Been meaning to suggest this for a bit, but now that everything is coming together and the world is expanding next update I wanted to get my thoughts out on campaign progression.
Right now, I feel the primary discussion of the campaign element of the game is that many players either feel the early game is difficult, or the late game mechanics and skills favor player controlled super ships or the highly trained officers and their related skills. To those who point out that losing ships (I'll update with post links later btw, feeling lazy atm ;P) hurts the bottom line too much and to have meaningful progression losses have to be minimized, I am not suggesting otherwise, as I would agree.
But, at the other end, the game can't be too easy if loses don't mean anything or supplies become trivial because everything is super cheap and accessible. So to rebalance around early game doesn't make sense either. In the blog post on procedural generation, Alex touched on early game progression and noted that though pirate skins and built-in debuff hullmods were meant to make the early combat encounters easier, automated defense encounters would be another level down too, and other exploration content would make early game easier. I think this is a good step, but I also think something else is needed before any of the above issues truly get solved.
What I am talking about is what a player finds of value in winning an encounter vs what they lose. Right now, the biggest medium of transaction in the game is credits. Credits buy supplies, fuel, weapons and ships. It is by far the most valuable "fun gaining" resource in the game. Think of reputation, for example. All that does at best is unlock new things that
also cost credits. So credits are still in play there. Nothing gained in battle outweighs the value of pure credits, because they are more flexible than just a weapon, supplies or even the costly boarding of a new ship, unless that ship or weapon
cannot be bought at a market for credits anywhere else.
Losses in battle in turn cost credits as well, both in terms of CR replenishment and supplies, and the loss of ships and weapons as a whole. Because deployment cannot be without cost (because it makes things too easy), it was balanced around careful supply considerations to make it undesirable to deploy overwhelming advantages. But! This also means that losses therefore
always become a redline area that makes success of the mission no longer worth the investment cost per cost.
That is because the only thing of true value gained from combat right now is additional credits. Reputation, as stated earlier, is inferior as a reward because it is also linked to having credits. And since multiple areas of the campaign and combat are finely tuned around a "mistake = lost credits" scenario, it is no surprise that only the most conservative of playstyles are successful, and then quickly become boring because they have crossed the threshold of the difficulty barrier.
So, the only real way to solve these issues is to implement 2 things across multiple areas of the game:
1) More than one (preferable a couple) accessible, reliable, repeatable and sustainable ways to make credits outside of a combat encounter.and more importantly:
2) The has to be another (again preferably many) currency that equals or is greater than credits in terms of potential content progression.So maybe stations can act as one, the addition of the new resources I could see as being something you would want to throw ships away over. But that's really the idea here. Imo, the game will be at its most fun when an actual decision most players make will be something along the lines of "lets tell these 2 Lashers to escort this Hyperion, because the Lashers are expendable and the Hyperion isn't." I would even go so far to say as around 65% of your fleet at any given time should be mostly expendable and fairly easily replaced. The only things you should
never want to lose is exceptionally rare or, your personal favorite, ships and weapons.
The big difference in this scenario, is that their loss would be as "payment" for something else that progresses the players goals, whatever that may be. It can be a buff to reputation's relevance as a resource, new research or tech potential, or even story. There are multiple paths to go I think.
Right now, all ships are equally important, because any losses equal lost progression because the only way to progress is more credits.
There hasn't been any details released (thankfully) on the exploration content, but it should hopefully give these new progression paths an equal relevance to just getting as rich as possible, because right now too many things are a
necessary drain on credits for that to work well otherwise.
I also think these progression paths should be content rewarding rather than punitive. Since most mechanics introduced right now discourage things (hyperstorms, CR, supplies, fuel, reputation tech barriers) by costing credits, there has to be a balancing end that rewards the player for losing expendable ships by increasing their access to new fun things. Reputation was a start, but it effectiveness was limited since like I said the stuff unlocked from rep still costs credits, so still equates ship losses as "unacceptable" in a player's mind.
Anyone else care to respond or give their ideas on this? I just figured now is the time since this is the kind of stuff currently under development.