So, will there be a need for .faction files with predefined fleet role stuff?
And I assume that the game will handle the amount of fleets (and their ship role content) based loosely on the economy?
Why despawning said fleets after doing their "bidding". Why not instead only despawn/refit them based on its faction needs (faction wasted too much money building/upgrading the fleet, sell the older ships not needed ships)?
(the newer versions of Exerelin and UsS already have similar systems at work)
Strangely enough, the part of the blog post that I was most excited about was the night time city lights for planets. It adds so much more "feeling" to things, its not even funny. I actually tried to make my own hacked version by spawning another planet (set as a star) on top of the planet I wanted to draw lights on. Ended up not including it when it became apparent that I couldn't sync up the two planet's rotation haha... the whole "cities in the middle of lakes thing" wasn't really a good look (not to mention it played havoc with hyperspace travel/jump points).Spoiler(http://i.imgur.com/E2EAwD9.jpg)[close]
On the topic of "adding feeling," I think it would be cool to have the ability to add more useless junk floating through space and give them descriptions (comets, derelict hulks, alien artifacts, etc.). One of my absolute favorite things so far from both a modding perspective and a gameplay perspective is just flying around the universe and sightseeing around all the different planets/lore people have made. It would also be pretty cool to have a codex page for factions, planets, and star systems.
I know the next update is huge, but the fact that you are now adding content gives me hope that a release is imminent-ish. I don't want to make you commit to any deadlines or anything, but do you have a feeling as to when the next update will come out? Is it weeks, a month, multiple months?
What do trade fleets do on arrival? Same orbit thing? Then head back?
Based on how it appears to be set up, that might already be possible; see the "1" next to combatMedium.I think that 1 is the "weight" of the choice, not the number
... It might not even be better feel-wise, since updating a fleet on the fly probably might not look better than despawn/respawn, not without some graphical changes to go with it.
If there were explicit mechanics around keeping fleets around, supporting them, upgrading them, etc, then that kind of approach would make sense.
So instead of the ring of space junk, why not make a dynamic ring of civilian ships orbiting the planet and stations whos size increase and decrease depending on market stability that trade fleets emerge and vanish from and to.
Also can add a simple visual indicator of how well a planet is generally doing.
Is there provision in ship roles for multiple ships fulfilling a single preference? Eg, if an outpost is really short on gear and can't even field a medium combat ship, it falls back even further to a pair of frigates, for instance. Or a strike force would prefer to have several frigates and fighter wings, but has to swap in a couple of fast destroyers in a pinch.
Based on how it appears to be set up, that might already be possible; see the "1" next to combatMedium.
Based on how it appears to be set up, that might already be possible; see the "1" next to combatMedium.I think that 1 is the "weight" of the choice, not the number
To help make the sector feel busy and make it feel alive, I'd like to see lots of 'individual' transport and courier style ships. People still need to travel from planet A to planet B whether on a high speed transport or a bus, and people need the stuff express delivered in un-catchable millennium falcon archetypes.
So instead of the ring of space junk, why not make a dynamic ring of civilian ships orbiting the planet and stations whos size increase and decrease depending on market stability that trade fleets emerge and vanish from and to.
Also can add a simple visual indicator of how well a planet is generally doing.
- Question about procedural vs. handcrafted: AFAIK most of the Sector is going to be procedurally generated (maybe exempt from core worlds etc.). If you say something is "handcrafted", what does that mean in this context?
Does it "just" mean that you teach the algorithm a lot of special cases? For example, an event or a (set of) market condition(s) generate a fleet profile with ship roles defined specifically for this event/condition. Or do you really mean to assemble certain fleets by hand and script their behavior? (But how would they fit into a procedural world? That would only seem to make sense for things so small or so enormous that they are independent from the state of the sector, or things coming in from the outside...)
- Something else: Can you already share anything about the way fleets with no (necessarily) clear destination behave? I.e. explorers, tech mining fleets, pirates, headhunters, freelancers, maybe patrol fleets. Do you plan on some kind of search or roaming algorithm? Or will the destination be made up (pseudo-) randomly before the fleet is even generated? Maybe with waypoints?
- Putting fleets in orbit sounds neat, visually. What happens if it is are attacked, anything special about that? Modified CR, loot or even combat scenario? Support from the planet?
However, I have a kinda off-topic question: will the NPC ships' loadouts be generated in the same way as fleets? I mean, I can beat any ship with closed eyes mainly because I know all the loadouts by heart. A more or less random loadouts would bring an immense depth to combat, players will actually scan ships first to see what's going on, we will have to adapt our combat techniques to different fleets even if they belong to the same faction, etc.
My only question is how well this works with multiple mods in play; it looks like you'd need a way to specify "Add this ship to Escort Medium with this weight", so that the final escort medium ship role is a merged conglomeration of multiple mods...
