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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Cartography  (Read 66987 times)

Wyvern

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #75 on: November 29, 2016, 09:49:23 AM »

As a thought experiment: how might one do this without introducing an additional control specifically to resume course?
Have the marked destination show up near the edge of the screen with one of those bubble-arrow UI thingies that indicates there's a thing off-screen that way.  Then the player can just click on that to resume course.
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Zarcon

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #76 on: November 29, 2016, 09:54:33 AM »

LOVE IT!  :)

Only sad part is now I'm that much more hungry for the next release/patch, lol.  It's gonna rock!!!
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CaptainWinky

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #77 on: November 29, 2016, 11:39:35 AM »

LOVE IT!  :)

Only sad part is now I'm that much more hungry for the next release/patch, lol.  It's gonna rock!!!

Seconded.  When I saw the screenshot with the 0.7.2 star systems taking up a fraction of the total map, I got stoked.
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Megas

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #78 on: November 29, 2016, 11:41:29 AM »

I probably would prefer storms eat fuel instead of supplies (via CR reduction), since supplies tend to be more expensive than fuel.  Currently, fuel consumption is minor compared to supplies.  Of course, storms eating fuel has its problems others mentioned.
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xenoargh

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #79 on: November 29, 2016, 12:50:43 PM »

Overall:  COOL.

Questions: 

1.  Does this mean that SS is going to stay really focused on just one Player Fleet?  I'm not really seeing much there that suggested that we're going to finally see some larger-scale gameplay.

2.  Exploration sounds fun, if there's a point to it.  In the current build, there largely wasn't; trade didn't work well to encourage long journeys and only Bounties got me to fly my fleet anywhere unusual.  What's the sales pitch on exploration rather than sitting around?  Weapons, ships or other gear we can't get otherwise or greater challenges or caches of trade goods all sound like good reasons; so would, "because you want to build your mini-empire away from the explored / occupied hub eventually".  Or both, preferably.  Or perhaps it's time for a long-term objective in this sandbox?

3.  I like the Burn concept, except that I don't think it'll work unless Fleet AI deals appropriately.  I.E., "I'm a giant Pirate fleet currently chasing some lame AI thing, Player fleet will become intercept-able if they don't dodge within 10 seconds and can't dodge me at all in 15; time to chase Player Fleet".  Right now, this mainly seems like a way to avoid having a Fast Travel system and mechanics to obviate the Boring of Travel and I think it'll be abuseable by players who figure out how to use that high speed to catch things with huge fleets, once they figure out the mechanics; I suspect long fast swings past Systems will do it pretty easily.  I'm really glad that the Boring of Travel keeps getting worked on, don't get me wrong; I just want to emphasize that this is probably one of the bigger issues with Fun if the SS universe is getting vast in scale.
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Megas

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #80 on: November 29, 2016, 01:13:45 PM »

The main reason (for me) to travel is usually to visit shops for more rare ships and weapons.  Occasionally, to fight a bounty to get more reputation and/or chance to board a very rare ship (e.g., Hyperion or Onslaught XIV).

Empire building may be fun, mainly as a means to invade and conquer other factions.
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Alex

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #81 on: November 29, 2016, 01:15:00 PM »

As a thought experiment: how might one do this without introducing an additional control specifically to resume course?
Have the marked destination show up near the edge of the screen with one of those bubble-arrow UI thingies that indicates there's a thing off-screen that way.  Then the player can just click on that to resume course.

Hmm. Gets weird when it's around the lower-left of the screen. Works in combat because the UI is set in a bit from the edges, but the campaign UI wouldn't look good if you did that. Nice idea, though - possibly a fixed button somewhere (with a shortcut) would do the job. Which is sort of the same as a dedicated control...



1.  Does this mean that SS is going to stay really focused on just one Player Fleet?  I'm not really seeing much there that suggested that we're going to finally see some larger-scale gameplay.

For this release, yeah. Beyond that, we'll see(tm), though if we were to have outposts, then it'd probably make sense to have more than one fleet, though how much control you have over any hypothetical extra fleets is an open question. Current answer would be "minimal".

I'm not sure how this map goes one way or the other on this - I think it's flexible enough to handle whatever is needed with a few adjustments - a new filter mode, etc.

2.  Exploration sounds fun, if there's a point to it.  In the current build, there largely wasn't; trade didn't work well to encourage long journeys and only Bounties got me to fly my fleet anywhere unusual.  What's the sales pitch on exploration rather than sitting around?  Weapons, ships or other gear we can't get otherwise or greater challenges or caches of trade goods all sound like good reasons; so would, "because you want to build your mini-empire away from the explored / occupied hub eventually".  Or both, preferably.  Or perhaps it's time for a long-term objective in this sandbox?

