Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: SafariJohn on April 16, 2018, 10:58:14 AM
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Hyperspace has been a bit rough the entire time it's been in Starsector. I think it's going to take a major revisement to smooth it out. Thankfully with this suggestion most of the work is simply shuffling around existing parts.
First, let's clear all this old hyperspace terrain off the map; now we just have our lovely swirly background. We're going to call those swirly depths "Deep Hyperspace". Oh yeah, and we have a bunch of jump points too.
Pick up all that flat cloud-ish terrain we swept off the map a moment ago, because we're going to put it under those jump points and all around them. Scatter some clusters of the stuff everywhere else while you're at it. We're gonna call it "Shallow Space". Real original, I know. Anyways, what this terrain does is reduce a fleet's sensor profile by half. It'll also protect fleets from some nasty deep hyperspace stuff described later.
We're also going to have two variants of this terrain. Shallow Space (Stable) and Shallow Space (Storm).
Storm terrain temporarily replaces normal shallow space. In addition to reducing sensor profiles, it reduces a fleet's sensor radius by half, reduces the speed of large fleets by up to half, and drains CR at a reasonable rate.
Stable terrain is formed around star systems by gravity. Unlike the rest of shallow space, it can't become stormy. Otherwise it's the same.
Alright, now we're going to bring back something that never made it in: wavefronts. Wavefronts occasionally fly across hyperspace, sweeping up small fleets in their path. Mid-sized fleets can power their way through pretty quickly and large fleets can basically ignore them. In addition to pushing fleets around, wavefronts also mildly drain CR. What makes all this bearable is that they only affect fleets in deep hyperspace.
Another hazard of deep hyperspace is the "Vortex". It's very similar to a black hole, except much less brutal on the CR drain and much better at sucking in small fleets. The special part about a vortex is the center - it's a wormhole to another spot in hyperspace. The vortex dissipates a few moments after it catches a fleet or after about a minute.
While it would be "cute" for wormholes to be a nonstandard game over by teleporting the player VERY far away, I recommend against any such feature in the strongest possible terms. Though let the in-game rumors fly! ;)
You may have noticed we have yet to see any mention of fuel. That's because burning fuel to travel gets the boot under this revision. Fuel is only used to jump into hyperspace and for certain abilities. To keep it important, though, jumping takes a lot more fuel - like 10 times as much (as a baseline).
There is still a need for a limit on exploration time, to be provided by food. Food has been waffled about before, but this time we will nail it down. 15 crew consumes 1 unit of food per month. There, done. Oh, and finding more in the fringes of the Sector is rare. That pesky little 5 year expiration date at work.
Seriously though, food is a much better limiter than fuel, because you still have plenty of time to save yourself if you carelessly run out of it. Run out of fuel and, at best, you'll be doing a lot of waiting in the near future.
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(Interesting side note: terrain around stars and clear "deep" hyperspace was how it was originally designed. Nailing down the visuals for that was exceedingly difficult, though, and flipping that around made it much more manageable. Not to say it couldn't be done, though.)
I think it might help to explicitly state what problems this is trying to solve and what the design goals of the new approach are, i.e. how it solves those problems. Otherwise, it's a bit tough to evaluate, and it would also help get any discussion on the same page.
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I admit it! My primary goal is to rid the game of the tyranny of fuel. :P Fuel is cool, it's just too shackling at present. It's very expensive, very essential, and can be very easy to lose track of.
I want travel that engages experienced players without being deadly to new players. I think wavefronts and vortexes will achieve this. At the moment it is trivial for an experienced player to begin a game, cruise out to the fringes with a frigate or two, and make loads of moolah. Shallow space and particularly storms create a different environment where small fleets can slink around and evade big fleets.
I think the terrains I've proposed also create a clear sense of progression to travel. In the beginning hyperspace throws your tiny fleet around like a toy. By endgame you can plow straight through hyperspace's hazards, or even take advantage of them to outfox AI fleets.
