But this blog post has created even more questions than it has answered! >_<
Will procedural generation (be considered to) affect the current worlds in the game too?
So will this new feature tie in to contracts? i.e. Survey planet X for X $pacebucks, establish outpost Y for Y $pacebucks.
Will procedural generation (be considered to) affect the current worlds in the game too?
Probably to some degree? I can't say for sure right now, but for example:
- currently, hand-made uninhabited planets will get random conditions each game
- you can add procedural content to existing systems, i.e. in the current dev build Corvus has lost Mors and Somnus and instead gets a few random outer-system entities (planets, rings, asteroid belts, etc). In a plot twist, it can also randomly roll a Mors and/or a Somnus due to how name assignment works :)
On the other hand, handmade markets will likely remain fixed - i.e. Jangala is unlikely to be subject to random changes.
Couple of thoughts:
Why should the survey be a one time thing? It's hardly how it work irl: the more time you spend surveying, the more stuff you are able to find. Why not have the outposts operate as a permanent survey mission? As they grow, they could be able to find things that the player missed, maybe even things that cannot be uncovered from space. Just to spice things up, imagine your secondary colony suddenly stumbling upon some major hidden treasure, then you have to defend that outpost with teeth and nails when before you could have let it fall into enemies hands without a second thought.
And, I called dibbs on the Acheron system (and Tartarus too ><)
But this blog post has created even more questions than it has answered! >_<
Excellent, blog post working as intended :)Will procedural generation (be considered to) affect the current worlds in the game too?
Probably to some degree? I can't say for sure right now, but for example:
- currently, hand-made uninhabited planets will get random conditions each game
- you can add procedural content to existing systems, i.e. in the current dev build Corvus has lost Mors and Somnus and instead gets a few random outer-system entities (planets, rings, asteroid belts, etc). In a plot twist, it can also randomly roll a Mors and/or a Somnus due to how name assignment works :)
On the other hand, handmade markets will likely remain fixed - i.e. Jangala is unlikely to be subject to random changes.So will this new feature tie in to contracts? i.e. Survey planet X for X $pacebucks, establish outpost Y for Y $pacebucks.
Probably! That very item (at least, the survey one) is on the TODO list somewhere, but since "TODO" usually means "try this", I don't want to commit for sure. But, yes, very much thinking in terms of tying missions and exploration together; there are a few more TODO items to that effect.
Will mods be able to set markets as set? Same with systems planets etc.
Why should the survey be a one time thing? It's hardly how it work irl: the more time you spend surveying, the more stuff you are able to find. Why not have the outposts operate as a permanent survey mission?
As they grow, they could be able to find things that the player missed, maybe even things that cannot be uncovered from space. Just to spice things up, imagine your secondary colony suddenly stumbling upon some major hidden treasure, then you have to defend that outpost with teeth and nails when before you could have let it fall into enemies hands without a second thought.
And, I called dibbs on the Acheron system (and Tartarus too ><)
Also, what is with you Alex and stealing famous mods' names?
That sounds like the best way to handle procedural generation. The foundations of the game need to be properly handcrafted to ensure that the game flows correctly, which having what is effectively the wilderness beyond be procedurally generated lets each playthrough stay fresh and exciting.
In general, I just really like the way you approach game design.
Sounds like Apogee is becoming more of a godship, or at least be a high-tier combat ship in addition to cargo hauler and other utility. First, equal or superior combat performance than Aurora for less cost; next, high cargo capacity (for a combat ship) and high-resolution sensors; now, bonuses to surveying?
I'm probably going to go for a planet in Corvus anyway, middle of the sector makes it much easier to go around. (Captures Barad A and B through Sabouteurs anyway).
Sounds like Apogee is becoming more of a godship, or at least be a high-tier combat ship in addition to cargo hauler and other utility. First, equal or superior combat performance than Aurora for less cost; next, high cargo capacity (for a combat ship) and high-resolution sensors; now, bonuses to surveying?
