(Also, I'm sorry for potential spelling/grammar erros, English is not my native language and I'm also ill at the moment :| )
An alternative idea is to make a safe/easy/cheap way to travel between civilized systems, and then make traveling through hyperspace more difficult/threatening. Jump gates are the obvious way of doing this, but any sort of sci-fi wormhole type thing could do. The idea is that you can do basic missions with small rewards staying inside of the safe jump gate network but the big rewards require you to venture out into hyperspace which is now much more dangerous and difficult. Sort of an 'early game playground' idea.
If I could expand on the OP's idea a little:
I think what he/she is getting at is the idea of "Gatekeepers" that are like the gear-checks of other games, whereby if you don't have a certain tier of character, (in this case, fleet size/composition) the game is prohibitively hard. For a sandbox game, being able to explore is a boon but I kind of see what the OP is getting at: we have warning beacons for [Redacted] systems but nothing is compelling me to enter outside of my own curiosity.
An alternative idea is to make a safe/easy/cheap way to travel between civilized systems, and then make traveling through hyperspace more difficult/threatening. Jump gates are the obvious way of doing this, but any sort of sci-fi wormhole type thing could do. The idea is that you can do basic missions with small rewards staying inside of the safe jump gate network but the big rewards require you to venture out into hyperspace which is now much more dangerous and difficult. Sort of an 'early game playground' idea.
There was another thread regarding hyperspace where "space lanes" were brought up. Basically, safe/easy/cheap ways to travel within the core worlds and then you're on your own paying full fuel cost anywhere outside those lanes. The problem is that once you start making money, fuel isn't terribly expensive and if you tune your fleet toward exploration, the fuel costs aren't that extreme. You'd end up tweaking fuel costs to shoehorn the space lanes in (although, the idea of hyperspace travel within the lanes being extremely cheap/free, with the caveat that your transponder has to be on, would change the core world dynamics pretty drastically).
There's very little point in doing short range scanning intel missions when just having a few tankers is enough to go basically everywhere and do much more lucreative contracts.What more lucrative contracts? Short range scanning missions, special story mission excepted are practically identical to longer ranged scnaning missions. What is the end game? For me it is reaching the point where I can fight the biggest expedition fleets, whilst being able to leave my colonies alone which can support the maintenance of such a fleet. Which is basically about 12-20 million credits. The progression can be satisfying up to that point and afterwards. If you just want to survive whilst building a fleet/increasing money, you can just do procurement missions ad infinitum, safely. You then don't actually ever need a fleet that can fight large fleets.
That's pretty much exactly what I've meant. I think that some sort of "Gatekeepers" system combined with Sector evolution mentioned by Alex would create an amazing milestone-style progression during the middle parts of the game. Actually, Starsector already has things like that, with examples being the mentioned Red Planet, Cryosleepers and even the early resource gathering phase before the player is able to do any substantial exploration. I simply think that the challenge behind all this things makes the rewards feel much more valuable.
I think that a good example of this milestone progression is Terraria, where the gameplay loop itself is pretty simple and consists entierly of resource gathering, exploration and boss fights. Terraria's progression structure is very much based on the concept of gatekeepers. Each time when you progress you are faced with a challenge that you need to overcome, and with each challenge come both vertical (opening up of new potential challenges) and horizontal (new tools and resources, new ways of solving problems) progression.
I think what makes Starsector a very unique game is the potential of integrating some system like this, maybe in less limitng fashion, and consistently integrating it in both game lore and narrative. The game taking place in basically what is a part of ruined, decaying super-civilization opens up amazing possibilities for different small stories about legendary spaceships, planets, both planetary and orbital facilities,quarantine zones, space monsters etc. Having all of this combined with the Sector evolving as the player progresses through the game would create absolutely exceptional exerience, something that hardly exists in any currently available videogame.
I don't know that I'd define progression in terms of being able to move further and further way from the core, though, hmm. I mean, that's not necessarily wrong, but progression could also take the form of successive expeditions becoming more difficult based on the player's actions/the evolution of the Sector.
progression could also take the form of successive expeditions becoming more difficult based on the player's actions/the evolution of the Sector.
I'm not so sure about them being non-combat dangers, but that's just a detail.