Finally, as I mentioned, there still needs to be a soft limit on how much exploration can be done in one go, which I believe food, with some help from fuel, will accomplish. I forgot to say in the OP that salvaging fuel should be much rarer. It tends to explode and all that. You more or less only have as much fuel as you bring with you, which limits how many systems you can check out.
In summary, I think the problem is that hyperspace travel doesn't engage experienced players and can be very harsh to new players. I'd even say the biggest risk experienced players face while traveling is letting their attention drift - next thing you know you're sitting on empty. Or in the middle of a patch of storms.
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I liked it better when storms merely ate supplies instead of killing Sustained Burn on top of that (and activating Emergency Burn does not help because it turns off Sustained Burn first before EB kicks in a few seconds later, which takes too much time). Now, if I get caught too badly or deeply by storms, I reload the game and try again. Storms are too punishing as they are.
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Storms are both punishing and unexciting. "Oops, the RNG just caused a storm right in front of me, way too late to avoid, guess I need to reload because I won't have enough Supplies to return home" is not terribly Fun.
I think I'll try out a new concept for Thar Be Dragons that has avoidable events, rather than storms, at some point. Figuring out how to make Travel actually interesting is one of the big challenges, to be sure.
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Storms sometimes just stop the player cold, too. I want to explore in that direction? Too bad, there is a solid wall of storms across the whole screen. And that wall is going to persist for in game weeks, so the choice of 'do I wait and maybe get hit by a pirate band?' isn't a choice at all, because it will take too long.
I do think its very rare to get caught by storms though - you can see the clouds lighten for quite a bit of time before the storm itself breaks up.
I really like exploring, and could 100% do without storms or deep hyperspace as they currently are, which is a pity, because I love how storms look.
Now, if there were actual lanes of clear space between stars, with convoys and pirate ambushes/luddic raiders, maybe remnants, and the deep hyperspace and storms outside of those lanes for those who wanted to try and brave them? That would be good. The lanes concentrate gameplay and ship danger, but the player still has the option of trying for the rough path if they think that is better, or if it is a shortcut (lanes don't have to be the shortest path, after all). But the AI has to respect the paths and not just blindly fly about as they do now.
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That's a solid thought.
Maybe I'll write a clear-a-path mod that connects all Systems in a Constellation and connects the Constellations to the nearest others. Shouldn't be too hard to develop one. Thar Be Dragons already clears Hyperspace around Systems where the proc-gen has put storms right on top of destinations.
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I do think its very rare to get caught by storms though - you can see the clouds lighten for quite a bit of time before the storm itself breaks up.
The light up warning is subtle enough that it is not always easy to spot if player knows what to look for. Less experienced player may not spot them. Also, collision detection is terrible. Fleet can be simply near it but still be caught and take huge penalties. When Sustained Burn was not affected much, I can get clipped by storms and not care much. I lost a little extra supplies, big deal. Today, if I can get caught for too long by a storm, I simply reload the game and replay the last few minutes because the penalties are too harsh.
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That's a solid thought.
Maybe I'll write a clear-a-path mod that connects all Systems in a Constellation and connects the Constellations to the nearest others. Shouldn't be too hard to develop one. Thar Be Dragons already clears Hyperspace around Systems where the proc-gen has put storms right on top of destinations.
Let us know how it feels for flying about! I think the difficult thing will be to get the AI to respect/use them, because that concentrates the more fun content of interacting with fleets.
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In theory, the AI should use them; it has some crude steering stuff that dissuades it from diving into clouds.
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I think I'm probably the only one here who would love the idea to turn the phase teleporter up to an eleven and then twist the dial of it all around up to eleven again and then go through some unknown madness and appear instantly light years away in another location where the destination was artificially set from the ship initially without much use of hyperspace, if at all.
