This is awesome! I don't know if it's been said before, but I noticed that you're able to develop a Luddic colony?
If we have high enough standing with a faction, will we be able to create colonies for them instead of it being the player faction? As well, if I create a colony in the player faction, will I be able to sell that colony to a faction? If it hasn't been discussed or mentioned yet I think that would be quite an interesting play style, setting up colonies and selling them off to the highest bidder.
If migration is the main driver of market growth, does that mean that growing markets typically stall the growth of surrounding markets by luring their population away?
Can you go about this actively, for example by blocking food from reaching a neighboring market, so that their pops migrate toward your own colony?
Btw, isn't "time until next market size is reached at current rate" usually more interesting to the player than "population growth in percent"? The latter is useful when comparing colony performance in an abstract way, the former tells you the more tangible info how long you have to wait to get new options.
I hope this is the start of support for official, vanilla Nexerelin (kill'em all) style games, instead of relying on Nexerelin to do said conquest or destruction.
Is this necessarily the case? Is there a place in the game for small and mean installations, research installations, shipyards, or hideouts that are ran more like a military base than a civilian society?
We love you Alex.
Man, I can't wait to see all this in action. Still quite a ways off though, I suppose.
Guess what I'm asking is, if I want to say run a small military hideout where everyone on board is under my employ, and it acts as a storage facility, mining operation, or shipyard with no/little civilian presence, is that possible?
Eh, I guess part of me hoped hired employees would be differentiated from immigrants, but I can be convinced they're the same thing under the hood.
Yeah, it's mostly an RP thing, but I do like my RP to have certain gameplay implications
Nexerelin-related request: Could we get API controls (on a per-market basis) for that? So a player could get authority over markets as they advance in standing with the faction.This is awesome! I don't know if it's been said before, but I noticed that you're able to develop a Luddic colony?
Well, in the current dev build, you can manage markets belonging to other factions, so I'm just taking screenshots at all sorts of core markets, for color variety.
in the same vein, is there/can there be an option to cap immigration?
"We need more recreational drugs to attract immigrants and stimulate population growth!" makes me giggle inside each time.
Nexerelin-related request: Could we get API controls (on a per-market basis) for that? So a player could get authority over markets as they advance in standing with the faction.
If we have high enough standing with a faction, will we be able to create colonies for them instead of it being the player faction? As well, if I create a colony in the player faction, will I be able to sell that colony to a faction? If it hasn't been discussed or mentioned yet I think that would be quite an interesting play style, setting up colonies and selling them off to the highest bidder.
Maybe? It's all stuff I'm thinking about to various degrees (perhaps less about selling colonies as a playstyle, specifically), but I really can't say right now.
If we have high enough standing with a faction, will we be able to create colonies for them instead of it being the player faction? As well, if I create a colony in the player faction, will I be able to sell that colony to a faction? If it hasn't been discussed or mentioned yet I think that would be quite an interesting play style, setting up colonies and selling them off to the highest bidder.
Maybe? It's all stuff I'm thinking about to various degrees (perhaps less about selling colonies as a playstyle, specifically), but I really can't say right now.
High-level, long-term mission where you are tasked with creating a colony matching specific criteria and handing it off to a faction? I don't know if it fits with your mechanics but it sounds awesome in my head.
For example, a habitable world will attract more members of the Luddic Church, a Commerce industry will attract some Tri-Tachyon-aligned population, a “free port” condition will attract pirates, and the use of AI cores may attract other parties.
While it sounds good, i'm a bit worried about possible performance issues. I guess the player will be limited (through skills?) to only a few outposts. However i can't imagine a limit when it comes to selling them, and that's potentially dozen of new markets in the sector during a long campaign, now in the AI's possession. The sector economy and our computers might not like that.
While it sounds good, i'm a bit worried about possible performance issues. I guess the player will be limited (through skills?) to only a few outposts. However i can't imagine a limit when it comes to selling them, and that's potentially dozen of new markets in the sector during a long campaign, now in the AI's possession. The sector economy and our computers might not like that.
I was under the impression that the number of markets will be a non-issue for performance in the new version with the economy rewrite.
Does the pop system track emigration numbers, or do pops just die if there are negative growth factors? What about refugee populations?
I really enjoy the style of run-down, reclaimed and hastily repailed that goes with the idea of being a refugee in space on some derelict station. It'd be cool to see some sort of a population dynamic etc tied with small, transiently inhabited stations popping up and disappearing as refugees move. Maybe tied with early game trading to supply their limited needs or something.
