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[Megas]

I hope bounty hunting isn't one of the cash flow nerfs that we are going to get. It took a big (too be to me) hit with the procedural content addition and I would hate to see combat disincentivized even more than it has been

It was risky in 0.8 (all-or-nothing; must-win), and level scaling in 0.8.1 made bounties too hard as an income source until late-to-end game.  Combat has been punished enough.  No point in a combat engine that took years to polish if combat is not worth doing.

[MajorTheRed]

Always great to see from the developper point of view, especially the maths and conceptual part of thing. Some thoughts/questions (not too repetitive I hope)

It got me thinking about the current way relationships work between faction: I guess with the new system, trading will need to also consider if the other factions are at war, or not with the current market? And it also means that it could be several states of relationships which influences directly trading (which was introduced in the Ironclad mod) : 2 factions in "cold-war" state might want to engage combat fleets but spare trading fleets, allowing some level of trade between them, while a total war would mean no quarter. In the same vein, what about alliance? Askonia, as an ally of Pearsean League, could be treated as a "same faction" market in regard for trading with PL worlds. This also ask about "how much the relationships between 2 factions can change in regards of initial status between them.

About Outpost : How about others factions? Can they established new ones too?
 I guess that to some extent, Outposts can be abandonned and/or totally destroyed. Where will be the limit with already established outposts/world? Can Asharu can be totally eradicated because it has a low level market and population?
And does outpost include Space Station?
And conquest?

So many questions....

[Thaago]

I hope bounty hunting isn't one of the cash flow nerfs that we are going to get. It took a big (too be to me) hit with the procedural content addition and I would hate to see combat disincentivized even more than it has been

It was risky in 0.8 (all-or-nothing; must-win), and level scaling in 0.8.1 made bounties too hard as an income source until late-to-end game.  Combat has been punished enough.  No point in a combat engine that took years to polish if combat is not worth doing.

Huh, I haven't found this to be the case - early game bounty hunting was quite profitable. Then again I haven't done more than like 3 industry runs, so my fleets are efficient, and I always invest in combat 1, so my flagship can destroy many early game threats by itself.

On granting autonomy: I see this as a great way of making 'client' colonies. Find a couple of good worlds that will be 'the best' suppliers, and keep those for yourself. Establish a whole bunch of smaller colonies around that don't have the ability to compete and grant them autonomy. Removes the upkeep from you, but you still get the profits from supplying them. Is this a good thing? Bad thing? Will those colonies even survive?

Hmm, that actually sounds like a problem case. I'd expect exports to semi-autonomous markets would not give you income, otherwise you're incentivized to make a ton of them just to farm cash, and that doesn't feel right.

My instinct regarding this is thinking about what would naturally happen to markets that don't generate a net profit or have someone to pay their upkeep. They collapse.

I guess it also depends on how much income you get from small player made autonomous colonies buying stuff vs what kind of investment is needed on the player end. If it takes more than a year or two in game for each client colony to actually produce a positive return for example, I think it would ok (especially since you also need the 'production' worlds, so initial investment before the wait is even larger). Its enough player in chair time that the only reason to do it would be for roleplay reasons rather than mechanical.

Hmm, that could be a market condition: impoverished. Reduces stability and drastically how much trading profit it gives?

[Alex]

I bought Starsector as of 0.8.1a a few months ago--and it's been fantastic, thank you Alex and all involved. So a few comments from a relatively new player:

Hi, and welcome to the forum!

1. I've largely avoided trying to understand the current economy in the game because I found the UI difficult, so I both appreciate your aside about the role of UI in the design of mechanics, and am happy to say that I find these screens to be an enormous improvement. I wouldn't quite call them intuitive, but I can say that after looking at them for a while today, I do feel like they now make sense to me and would work well; and I'm sure playing the game with them would further enhance that.

Glad you've found it... let's say, "comprehensible"

My one thought here: given that every faction seems to have its own color, and that red typically means pirate faction/illegal, did you consider having goods supplied by a faction outlined in the color of that faction in the Commodities list for the market, and having unmet demand be dimmed; rather than dim meaning imported and red-outlined meaning unmet demand, as you have it now?

I see what you're saying - I think that would make the UI look more cluttered and obscure some important information. Green/red outlines being tied to low/high prices is a very nice property to have. If a lot of icons have colorful outlines, it's going to be harder to pick out important information, while dim icons for imports contibute less to the clutter due to being dim. On the flip side, a shortage is important, so making it dim doesn't seem like a good idea.

