being closed, like checking PC system date / time and adjusting population on a slider based on that time difference ?