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Author Topic: Strategic Direction of Starfarer  (Read 16161 times)

CommComms

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #15 on: October 26, 2011, 04:19:01 PM »

Hmm, sounds to me like the differences are
Go anywhere: Freedom at the cost of complexity and lack of direction for new players
Jump lanes: Simplicity and the ability to make a more controlled/directed experience for campaign/mission/mods.
Of course there's other considerations too, like is travel instant, or does it take time?  Is range limited by fuel, engines, navigation computers, or what?  Can you navigate while traveling, or just pick a point and then you're locked in?  Could you set up your own jump lanes for private use, maybe only let your own people use them or charge a fee for traders to use the lane you set up between two trade hubs that aren't otherwise connected? 

Well now I'm really excited about a combination of the two, where some certain engine or ship system lets ships travel faster than light around wherever they want, and for there also to be jump gates/lanes/whatever that allow instant travel between two points, but could require a fee or passcode to use depending on who built/owns/has more guns nearby them.  Then I could pick some random point of space nearby a bunch of rich colonies/resources/trade lanes/whatever and build a secret pirate space station there from which I could terrorize nearby systems. 

Whatever the case is, I'm excited to see how it'll work.
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Alex

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #16 on: October 27, 2011, 08:58:18 AM »

Fair enough. I like the lane system because it creates chokepoints which tend to create points of focus around which interesting stuff tends to happen. However, I trust you to make whichever option you go with rock.

Heheh, thanks for the vote of confidence :)


Hmm... there's certainly a lot to consider. The one thing I want to ensure is the feeling of open exploration, regardless of how it's actually accomplished. Star lanes do offer some interesting gameplay, but I think they could also emerge naturally - say, from a combination of supply/demand and the need to refuel - instead of being hardcoded in.

The player could then go anywhere they want, if they were adequately prepared in terms of fuel and supplies - while the AI would largely stick to established star lanes, with the benefit of supply outposts and escorts along the way. That's not to say that's *all* the AI would ever do, but it would make a lot of sense for freighter convoys and such that don't get paid to take risks.
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Thana

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #17 on: October 27, 2011, 09:25:10 AM »

Fair enough. I like the lane system because it creates chokepoints which tend to create points of focus around which interesting stuff tends to happen. However, I trust you to make whichever option you go with rock.

Heheh, thanks for the vote of confidence :)

So far, you've certainly earned it.  :)


Hmm... there's certainly a lot to consider. The one thing I want to ensure is the feeling of open exploration, regardless of how it's actually accomplished. Star lanes do offer some interesting gameplay, but I think they could also emerge naturally - say, from a combination of supply/demand and the need to refuel - instead of being hardcoded in.

The player could then go anywhere they want, if they were adequately prepared in terms of fuel and supplies - while the AI would largely stick to established star lanes, with the benefit of supply outposts and escorts along the way. That's not to say that's *all* the AI would ever do, but it would make a lot of sense for freighter convoys and such that don't get paid to take risks.

Certainly true. Of course, then there's a middle-ground version: require FTL to be initiated in a particular point or points in a star system (whether they're natural stress points in space or jumpgates) but let the destination be anything within a range determined by... Well, maybe the gate itself, maybe the fleet's jump drives, who knows. That way, you can get both exploration and chokepoints, should that be a desirable state of affairs.
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TheTank

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #18 on: October 28, 2011, 12:45:21 AM »

In one of my 4x games, they actually had both. Star lanes where anyone could warp through and, if you bought it and had the energy cells to fuel it, a jump drive that could take you to any sector in range (depending on the number of energy cells).
Then again, it was slightly a different game. If I think back to games like Elite and it's successors that tried to do more 'realistic' things, it became so much you could not live without the 'time acceleration feature'.

In StarFleet Command they just used hexes you could move between and then just offered you missions. Sure, it was not space exploration but 'real' space exploration would be REALLY boring. Someone once compared two star systems in space as about comparable to two bees over Europe.

I personally have the feeling SF goes more into the 'mission based' direction. Kinda like the old Panzer / JaggedAlliance / Commandos / UFO EnemyUnknown|TerrorFromTheDeep. You set up your team, start the mission and then incrementally move on from there. Once done, collect the booty, RTB, etc pp.