Relying on many colors here would make it less usable for someone that's color blind. Red/orange and green are ok, since there's an (admittedly somewhat hidden) setting to turn those into something a color blind person can distinguish. Not to say that the game does a perfect job of being accessible, but I generally prefer not to solely use color to indicate something.

Finally, mods add more factions, and the color space gets crowded. Basically, this is a case of the faction crest being used to do precisely the job it's meant to do.

2. Regarding the pseudo-logarithmic conception of market size: for whatever it's worth, I'm having more success understanding it myself if I think of it as being not only about production scalability but also about commerce infrastructure and facilities. If a market just physically can't support large freighters docking and loading on a regular basis, for example, then it makes some sense that the market could be able to support more smaller freighters (thus allowing exports to more markets of the same smaller size), but wouldn't be able to efficiently supply any markets of a larger scale. Kind of. Maybe.

3. A thought on terminology: with "market size," sequential numbers plus the word "size" tends to imply a linear scale, I think. Whereas if it was something like "Market Class" or "Tier n Market" that might help put people in the right conceptual frame of mind, because "class" and "tier" are more often understood to represent non-linear categories. (Indeed "market category" would work, although the word length of "category" makes the UI more difficult.)

I think you're right, but since gameplay-wise (rather than conceptually), things based on market size tend to be linear or close to it, market size is - by the same logic - probably better

4. Regarding outpost fleets: as I've been playing, I have been inexorably accumulating a large number of ships in storage. It's past the point of them being a safety net in case my active fleet is wiped out; there just hasn't been any compelling reason to either scrap them or sell them, and many have sentimental value/memories. So while I can understand it being outside the core areas of the game, I'll just say that it would be very nice in terms of both player asset utilization and role-playing to be able to assign these currently extraneous stored ships to an outpost as part of its fleet so that they can continue to be of service, rather than the "immersion eyesore" they currently are.

Hmm, interesting idea! Will keep it in mind when figuring out just how ship production works.

I hope bounty hunting isn't one of the cash flow nerfs that we are going to get. It took a big (too be to me) hit with the procedural content addition and I would hate to see combat disincentivized even more than it has been

Some rebalancing may happen, but I'll just say that I think bounty hunting is in a pretty good place right now in terms of income. Other stuff would likely be balanced around that level.

Questions:

• How will the colonies be set up: colony ship (O-Game), colony structure in cargo (X-Series), just dump people and supplies on a planet and wish them luck?
  

It'll require crew/cargo/machinery. Possibly with a later-game option to just dump credits into it and have someone else take care of it (say, once you've already got a sizeable outpost).

• Will there be any pirate bribery to remotely obstruct/destroy competing trade fleets (especially without being held responsible)?
  

Maybe? As I think I mentioned in the blog post, there definitely need to be a bunch of options for moving up on the list of "preferred suppliers".

• Will colonies/outposts/waystations/planets be destructible? Able to be abandoned? Conquerable? Tradeable?
  
• Any thoughts on how faction commission works in relation to trade optimization? Will factions who declare war avoid your commissioned outpost, or is it possible they'd focus on your assets exclusively? Plans for semi/permanent faction joining?
  
• Will you allow factions to (try to) colonize in REDACTED space, or will there be a 'safety factor' when the factions try to expand?
  
• How will taxes work in relation to this? Will you still be the one paying the transaction tax to the other faction, whether buying or selling? Can you set local tax rates?
  

I guess that to some extent, Outposts can be abandonned and/or totally destroyed. Where will be the limit with already established outposts/world? Can Asharu can be totally eradicated because it has a low level market and population?

All good questions, but I really can't say until this gets further along and I can do some playtesting.

It got me thinking about the current way relationships work between faction: I guess with the new system, trading will need to also consider if the other factions are at war, or not with the current market? And it also means that it could be several states of relationships which influences directly trading (which was introduced in the Ironclad mod) : 2 factions in "cold-war" state might want to engage combat fleets but spare trading fleets, allowing some level of trade between them, while a total war would mean no quarter. In the same vein, what about alliance? Askonia, as an ally of Pearsean League, could be treated as a "same faction" market in regard for trading with PL worlds. This also ask about "how much the relationships between 2 factions can change in regards of initial status between them.

If the factions are hostile, trade between the two markets is considered smuggling and is limited to 3 units per commodity.

About Outpost : How about others factions? Can they established new ones too?

Probably/maybe? Definitely not on a large scale, though, if anything I could see "faction X wants to establish an outpost somewhere" being a major event.

 

And does outpost include Space Station?