Was there any mention of the Construction Rig I missed?
To what extent will the AI survey and establish outposts? I can imagine some very interesting scenarios such as the player being able to sell supplies and machinery to a newly established AI outpost at a better price or pirates establishing an outpost near the players outpost forcing them to defend their property. It could also be interesting if the player sees a faction survey fleet near their outpost or an uninhabited planet with valuable resources and decides to attack them to keep the area uncontested or to keep valuable resources hidden. I'm seeing so much potential here. This could really add some purpose to player actions rather than 'get bigger fleet to collect bigger bounties'.
In the Civilization games, as you advance the tech-tree, you'll unlock the ability to see resources on the map. These resources were spawned at map generation, but can't be viewed without the relevant advancement. Because of this, you'll often find that you've settled one or two tiles away from a very valuable mid-game or late-game resource, that you are now unable to get due to range. For those who have played Civ, I'm talking about Aluminium, Oil, and Uranium.
You mention uncovering surveyed objects as you increase your surveying skill, Alex - is the above example an outcome we could expect?
In addition to this, have you given any thought to assigning purposes for outposts. Off the top of my head, I would assume Military, Mercantile, and Research. In order, these outposts might produce fleets at an increased rate, have a larger market and mission board, and occasionally prompt you for quests or responses to an event on the outpost. It would be great if the outposts could generate tasks for the player.
And finally, do you feel that the star-map is becoming too cramped when viewed on a screen such as this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/planet_list.jpg). In a very busy Corvus sector, featuring a number of mods, the star-map becomes very cluttered.
Has David made icons for all the variations of the same resource? So an icon for poor/moderate/fertile farmlands, and sparse/plentiful/rich ore, etc? If so, then damn, that is A LOT of icons...
Also gonna need a lot of those "planetary surface" shots for all the different types of worlds, too! :O
Why should the survey be a one time thing? It's hardly how it work irl: the more time you spend surveying, the more stuff you are able to find. Why not have the outposts operate as a permanent survey mission?
Thought about this exact thing! This seems like too much of a bother for the player to deal with. Imagine having to establish 5+ outposts and then check in on them and cease operations some months later every time you go to survey a star system. Just the mechanics of doing that seem like they'd get repetitive. Plus it takes away the immediacy of something fun - sort of a slot-machine type gambling, finding out what the conditions are.
Instead, you're establishing an outpost to answer the question of whether this planet is one you want to establish an outpost on. This seems a bit circular and confusing, and the question is, what's the benefit?
Not that going to survey 5 planets in a system is something that won't get old, but it's still a lot more concise.
Side note: also thought about surveys taking campaign-time, with a progress bar and all that. Also seems a bit unnecessary.
I think maybe this depends on how many planets you want to ultimately survey. If the game was all about surveying a single star system, then establishing outposts everywhere and then checking on their progress and steering things along, fixing problems that come up, etc, sounds like it could be a lot of fun. But if the scale is bigger than that, then I don't think that would work.
Making some assumptions about precisely what you meant, though, so perhaps I'm off in that.
As they grow, they could be able to find things that the player missed, maybe even things that cannot be uncovered from space. Just to spice things up, imagine your secondary colony suddenly stumbling upon some major hidden treasure, then you have to defend that outpost with teeth and nails when before you could have let it fall into enemies hands without a second thought.
That, however, could totally be a thing, but perhaps handled through events instead. Effectively, generating new conditions rather than uncovering something predetermined.
And, I called dibbs on the Acheron system (and Tartarus too ><)
Ahh - sorry! Not much I can reasonably do about this; a lot of the names are common stuff from mythology, sci-fi staples, animal names, etc. Trying to avoid mod-names would be extremely limiting in terms of what the game *could* use, just not a road I want to go down.