Any living human crew onboard would suffer severe blows to their mental health and sanity, basically Event Horizion in SS at the very worst. A long-range glorified phase teleporter with high chances of killing off most of one's crew unless the ship that has that device is automated/operated by an AI. Whole fleet would need to be automated to avoid crew loss on other ships in one's fleet. Robot/drone crew would come really useful to avoid that. In general I'd rather have robot/drone crew over human crew any day. Of course since the ship with that device could/would suffer some combat readiness along with hull and armor loss too since it can teleport from one star system into another and while teleporting it's gonna go through an unknown and uncharted hell of a place.
Then again I am aware that hyperspace is part of the game and I'd be missing out on blasting hostile fleets to smithereens in hyperspace. I went kinda insane long ago now, so some far-fetched craziness has become part of me along with eldritch inner workings of lovecraftian origins.
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I admit it! My primary goal is to rid the game of the tyranny of fuel. :P Fuel is cool, it's just too shackling at present.
Ah, gotcha :) I think it's a difference of preference, then - I'd like fuel, and running out of it, to be something you're almost always concerned about. Feel-wise, I think that's good for making exploration feel more dangerous. The "tyranny" is a feature, if you will. Not to say it couldn't be tuned in one direction or another, of course; it's entirely possible that it's on the harsh side right now.
Re: Food - why make it a second version of supplies?
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Re: Food - why make it a second version of supplies?
It would make sense for the human crew to have that need but I have thought of it myself however too and the way it currently is in the game (the concept of supplies) I'm guessing the supplies contain food already but in a form of astronaut food in packages, which seems an ideal way to carry and preserve food for the crew even in SS. That makes the actual food item in the game more of a commodity for civilizations/stations/colonies/outposts in general for the masses.
Just my two cents.
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I do not mind crew living on rations, uniforms, motor oil, flux capacitors, and heavy metal. Dealing with supplies and fuel drain is enough. The Neutrino ability sucking up Volatiles is a reason why I do not want it (although wasting a skill point on it is the primary reason not to take it, the volatiles requirement is just more pain on top).
It would be nice if tankers were not required for a simple round-trip between the edge of core worlds and a bounty system. By endgame, every big fleet off to kill high bounties or Remnants needs a Prometheus (thanks to 30 ship limit), which makes burn speed kind of meaningless. It would be nice if normal ships can go a short distance from core and back, and tankers would be useful for long sector tours, not simple round-trip between two points. In other words, ships that are not tankers carry too little fuel.
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I admit it! My primary goal is to rid the game of the tyranny of fuel. :P Fuel is cool, it's just too shackling at present.
Ah, gotcha :) I think it's a difference of preference, then - I'd like fuel, and running out of it, to be something you're almost always concerned about. Feel-wise, I think that's good for making exploration feel more dangerous. The "tyranny" is a feature, if you will. Not to say it couldn't be tuned in one direction or another, of course; it's entirely possible that it's on the harsh side right now.
Re: Food - why make it a second version of supplies?
I too like fuel; and don’t think that this proposal fixes the issue. Adding food as another resource kind of makes sense but you could easily abstract and say “you have enough food, the space required is trivial”.
That being said I think someone wrote something about fuel recently and I think it’s a pretty good thing
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I admit it! My primary goal is to rid the game of the tyranny of fuel. :P Fuel is cool, it's just too shackling at present.
Ah, gotcha :) I think it's a difference of preference, then - I'd like fuel, and running out of it, to be something you're almost always concerned about. Feel-wise, I think that's good for making exploration feel more dangerous. The "tyranny" is a feature, if you will. Not to say it couldn't be tuned in one direction or another, of course; it's entirely possible that it's on the harsh side right now.
Re: Food - why make it a second version of supplies?
I'll have to get back to you on fuel because my line of thought keeps running away from me. In the meantime, I'd like to emphasize that I don't hate constantly burning fuel, but rather I don't think it contributes well to the game. Maybe there's a way to tweak stuff to where it does, but I haven't been able to come up with anything.
