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[Alex]

Why do I keep getting this feeling that Seeker will be much much easier to implement once 0.8 drop... 

Second, on the real-time layer once the destination is set, a popup text will flash or appear that tells the player they have locked a destination, and pressing space or whatever will cancel it(something that is not bound to any other movement or menu)

That's the tricky part; a lot of buttons are used for stuff. E.G. space is pause. At that point, might as well have a dedicated control.

I don't have an elegant solution for adding this functionality without a dedicated control, but I'd go so far as to argue that not only is it worth the addition, but that the game should be having a bit more emphasis on your destination / route planning to begin with.  For how much of the game you spend traveling and planning trips and with the addition of time-sensitive missions, I'd say that the game should not only have a way to preserve your destination after short-term course adjustments, but also support things like estimated time of arrival and remaining fuel and supply reserves.  I know you're wary of adding features for their own sake and I can't thank you enough for designing with that general sentiment, but right now trip planning is a very approximate art.  Having to eyeball fuel reserves can be problematic even in this version of the game, and I can't imagine it's going to become less important in the upcoming versions.

Hmm. Good points all around; let me give this some thought. I think I'll probably wait until I've done more playtesting before deciding either way on this, but will very much keep the idea in mind. If tracking fuel reserves does indeed turn out to be too much of a hassle, this could work out.

Now that's just cruel.

Sorry not sorry

speaking of challenge. Now that we have drones and ancient relics as early game cannon fodders, does that mean pirates (and other faction fleets, to a lesser extent) will stop being such pushovers?

Not entirely sure. I wouldn't want to remove pirates as an early-game-fodder option entirely, but there are some other things in the pipeline regarding that, so I guess we'll see.

So from what I gather, there is gonna be no markets in the outer systems, which I'm gonna go ahead and assume takes up about 90% of the map space (unless smaller ones are procedurely generated?).

Correct - well, somewhere in the range from "no" to "maybe a couple of lost ones".

That said, are we ever going to ever run into faction fleets out there? Like giant exploration or colony-starting fleets to fight and keep things interesting, or is that not what you're going for?

Maybe. I mean, this sort of thing is definitely a possibility, right. And I'd expect to see pirates, other scavengers, etc out in the wild. Can't say exactly what set of things it'll end up with; still a bunch of work to do there as far as putting together a solid set. It's also likely to be added to over time, so if the initial version of it doesn't have some of the stuff we've been discussing here, it's quite possible it'll just be added in later.

[TheDTYP]

Gotcha. The update is looking sick so far! I've always been stoked for the game to grow star system, content, and general world-building wise and this looks like a HUGE step in that direction. And finally a new faction!

[Voyager I]

Things I'd be happy if some kind of destination / trip calculator UI feature could support:

Distance to destination LY
Remaining fuel in LY, maybe also in days (the current display of raw quantity and usage rate is probaby the least useful metric, since it requires math to produce any information about what your fleet is actually capable of).
Estimated time to destination, either at current speed or at general travel speed.
Supplies remaining measured in days, rather than raw quantity.

Hopefully all of this information would be visible somewhere in the overworld UI.


It would also be helpful if there was some sort of route planning feature I could access in stations / from the map screen that could give me rough approximations of travel times so I could evaluate the pressure of time sensitive missions or distant bounties before committing to them.  This would somehow need to be able to account for acceleration time entering and leaving sustained burn, travel impediments, and perhaps even indirect courses around obstacles like nebulae.  In a dream world, you could maybe even plot an indirect course to a destination in the star map and then have your autopilot follow that as its route to the destination.  I have no idea how feasible it would be to code something like that, though.

[Deshara]

=
In the (likely) event that nothing like that makes it into the game, there is one function I'd want to see: a 'resume course' option, or at least a settable destination marker; there are, at the moment, a number of things in the game that cause you to want to make minor course adjustments around them (hyperspace storms, pirate fleets, stars), and - especially for long-distance transits - it's a bit of a pain to have to re-set your course each time.

I'll second this request.  It's going to become even more of a concern with an expansion of the star map and larger general emphasis on travel.

Third. Having to constantly readjust or click/hold down mouse non stop is very tiring way of playing.