However: there's an API method call you can make to report a system/planet name as being used. So, while "Acheron" will have a chance to show up in a normal game, you could make it so that it won't show up if your mod is enabled.
... actually, you know what - let me add that call to initStar()/addPlanet(), seems like something you'd always want to happen anyway.
Yeah, very much aware of this, was even thinking "hmm, I'll need to nerf this" while adding the hullmod to the Apogee :)
Was there any mention of the Construction Rig I missed?
There wasn't, but oddly enough, thinking about a new use for it that I'm quite excited about, if it pans out. But that's all I can say here :-X
Well, it will be nice if the survey game is like minesweeper.Not if it becomes a luck-based mission. I stopped playing minesweeper long ago because I got sick of losing to mines that were impossible to locate. See the trope picture of "Luck-Based Mission" at TVTropes.
In Minesweeper, since the boards are psuedo-randomly generated, you can easily end up with situations where there's no way to logically determine where the remaining mines are, and whichever square you click has an equal chance of containing a mine.
My OCD level of completionist thanks you for not making me survey every plant that I own every time I get a new level in the survey skill.
If systems will be at least partially random, will the hyperspace of these systems also be randomly generated?
If the hyperspace locations of some systems are randomly generated, will these locations be hidden on the hyperspace map?
I was more thinking along the line of the example just after but the initial idea was about a way to trade time for skills: if you didn't invest any point in survey skills, you could establish a "survey outpost" that would consume more resources to setup (although less than a full Outpost) and each week/month produce a survey report automatically. And you wouldn't have to really check on them since their findings would appear on the planets screen.
In a way, it could be as efficient as skills once you established several of them, but much more expensive, and probably time limited (or you could remove them to get back your crew and some of the resources invested)
Well, if it is negative permanent conditions not discovered with the initial survey, you could always have ways to mitigate them. You missed "Frequent seismic activity" before establishing the outpost? Not a trouble if you build the "Dampened foundations" upgrade to the colony. But I can definitively see temporary ones too, "Millennial dust storm" could lower your industry output and kill the food production for a year, but "Sand screens" could mitigate that, and "Underground colony" completely negate it. That kind of things.
It might be a little more interesting for the player if (as mentioned above) some 'things' could pop up later after the outpost/whatever has been in place for a while, like "Oh, hey! Look at this seam of rare earths next to this fault. No wonder we missed that on the flyby" kind of thing.
So additional resources, or quantities thereof. Weird weather/tectonics etc. that effect the way things work.
On the flipside, it could also degrade stuff you've already found.
Not removing a resource entirely - that would be pretty irritating/harsh. But maybe degrading the quality/quantity of a resource in a "We mined all this stuff, and now the rest is super hard to get to." sort of thing.
Neither of these would be particularly common events, but just something to remove the absolute certainty of having a planet be 'worth' x, y or z.
Definitely interested in this though.
Getting a very Starflight vibe from it, and nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Also on the surveying skills topic. Would it not be better it have an officer that does the survey for you? It would totally make sense too, one man does not manage everything. Have you considered adding a "special" officer type. Ones that could participate in combat, with certain perks, but gets no exp from it. But they could do stuff like comm(intel) management, outpost management, and survey management. The guys wear scientist or settler outfits etcetc...
Well, it will be nice if the survey game is like minesweeper. ;D
Stellaris style thematic exploration element.
Okay, the usual questions:
1) Will buying survey data or commissioning a separate survey fleet be a thing? (It's the sort of thing you'd expect to exist, but it might also render the skill pointless.)
2) *looks at all the GreekLetter RandomWord star names* We'll be able to rename planets after settling an outpost on them, right?
3) Do the lines in the last screenshot (http://fractalsoftworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/planet_detail.jpg) have any particular significance beyond signalling that the stars are connected in a constellation? Does grouping stars together in a constellation have any (other) effects?
Just finished reading, seems like a solid groundwork for the outpost system. This sounds like much more work compared to your previous updates though.