An orbital station is a "structure" you can build at an outpost. Exactly what it does is somewhat TBD, which is to say I have something in mind but haven't done/tried it yet.

Hmm, that could be a market condition: impoverished. Reduces stability and drastically how much trading profit it gives?

Hmm, a possibility. What I had in mind originally, though, is "grant autonomy" still keeps the outpost as belonging to your faction, so there's no money for exporting to them, and you're still responsible - in some sense - for providing protection. On the plus side, you wouldn't get a stability penalty for importing from one of these. But the details are extremely up in the air here.

[DatonKallandor]

3. A thought on terminology: with "market size," sequential numbers plus the word "size" tends to imply a linear scale, I think. Whereas if it was something like "Market Class" or "Tier n Market" that might help put people in the right conceptual frame of mind, because "class" and "tier" are more often understood to represent non-linear categories. (Indeed "market category" would work, although the word length of "category" makes the UI more difficult.)

That's a great point actually. Totally agree. Call it a Class 7 Market instead of a size 7 and suddenly the fact that it can supply multiple 7 demands doesn't sound weird anymore.

[xenoargh]

Ditto on the above. 

I also don't think Bounties have been hurt, and I'm playing them in Really Tough Mode, where they go from "meh" to "ohcrap" in about two Bounty encounters.  I like the challenge level; I do think that perhaps midgame Bounties might need a little difficulty nerf and late-game Bounties might be a tad harder, but I don't feel like it's terrifying, using a mixed-arms fleet approach.

[FooF]

I guess the introduction of outposts and swaying existing markets (or potentially destroying them completely) begs the question of how dynamic/emergent do you expect the Sector to become after a few dozen cycles?

We're also nearing that pivotal moment where something may be "worth" more than our pristine ships and fleet compositions. Securing/attacking/defending an outpost might justify losing a chunk of our fleet, which up until this point, has been a really hard sell.

As a complete aside, I would highly encourage tweaking some numbers to the seeding algorithm so that there is a good chance for high-value planets to be found in [REDACTED]-infested systems. It gives incentive for the player to engage/clear out these systems and who knows, maybe a [REDACTED] battlestation that has been defeated could be "re-purposed" for Outpost defense...

[Megas]

If Remnants held systems with mostly high-value planets, it seems that Hegemony or whoever sealed those systems off would have destroyed the offending AI instead of containing them so they could claim and develop the planets.

Systems where space monsters live should not necessarily be more valuable just because space monsters live there.  Systems with space monsters should be more valuable for dropping rare weapons player cannot find easily elsewhere.

[Anysy]

Why not though?

Perhaps its not that coincidentally space monsters live there as much as because the space monsters live there, or space monsters live there purposefully. Perhaps their ai was programmed to seek out valuable worlds and terraform them or something, maybe its just that they too required rich ore deposits to do what it is they do, that sort of thing.

If the hegemony thought it was easier to deal with what was left over instead of fighting for them, it does make sense. Or perhaps at the time they simply didnt have the means to destroy the ai, only contain them, and over time that 'goal' was lost as regimes change.

[Sendrien]

Alex, I really like where you're going with outposts. It harmonizes perfectly with the rest of the game!

When MattD suggested being able to use the large number of reserve ships to patrol one's outposts, an endgame goal that I had never considered came to me instantly...

Creating our own faction! It would be the perfect endgame goal for the exploration/industry skill tree! Especially since the game already has the mechanics for diplomacy (faction relations), it would be such a sense of accomplishment for the player to start off in a singular vessel, eventually become the commander of a large fleet, build a colony to govern, and finally rise to the leader of an entire faction

Every once in a while, a game comes along that utterly astounds you with its depth, replayability and the number of new mechanics that it introduces even late into the game...In short, the sheer number of things you can do in-game. If you were to add faction creation on top of the colony mechanic, I believe you would be entering that level of jaw-dropping scope, very similar to Stardew Valley.

Most devs don't bother with icing on the cake features any more, but for players and ultimately your fanbase, those things are often the difference between like or love, a positive review or evangelism.

It's clear as day how much you care about Starsector. Please give us the icing!

[intrinsic_parity]

a couple questions:

First, what mechanisms are you considering for outposts changing hands (if any)? I would like it if the player could sell their outposts. I think it makes sense that a faction would want to buy their supply chain to reduce costs, but maybe they would only be interested if you are supplying some large market or some large number of markets. It would be cool to build up a food supply network and then liquidate it and invest all that new capital in a more lucrative resource. I think it's much more logical to sell an outpost than to just let it go. Maybe if you give someone a good deal when you sell it, they will continue to supply your other outposts for a reduced price.