Food has a key distinction from supplies: you won't find edible food in a 100 year old wreck, or even a 10 year old wreck. I suspect food doesn't survive an exploding ship very well either. There's also differences in price and where it's produced, but that's less important.
Adding food as another resource kind of makes sense but you could easily abstract and say “you have enough food, the space required is trivial”.
The average person eats about 4 pounds of food per day. 2000 pounds of food / (4 pounds per person * 30 days) = 16.7 people fed per 30 days. Drop that to 15 for ease of use and assume 1 unit = 1 ton (not really true, but a unit is abstract so whatever), then even a Tempest needs to carry 1 unit of food per 6 units of supplies. That is clearly non-trivial.
A skeleton crew Onslaught would need 33 units of food per month to go with its 40 units of supplies. Up that to max crew and it's over 80 units of food per month.
TBH, I was surprised myself at how high the numbers are.
Edit: forgot another point on food: you can reduce your food consumption by dropping extra crew off in cryopods. Having to leave a ship behind because you don't have enough fuel or supplies is much more painful.
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Why is a unit a ton and why do humans need 4 lbs of food a day in space? Everyone just eats raw nutrients.
Also if 1 unit == 1 Ton then the Atlas is roughly 1/10th the size of the average cargo container ship on the water these days.
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And that “average” is pretty small. At ~20,000 TEU the largest ships clock in at upwards of 180,000 DWT (total safe cargo weight) and so can likely haul at least 150,000 tones fully loaded. The largest bulk carriers clock in at upwards of 350,000 DWT! This would make our 2,000 tonne atlas mighty small in comparison.
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Actually, 4lbs. person/day is pretty light, compared to the real thing (https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/everydaylife/jamestown-needs-fs.html): "an astronaut on the ISS uses about 1.83 pounds (0.83 kilograms) of food per meal each day"; that works out to roughly 8 pounds a day, with three meals and a snack, more or less.
Also, bear in mind that Supplies isn't just "space food"; it's supposed to be the total logistical support for fleet elements- spares, repair kits, the million-and-one things people carry around IRL on ships to support humans, plus the plausible extras you'd need in space.
I agree that the tonnage / mass stuff for the Atlas seems pretty unrealistic, overall, when we compare with giant civilian cargo ships.
But that's not what gets used by real-world navies, for various reasons (mainly, speed; a giant cargo ship is slow and needs deep water, can't dock at a lot of international ports, etc.). Look what it takes to supply a fleet carrier group on the move IRL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-class_fast_combat_support_ship). The numbers are higher than the Atlas, but it's not vastly so.
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What about making Hyperspace kind like a Arctic?
With Ice melted(clear space) nearby stars(bigger/hotter one have bigger clear radius) and with possibility of Ice-breaking(space clearing) ships that make clear routes through space and this routes are constantly encroaching by ice and only constant ship movement and ice-breaking ships keep them away?
It would add possibility to make new routes and that old ones could get lost to ice.
Ice could have few densities, some could be easily pushed through even with normal ships - other would be hard even for flotillas with ice-breakers,Storm would be places where ice crush against each other making it dangerous plus also occasional iceberg that you better do not try to crush(and which move around if freed).
It would make exploration actually much harder - needed investments and would be more logical why factions do not expand wildly.
Just a free thought.
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@Sarissofoi
I like this Arctic analogy quite a lot. Maybe it doesn't have to be so literal with Icebergs, but dynamic route generation/maintenance by traffic sounds good.
It can reduce so called 'Tyranny of fuel' too. Travel in clear space can be relatively cheap, while going deeper into ice becomes more fuel expensive (and may require specialized ice-breaker ships).
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Why is a unit a ton and why do humans need 4 lbs of food a day in space? Everyone just eats raw nutrients.
Also if 1 unit == 1 Ton then the Atlas is roughly 1/10th the size of the average cargo container ship on the water these days.