1. I'd really prefer to see more visual uniformity amongst the Factions, to give them a more coherent look and feel. Of them, only Tri-Tachyon has a distinct visual feel, and the rest feel very generic... and I'd really like to see the game move away from that and towards giving the Factions a unique look and feel, ala Freelancer. This change will mean that fleets are even less heterogeneous in character, which may be potentially good / bad from a gameplay perspective, but it's going to cost the Factions even more of what makes them visually unique.
Depending on the state of the game art, this may or may not be a big deal to implement; perhaps just some palette manipulations and minor stat changes would be all it took to give each Faction's ships a more cohesive character- a Hegemony Enforcer might have better armor but slightly less speed than a Pirate one, etc.
2. I don't mind that, if there's nothing "better" around, the Hegemony will produce a Medusa, but it sounds like creating the web of dependencies is going to be really time-consuming, if one wants to ensure that a given planet won't have anything it can build if the Faction's preferences say ABC but the only Blueprint around is D. How is that eventuality being handled?
1. The .faction files are well and truly broken, in terms of backwards compatibility now?
2. Enabling which Blueprints are available happens through setup of the Markets by code fiat (for now), yes?
3. Special fleets can still be built via code by adding new FleetMembers and all that?
I like the general idea; it's a good approach to the problems of making fleets varied. That said, there are a couple of critiques I'd like to offer:
1. I'd really prefer to see more visual uniformity amongst the Factions, to give them a more coherent look and feel. Of them, only Tri-Tachyon has a distinct visual feel, and the rest feel very generic... and I'd really like to see the game move away from that and towards giving the Factions a unique look and feel, ala Freelancer. This change will mean that fleets are even less heterogeneous in character, which may be potentially good / bad from a gameplay perspective, but it's going to cost the Factions even more of what makes them visually unique.
Lore wise it actually make sense that the Hegemony also make use of high-tech ships. Strike Force Pollux are soldiers from the Domain so it's not surprising that they are armed with high-end weaponry like Paragons and other high-tech toys.
In engagements, the Aurora's large energy turrets annihilate targets at extreme ranges with impunity, while missile launcher hardpoints deal with what is left. Most blueprints required to manufacture an Aurora-class ships are closely guarded corporate secrets, but a few have also seen service in the Hegemony Defense Force and rarely, in the hands of enterprising mercenary captains.
I'd really prefer to see more visual uniformity amongst the Factions, to give them a more coherent look and feel.
well..... they were sent from the domain "many years ago" on slower than light travel, so I'm not entirely certain that that is the case
low tech: started "many years ago" before the invention of effective energy weapon and shielding, most of which brought to the sector by Pollux
midline: current level civilian tech, declassified weapons for civilian and local militia use, "standard" tech level at the time of collapse
high tech: cutting edge domain technology at time of collapse, kept in working order and safeguarded by the elitist Tri-Tachyon corporation
It's a bit as if we would start building WW2 fighter planes again after a major collapse of civilization, because nobody has the know-how to assemble a modern jet.
I don't actually like the idea of factions having completely non-overlapping ship sets. Some unique ships are good, but it feels like stuff like the Hound or the Lasher, standard workhorse type ships, should be pretty universally available.I agree with this in principle- I just want to see paintjob variations, really, that gives each Faction more of a cohesive look visually. Ideally, they'd have small stat-line differences, but just having them use a Sprite swap would be good enough and easily implemented :)
I think less well off/smaller/independent factions should use a hodgepodge of ships, but stronger/larger factions should have a very consistent feel and style.I agree with this strongly. It's quite OK to engage in a lot of asset re-use for minor factions, and if done cleverly, it can create a feeling that they're a blending-point, culturally, with the other groups they share space with. With the big factions, I kind of expect a lot more uniformity.
I don't quite understand the question. Is there a missing negation somewhere, maybe?More that I didn't really express myself clearly due to my limited understanding of the underlying mechanic, sorry :)
Anyhow, the question is, "If Factions have strict preferences to build ABC, but only have Blueprint D, will there be a mechanic that will allow that to happen, or will the Faction not build anything at all?"
oh, from a gameplay perspective, sure....
which is why paintjobs would probably be the best way of going about this, the coding and art involved though.... :P
oh, from a gameplay perspective, sure....
which is why paintjobs would probably be the best way of going about this, the coding and art involved though.... :P
That's been my favorite idea from the start; it's been mentioned several times over the months/years. If the sprites could each accommodate some minor visual modifications based on a faction's color or logo (color might be less tacky...), such as with Mass Effect's armor stripe colors, it could go a long way to making it much easier to identify enemy/friendly ships in the heat of battle, and lend some unity to factions' ships.
Sure, it'll take some time to code and make visual modifications, but I think it's an effort that'll pay off in the long run.