This leads to the second question: How is supplying your own outposts going to work? Are there going to be supply contracts that the player manager will it just be the best available market becomes the supplier automatically. I like the idea of approaching people on stations and offering them a supply contract or requesting one. It would feel very immersive, especially because you could add bribes and stuff as well, or even threats.

[Steven Shi]

I'm probably the only detractor here but as much as I love what's happening with the economics, I think there's been too much feature creep during the past 12 months.

I bought the 0.4x version and 4-5 yrs on, it is still 60% complete. While on paper, the finished product would be a dream come true for me, I can't help but feel Alex is trying to perfect his magna opus in one go. In my view, the base game focusing on combat, bounty and light trading should have been pushed out a long time ago with economics/industry followed afterwards as an expansion.

Right now, there are just SO much stuff being added and tweaked, the finished game will have a oblique learning curve for those who haven't followed the game since the beginning. While Starsector is rapidly approaching the X series in scope, it has also lost some of its focus I feel. Is this a combat sim game? Or a economics game? Is trying to become a tycoon as fun as being a pirate captain or a bounty hunter? I'm worried in trying to build a fantastic, living world full of options, Alex may risk drowning the players in options.

From a business stand point, the vast scope of the Starsector as it stands now will probably hurt its sales as much as it would help. Mount and Blade, the closest game I can think of similar to this one, didn't gain its cult status by also being a realistic economic sim, a political intrigue game nor even a good battlefield simulator (you basically just attack move everything). What it did do well in terms of combat and the cheer joyous chaos it was unmatched and everything else worked to support that. Had M&B tried to implement EU IV level politics or Anno level trade simulation, that game would never have been as popular.     

Anyway, I'm just expressing my concern that Starsector's focus seems to been dragged in several directions lately. Definitely hope to be proven wrong at v1.0 but I HAVE seen too many examples of over reach by developers when tighter focus was called for.

[Althaea]

While I can understand a good degree of concern, I would point out that Mount & Blade also had a very long early access period, and could be said to be one of the pioneers of that concept. It built up its cult of popularity slowly as it developed and the cult, as it were, was already very well established on launch. There are lots of similarities that can be drawn, but if anything they are encouraging.

And while the basic Mount & Blade did not have much of interest in trade or politics (though it dabbled in both), M&B, like Starsector, had the modding scene as one of its major draws. And the implementation of more advanced strategic-layer features (such as with trade, politics and more) were one of the most common features, with almost all of the popular mods, IIRC, making use of the "Diplomacy" submod.

Starsector and Mount & Blade are both passion projects by small dev teams that enjoyed considerable success without needing to concern themselves overly with marketing or pragmatic business decision, instead growing more popular by word of mouth.

Perhaps my own perspective is flawed by I first entered the scene with 0.72 and only engaged with the community to any serious extent after 0.81, but I, at least, don't think this direction is a problem. It is certainly something I've looked forwards to since I first noticed the industry aptitude in 0.72 and sank all my points into that without realizing there was no use for them. (There were no skills, but of course I didn't know the mechanics back then and so I assumed the aptitude points themselves had some effect on what you could do within the game.)

I would note, however, that much as Mount & Blade had its strategic-layer mods which added features anticipated and implemented for later versions of the base game, Starsector has Nexerelin and Remnant Autofactory, which drew from the earlier Omnifactory. What the next version of Starsector adds is something that people have anticipated for a long time. Personally, I suspect you will be proven as wrong as you hope you will be.

[Alex]

I guess the introduction of outposts and swaying existing markets (or potentially destroying them completely) begs the question of how dynamic/emergent do you expect the Sector to become after a few dozen cycles?

Not very - maybe a few new faction outposts at the most.

We're also nearing that pivotal moment where something may be "worth" more than our pristine ships and fleet compositions. Securing/attacking/defending an outpost might justify losing a chunk of our fleet, which up until this point, has been a really hard sell.

Yeah, this is a key point of outposts, even though it's barely touched on in the blog post. I'm pretty excited about it!

As a complete aside, I would highly encourage tweaking some numbers to the seeding algorithm so that there is a good chance for high-value planets to be found in [REDACTED]-infested systems. It gives incentive for the player to engage/clear out these systems and who knows, maybe a [REDACTED] battlestation that has been defeated could be "re-purposed" for Outpost defense...