Heck, with the theme of SF you could actually have multiple paths: a strict campaign ala Panzers / Commandos / JA: first mission 1 then 2 then 3 ... climax medals everyone parties; a dynamic story ala UFO (the path was kinda fix, but the events that lead up to the climax were dynamic) and finally a fully dynamic world ala SF:C, you go where you wanna go, do what you wanna do etc.
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Flare

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #19 on: October 28, 2011, 03:44:33 AM »

Fair enough. I like the lane system because it creates chokepoints which tend to create points of focus around which interesting stuff tends to happen. However, I trust you to make whichever option you go with rock.

Heheh, thanks for the vote of confidence :)


Hmm... there's certainly a lot to consider. The one thing I want to ensure is the feeling of open exploration, regardless of how it's actually accomplished. Star lanes do offer some interesting gameplay, but I think they could also emerge naturally - say, from a combination of supply/demand and the need to refuel - instead of being hardcoded in.

Would this be like M&B except with a very real limit placed on how much fuel your fleet can carry based on expense? The problem with M&B model if applied in this context would be the near absurd amounts of fuel or food that the average party can carry, or at least, the very slow speed in which they consume it.

As you've said, I think if resources consumption and stocking was better tailored to the distances in the game, long treks would not be possible without a sufficient logistics train following the party. Likewise, a small fleet in this game might only have the distance of a small circle around the point of origin before it has to seek more fuel. It would kind of be like jumping from depot to depot without the need for making fixed lanes and would allow the player to venture away from the most efficient route to either hide the fleet from sensors or to build a secret refueling base in isolate space. The latter would probably add a good deal of strategy on top of things.

Finding your opponent's depots and blowing them up, and vice versa, having your own found and blown up can potential hamstring an offensive or cripple one's defensive net. Likewise, if fuel production peters off as you go higher, you  and your opponents can end up with natural choke points of sorts. Since fuel production can only be increased so much before expenses outweigh the output, there's only so much fuel that can be stock piled while full combat operations and patrols are underway. That is of course, nothing preventing a side from digging into a potentially large fuel stock pike and bum rushing its opponents, but doing that would take significant amounts of resources that could be used elsewhere.
« Last Edit: October 28, 2011, 03:52:01 AM by Flare »
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The battle station is not completely operational, shall we say.

"Now witness the firepower of this thoroughly buggy and unoperational batt... Oh, hell, you know what? Just ignore the battle station, okay?"

Alex

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #20 on: October 28, 2011, 07:20:28 PM »

In one of my 4x games, they actually had both. Star lanes where anyone could warp through and, if you bought it and had the energy cells to fuel it, a jump drive that could take you to any sector in range (depending on the number of energy cells).
Then again, it was slightly a different game. If I think back to games like Elite and it's successors that tried to do more 'realistic' things, it became so much you could not live without the 'time acceleration feature'.

In StarFleet Command they just used hexes you could move between and then just offered you missions. Sure, it was not space exploration but 'real' space exploration would be REALLY boring. Someone once compared two star systems in space as about comparable to two bees over Europe.

I don't know that I would frame open exploration vs starlanes as realistic vs not - each is about as realistic as the other. I think the open feel is a better match for Starfarer - and it doesn't have to mean "realistic" distances. Though I would like to avoid the "oh I walked for 3 minutes and I'm halfway across the world" that some sandbox games have going *cough* Oblivion *cough*. As much as distances are important for gameplay, they are also a big deal for feel.

I personally have the feeling SF goes more into the 'mission based' direction. Kinda like the old Panzer / JaggedAlliance / Commandos / UFO EnemyUnknown|TerrorFromTheDeep. You set up your team, start the mission and then incrementally move on from there. Once done, collect the booty, RTB, etc pp.

I can certainly see why it seems that way now, but it's actually very much not the case :)


...

Yeah, fuel opens up a lot of interesting interactions. I like the idea of fuel being a significant limiting factor, so you actually have to prepare for long-range exploration or extended conflict - maybe going as far as setting up resupply points ahead of time. Have to be careful so that it's not boring and the payoff is actually worth the trouble, of course. I'm a big fan of how Star Control 2 handled it.