I'm curious to see how the AI will handle all of this. As said earlier, a local power might not be amused to see some newcomer making its home in the same system. I wonder if some property litigation might result, depending on the relation between the factions, either a irritated sigh of the local administration, or straight-up exterminatus. Might be a bit early for this question though, as the blog-post seems more about exploration mechanics than diplomacy.
Just one question : Will it be possible to discover hidden, inhabited outposts? A bit like the independent world, Killa. Rather than directly appearing as "active" on the system map, they would require to be found first (following smugglers might yield some clues) through survey. I'm saying that, mainly because a "pirate" player would never be able to implement himself in an already populated system, or run the risk of meeting the "welcoming neighbourhood Onslaught party". Hiding its outpost however, might let the player gain some time to grow before being rushed to death.
On a similar topic. Asteroid survey : Yay? Nay? Maybe? Or will it be more a part of the outpost system (creating stations) than the survey one (discovering places to build)?
Also, that pulsar thing is pretty cool, again, i'm curious how the AI will deal with it.
Assuming current topology stays the same, I like to commandeer and repair the broken stations like the gas siphon in Yma, Ashura, or all of Penelope's Star.
Plus it takes away the immediacy of something fun - sort of a slot-machine type gambling, finding out what the conditions are.
A lot of thought has been made into the XP and levels, but have you considered splitting the type of attainable experience?I think the reason for a single XP type is because Alex is trying to follow the rule of K.I.S.S
Assuming current topology stays the same, I like to commandeer and repair the broken stations like the gas siphon in Yma, Ashura, or all of Penelope's Star.
Another thing that's being thought about, but, again, just not something I'm ready to talk about. I would like all the abandoned/derelict stuff to play a role, though.
A lot of thought has been made into the XP and levels, but have you considered splitting the type of attainable experience?
It might make liner ships useful!I like to see Valkyrie made useful. The liners have made the Valkyrie obsolete. Who cares if the Valkyrie can use a few more guns than liners; Valkyrie still has poor combat stats.
but there is no such thing as being too good at combat.Definitely. There is so much useful stuff for combat that the only way I can get them all is to cheat for XP. (I do not want to waste time grinding past level 70+ for every game.)
Neato! However, are there any plans in place for things to go spectacularly wrong?
Maybe planet conditions adding small chance of casualties (unstable tectonics?) Or maybe some resources that cause casualties when uncovered (survey crew discovers hostile mutants when one gets mauled) or even common resources screwing with the player (common organics with a chance of carrying some kind of diseases that sicken/kill crew, widespread ruins having an errant landmine.)
I don't mind the idea of crew cost not being factored into surveying, but a planet with 75% hazard rating should take some kind of a toll.
Also do the crew just vanish after you use them in a survey? I'm cool with that btw.
I think it's ok to have a 'progress bar' for a survey, but it should be one you can just leave and come back to later. For really mean planets it might be interesting if it was substantial - like a month or something. Also the skill level of the crew could effect the amount of time needed!
What if each condition like "rich ore deposits" was a bar the player had to fill up? Each day of the survey the player would make, say, 10% survey progress to any random condition the planet may have.
Higher skill levels would improve the quality of surveying without impacting actual effectiveness. Here's an example:
Level 0: 10% progress to a random condition. Progress is random and alternates between conditions.
Level 1: Lists all conditions as "Uknown" until surveyed. Lets you see how many the planet has. Progress among them is still random
Level 2: Shows unsurveyed condition's category such as "Minerals" or "Volatiles" or "Gases".
Level 3: Shows the actual conditions without surveying. The player still needs to survey them to make use of.
Level 4: Lets the player choose which condition to survey first and focus on them instead of spreading the effort.
Level 5: Lets the player survey from a large distance away, with dimishing effectiveness based on distance. The fastest way is to orbit the planet but if for some reason you want to stay away you can still survey it at a much reduced speed.