Edit:
And that “average” is pretty small. At ~20,000 TEU the largest ships clock in at upwards of 180,000 DWT (total safe cargo weight) and so can likely haul at least 150,000 tones fully loaded. The largest bulk carriers clock in at upwards of 350,000 DWT! This would make our 2,000 tonne atlas mighty small in comparison.
A unit is a ton in this case because it makes it easy to calculate food consumption. As I said, 1 unit isn't really 1 ton.
When was the last time you ate raw nutrients? School cafeterias don't count. ;)
I'm with you on the Atlas point. I ran the numbers before I started this thread and was bothered by it. I'm not sure how much logic there is behind cargo capacities. They feel mostly arbitrary to me, at least. With both supply and food consumption, and the upcoming abstraction of the economy, I think there would be enough footing to rebalance cargo capacities using solid math and logic.
Actually, 4lbs. person/day is pretty light, compared to the real thing (https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/everydaylife/jamestown-needs-fs.html): "an astronaut on the ISS uses about 1.83 pounds (0.83 kilograms) of food per meal each day"; that works out to roughly 8 pounds a day, with three meals and a snack, more or less.
IIRC, low gravity is why they have to eat so much - lots of exercise is required to keep healthy. Not 100% sure on that, but if it's true then Starsector space crew wouldn't need as much due to their ships' artificial gravity.
Assuming 6 pounds of food per day would be handy, since that's about 10 people per ton per month. Much easier to remember and calculate with than 15.
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Sorry for the double post, but I finally caught my line of thought on fuel long enough to get a train of thought through. This may be a bit rough.
I could liken Starsector travel to coal/oil-powered sailing well enough, but I think cars are an even more apt analogy. This seems a bit odd, but bear with me. When you use a car, you first walk around at home (no fuel used). Then you drive somewhere else (using fuel). You walk around the other location (no fuel again). Finally you drive back home (more fuel used). That lines up pretty exactly with Starsector's system/hyperspace dynamic.
Now with cars, there's almost always a gas station nearby if you run low on fuel. But sometimes that's not true. In that case you need to know how far you can go on a tank of gas. Most people know their car's range off-hand, more or less, or they can look it up on the internet. In Starsector, however, you can't memorize your fleet's range.
You can't memorize your fleet's range because it frequently changes. You gain ships, you lose ships, then you add/remove a tanker and any idea you had before gets thrown right out. I think this is likely the crux of the problem with fuel in Starsector. Obviously, "fixing" this aspect of the game would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I guess that's the main reason I believe constantly paying fuel to travel should go. It's too complicated to keep track of reliably without frequently checking references (like fuel range on the map), so most people just wing it and hope they don't get unlucky.
The fuel cost to jump to hyperspace escapes this mess because it is a one-time cost that can be easily kept track of.
I'll keep thinking on this and see what else I come up with.
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Food has a key distinction from supplies: you won't find edible food in a 100 year old wreck, or even a 10 year old wreck. I suspect food doesn't survive an exploding ship very well either. There's also differences in price and where it's produced, but that's less important.
Aha, that's a very good point, as far as what makes it different. I'm not sure that's a good thing, though - part of the design is that you can find more stuff to keep you going if your run is at least moderately successful. It's not a hard timer but a reserve you can refill by doing well, so you're not forced to go back until you've gotten a good haul. Or failed miserably, I suppose.
You can't memorize your fleet's range because it frequently changes. You gain ships, you lose ships, then you add/remove a tanker and any idea you had before gets thrown right out. I think this is likely the crux of the problem with fuel in Starsector. Obviously, "fixing" this aspect of the game would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I guess that's the main reason I believe constantly paying fuel to travel should go. It's too complicated to keep track of reliably without frequently checking references (like fuel range on the map), so most people just wing it and hope they don't get unlucky.
Hmm. I do understand what you're saying, but I personally don't see it that way. To me the fuel range indicator does the job - when fuel is a concern, I'll just leave it on and check the map periodically, especially when there are ship changes. Which happens, sure, but picking up a new ship when you're out on the fringes factoring into fuel costs is imo a good thing. Just, more things to worry about, more corners to try to cut if you want to get back with that nice new ship, and so on.