... we're going to need a tanker-type ship. I can just see stranding a huge Hegemony fleet by intercepting refueling fleets headed for it. That'd be very neat. Must... code... faster.
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Flare

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #21 on: October 29, 2011, 03:22:59 AM »

M&B's system isn't perfect, and while I appreciate M&B's strategic free form system I'm usually quite frustrated with how easily the Lords can just group up, or more often than not just take it upon their own initiative, and raid a village or siege a castle across the map without any sort of limits on how well they can supply themselves in hostile uncooperative territory. I can accept a band of 30 people living off the land or from snippets of aid taken from hostile villages, but for a group larger than 200, this doesn't seem to be possible unless they take up extensive measures to make sure they can all be supplied.

A solution to this would be making it so they either raiding as they go along, or establish some sort of supply train or an attached segment that carries their majority of supplies the result of which would make them far slower as well as far more vulnerable, and probably much more noticeable. This would serve as some sort of balancing feature to the in-game 300 automatons marching non-stop to their destination only needing to be mindful of what they carry on their individual selves. There really was no semblance of territory integrity because of the fact that armies didn't seem to march based on any sort of requirement, and because of this, the player are often times running all over the place without any heed of a front line.
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The battle station is not completely operational, shall we say.

"Now witness the firepower of this thoroughly buggy and unoperational batt... Oh, hell, you know what? Just ignore the battle station, okay?"

Durandal4532

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #22 on: November 17, 2011, 09:42:41 AM »

I know I always post about Escape Velocity, but in regards to fuel I think they had a decent system in place for making the game dynamic without being too annoying.

Each ship had a certain amount of fuel it could hold, and X amount of fuel got you Y "jumps" to new systems. What I enjoyed was that early-game it was a consideration where you'd want to conserve fuel in order to save on costs as you build up your cashflow trading, so it added a little strategic layer of route-planning that I really enjoyed. Make sure you hit delivery A, B, and C in a row and then fuel up once you had the cash. Something about plotting out a course to maximum profit resonates with me.

When fuel costs eventually became less of an issue due to your mounting riches, fuel still played a part in giving the universe some boundaries. Exploration became a game of deciding whether you thought you could make it your full 12 jumps and find a planet to refuel in the space beyond, or if you should play it safe and jump 6 out, 6 back. Eventually you got things like ram-scoops to give you a slow refuel rate in-system that would let you recover from a bit of overextending.

It wasn't a perfect system, but I enjoyed the fact that it kept you tied to civilization, but made exploring outside the bounds feel a bit more adventurous.
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Alex

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #23 on: November 17, 2011, 10:22:44 AM »

Thanks for detailing how that works. That sounds similar to what we have in the works for SF. I really liked that aspect of Star Control 2, too - having to explore carefully, deciding whether a planetary landing was worth it (those cost fuel as well) - it lent a certain realism, and perhaps a bit of grimness to the proceedings.

A question - how does EV deal with running out of fuel, before you get ram scoops and such? Totally stranding the player is a possibility, of course, but that seems rather harsh.
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Thana

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #24 on: November 17, 2011, 10:30:03 AM »

Thanks for detailing how that works. That sounds similar to what we have in the works for SF. I really liked that aspect of Star Control 2, too - having to explore carefully, deciding whether a planetary landing was worth it (those cost fuel as well) - it lent a certain realism, and perhaps a bit of grimness to the proceedings.

A question - how does EV deal with running out of fuel, before you get ram scoops and such? Totally stranding the player is a possibility, of course, but that seems rather harsh.

Okay, this suddenly made me think of The Lost Fleet series of books. It's a scifi series about a fleet of warships that gets stranded far, far, far behind enemy lines and begins to slowly make its way back into friendly territory, getting into various sorts of problems along the way including but not limited to logistics, resupply, power structures (internal politics of the fleet) and, of course, enemy pursuit.
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SeaBee

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #25 on: November 17, 2011, 10:34:31 AM »

Sounds like a series I might like ... to the reading list it goes!
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Thana

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #26 on: November 17, 2011, 12:01:05 PM »

Sounds like a series I might like ... to the reading list it goes!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Fleet
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Wyvern

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #27 on: November 17, 2011, 06:29:25 PM »

A question - how does EV deal with running out of fuel, before you get ram scoops and such? Totally stranding the player is a possibility, of course, but that seems rather harsh.