That's been my favorite idea from the start; it's been mentioned several times over the months/years. If the sprites could each accommodate some minor visual modifications based on a faction's color or logo (color might be less tacky...), such as with Mass Effect's armor stripe colors, it could go a long way to making it much easier to identify enemy/friendly ships in the heat of battle, and lend some unity to factions' ships.
Sure, it'll take some time to code and make visual modifications, but I think it's an effort that'll pay off in the long run.
That was actually tested, let me point you to this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2888.msg41083#msg41083). Doesn't look too pretty, in my opinion.
Heard nothing official about icons, though. Some of the backrock ships look great with them.Spoiler(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a350/cycerin/brdy_convergence_zps0b8ab487.png)(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a350/cycerin/brdy_eschaton_zps6983f3a3.png)[close]
As far as tech levels: think of it in terms of technology having mostly plateaued a long time ago. The "tech levels" more represent different schools of design thought. Sure, some slight improvements to engine technology may have been required to create the "high tech" ship designs, but they were far from being a qualitative change, and likely came with their own set of trade-offs.high tech ships are more expensive to build and maintain, for one. Which means you can have more low tech ships than you can high tech, even if the high tech are individually more powerful it means little if they're overwhelmed. Something like that, right? :p
That was actually tested, let me point you to this (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2888.msg41083#msg41083). Doesn't look too pretty, in my opinion.
Heard nothing official about icons, though. Some of the backrock ships look great with them.Spoiler(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a350/cycerin/brdy_convergence_zps0b8ab487.png)(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a350/cycerin/brdy_eschaton_zps6983f3a3.png)[close]
Looks very nice. Question about the fleet preferences: it seems they are variant dependent, so how does it know if a specific variant can be made? Also, would it be possible to have "groupings" of ships? For example, if all of a sudden no carriers are available then maybe the patrol should swap its fighters out for frigates (so the groups would be carrier+fighters with the fallback being a number of frigates).
On the orbiting supply fleets - would it look good to have shuttles going between the fleet and its target? Probably not clickable or saved or anything, but just visuals to show activity.
Are you planning on tweaking costs/rewards a bit? It seems hand in hand with the economy - balancing the trader and raider playstyles just a bit. (Bloody Hegemony wants 50% of my take for giving a letter of Marque... grumble...)
Looks very nice. Question about the fleet preferences: it seems they are variant dependent, so how does it know if a specific variant can be made? Also, would it be possible to have "groupings" of ships? For example, if all of a sudden no carriers are available then maybe the patrol should swap its fighters out for frigates (so the groups would be carrier+fighters with the fallback being a number of frigates).
Right now, it just assumes everything is available, both in terms of hulls and weapons. Later on, what I'd like to do is generate variants based on what's available, with the specific variant being the "ideal" that it will aim for. Hopefully that'll pan out.
Edit: As far as grouping, you can tell whether a ship was added successfully or not; managing groups would be done on the level of the code putting together the fleet, not the code picking a ship.On the orbiting supply fleets - would it look good to have shuttles going between the fleet and its target? Probably not clickable or saved or anything, but just visuals to show activity.
It might, yeah. Not something I really want to mess with right now, though. That kind of stuff is important, but I'd like to beat everything into playable shape first.Are you planning on tweaking costs/rewards a bit? It seems hand in hand with the economy - balancing the trader and raider playstyles just a bit. (Bloody Hegemony wants 50% of my take for giving a letter of Marque... grumble...)
Yeah, will have to do that for this release. Probably pretty extensively.
Adding an extra step where fleets orbit each world, loading and offloading cargo for several days, made a huge difference in terms of feel.
Are you planning on tweaking costs/rewards a bit? It seems hand in hand with the economy - balancing the trader and raider playstyles just a bit. (Bloody Hegemony wants 50% of my take for giving a letter of Marque... grumble...)
Yeah, will have to do that for this release. Probably pretty extensively.
On this, are you going to allow new fleet behavior to be modded in at some point? There is only so much that can realistically be done with the current available fleet assignments... :P
The small fleets act really finicky, frequently they will decide to make 180s or just spin in circles because there are too many fleets they are interacting with. What ends up happening is looking like a giant mosquito mating ball, also very annoying trying to catch a fleet even if they are significantly slower.
Perhaps cut down on "opportunistic" behavior so small fleets dont get chased around by large fleets causing them to fly around looking like fools.
Yay! Will you try anything yet to invert the (at the moment upside-down) difficulty curve? Trading should offer a great starting point to that end, shouldn't it?
It's a start, yeah, but I don't think the pieces are quite there to make the endgame more challenging. That's almost certainly going to take giving AI fleets skilled combat officers. I'm more looking at balancing out trade income vs combat income, which isn't quite the same as changing the curve, though that can't help but change somewhat anyway. Hopefully in a good direction, but this isn't a pass where I'm terribly worried about the curve, beyond it being playable.