None of these impact the actual effectiveness of surveying a planet while giving plenty of reason for someone to invest skillpoints into it if they want to.
On a separate note i would like to see survey "weapons" and different hull mods (not just one). Asteroid belt/ring survey could be done in the battle screens and have players orbit and dodge a hail of asteroids while the "weapons" survey them. Survey "weapons" would also double as target painters or scanners that increase accuracy or missile tracking against that target, including a higher chance to ignore Flares/Chaff.
I really like the straightforward mechanic, this could have enden up way more convoluted - I'm thinking of Mass Effect and Star Control here. The UI presentation with the planet looming big in the the background is quite pleasant, too :)
One related thing I didn't see mentioned is immediate consequences. It would be a nice touch if the acquisition of planetary data wouldn't be the only possible outcome of a survey. Maybe something nice happens, you find abandoned resources, or data about other places in the Sector. Or misfortune befalls you, raiders appear in orbit (->fight) or your ground team gets annihilated in a natural disaster. I think more possible outcomes make the slot-machine more fun.
A lot of thought has been made into the XP and levels, but have you considered splitting the type of attainable experience?
Recently when reading previews of Civilization 6 I heard the devs arguing that civilizations that are nowhere near the coast should have no business getting tech related to the seas and would have to spend a lot of research points to get it and those who are close to it should have a lot of bonuses when researching such. Similarly for Starsector isn't it odd that the player can get something like missile specialization or combat aptitude when all he is doing is trading and surveying?
+1 on this, surveying is an interesting feature, but I really can't imagine myself compromising combat performance (by not taking tech/combat skills) for any reason. Well, except maybe first time as test for new mechanics.
Whatever financial gains it could provide will probably become obsolete by sufficiently late game (when you have more money than necessary), but there is no such thing as being too good at combat.
I really hope you keep the abandoned topology, even if you fully randomized the untouched topology (ie outlying planets like the two in jangala that have no history in the game are randomized but stuff like Penelope's star where everything in it has history and scars and just plays into the scene so well stays as is)
SpoilerAlso; Stellaris has this mechanic where you have to survey basically anything before you know what kind of resources it has to exploit, so every time the survey command is presented to the player "survey system" is right under it because you never know what kind of resources you're about to miss, making it basically so that you will NEVER have a reason not to survey everything.
However, about every solar system has an Anomaly (or rather, 70% do, 20% don't and 10% have two or more) that is revealed when you survey an object, which pops up with flavor text giving you a brief synopsis as to what weirdness it is that caught the surveyor's eye and what they might intend specifically to find out about it (two that pop up in mind are the presence of a dead ancient solar-sail vessel in orbit around a planet or a planet with no signs of sentient habitation that has a massive superstructure on it) and the general level of the anomaly (and therefor the natural risk that something will go wrong if you try to study it/the level of the officer required to safely study the anomaly) and how much risk of something going wrong there is if you sent the currently selected survey vessel to study it, leaving you to abandon certain anomalies for a time and come back to them when you're ready (I learned my lesson when I had a science officer throw on a space suit, go down a planet inhabited by titans to study them only to get stepped on)
Most of the anomalies don't really pan out to be a whole lot, most of them giving a really minor mineral bonus to any outposts established on the object with it, some of them wind up unlocking previously hidden quest chains (that you can crush as you find it) and some that wind up being big stuff, but all of them provide flavor text that helps to reinforce the theme of the setting.
As Gothars said before, it gives bonuses, or generates surprise content, that isn't necessarily accessed on your first pass. Most of it doesn't wind up being negative content (unless you jump the gun and fail the hazard check) so there's no reason not to survey an anomaly that you are otherwise occupying with an outpost, and many anomalies pay off an investigation with a one-time bonus that doesn't require occupation so there's reason to investigate anomalies that are on something you can't/won't occupy.