Can you pack a transport ship full of crew and them debark them on your colony to grow it manually? For a size 3 or 4 market that should theoretically have a major influence :)
Can you tell us more about the "later fun things" that can come out of tracking the population composition? An influence on resource output (Hegemony pops are better industry workers, Luddites are better farmers etc.)? Or more like "unrest if you have a majority stemming from a faction you are at war with", with a chance of revolutions and stuff like that?
If populations have distinct faction-specific attitudes and/or skills, can the player faction also (eventually) have pops with a distinct culture that influences these parameters?
Can market conditions emerge or disappear dynamically? I mean, with population composition being tracked(although vague), I can see something like Organized Crime, Luddic Majority etc coming up as the outpost grows. As well as market conditions affecting the compositions(Does it already do that?).
From this post (admittedly specifically about population growth), it seems like the natural progression for outposts/colonies/markets is to get bigger.If it was up to me, I'd say that outposts with less roles would naturally be smaller - very rich planet with no other modifiers would make a profitable mining outpost, but it would remain small because not much people like to live here (it's inconvenient), whereas a world with 2 or 3 sparse resource modifiers would over time grow larger, even though immediately it would be much less profitable.
Is this necessarily the case? Is there a place in the game for small and mean installations, research installations, shipyards, or hideouts that are ran more like a military base than a civilian society?
So, we know that market size can go up, and there's a hard lock to prevent it going down. But is there a way for modders to cause a reduction in market size? For instance, if there was a custom event like an Imperial Siege, or a Dickerson Pirate Raid, or a Templar Crusade, or if some lunatic grabbed a TITAN and dropped it on a market.
If it was up to me, I'd say that outposts with less roles would naturally be smaller - very rich planet with no other modifiers would make a profitable mining outpost, but it would remain small because not much people like to live here (it's inconvenient), whereas a world with 2 or 3 sparse resource modifiers would over time grow larger, even though immediately it would be much less profitable.
So, we know that market size can go up, and there's a hard lock to prevent it going down. But is there a way for modders to cause a reduction in market size? For instance, if there was a custom event like an Imperial Siege, or a Dickerson Pirate Raid, or a Templar Crusade, or if some lunatic grabbed a TITAN and dropped it on a market.
The blog post implies that progress toward growth can be negative/lost but actual market size cannot. With the scale being logarithmic, I understand that to lose market size would be equivalent to losing 90% of a given population (more like an extinction-level event), but hey, it's a brutal Sector out there. Blockades/sieges, WMD attacks, espionage that results in mass riots and civil war, etc. would be interesting. Size 4 markets dropping to Size 3 doesn't sound like too much of a stretch though I admit size 8 dropping to size 7 would result in a great disturbance in the Force.
Would making markets being able to shrink cause too much volatility? I think if it needed a really long time in bad conditions it'd be an interesting dynamic.
Since smaller markets have naturally better growth modifiers removing more than 1-2 pips from core worlds could be very hard anyway.
Wow so much excite! ! !
I am always thinking about how this station economy will tie into the end game. I mean in nex mod we can roll around in a death fleet taking on almost 4-5 250 point fleets in a row and end up with positive supply gain.
Will they be worth the investment? How will they contribute?
Also lore wise how will this work for a player to have so many worlds and stations at their beck and call? Are we an military dictator, or some kind of mega corporation ceo with alot of influence. Will these choices affect our outposts and how much control we have? Will our outposts revolt?
Any word on what installing an AI core does, or is that going to be a secret till gameplay? (Also I have my crude chemical based explosives ready and waiting.)Did you see this link?
There are perhaps 3 unreleased games capable of making me physically giddy in anticipation, and this is one of them. And it keeps getting better. Please keep up this great work, Alex!
This looks amazing!
Any word on what installing an AI core does, or is that going to be a secret till gameplay? (Also I have my crude chemical based explosives ready and waiting.)
In the past, I've referenced the great potential for a Eureka discovery moment for a player who finds the rare Terran planet. Now, with the tools to colonize and build this planet, imagine how much more powerful that moment will be for a first time player realizing the possibilities for the first time!
