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[nomadic_leader]

This might be an interesting way to work in lore gradually and reward exploration. Like so:

-The available missions in the main menu depend on which campaign character is currently loaded.

-These menu missions relate to important or interesting historical battles in the sector that are alluded to in planet descriptions, conversations with other characters, etc.

-Main menu missions contain a historical account or whatever in the description, and a little more elaborate scripting in the combat to simulate events besides just two groups of ships slugging it out.

-Some main menu missions get unlocked by character progression: either from levelup, getting a commission, reaching certain cash thresholds, buying a certian ship, or whatever. Just so that the lore gradually unfolds without smothering players all at once.

-Other main menu missions get unlocked by exploration. For example, when you land on Ogygia in Penelope's Star system, the decription says:

A major impact event has left much of an entire hemisphere of Ogygia a cold lava-sea sunken some tens of kilometers below the mean elevation. Little remains of human visitation except stripped foundations and, oddly, half of a rad-hot Onslaught-class battleship hull at the bottom of a fracture-canyon.

So landing on the planet and seeing that description should unlock a mission wherein you get to see how that rad-hot Onslaught ended up in the canyon.

Anyway this accomplishes two things:
-Rewards exploration
-Makes the menu missions convey lore when and how the campaign designer wants.
-gives players a little interlude from grinding to participate in big battles where they don't have to worry about losing ships.

[Dabor]

Rewards for exploration, if they exist, should exist on a per-game basis. Using a system like you're suggesting, once you've explored once in one campaign, you would no longer have any benefit from doing so.

There's no advantage to making lore-tied-in battles unlock after you visit places. It would be just as meaningful to find a place that you've done a battle for than find a place and do a battle for it.

Further, I find battles to sort of be a relaxed side skirmish mode. If there are people out there who just enjoy the battles and find the campaign unappealing (possibly just due to not having much free time and wanting to do just one or two battles) forcing them to dig through the campaign would be a bother, and an "unlock all missions" mod would very quickly come out.

[nomadic_leader]

Dabor:
Your first paragraph: What kind of reward in-game? Cash? XP? I disagree. People who like exploring care about lore, so they should be rewarded in lore. If you reward exploration with XP or cash, it will just 'force' minimaxers who don't care about lore to do something  they don't care about to get a handout.

If the handout for an intangible thing is another intangible thing, then it's just a matter for people who like intangible things, and nobody else need to bother. As it should be. And if it isn't rewarding on subsequent playthroughs: so what? They don't have to play the mission each time. If you offer cash/XP/in-game perk for exploration on each playthrough, then people are 'forced' to reexplore the same planets each time they play the campaign, which really sucks since landing on every planet in each playthrough to get a little handout is totally boring.

So that perhaps is a non-argument.

Your 2nd paragraph: I don't understand it actually. Can you rephrase?

Your 3rd paragraph: Fine, let there be that unlock mod. What's wrong with that? Cheating mods always exist; they appeal to a lot of people.

[Dabor]

If the handout for an intangible thing is another intangible thing,

This is the crux of my problem with this suggestion, and the only thing that really matters. Missions aren't an intangible thing - they're an interesting little extra option in gameplay terms.

The people who play this game seriously "caring about lore" will be few and far between. And out of the ones who do, they're not necessarily interested in playing missions - once you've read the mission introduction, you don't need to actually play it out: no more lore information is gained from that. You play it purely because you'll have fun playing it. And there's no advantage in denying people that option.

You call a mod to unlock it a cheating mod. You say that flying to every planet for a tangible reward would be unenjoyable and a bother.

So what if I find some people discussing some cool mission and different ways to play it, so I decide to open up my game and play it. Woops! You have to either load into your game and spend 10 mins flying to some arbitrary planet or download an unlock mod. Why is that an advantage?

I have no problem with exploring the world unlocking lore info. It sounds like a nice idea, in fact. But missions are not "intangible" and I have no idea why you'd claim them to be. It's not you unlocking some text or a paint job. It's something you might want to do for fun for completely unrelated reasons.

I see no reason why the people who want to play missions would be the people who want to explore. In fact, to me, those two groups should be somewhat separate by nature - missions are a good way to get some playing done for people without much time to play, whereas exploring the lore could only really be rewarding if you're spending a good deal of time digging into it.

Since your definition of "explore" seems to just be "click a bunch of preset locations once" why do you consider a mod that circumvents that cheating? While it's hard to really call anything cheating in a single-player game, that seems like an example of skipping something boring and tedious. I can think of various games that had a reward that I wanted for checking a bunch of locations - even at maximum efficiency: running straight from each one to each one with a guide, I still found it a profound waste of time.

But again, I'll bring it back to a single point. What's the relationship between "visiting every planet once to read the lore" and "playing missions"? I visit lots of planets without being concerned with lore (having fun in the process), and I've played plenty of missions (having fun in the process), and often don't read the briefing. How is interlinking these two things improving the game, for me or for anyone?

[Megas]

Re: Onslaught wreck
Fluff and stuff like that only interests me if I can repair it, get an item, or otherwise get some in-game reward from it in some way.  Otherwise, it is beneath my notice.

[Pushover]

I actually like this, since it pushes the lore a little more. You get a little more background as to the events of the sector. Was there a battle around the Terraforming Platform in Asharu? Where was the first Hyperion launched? What was the battle around some of the siphon platforms? One could make just the 2 tutorial missions and random battle the only 3 missions available, but as one explores the sector, more get unlocked.

However, I would add something in settings.json so that if someone wanted to play all the missions without 'discovering' them, they could.

[Weltall]

Adding storyline events and content might break the whole sandbox feelings of the game, or make it more enjoyable. The sure is for me my game kind of ended when I managed to get myself a couple of capital ships and after that, beat any battle I ended up upon, with of course larger fleets. Sure potentially I could keep grinding, get even more capital ships and make any enemy fleet avoid me, but still I do not think it would take that long. I love the base game, but for better or worse, I can't see myself playing long with just vanilla. I get from this, almost the same feeling as Minecraft. Awesome game, wonderful potential, but like others prefer only the vanilla game, I want more.

Definitely adding something "more" in the game would be great. It is all good to killl stuff, board ships as prizes, raise a fortune and become powerful. Having an extra reason to do all these and keep doing them after there is no "more", would definitely be great. I do not believe even a storyline can break the sandbox feeling of a game, as long as there is more stuff to do afterwards.

[Linnis]

I do agree that the mission system could be really great.
1. They can present lore and fluff.
2. They put the player in unique senarios where insandbox a player will baisically never get into.
That said, having to "play a different game" while one is in their sand box game is very contrived - acheivement way to force feed or bait people to playing missions. Honestly I don't think it a great idea.


But rather how about this, the mission themselves are a series of branching lore revealing senarios.

By beating a mission the player unlocks additional missions to play, sometimes one more, sometimes multiple.
Depending on completion new missions will appear.
Each new mission will reveal deeper and depper lore.

Then in the end, when you beat an onslaught with a buffalo, you get the ultimet peice of lore presentation that tells you the deepest darkest secret of starsector. Like how the gates collapsed, or what is happening outside the sector, or a glimpse of the future what not.

Thus by introducing progression in lore reveals, a story can be told with plot twists and all.

[Weltall]

Still I do not see this feature as something of high important for now. I remember I read that the final Galaxy will be much larger, so that means the lore could be spread out across it and added after more stars appear. Every time I see the inactive gates, I smile. My imagination runs wild thinking of the future Starsector~