If fuel costs were so fixed that range was always memorized and never messed up, that would almost by definition mean that it wasn't an interesting mechanic. Which I think is what you're getting at with the bathwater etc.
I mean, I could see an argument against that if it was a UI issue, but imo the UI support for it is pretty sound. Add in the fact that running out of fuel can be worked around with distress calls and/or scuttling, and to me it just looks like a set of mechanics working together as I'd like them to.
(I think this is where the car analogy breaks down, btw, and this is kind of the pitfall of analogies in general. They work to get the initial point across, but then there's an element (in this case, a well-known, fixed range) that *doesn't* fit, but the analogy makes one want to make it fit/see it "fitting" as a positive, without necessarily a basis for that.)
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If we could leave ships Mothballed in stable orbits, or if Call For Help actually gave us the option to fill up (at ruinous prices) rather than feeling like a token mechanic, Fuel would be less of a catastrophic problem.
I’ve had situations where Fuel death-spiraled due to Hyperspace shenanigans, and once I had a fleet have to kill whatever got near it to get enough Fuel to return home. Those poor Independents should’ve just traded with me, lol; it was kill or lose my brand-new-to-me Dominator, lol.
On that note, why can’t we trade with friendly / neutrals we encounter? They have inventories, after all.
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I strongly suspect 1 unit of cargo is actually 100 tons rather than 1 ton of material, for what it's worth.
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Why is a unit a ton and why do humans need 4 lbs of food a day in space? Everyone just eats raw nutrients.
Also if 1 unit == 1 Ton then the Atlas is roughly 1/10th the size of the average cargo container ship on the water these days.
Edit:
And that “average” is pretty small. At ~20,000 TEU the largest ships clock in at upwards of 180,000 DWT (total safe cargo weight) and so can likely haul at least 150,000 tones fully loaded. The largest bulk carriers clock in at upwards of 350,000 DWT! This would make our 2,000 tonne atlas mighty small in comparison.
A unit is a ton in this case because it makes it easy to calculate food consumption. As I said, 1 unit isn't really 1 ton.
When was the last time you ate raw nutrients? School cafeterias don't count. ;)
I'm with you on the Atlas point. I ran the numbers before I started this thread and was bothered by it. I'm not sure how much logic there is behind cargo capacities. They feel mostly arbitrary to me, at least. With both supply and food consumption, and the upcoming abstraction of the economy, I think there would be enough footing to rebalance cargo capacities using solid math and logic.
Actually, 4lbs. person/day is pretty light, compared to the real thing (https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/everydaylife/jamestown-needs-fs.html): "an astronaut on the ISS uses about 1.83 pounds (0.83 kilograms) of food per meal each day"; that works out to roughly 8 pounds a day, with three meals and a snack, more or less.
IIRC, low gravity is why they have to eat so much - lots of exercise is required to keep healthy. Not 100% sure on that, but if it's true then Starsector space crew wouldn't need as much due to their ships' artificial gravity.
Assuming 6 pounds of food per day would be handy, since that's about 10 people per ton per month. Much easier to remember and calculate with than 15.
I don’t care. The point is not the numbers; the point is that the space required can be made arbitrarily small so as we don’t have to deal with it. When was the last time I ate raw nutrients? When was the last time I was on a space ship eating superfuture magic food traveling around star systems in hyperspace?
Fuel and supplies are all we need we don’t need a third resource to keep track of
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Food has a key distinction from supplies: you won't find edible food in a 100 year old wreck, or even a 10 year old wreck. I suspect food doesn't survive an exploding ship very well either. There's also differences in price and where it's produced, but that's less important.
Aha, that's a very good point, as far as what makes it different. I'm not sure that's a good thing, though - part of the design is that you can find more stuff to keep you going if your run is at least moderately successful. It's not a hard timer but a reserve you can refill by doing well, so you're not forced to go back until you've gotten a good haul. Or failed miserably, I suppose.