Having played through the current iteration of the sandbox campaign, I do believe that planets -- even the named/colonized ones we all recognize -- lack identity. Then I think back to games like Stellaris and Endless Space 2 where a player might control hundreds of planets. Yet most of them feel distinct and recognizable. This is because when the planet was discovered, they were more than just a list of resources that could be mined from them. While your empire might have a dozen desert planets, they all feel distinct because those planets will have anomalies, characteristics, indigenous populations that set them apart from each other.
The goal, of course, is to be able to reproduce Eureka moments not only when discovering the holy grail Terran planet, but also when exploring less legendary planets. All the while giving them an anchor in the player's memory. Very clearly Starsector is not a 4X game like Endless Space, nor should it be. But giving planets their own unique anomalies forces a player to interact with each planet very differently, even if they are otherwise the same.
You're already half way there: magnetic rings, solar flares, and other things that affect the "terrain" near a planet gives great character. All that's missing now is the same kind of weird stuff ON the planet.
Hmm. I get what you're saying here, absolutely. Question, as I haven't played Stellaris - do the anomalies end up being more or less resource modifiers in the end? If so, can you put a finger on what makes them compelling?
For Starsector, I have some ideas about making certain systems and constellations more appealing/interesting based on what you discover; one of the concepts for finding stuff out in the fringes is it's supposed to mostly tie into outposts. That's not really visible in the current release because, well, no outposts - but I think you can sort of see parts of it, like Domain probes pointing you towards nice planets and remant systems having more ruins (which could be exploited by Tech-Mining).
For planets specifically, I wonder if it's just a question of having some more unique market conditions. E.G. if it's and ultrarich world, that's great, but it's not a lot of character. Even the same bonus presented in another way (say, "pre-collapse storage bunker") might change the feel enough, if you know there's only one of those in the entire Sector, if that. And if it had some specific effects/events tied into with it - happening later, say something being found in said bunker - well that'd just be gravy. This is sounding really neat, actually, going to make some notes.
There are some plans to make marines useful, but I'll have to refrain from detailed comment for now, since I don't know exactly how it'll pan out :)Alright! Will wait and see what happens, Star Sector is so full of promise (while being an excellent game already) keep up the awesome work!
I will say that in general, I'd like things on planets to only be detailed to the degree that they tie into things that happen in space. Stuff like attacking specific installations etc, in my opinion, veers dangerously into "mini-game" territory.
You know, that sort of thing might happen naturally - the player might have more incentive to invest in growing the larger/sparser world vs the smaller rich one, since that might be overkill. Could also have some sort of minor immigration bonus based on the total number of industries and installations - that might make sense, but really want to see how it plays before adding in too many things.I have rather meant that creating and maintaining a sizeable population should be something you plan for, not receive just like that - if populations of size 5, 6 required some amounts of everything to be at hand or in close proximity that'd make knowledge of planets more valuable (by making outpost placement a bit more valuable). Best case scenario would be that the player could create throw away "city" outpost by plucking it on a planet with sparse everything, but a smart player could create 6, 7 size outpost by having it orbit a worthless rock juuust right between industrial mining outpost, a volatiles and organic matter gas giant one and a one on a planet that makes excellent farmland, except for when everything tries to kill you.
Hmm. I get what you're saying here, absolutely. Question, as I haven't played Stellaris - do the anomalies end up being more or less resource modifiers in the end? If so, can you put a finger on what makes them compelling?
SpoilerBetween Endless Space 2 and Stellaris, discovery of anomalies is not limited to resource modifiers, although who doesn't like these! Often times, they are mini-events, like finding a derelict precursor ship containing ancient technology, being ambushed, or even full-fledged quest lines where the trigger is the discovery of an anomaly on the planet. Using something from Starsector's lore, how unforgettable would be a planet on which you found a hook that brought you into the whole Remnant storyline, for instance?
Other anomalies might involve the player having to be creative in developing their planet. For instance, discovering something that would allow life on a typically uninhabitable gas planet. Naturally, building this colony would require special resources and attention by the player but may yield unexpected benefits too.
Obviously creativity is the biggest limiting factor in terms of what you can do with these planet-specific things, but having these mechanics that occasionally break up the routine of play allows the player to build his own narrative (even subconsciously) about what's happening on these newly colonized planets, what life might be like for the people there, what challenges they face, etc.
The human mind has evolved to remember things via story rather than numbers and statistics. So much so that the process is pretty much automatic and frequently requires next to no narrative effort on the developer's part. Compare the following two lists. The in-game effect may be the same, but the first list is a random number generator, whereas the second list informs the player of being in a living, changing galaxy.