Yes, that's true that the intel missions/cotracts of given type are, in their structure, identical to each other, with only difference being pay. I've used this example to point out, that in current context, when the player assembles his/her first exploration-capable fleet there's not really much of a challenge progression going on until the point of creating first colonies. There's simply not much incentives and roadblocks for the player to not go straight for the best exploration-related rewards and jump right into colony managment part of the game. Basically, presently in the game, from the moment you can go anywhere in the Sector you very quickly get to the point when you actually don't really need to explore anymore, because there's not really anything making it worthwhile. Of course, as I already stated, I was writing all of this in the context of the current state of the game, with static Sector and no further gameplay changes in mind. When you take what Alex and FooF said, about possible implementation of some sort of "gatekeepers" and Sector's evolution into account my initial sugestions become in part redundant, because the problem I pointed out gets already solved, just in diffrent, probably much more interesting way.There's very little point in doing short range scanning intel missions when just having a few tankers is enough to go basically everywhere and do much more lucreative contracts.What more lucrative contracts? Short range scanning missions, special story mission excepted are practically identical to longer ranged scnaning missions. What is the end game?
Exploring derelict stations is kind of like this already. Every derelict you explore steadily increases in difficulty till a certain point is reached.
I don't like the idea of gatekeepers. It sounds really artificial to me and less like living, uncaring universe.
I understand what you mean now. It is that you want progression to be tied to exploration distance to be tied with difficulty. Kind of similar to what Morrokain wrote.
Which is fine by me even if it doesn't make too much sense story wise currently.
Want to explore? You will have to fight for it!Well, I don't see any reasons for the mentioned gatekeepers to not be literally just that - an entities, or some sort of other challenges that make it necessary for the player to actually fight, in one way or another, to access some very valuable salvage locations, or maybe even some special spaceships. Imagine someting like a legendary spaceship of long forgotten class that can be found drifting in some desolate system that was used by the Domain as a weapon testing playground. Or, for example a uniqe ship like that being in a possesion of another explorer/legendary pirate that you need to fight in order to capture it. I think that that's exactly what FooF had in mind when first talking about this concept, and that's very much what I was thinking about. Especially in the context of challenge progression, addition of some very high reward locations, like some sort of quarantine or weapon testing zones, together with some sort of defences blocking access to them would make a great expansion of current exploration system. What's also so great about all of this is the fact of how easy it would be to actually incorporate it all in game lore/narrative. We already have the setting being remnants of a derelict galactic civilization, so why not expand on this concept?
(...)
I don't like the idea of gatekeepers. It sounds really artificial to me and less like living, uncaring universe.
Well, I don't see any reasons for the mentioned gatekeepers to not be literally just that - an entities or some sort or other challenges that make it necessary for the player to actually fight, in one way or another, to access some very valuable salvage locations. I think that that's exactly what FooF had in mind when first talking about this concept, and that's very much what I was thinking about. Especially in the context of challenge progression, addition of some very high reward locations, like some sort of quarantine or weapon testing zones, together with some sort of defences blocking access to them would make a great expansion of current exploration system. What's also so great about all of this is the fact of how easy it would be to actually incorporate it all in game lore/narrative. We already have the setting being remnants of a derelict galactic civilization, so why not expand on this concept?
The "high danger" sectors are pretty open access. It's impossible for every single jump point to be perfectly guarded. I mean, you'll probably die a few times before you get the hang of it, but after that the system is largely free reign. That entire attitude can change dramatically if the enemy fleet gets bonus speed+sensor range, or even if your own fleet gets a speed penalty inside the system. If you can't out run them and you can't hide from them, you are forced to face them. The only way to really explore such a system is to break through. It's not a hard obstacle, but it's very firm.
A system can also be hard gated just like the tutorial system. No one can enter or leave, and only transverse jump is viable. Maybe there's more than one system like that out there?
I ws thinking gatekeeper as a challenge for range. That if you can't bypass the gatekeeper, you can't explore any further If it is merely just a challenge for a reward, then gatekeeper isn't just the right word. Personal bounties are basically that game mechanic already. I suppose the only problem is that you will lose the feeling of exploring the universe and stubling on something nice.
Yeah I was thinking of gatekeepers more as something that locks a certain aspect of gameplay or certain technology that isn't available anywhere else, not just general loot. Maybe cryosleeper and planetary shield aren't really significant enough right now to alter gameplay meaningfully, but something like transverse jump would. If there were threats that really challenged ground defenses and planetary shield allowed you to defend against those when you otherwise couldn't, then that would definitely fall more into the gatekeeping category. Probably not the greatest examples on my part.