Whoops! I didn't mean to imply you can't find any food while salvaging. Just not enough to keep going perpetually, except maybe for the smallest fleets. Scuttling should probably turn up a little bit of food, too, (looted from the crew's quarters ;)) just to be safe.
I'd like fuel, and running out of it, to be something you're almost always concerned about.
I think my point of view is that being concerned about running out of fuel is fun, but being almost always concerned about fuel is not.
picking up a new ship when you're out on the fringes factoring into fuel costs is imo a good thing. Just, more things to worry about, more corners to try to cut if you want to get back with that nice new ship, and so on.
I feel this suggestion gives the player almost exactly the same concerns, except the game is up-front about it instead of "Ha! So close to getting back. Enjoy the wait!"
If fuel costs were so fixed that range was always memorized and never messed up, that would almost by definition mean that it wasn't an interesting mechanic. Which I think is what you're getting at with the bathwater etc.
You are correct, I definitely don't want easy perfect play. In fact, "perfect" play being impossible is a-ok by me. I don't think I'd even mind some hyperspace terrains eating fuel when most don't so long as they were (generally) an optional risk-reward type thing.
in this case, a well-known, fixed range
The entire point of the analogy was that, in regards to the player's memory, the range is not fixed and is not well-known. If you stopped me randomly while I was playing and asked me how far I could fly in hyper from my current spot — I couldn't tell you. I would have to consult the fuel range UI. If you asked me how much adding or removing some random ship would change my range, I couldn't tell you without sitting down and running the numbers.
Got a bit ranty there, sorry. Maybe we should do a poll on how frequently people use the fuel range indicator.
Suggestion: Remove the color fill on the fuel range UI because it hurts a bit to look at. I think the two circles are good enough.
Another Suggestion: Explicitly call out in-game how far across the squares are on the map. I think that would help with off-hand estimation of fuel use and travel time.
My end goal is to convince one of us the other's argument is right regarding fuel. I don't know whether that will be you or me! :P
If we could leave ships Mothballed in stable orbits
I did not realize that wasn't possible when I started this thread. I had assumed it could be done because it seemed like one of those no-brainer things once the game got derelicts and cargo pods.
I strongly suspect 1 unit of cargo is actually 100 tons rather than 1 ton of material, for what it's worth.
That sounds much more accurate. I'd say units are also a measure of volume, though that's probably not enough to properly justify 1 unit of food = 1 ton of food. Might be enough to *** it, though, if needed.
Fuel and supplies are all we need we don’t need a third resource to keep track of
Then please just say that next time instead of dancing around the issue. Personally, I don't think it would be a big deal because food goes down slowly and the consumption rate never spikes like it can for supplies.
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Whoops! I didn't mean to imply you can't find any food while salvaging. Just not enough to keep going perpetually, except maybe for the smallest fleets. Scuttling should probably turn up a little bit of food, too, (looted from the crew's quarters ;)) just to be safe.
But then it's back to not being different enough from supplies to really warrant the extra hassle :) Remember, a new campaign-level resource means UI indicators for it in possibly lots of places, and it's an extra thing for the player to keep track of, too.
I think my point of view is that being concerned about running out of fuel is fun, but being almost always concerned about fuel is not.
Hmm. I think it could be alleviated by, say, increasing fuel drops or reducing fuel consumption. Or by making fuel prices more stable and making fuel more available for purchase in the core, which is very much will be in the next release.
However, I do feel that being always concerned about fuel is in "feature" rather than "side effect" territory (though the degree to which one is concerned, there's some range of options there). See point re: feeling of scale etc a few paragraphs down.
in this case, a well-known, fixed range
The entire point of the analogy was that, in regards to the player's memory, the range is not fixed and is not well-known.