This is a great question. The reasons that you'll want to explore should ideally be many; let me list a few:

1) Getting a leg up in the early game - finding some easy salvage, etc. An easier alternative to fighting (and finding) pirates, and scaling up from there.
2) Later-game challenge, but that's all I'll say here because spoilers
3) Missions! Which would hopefully work to get you to go somewhere, and then run into interesting things to do on the way, ideally turning a "go here to finish mission" into something with a lot more branching.

There's also:
4) Finding planets for outposts
5) Finding things that improve your outposts

But as outposts aren't going to make it into this release, these are unfortunately not much of a reason. This is a bit of a problem - rather, it's just going to be a rough edge in this release. All the planet surveying stuff, and any exploration-related rewards that would tie into it, don't have a purpose just yet.

Will probably rig up some temporary stop-gap rewards to make it a tad better for now, but, yeah. The idea is that exploration eventually builds into higher-level gameplay, so *just* exploration without the higher level stuff won't be quite as appealing. Hopefully, the other reasons to explore will be sufficient for the time being.


3.  I like the Burn concept, except that I don't think it'll work unless Fleet AI deals appropriately.  I.E., "I'm a giant Pirate fleet currently chasing some lame AI thing, Player fleet will become intercept-able if they don't dodge within 10 seconds and can't dodge me at all in 15; time to chase Player Fleet".  Right now, this mainly seems like a way to avoid having a Fast Travel system and mechanics to obviate the Boring of Travel and I think it'll be abuseable by players who figure out how to use that high speed to catch things with huge fleets, once they figure out the mechanics; I suspect long fast swings past Systems will do it pretty easily.  I'm really glad that the Boring of Travel keeps getting worked on, don't get me wrong; I just want to emphasize that this is probably one of the bigger issues with Fun if the SS universe is getting vast in scale.

I get what you're saying, yeah. Will need to playtest more to see how exploitable it is, my guess is that if a fleet sees you coming and runs at *anything* other than a vector directly along your current flight path, you won't be able to engage them. Was also thinking (just yesterday, actually) about whether or not SB being on should prevent you from being able to engage for a bit, but this might not be needed. There's also potential for some anti-SB abilities (e.g. "drive interdictor", etc).

It's a question of having time to get to everything; focusing on the most important things right now - "having faster travel" is 100% necessary. The fleet AI being able to use this ability or understand how to take advantage of it, and other abilities that play around this, while potentially very interesting, is less important.
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Tartiflette

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #82 on: November 29, 2016, 01:38:12 PM »

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

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #83 on: November 29, 2016, 01:50:01 PM »

For the destination thing. How it could be handled could be like this:

First the only way to activate a destination is via the map interface through whatever means. This removes the finicky control problems of either there player wants to move temporarily or setting destination.

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)

Third, once in this mode an arrow will tell the player where they are moving, and any player input will override the "auto pilot" temporarily, and when the player lets go or in the case of a clicked on fleet or station or w/e upon teaching that object, THEN the fleet will automatically go back on its route immediately.
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Voyager I

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #84 on: November 29, 2016, 02:17:58 PM »

=
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 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.

Quote
Switch to a fuel penalty actually changes up the dynamics here, since barreling through them or plodding through without SB will cost the same amount of extra fuel.

Oddly/interestingly, it makes turning off SB and stopping a good response to being caught in a storm which... really doesn't seem good. Hmm. Well, I did say I was still thinking about it :)

That could work if you wanted to make storms into a timesink (and historically, sailing ships did respond to storms by pulling in the sails and just trying to ride them out), though I'm not sure that's the direction you're trying to take them.
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Jonlissla

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #85 on: November 29, 2016, 02:20:23 PM »

2) Later-game challenge, but that's all I'll say here because spoilers

Now that's just cruel.
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PCCL

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #86 on: November 29, 2016, 03:09:44 PM »

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?

I'm a little giddy at the thought of pirates actually being something more than free bounty and experience
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Wyvern

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #87 on: November 29, 2016, 03:18:53 PM »

I'm a little giddy at the thought of pirates actually being something more than free bounty and experience
There's actually one other thing that has to happen first: we need an option to bribe pirate fleets to leave us alone.  Why? Sustainable business model.
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Megas

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #88 on: November 29, 2016, 03:39:56 PM »

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?

I'm a little giddy at the thought of pirates actually being something more than free bounty and experience
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.
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TheDTYP

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Re: Cartography
« Reply #89 on: November 29, 2016, 06:39:02 PM »

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?). 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?
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