As a thought experiment: how might one do this without introducing an additional control specifically to resume

Simple, take the mechanic where when you release control of your fleet in close orbit of a celestial body it puts you in orbit only when set on a course it simply resumes course after a selected detour has been reached. No UI on the flight screen for it, just make it a part of the course setting-- you can select a detour and it'll return to course after unless you click on empty space for your fleet to lay in orbit in

[Histidine]

Can a mod suppress the creation of the predefined core world star systems (as done at present) while letting the procedural generator do its usual thing, after which mod code adds its own markets to said procgen systems? (Rereading the blog post suggests yes, but just to be sure)

=
In the (likely) event that nothing like that makes it into the game, there is one function I'd want to see: a 'resume course' option, or at least a settable destination marker; there are, at the moment, a number of things in the game that cause you to want to make minor course adjustments around them (hyperspace storms, pirate fleets, stars), and - especially for long-distance transits - it's a bit of a pain to have to re-set your course each time.

I'll second this request.  It's going to become even more of a concern with an expansion of the star map and larger general emphasis on travel.

Third. Having to constantly readjust or click/hold down mouse non stop is very tiring way of playing.

As a thought experiment: how might one do this without introducing an additional control specifically to resume course?

I think the usual RTS Shift-click waypoint system + adding a command insert functionality would be good. (I help out with a game that already uses this)
Needs no additional GUI buttons or changes to the current behaviour when clicking normally.

RTS waypoints normally work as follows:

• Click: Go to point immediately (normal behaviour)
• Shift* + click: Queue waypoint; will go to points in the order they are given

For our purpose we want these extra functions:

• Space* + click: Insert waypoint at front of queue
• Shift + Space + click: Insert waypoint in between existing waypoints, if close enough to the line between them
• Shift + click on existing point: Remove waypoint

Example use: Player fleet is flying along in hyperspace. A storm is directly ahead. Player inserts two waypoints off to the side of the storm with space-click. Fleet follows these waypoints around storm, then resumes heading for its original destination without further player input.

If the player needs to do complex manuevers (like evading a pursuing fleet) it'll likely end up being easier to manually control the fleet manually (without waypoints) until the situation is resolved, but that's a given.

*The fact that SS already uses Shift and Space for other things is an obvious issue with the proposal. One or the other function will need to go to a different key in each case.

[ArkAngel]

As a thought experiment: how might one do this without introducing an additional control specifically to resume course?

Any reason it wouldn't work as ability button down near emergency burn and the others? Seems easier ro add versus a new button/click place.

[Alex]

It would also be helpful if there was some sort of route planning feature I could access in stations / from the map screen that could give me rough approximations of travel times so I could evaluate the pressure of time sensitive missions or distant bounties before committing to them.  This would somehow need to be able to account for acceleration time entering and leaving sustained burn, travel impediments, and perhaps even indirect courses around obstacles like nebulae.  In a dream world, you could maybe even plot an indirect course to a destination in the star map and then have your autopilot follow that as its route to the destination.  I have no idea how feasible it would be to code something like that, though.

Now that, I think, is going a bit far. At some point, one has to actually play the game, and being able to eyeball things like that is part of being able to do well. It's also the sort of thing where it's tempting to try and estimate and make all these complex calculations, but in reality it would almost never produce the right answer.

In my experience, the more stuff a computation like this tries to consider, the more misleading it ends up being. You're much better off giving the player some primary facts (this far, this much fuel left, this many days assuming a straight line and current speed) and letting *them* make the more complex calculations in their head. Not at a math-level, necessarily - but an experienced player is going to eyeball this kind of stuff more accurately then an algorithm that makes all sorts of assumptions that will inevitably turn out to be wrong.

Simple, take the mechanic where when you release control of your fleet in close orbit of a celestial body it puts you in orbit only when set on a course it simply resumes course after a selected detour has been reached. No UI on the flight screen for it, just make it a part of the course setting-- you can select a detour and it'll return to course after unless you click on empty space for your fleet to lay in orbit in

I think that's glossing over the details of exactly how you would cancel it, which is the actual key point here.

Can a mod suppress the creation of the predefined core world star systems (as done at present) while letting the procedural generator do its usual thing, after which mod code adds its own markets to said procgen systems? (Rereading the blog post suggests yes, but just to be sure)

Yeah. There's another entry point for the procgen step, which can be configured in setting.json.