What I was saying is the known, fixed range is part of the car analogy, and that leads one to assume this is a desired quality of what the analogy trying to represent, i.e. the game's fuel use. My point being that this assumption is not really warranted and is just driven by the choice of analogy.
My end goal is to convince one of us the other's argument is right regarding fuel. I don't know whether that will be you or me! Tongue
Fair enough, but removing fuel costs for moving through hyperspace is really a non-starter for me. It's a huge part of whatever sense of scale you feel; the Sector is really not *that* big, and if you could fly around it with only a long timer in the form of food/supplies, that'd really feel very differently. I think it's essential that movement through hyperspace have a direct cost. The sense of something being far is in large part how difficult it is to reach.
It also keeps hyperspace from ever feeling too comfortable, and that's another point of feel that I think is pivotal. Star systems feel like a bit of a safe haven; a sense of relief that you're not burning fuel anymore and can relax about that aspect of it. I think this contrast - the tension about it when you're in hyper, and the relief when you go in-system and now have some time to go about your business - is ... I hate to keep saying pivotal, but, well, pivotal.
If we could leave ships Mothballed in stable orbits
I did not realize that wasn't possible when I started this thread. I had assumed it could be done because it seemed like one of those no-brainer things once the game got derelicts and cargo pods.
(Yeah, I probably ought to add that in at some point.)
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I use the fuel range UI in the map all the time (the circle overlay), and it's great for planning expeditions and knowing how far you can make it. I don't unintentionally get into fuel trouble since I got a sense of how that works. If I get into fuel trouble, I knew full well before leaving that what I was doing was risky and accepted that risk. I never get a sense of having no idea how far my current fuel will take me, although I also wouldn't say I know exactly how far it will take me. I just make sure to bring a little extra fuel to ensure I make it home safely.
I also think the fuel cost associated with salvaging ships is very justified if not necessary, given how easy it is to acquire ships via salvage. I actually would like to see random derelicts distributed so that larger ships appear more frequently further from the core (since it is much harder to get them back so perhaps fleets are more likely to leave them out there). This would add another reason to explore since soon planetary surveys will not be directly lucrative.
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I think I'll concede this round of "fuel vs. no fuel" because the true purpose of this thread is to make hyperspace more enjoyable and all-around better for the game. I'll cross out the fuel and food stuff in the OP while I'm at it.
Please please note: all the terrains I proposed work perfectly well with fuel as it is.
the Sector is really not *that* big, and if you could fly around it with only a long timer in the form of food/supplies, that'd really feel very differently. I think it's essential that movement through hyperspace have a direct cost. The sense of something being far is in large part how difficult it is to reach.
This is very important indeed. Sadly Starsector can't pull rendering shenanigans like Skyrim does to make a 5 minute run feel like it covered many miles.
I can think of a couple things Starsector can do, however.
A quick and easy one would be to add a sound effect when a new week starts. I think once a day might be too often and once a month is too long. Sid Meier's Pirates rang a bell at the beginning of each month, which was sometimes less than 40 seconds apart (just timed it ::)).
A more ambitious endeavor would be to add a soft edge to the Sector. At the moment the only logic for why you can't sail to farther and farther systems (as long as you have the fuel for it) is that the game generates them only so far. A terrain or combination of terrains that makes it harder and harder to get close to the map border would provide the logic for why this part of hyperspace is colonized and not some other part. I'd say the farthest systems should be a little ways inside this border region to reinforce the difficulty of travelling in it.
Yes, a border area would sort of shrink the Sector, but I believe it would help players suspend their disbelief. "This is why the Sector is the size it is. This is why the game doesn't generate stars farther out." Then they turn back instead of dwelling on the fact they reached the edge of the map. In other words, disguise the limits of the engine as a feature.
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I would not care about any bells rung due to time alone, since the only things that matter for time are bounty durations and when shops get more rare stuff for sale (assuming player has access to military markets). Significant events like reputation loss already ring their bells when the event is revealed. Come to think of it, bells were not rung in Star Control 2, and that was fine.