Most systems had at least some NPC traffic; you could hail a passing vessel and ask for help.  Of course, that wasn't cheap, and some few systems didn't even have that.

If you were out of cash or otherwise totally stranded, you could self-destruct, launch your escape pod, and get transported to the nearest shipyard.  You lost your ship, and whatever amount of fleet you'd built up, but kept any cash you had.

And if you were stranded but hadn't bought an escape pod - well, then it was time to reload your last save.  (Edit: this is one of the few things that annoyed me about the game.  It just doesn't make sense to me for escape pods not to be an automatic feature of every ship in the game; flying without one was only reasonable if you could re-load from the last save point, i.e. you were the player.)

Personally, my favorite option was disabling pirate ships and stealing their fuel.  But that did require being in an area where pirates would show up, and having a combat-capable vessel.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2011, 06:43:27 PM by Wyvern »
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Flare

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #28 on: November 19, 2011, 03:26:42 PM »

Thanks for detailing how that works. That sounds similar to what we have in the works for SF. I really liked that aspect of Star Control 2, too - having to explore carefully, deciding whether a planetary landing was worth it (those cost fuel as well) - it lent a certain realism, and perhaps a bit of grimness to the proceedings.

A question - how does EV deal with running out of fuel, before you get ram scoops and such? Totally stranding the player is a possibility, of course, but that seems rather harsh.

Maybe the system will save your game when you're halfway out of fuel and from the nearest stockpile to allow you to turn around if you do become stranded. But then that doesn't really provide any costs to exploring safely does it? It promotes a lot of save scumming I would think. Perhaps FTL communications can call in some sort of very expensive out of dock refueling service? Or perhaps you should establish some sort of emergency tanker at your base that will come rescue you if run out of fuel looking into a dark corner of the sector, though of course, manned by a captain you assigned to it and it'll take a while to reach you.

As for EV's NPC traffic, there were sectors where there weren't any NPC traffic IIRC, or at least they didn't come in the time I waited for them. But I think we all walked away from that experience unperturbed by the game letting you become stranded in a system. Personally I did not hold it against the game for letting me do that. Perhaps in this game a stockpile can be established further out in unknown space to facilitate exploration as a boon against being stranded.
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The battle station is not completely operational, shall we say.

"Now witness the firepower of this thoroughly buggy and unoperational batt... Oh, hell, you know what? Just ignore the battle station, okay?"

Alex

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Re: Strategic Direction of Starfarer
« Reply #29 on: November 19, 2011, 03:44:29 PM »

Most systems had at least some NPC traffic; you could hail a passing vessel and ask for help.  Of course, that wasn't cheap, and some few systems didn't even have that.

If you were out of cash or otherwise totally stranded, you could self-destruct, launch your escape pod, and get transported to the nearest shipyard.  You lost your ship, and whatever amount of fleet you'd built up, but kept any cash you had.

And if you were stranded but hadn't bought an escape pod - well, then it was time to reload your last save.  (Edit: this is one of the few things that annoyed me about the game.  It just doesn't make sense to me for escape pods not to be an automatic feature of every ship in the game; flying without one was only reasonable if you could re-load from the last save point, i.e. you were the player.)

Personally, my favorite option was disabling pirate ships and stealing their fuel.  But that did require being in an area where pirates would show up, and having a combat-capable vessel.

Thanks, that's good to know. Hmm.

It promotes a lot of save scumming I would think. Perhaps FTL communications can call in some sort of very expensive out of dock refueling service?

Melnorme-style! I thought that was nicely done in SC2... may have to do something similar here :) For those that haven't played it: in Star Control 2, when you ran out of fuel for the first time, a Melnorme trader ship came along and sold you some in exchange for biometric data. That game was/is so good in so many ways...


But I think we all walked away from that experience unperturbed by the game letting you become stranded in a system. Personally I did not hold it against the game for letting me do that. Perhaps in this game a stockpile can be established further out in unknown space to facilitate exploration as a boon against being stranded.

Right, there would definitely be ways to actively guard against running out. I'm just on the fence about letting you completely strand yourself if you're just learning the ropes.
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