I think the usual RTS Shift-click waypoint system + adding a command insert functionality would be good. (I help out with a game that already uses this)
Needs no additional GUI buttons or changes to the current behaviour when clicking normally.

RTS waypoints normally work as follows:

• Click: Go to point immediately (normal behaviour)
• Shift* + click: Queue waypoint; will go to points in the order they are given

For our purpose we want these extra functions:

• Space* + click: Insert waypoint at front of queue
• Shift + Space + click: Insert waypoint in between existing waypoints, if close enough to the line between them
• Shift + click on existing point: Remove waypoint

Example use: Player fleet is flying along in hyperspace. A storm is directly ahead. Player inserts two waypoints off to the side of the storm with space-click. Fleet follows these waypoints around storm, then resumes heading for its original destination without further player input.

If the player needs to do complex manuevers (like evading a pursuing fleet) it'll likely end up being easier to manually control the fleet manually (without waypoints) until the situation is resolved, but that's a given.

*The fact that SS already uses Shift and Space for other things is an obvious issue with the proposal. One or the other function will need to go to a different key in each case.

Whoa there A "maneuver to avoid whatever, then press <key> to resume course" scheme seems a lot simpler than that. I'd love to figure out a way to avoid having an extra key involved in that, though. But if you don't (and, say, simply resuming course will make autopilot take over after a few seconds), then how would one cancel this entirely?

Any reason it wouldn't work as ability button down near emergency burn and the others? Seems easier ro add versus a new button/click place.

Generally speaking, the ability slots shouldn't be a way to access basic UI features, they're just different things.

[Gothars]

A "maneuver to avoid whatever, then press <key> to resume course" scheme seems a lot simpler than that. I'd love to figure out a way to avoid having an extra key involved in that, though.

How about this: to divert from a course you have to keep the LMB pressed, otherwise you will rubber band back to your original course.
The course can be canceled by either going to the map and clicking it (i.e. a destination marker) again or by keeping LMB down for a long duration (30s? Basically when it's likely that you gave up on you original destination).
Oh and when clicking on an enemy fleet you automatically approach it without rubber banding to the original course, but when you then click on empty space that behavior resumes.

The "keep LMB pressed" works well with the fine control you usually want during course divergence anyway (to avoid storms or intercept fleets). Also, I think its quite intuitive and doesn't require any explanation.

[CrashToDesktop]

How about this: to divert from a course you have to keep the LMB pressed, otherwise you will rubber band back to your original course.

There's always double-clicking to cancel the set destination as well.

[CaptainWinky]

In a way, I prefer pirates that use standard ships like they did during the 0.5x era because if the player was good enough, he can board their ships almost immediately after starting a new game.  Currently, pirates use mostly (D) ships, which are useless hulks not worth boarding or using.  Boarding is useless until player starts fighting mostly major factions, which means endgame.  If we have malfunctioning robots as low-level fodder, then pirates at large do not always need to fly clunkers.  We can have more pirates aside from named bounty fleets that use normal ships.  Do keep the paint job though; pirates are one of the more distinctive factions despite shoddy hardware.

Currently, pirates are simply the space version of low-level vermin like rats and goblins that exist to feed levels and vendor trash to a new player.  After the player levels up, he can join the big leagues and fight Hegemony and Tri-Tachyon for more rewarding loot and ships.

Maybe if there were a shipyard where the player could get a (D) ship overhauled to standard specs for a small fee, they would be more tempting to board.  I know that I've boarded a few more (D) ships than usual when playing with the Tiandong mod, which lets you convert (D) ships as well as regular ships.  Otherwise I agree, they're rarely worth the trouble.

[Morgan Rue]

On the pirates thing: I think there should be two types of pirates. The disorganized idiots flying clunkers, modified civ ships, freighters, and the occasional stolen low tech frigate, and the organized pirates with proper gear who are ready to tear you apart. The disorganized ones should spawn randomly throughout the sector, but never in large numbers. The organized ones should spawn from pirate controlled planets and stations, and should spawn in relatively large numbers if the pirates want to raid a specific market. Fleet size would be based on market stability, as is normal. Raids by the organized ones should attract larger numbers of disorganized ones.