All of which I think would suit Starsector really well. Of course, the flavor text and themes of the anomalies themselves in Stellaris are frequently high, soft scifi and revolve around the discovery of precursor aliens and stuff like the, but the events and payouts could be tuned for Starsector's harder scifi/lower fantasy. For example, the fewer outposts you're supposed to make (I know you want to naturally cut down on the "plague the galaxy" playstyle, due to the player interface not currently supporting a galactic RTS style gameplay) could be supported by making it so that more of the anomalies could be one-time bonuses or quest chains that don't require occupation to be exploited, most of which are small-time stuff but the feintest chance of a huge payoff to be worth en-mass late-game exploitation (like finding a section of the original XIV fleet that didn't make it to the Sector way back when that wound up being left to drift that could be recovered)[close]
Forgot to respond to this!I really hope you keep the abandoned topology, even if you fully randomized the untouched topology (ie outlying planets like the two in jangala that have no history in the game are randomized but stuff like Penelope's star where everything in it has history and scars and just plays into the scene so well stays as is)
Yeah, definitely. Stuff like Penelope's Star is staying put; just because a place doesn't have markets doesn't mean it's not going to be handcrafted.SpoilerAlso; Stellaris has this mechanic where you have to survey basically anything before you know what kind of resources it has to exploit, so every time the survey command is presented to the player "survey system" is right under it because you never know what kind of resources you're about to miss, making it basically so that you will NEVER have a reason not to survey everything.
However, about every solar system has an Anomaly (or rather, 70% do, 20% don't and 10% have two or more) that is revealed when you survey an object, which pops up with flavor text giving you a brief synopsis as to what weirdness it is that caught the surveyor's eye and what they might intend specifically to find out about it (two that pop up in mind are the presence of a dead ancient solar-sail vessel in orbit around a planet or a planet with no signs of sentient habitation that has a massive superstructure on it) and the general level of the anomaly (and therefor the natural risk that something will go wrong if you try to study it/the level of the officer required to safely study the anomaly) and how much risk of something going wrong there is if you sent the currently selected survey vessel to study it, leaving you to abandon certain anomalies for a time and come back to them when you're ready (I learned my lesson when I had a science officer throw on a space suit, go down a planet inhabited by titans to study them only to get stepped on)
Most of the anomalies don't really pan out to be a whole lot, most of them giving a really minor mineral bonus to any outposts established on the object with it, some of them wind up unlocking previously hidden quest chains (that you can crush as you find it) and some that wind up being big stuff, but all of them provide flavor text that helps to reinforce the theme of the setting.
As Gothars said before, it gives bonuses, or generates surprise content, that isn't necessarily accessed on your first pass. Most of it doesn't wind up being negative content (unless you jump the gun and fail the hazard check) so there's no reason not to survey an anomaly that you are otherwise occupying with an outpost, and many anomalies pay off an investigation with a one-time bonus that doesn't require occupation so there's reason to investigate anomalies that are on something you can't/won't occupy.
All of which I think would suit Starsector really well. Of course, the flavor text and themes of the anomalies themselves in Stellaris are frequently high, soft scifi and revolve around the discovery of precursor aliens and stuff like the, but the events and payouts could be tuned for Starsector's harder scifi/lower fantasy. For example, the fewer outposts you're supposed to make (I know you want to naturally cut down on the "plague the galaxy" playstyle, due to the player interface not currently supporting a galactic RTS style gameplay) could be supported by making it so that more of the anomalies could be one-time bonuses or quest chains that don't require occupation to be exploited, most of which are small-time stuff but the feintest chance of a huge payoff to be worth en-mass late-game exploitation (like finding a section of the original XIV fleet that didn't make it to the Sector way back when that wound up being left to drift that could be recovered)[close]
Thank you for the breakdown - heard about that aspect of it and was actually wondering how it worked.
