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).
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.
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?
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
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'.
Hi, and welcome to the forum!
It's hard to say exactly - I haven't gotten into that part codewise yet, and haven't done the design fully enough. I will say that I've been thinking of exactly these scenarios, and also think they are very interesting
There are just a lot of things flying around design-wise, and it's a question of making it all fit as cleanly and elegantly as possible.
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?
I mentioned it in the context of
not doing it, specifically to avoid the above outcome
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.
Definitely thought about it, but outposts is a different (though naturally related) topic that I'm not at all prepared to discuss right now.
And finally, do you feel that the star-map is becoming too cramped when viewed on a screen such as this. In a very busy Corvus sector, featuring a number of mods, the star-map becomes very cluttered.
Yes, keeping an eye on that. For example, in this screen, the minimap is always centered on the player, and is sized to include the target star, but not the entire Sector. This helps avoid the clutter when showing nearby stars, and even when it's showing a far-off star (and thus a lot of other stars in between), yeah, it looks cluttered, but it still conveys what it needs to there, which is the relative location of the other star system to the player.
But, yes, this is a concern and something I'm keeping my eye on. As are map-related things in general, I think there's some revamping to do.
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...
Yes! and yes.
Also gonna need a lot of those "planetary surface" shots for all the different types of worlds, too! :O
Ah, that's actually a placeholder illustration in that screenshot, though it happens to look alright for that specific planet, with the ruins on it and whatnot. It's supposed to be something generic and survey themed, not planet specific. Would be a bit much to have custom illustrations there for every occasion, both in terms of work for David and video memory requirements.