[Voyager I]

It would also be helpful if there was some sort of route planning feature I could access in stations / from the map screen that could give me rough approximations of travel times so I could evaluate the pressure of time sensitive missions or distant bounties before committing to them.  This would somehow need to be able to account for acceleration time entering and leaving sustained burn, travel impediments, and perhaps even indirect courses around obstacles like nebulae.  In a dream world, you could maybe even plot an indirect course to a destination in the star map and then have your autopilot follow that as its route to the destination.  I have no idea how feasible it would be to code something like that, though.

Now that, I think, is going a bit far. At some point, one has to actually play the game, and being able to eyeball things like that is part of being able to do well. It's also the sort of thing where it's tempting to try and estimate and make all these complex calculations, but in reality it would almost never produce the right answer.

In my experience, the more stuff a computation like this tries to consider, the more misleading it ends up being. You're much better off giving the player some primary facts (this far, this much fuel left, this many days assuming a straight line and current speed) and letting *them* make the more complex calculations in their head. Not at a math-level, necessarily - but an experienced player is going to eyeball this kind of stuff more accurately then an algorithm that makes all sorts of assumptions that will inevitably turn out to be wrong.

I might be overestimating the needs for precise route planning, but it would be really nice if there was at least some way to estimate how long it would get me from one place to another before committing to a time-sensitive undertaking.  It feels really bad to buy a bunch of stuff for a mission, fly halfway across the sector, and them have it time out a day's journey from the jump point.  It's a fringe issue on the current map because you're mostly just travelling between the same few systems and it doesn't take very long to get familiarized, but with how much bigger the sector is about to get I'm not sure that will continue to be the case.  Of course, you know the details better than I do at this point, so maybe it's just not going to be as much of an issue as I'm fearing.

As someone who's played Elite Dangerous and is familiar with its farcical ETA readout I very much understand your point about technical limitations trying to create useful algorithms for very vaguely defined problems, though I still think even something like a basic "This is the fastest your fleet could possibly get here going full burn in a straight line" calculation might at least provide a useful starting point for player estimations.

[Deshara]

Simple, take the mechanic where when you release control of your fleet in close orbit of a celestial body it puts you in orbit only when set on a course it simply resumes course after a selected detour has been reached. No UI on the flight screen for it, just make it a part of the course setting-- you can select a detour and it'll return to course after unless you click on empty space for your fleet to lay in orbit in

I think that's glossing over the details of exactly how you would cancel it, which is the actual key point here.

Clicking empty space unsets the set course, but clicking an object sets it as a detour

[Alex]

How about this: to divert from a course you have to keep the LMB pressed, otherwise you will rubber band back to your original course.
The course can be canceled by either going to the map and clicking it (i.e. a destination marker) again or by keeping LMB down for a long duration (30s? Basically when it's likely that you gave up on you original destination).
Oh and when clicking on an enemy fleet you automatically approach it without rubber banding to the original course, but when you then click on empty space that behavior resumes.

The "keep LMB pressed" works well with the fine control you usually want during course divergence anyway (to avoid storms or intercept fleets). Also, I think its quite intuitive and doesn't require any explanation.

I mean, I was thinking along similar lines, but it doesn't seem good. Basing cancelling on a duration, it's going to be one-size-fits none since it's situational. Appreciate the thought you've put into it, though! Hmm. At this point, it seems like an extra control might be the cleanest way to go, if things do go in that direction. On the bright side, another control in the campaign might not be a bad thing and could help increase the feeling of "doing something" during travel.

There's always double-clicking to cancel the set destination as well.

That's bound to result in some false positives, unfortunately. Plus it's a new control

Clicking empty space unsets the set course, but clicking an object sets it as a detour

That wouldn't work when you're trying to detour around, say, a hyperstorm.

As someone who's played Elite Dangerous and is familiar with its farcical ETA readout I very much understand your point about technical limitations trying to create useful algorithms for very vaguely defined problems, though I still think even something like a basic "This is the fastest your fleet could possibly get here going full burn in a straight line" calculation might at least provide a useful starting point for player estimations.

Yeah, I think we're on exactly the same page here.

[Dri]

Hey Alex, could you share with us how many new ship hulls are currently in the dev build? We know of the two drone ships and the Mora, anything else make it in? No need to even describe the hulls (unless you want too), just a number would be great!

Probs a tad off-topic but my curiosity is killing me!

(Also, damn, you guys are really hung-up over this auto-navigate thing. Sheesh.)