Planet 1: +30% mineral extraction | The planet I found a crashed Conquest next to a gargantuan mineral mine
Planet 2: -20% population growth | I was so excited to finally colonize this Terran planet, but 2 months per cycle, it is completely shut down for trade due to violent storms.
Planet 3: +55% maintenance cost | That planet with native fauna so hostile that early settlers threatened to leave if I didn't deliver a shipment of weapons in 15 days.
Incidentally, if you are inclined towards more narrative, I believe it would be an interesting mechanic if the planetary survey doesn't always reveal all particularities about a planet. Some might have to be triggered by certain actions, like building a spaceport or reaching a certain population milestone, etc. or just through the passage of time.[close]
SpoilerIn Stellaris parts of early and mid game are concerned about discovering the stars around you and in the whole galaxy. Anomalies and events give various things, not limited to modifiers. In general anomaly is when a science ship discovers stuff's all weird there and after spending some time it gives feedback about things seen and interacted with. Sometimes, the abnormal radio frequencies around the planet turn out to be a long-forgotten probe that's marking the presence of precious ores. Other times you discover that an intricate network of canyons and charred lines is actually an alien mercenary's biography. In game both are reduced to additional planet resources, though. However, some anomalies (and events which are basically miniquests about anomalies) have longer lasting and more complicated consequences. You can discover that a routine scan accidentally activated an alien drill inside an asteroid and you have to hurry before it's destroyed either to take it for yourself and use it or to disassemble it and learn some of the alien tricks. Or you can find that there's malfunctioning terraforming equipment on a planet and you can either destroy it so that it stops screwing with the biosphere or you can fix it and let it do its job (too bad you don't know what the job is!). And then there's that after some months your colonists find that there are some monstrous creatures on the planet that can be harnessed as beasts of battle.
I think the general thing that's interesting is that it's not something hidden, but rather shows up in your face and is accompanied by text describing what's happened and a theme image. It feels better to know why some planet is so X rather than to get "+X per month" modifier somewhere. Though there's also the fact that you never know if it ends at the scan or if there is more stuff underway, even if it takes some time to happen.[close]
I have rather meant that creating and maintaining a sizeable population should be something you plan for, not receive just like that - if populations of size 5, 6 required some amounts of everything to be at hand or in close proximity that'd make knowledge of planets more valuable (by making outpost placement a bit more valuable). Best case scenario would be that the player could create throw away "city" outpost by plucking it on a planet with sparse everything, but a smart player could create 6, 7 size outpost by having it orbit a worthless rock juuust right between industrial mining outpost, a volatiles and organic matter gas giant one and a one on a planet that makes excellent farmland, except for when everything tries to kill you.
Yeah, I know already the answer's "neat idea, but I need to know how it'll work in practice first".
Question: Where will bounties spawn if player starts building an outpost on their favorite spawn point?
I had a game where I found an ideal class V Terran planet in a system were bounties periodically spawn. It does not make much sense for enemy fleets to poof out of nowhere into new civilization just to get slaughtered for raw materials.
Hmm, as much as I appreciate being able to look under the hood, I don't see how these interconnected mechanics ultimately affect how most will play the game.
Starsector was and still is a predominately combat oriented game; we go to planets to pick up 'quests', sell loot and browse for bigger guns/ships. Unless I'm playing a dedicated trader, I can't see myself ever caring much about pop level, food production rate and commerce stats etc etc after the first few hrs. While I personally would love a trading sim as fleshed out as the combat, commerce is currently not Starsector's strength and I fear such detailed and nuanced growth/market mechanic will simply delay the game's release while being completely overlooked by the majority of players.
In the end, I have to wonder what type of game is Starsector aiming to be. Is it a combat sim with simplistic market economy or a full blown sandbox world-builder? Will this magnum opus be ready by 2019? Will the final iteration by so feature packed that only the hardcore gamers will be interested in it?
Just to be clear. I AM hoping for a feature packed sandbox sim that will put the X series to shame but the more complicated a game is, the smaller the potential player base and even the X franchise spent years and many iterations building up its fan base.
Alright! Will wait and see what happens, Star Sector is so full of promise (while being an excellent game already) keep up the awesome work!