This is already the case to some extent, actually. They tend to have ruins (which are valuable due to a Tech-Mining industry) and more habitable worlds. There will also be some exploration-related reasons for them to be desirable - in brief, I'd like the things you find during exploration to feed into outposts, for example you might find an abandoned structure that gives a nearby outpost a bonus, that sort of thing.

Alex, I really like where you're going with outposts. It harmonizes perfectly with the rest of the game!

When MattD suggested being able to use the large number of reserve ships to patrol one's outposts, an endgame goal that I had never considered came to me instantly...

Creating our own faction! It would be the perfect endgame goal for the exploration/industry skill tree! Especially since the game already has the mechanics for diplomacy (faction relations), it would be such a sense of accomplishment for the player to start off in a singular vessel, eventually become the commander of a large fleet, build a colony to govern, and finally rise to the leader of an entire faction

Every once in a while, a game comes along that utterly astounds you with its depth, replayability and the number of new mechanics that it introduces even late into the game...In short, the sheer number of things you can do in-game. If you were to add faction creation on top of the colony mechanic, I believe you would be entering that level of jaw-dropping scope, very similar to Stardew Valley.

Most devs don't bother with icing on the cake features any more, but for players and ultimately your fanbase, those things are often the difference between like or love, a positive review or evangelism.

It's clear as day how much you care about Starsector. Please give us the icing!

Thank you, what a nice reply to read - this just about made my day

As far as creating your own faction, just having outposts is getting us most of the way there, isn't it? We'll see how it goes, of course, but I'll just say I'm thinking about the things you're talking about as far as relations etc.

First, what mechanisms are you considering for outposts changing hands (if any)? I would like it if the player could sell their outposts. I think it makes sense that a faction would want to buy their supply chain to reduce costs, but maybe they would only be interested if you are supplying some large market or some large number of markets. It would be cool to build up a food supply network and then liquidate it and invest all that new capital in a more lucrative resource. I think it's much more logical to sell an outpost than to just let it go. Maybe if you give someone a good deal when you sell it, they will continue to supply your other outposts for a reduced price.

Good questions, but again in the "can't quite answer yet" category - sorry

This leads to the second question: How is supplying your own outposts going to work? Are there going to be supply contracts that the player manager will it just be the best available market becomes the supplier automatically. I like the idea of approaching people on stations and offering them a supply contract or requesting one. It would feel very immersive, especially because you could add bribes and stuff as well, or even threats.

It'll be automatic, though I like the potential for contracts/bribery to override the automated results.

I'm probably the only detractor here but as much as I love what's happening with the economics, I think there's been too much feature creep during the past 12 months.

...

Anyway, I'm just expressing my concern that Starsector's focus seems to been dragged in several directions lately. Definitely hope to be proven wrong at v1.0 but I HAVE seen too many examples of over reach by developers when tighter focus was called for.

First off, I hear what you're saying. The scope of Starsector is... a bit on the large side, let's say. It's absolutely not "feature creep", though, since all this stuff was meant to be in the game from the very beginning. (Not to say that it's not an example of over-reach; obviously I don't *think* it is or I wouldn't be doing it, and at least to me it feels like things are coming together in terms of progress towards 1.0, but, well, we'll have to see!)

As far as focus, most things are meant to feed back into combat at some point, although the blog post doesn't really touch on it beyond mentioning pirates. Ultimately, outposts should be about making a few decisions and then letting them run. After that, they provide a backdrop and a context for your combat. Not to say one player couldn't focus on outposts more than another, but still, design-wise, they should ultimately be "a way to get into more fights on a larger scale".

[Schwartz]

I don't think it all has to feed back into combat. Having cash benefits your ability to fight, and having things that belong to you gives you a reason to fight. Soon we'll be in Nexerelin territory where it all comes together as 'grand strategy' similar to how M&B Warband does it. You can absolutely chain fights all day but the sum is more than its constituent parts.

I'd still like to see more weight given to personalities. Now they're entities that you might see once and then never again. Station commanders are interchangeable, patrol captains are too. If you've repeatedly *** off the patrols in a certain system, that system should put you under scrutiny. Persistent patrol commanders and system military figureheads flying the flagship fleet would be one way to go about it. Someone you might have to appease down the road.

On the flipside, having outposts in a certain area of space could predispose the neighboring systems to be unreasonably hostile whereas the faction they belong to doesn't necessarily have to be. Again you're given the opportunity to fight in border disputes without *** off the entirety of the Hegemony. And later you're faced with a grudging system or two that you'll need to mend relations with so that you can proxy your wares through their systems and beyond.

These are just a couple of examples that can loosen up the 'all or nothing' style of current faction relations and add some character to a run.