That aside, I think there'll be plenty of reasons to invest in non-combat skills. At a very basic level of what industry might do, consider having access to a ton of disposable ships vs lots of disposable ships and a tough flagship, vs a very tough flagship and no disposable ships. That seems like it'd be more a playstyle and tactical/strategic decision, rather than one option simply being better. Then there's the potential to gain access to higher-end stuff more quickly, and having it be replaceable, and... other things.
I wonder how the Hegemony is going to react to your setting up shop in their system... I mean, I'm assuming the pirates are paying *somebody* off to go unnoticed right under the Hegemony's nose.
Perhaps surveying a planet "wakes up" a pirate fleet hiding nearby, perhaps you run into other surveyors. Also definitely thinking about what form a quick profit - i.e. salvaging something, either from ruins of from particularly rich natural deposts, w/o establishing an outpost - could take.
I like the deliberate simplicity in the surveying mechanic- I feel like there would be enough to keep track of (I'm assuming) with the setting up of outposts and markets afterwards.
I do wonder though, how many campaign events will involve surveying, like faction missions, and whether or not surveyable planets might have existing civilization, presumably cut off after the Collapse.
Speaking of discovering unexpected things, it'd be pretty amazing to survey a planet and discover that there's a rudimentary colony there already; one that has been isolated since the collapse and never managed to reach anyone or get back to space. There's bound to be a few, especially on the low-risk worlds.
... even get your ships magnetically dragged in
Ton of disposable ship could become viable at some point, but 10 officers softcap and 25 ships total hardcap seriously limit efficiency of such approach in current version. Of course, it's probably subject to change...
As far as making a survey skill or set of survey skills which are useful to have at any level and not something that you'd either be guaranteed to never have or always take to max rank, I might suggest treating the survey skills as data interpretation skills rather than data collection skills. You perform a survey and collect complete, accurate survey data regardless of your survey skill, but the survey report is only as accurate as your skill in data interpretation allows it to be. A zero-skill surveyor might interpret the data to indicate that the location has a feature with a value of X, with the true value X' being within 50% of X in either direction; higher survey skills would reduce the maximum error. The value of X would preferably be set the first time the player viewed the survey data at a given survey skill level, so as to avoid repeatedly viewing the survey reports to collect enough random points around the true value to find a much more accurate estimate of the true value than that which is reported in the game.
You could be assumed to keep the raw data in storage somewhere and reevaluate the data each time your character's survey skill improves, regenerating the survey report to provide a more accurate interpretation of the data, which removes the incentive to put off surveying until the character maxes out survey skill (or at least reaches a point where the accuracy of the report is within acceptable limits), and because the data itself is complete and accurate you have little reason to redo the survey "in case something was overlooked the first time around."
If it's felt to be necessary, you could also add a merchant type that can be paid to provide a higher-accuracy interpretation of survey data that the player has collected, so as to reduce the risk of making a bad choice for outpost placement for players with low survey skill; if the cost is sufficiently high, if the maximum accuracy of reports gained by the merchant is still worse than the maximum accuracy of reports generated by a player character which maxes out survey skills, or if there are other drawbacks to giving the merchant access to your survey data (e.g. the survey report is now in the public domain or is the merchant's property and so you cannot legally sell it or cannot legally sell it at full value, or it can come to the attention of factions with which the merchant is aligned and result in fleets of that faction paying unwanted visits to an area you were considering setting up shop in, or it makes the surveyed world a potential location for other factions to set up shop if they previously had no information on the area or were in no rush to set up there because they thought no one else was interested in it), you'd still have an incentive to improve the character's survey skill, but it wouldn't necessarily be essential.
As far as tying survey speed to survey skill goes, my own opinion is that it'd be better not to do so. I tend to find that things that increase the rate at which a task is performed have either so much of an effect on the time taken as to be nearly essential or so little practical impact on the time taken as to be nearly worthless, and, worse, a lot of times a large part of the reason for getting them is tedium-reduction.