I'm a bit sad to see a more detailed sandbox simulation go, but I guess it would be too expensive and hard to control for in practice. I'm just personally a big fan of emergent stuff (The developer who manages to create an engine that creates good emergent storytelling and quest design will have my undying adoration!) and that would play into it, making the world seem that much more alive and interconnected.
But it's not a deal-breaker or anything.
(The developer who manages to create an engine that creates good emergent storytelling and quest design will have my undying adoration!)
(The developer who manages to create an engine that creates good emergent storytelling and quest design will have my undying adoration!)
Same! Not entirely sure it's possible, though supposedly CK2 is pretty darn good in this regard.
I have this idea bouncing in my head of a mission-based CRPG whose missions would be constructed of modules (recruitment, planning/preparation, entry, execution, exit, getting paid) and each would have random variables. It was for Shadowrun originally I guess, so you might find that when you go execute your mission, your target location might be surrounded by a crowd of protestors, or your run might be interrupted by another group coming in to do the same or some other objective at your location, that sort of things. It'd be really tough to balance right, but conceptually not outlandishly difficult to execute, I believe.
(Sorry for the tangent.)
I have this idea bouncing in my head of a mission-based CRPG whose missions would be constructed of modules (recruitment, planning/preparation, entry, execution, exit, getting paid) and each would have random variables. It was for Shadowrun originally I guess, so you might find that when you go execute your mission, your target location might be surrounded by a crowd of protestors, or your run might be interrupted by another group coming in to do the same or some other objective at your location, that sort of things. It'd be really tough to balance right, but conceptually not outlandishly difficult to execute, I believe.
(Sorry for the tangent.)
No worries, it's fun stuff to think about :)
Hmm. I wonder how it would feel - with a fairly rigid structure like that, it might end up more obviously "X things can happen at these particular points", so not so much emergent stories but randomized content. I mean, if the approach is to implement a set of variations for the specific piece of the sequence, that's at odds with what "emergent" means, right? Which if I had to define quickly would be something like "unexpected but compelling results from the interaction of different rules".
But say the variations in the different pieces were based on some prior events in other missions, all operating based on some set of rules... then it gets more interesting. Yeah, it's fun stuff to think about.
I have this idea bouncing in my head of a mission-based CRPG whose missions would be constructed of modules (recruitment, planning/preparation, entry, execution, exit, getting paid) and each would have random variables. It was for Shadowrun originally I guess, so you might find that when you go execute your mission, your target location might be surrounded by a crowd of protestors, or your run might be interrupted by another group coming in to do the same or some other objective at your location, that sort of things. It'd be really tough to balance right, but conceptually not outlandishly difficult to execute, I believe.
(Sorry for the tangent.)
No worries, it's fun stuff to think about :)
Hmm. I wonder how it would feel - with a fairly rigid structure like that, it might end up more obviously "X things can happen at these particular points", so not so much emergent stories but randomized content. I mean, if the approach is to implement a set of variations for the specific piece of the sequence, that's at odds with what "emergent" means, right? Which if I had to define quickly would be something like "unexpected but compelling results from the interaction of different rules".
But say the variations in the different pieces were based on some prior events in other missions, all operating based on some set of rules... then it gets more interesting. Yeah, it's fun stuff to think about.
A issue I see is that the connection points between modules have to be rigid to allow exchanging modules. So while what happens during a module can vary, the start and end conditions would always be the same, right? Like in the boardgame Tsuro, you have varied tiles but the connections are all the same.Spoiler(http://www.theboardgamefamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/TsuroBoard.jpg)[close]
That does seem like it come become predictable and boring pretty fast.
I think the trap here - and I tend to fall into it myself as well - is how would the player know enough to be "smart" about it? If it's got to be "just right", then either they can see the data to begin with, in which case they're not being smart but just checking everything, or they can't see the data and it's going to be fairly random, trial-and-error.I don't recall outpost creation window shown anywhere nor a outpost management window/map. I think that if former showed available resources that'll reach outpost in that place (via local, import and smuggling separately) or if the latter could show overlapping market reaches on an interactive map or a map mode with tooltip showing resource availability in pointed star system (or planet, whatever) this could help with some planning.
That said, I think it'll still take some effort to get to higher population sizes at any speed unless conditions are good. I mean, your mining outpost may *eventually* get to size 5 but it'd take maybe 100+ cycles for a high-hazard world to do that without ongoing investments. Or, well, it could be a free port and get a considerable boost, but that's making some tradeoffs in other areas.