Spoiler
Between 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.
Thank you for the info/ideas! Made some more notes, I think this is good all-around.
Spoiler
In 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.
Thank you for the added details!
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, I know already the answer's "neat idea, but I need to know how it'll work in practice first".
Haha, you know me well
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.
Haven't done anything with that, but presumably they wouldn't spawn at a system with heavy player-faction presence. They might take a bit of a different shape in general, too.
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.
I see what you're saying, and I can see how you might get this impression from the blog post. The thing is, the main goal of having outposts/colonies is to push the player towards combat - but the blog posts don't really get into those aspects of it, because I mostly prefer to talk about things that are at least sort-of done. So, yeah, it's a bit misleading in not directly addressing a major design goal.
As a small example confined to population growth - it can get you into trouble in several ways, i.e. through attracting the attention of pirates/organized crime/pathers. These should ultimately have combat resolutions. One can also imagine an event where a refugee fleet heads towards one of your markets and you need to escort/defend it. If you're successful, though, you'll at the very least have some nice income from your growing markets to help power your fleet, and depending on how things shape up, this could involve ship/weapon/fleet production etc.
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!
Thank you!
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.
There's "emergent gameplay", and then there's "confusing stuff happens" - and my feeling is the more detailed immigration calculation were much more the latter
(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.