You know, it might be worth some thought if this should be tied to the survey skill level. While I completely agree that getting a permanently better planet with a higher skill would be too enticing, getting a better chance at a one-shot bonus could strike a good balance.
A downside of the current implementation is that you might feel cheated under certain conditions. Imagine a case where you invested a lot in the skill and then all the interesting "high risk" planets turn out disappointing and you end up settling on some low risk ones. Wasted skill points! If you at least got some better one-time bonuses that would mitigate the issue.
I'm thinking of a wide range of things; stuff like ships, weapons, (shipwrecked) officers and hidden missions.
Alex, I know you are holding back on playing stellaris but there are some lessions that could be learned! The best would be the "events" that happen when you survey planets and stars. I have hundreds of hours now and I still see new events...
Dynamic difficulty is yet another concept I really dislike. The game tells players "Hey, want to win? Don't play too well or you will die! Feign incompetency and live!" Might have a point if it has unlockables or acheivements (yet another thing I dislike - pointless grinding and busywork for the sake of the game patting you on the back).
Yeah, I think we're on the same page here.
My point was just that you could make "dynamic difficulty" without making it awful, it's just the arbitrary, unavoidable, punishing-good-play aspect of certain implementations of it that makes it bad. And there's probably a good deal of room for what one might consider "punishing good play". I mean, if the Hegemony sends out a task force dedicated to hunting you down because you've been such a pain, that's "punishing good play" on some level, but is also perfectly reasonable.
So it's not all black and white, but "dynamic difficulty" as a concept tends to be maligned, where I think the problem people have is really with the specifics of the implementation. Or maybe I'm just defining dynamic difficulty too broadly to include things that don't suck :)
the survey skill will have some other benefits
There was also the minor fluff issue of bandits suddenly getting access to equipment was supposed to be ultra rare and ridiculously expensive, but the real issue was that it scaled combat power of enemies to a stat that could be a non-combat stat.
Can you talk about those? :)
Would be cool if you could survey all kinds of things to learn more about them. Maybe survey neutral/allied colonies and stations to get intel (and sell it to their enemies). Or suns, to predict upcoming solar events and get a tactical advantage. Or com relays to see who's listening in with their bugs. Or just deeper lore information on all kinds of space born artifacts. It could be a general "invest ressources to learn more about this" skill.
Oh. I saw a comment about previously unknown small colonies being discovered in Surveying and it brought a question to mind.
Are there Aliens in this Sector of Stars? :P (Sorry if this is already addressed or obvious.)
Or just stranded humans?
Oh. I saw a comment about previously unknown small colonies being discovered in Surveying and it brought a question to mind.
Are there Aliens in this Sector of Stars? :P (Sorry if this is already addressed or obvious.)
Or just stranded humans?
The are certainly aliens in the Sector. Just look at Jangala - it's full of non-Terran life forms.
:D
Oh. I saw a comment about previously unknown small colonies being discovered in Surveying and it brought a question to mind.
Are there Aliens in this Sector of Stars? :P (Sorry if this is already addressed or obvious.)
Or just stranded humans?
Oh. I saw a comment about previously unknown small colonies being discovered in Surveying and it brought a question to mind.
Are there Aliens in this Sector of Stars? :P (Sorry if this is already addressed or obvious.)
Or just stranded humans?Spoileraliens? YesSpoilersentient aliens? No[close][close]
Also, star systems could be a wee bigger than they are now (they are huge IRL) so that you can have more content into them without flooding the star map with new ones. (if that isn't your intention)I do not want the old Valhalla system back. That system was huge, and was nothing but pain (anything useful you did there angered a faction). I avoided that system unless it had a named bounty fleet hiding there.
Since random sector generation is now a thing, I'd assume there will be random markets... How would economy system go with it?
Regarding the idea of having your surveys be interrupted by hostiles: SPAZ 2 had a nice way of dealing with this, performing an action (harvesting) accelerated time around you.