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[Gothars]

For the procgen stuff, I think... well, it's a complicated topic. One thing is having enough variety, so that it's not always the same stuff, but pretty much no matter how much variety you have, it's going to get recognizable over multiple playthroughs. The other part is having it be fun to interact with/making it matter; that's what's going to give it long-term punch. If it's a fun thing, then it's ok even if it's not a new thing, as long as you haven't seen it 10 times in a row. It's a team effort between variety, tangible rewards, and fun interactions.

In my experience the one thing proc gen excels in is topography. When it's about generating shapes and and short cuts to navigate through, I often find auto generated stuff more interesting than handcrafted landscapes. I think part of it is that you have certain expectations for handcrafted maps; every formation supposedly has some meaning, every path leads to a point of interest, every potential danger was carefully placed so as to not be overwhelming. There is a clear path or hints to everything the designer wants you to see, you feel more like being guided than really exploring. The hand-holding is inherent to hand crafted worlds.

That's not how it is in real life. If you go hiking, there are lots of dead ends, recursive paths and unexpected dangers or beauties to be stumbled upon (or missed!). That makes it feel much more meaningful if you really discover something great (or dodge some dangerous thing), you did it yourself! Proc gen content feels much closer to that. It's wild and unpredictable! Which is just what you want for adventures exploration, right?


Although I'm thinking mainly of games like Subnautica, Terraria and Minecraft here, were you actually have terrain - not sure how that principle would work in Starsector's open space.

[Histidine]

Honestly, I don't think it's possible for me to choose. And I might even be a bit uncomfortable if I were to make a "Mary Sue" faction. Maybe it'd feel creatively compromised, or didactic, or something along those lines.

I take it that's at least partly why the League has the cast iron pan homeworld? As in, giving the "noble democratic" faction a comfy, pleasant terran homeworld to contrast with Chicomoztoc, Eochu Bres and Askonia would have been a bit too obviously heavy-handed, even (or especially) if it's supposed to be Space Athens.

Tartessus is a bit of an outlier in this regard though.

[Embolism]

I find the "at least one new faction, but not quite" part interesting. The one in question is obviously the Persean League, and I suspect the "complexity" is Ko Combine; which always felt rather apolitical compared to Tri-Tach. Presumably this is why they're "sort of but not really" an independent faction: they got the clout, but they're content to serve under the Hegemony umbrella.

The Knights of Ludd might also be a potential "sort of but not really" faction: you would expect them to be part of the Luddic Church but it seems like the Church might not have as much control over them as they would like.

Perhaps we'll see a subfaction system? Highly unlikely but could be interesting... e.g. there could be multiple subfactions of pirates, independents and the Persean League to model that they're technically autonomous, but with shared interests. Ko Combine and the Knights of Ludd would be subfactions of the Hegemony and the Luddic Church, respectively.

Each subfaction would have their own reputations, but are affected and can affect the reputation of the parent faction. So *** off New Maxios would lower your independent reputation to a lesser degree, which in terms makes all other independent subfactions like you a little less.

The independents and pirates wouldn't have a tangible "parent faction" of course, whereas the Persean League would technically be just Kazeron with every other polity being a subfaction.

[Gothars]

I find the "at least one new faction, but not quite" part interesting.

I was thinking of the new exploration content. When there are semi-active relics or creatures or whatever, they have to belong to some kinda "faction", right? That could be a general "relic" faction, or it could reflect the origin of what ever we find (Ancient Aliens Association, Club of Dormant Domain AIs, Space Monsters inc.).

[Embolism]

I find the "at least one new faction, but not quite" part interesting.

I was thinking of the new exploration content. When there are semi-active relics or creatures or whatever, they have to belong to some kinda "faction", right? That could be a general "relic" faction, or it could reflect the origin of what ever we find (Ancient Aliens Association, Club of Dormant Domain AIs, Space Monsters inc.).

You may be right, although it doesn't seem like there would be any way to interact with these "factions": presumably automated drones don't tell other automated drones how mean you are, so it would simply be a place to put actors that don't interact with the real faction system.

Could be wrong, but I don't see sapient aliens playing a part in StarSector: it always struck me as a very "we're alone in the universe" sort of setting. At most I'd expect ruins and relics, but no currently active alien sapients.

There might be sapient AI lurking out there but... doesn't feel like it fits, two AI wars notwithstanding.

[Gothars]

You may be right, although it doesn't seem like there would be any way to interact with these "factions"

Hence they why the would be only "factions", not real factions.   Maybe we are both right and there are all kinds of not-quite-factions.



BTW, the Onslaught description hints that it was constructed for war against (now forgotten) aliens. I also doubt that we will encounter a functional alien civilization. But constructs, ruins, wrecks, survivors, refugees, scouts - everything a step short of a real civilization - is fair game, in my book.

[Embolism]

BTW, the Onslaught description hints that it was constructed for war against (now forgotten) aliens. I also doubt that we will encounter a functional alien civilization. But constructs, ruins, wrecks, survivors, refugees, scouts - everything a step short of a real civilization - is fair game, in my book.

I know, hence why I said I would expect ruins at most. The description implies it's just a rumour rather than a historical fact though, so on that basis I'm doubtful we'd see anything alien (at least not alive: no survivors, refugees, or manned scouts). Even if the rumours are correct , the war was likely 1. a very long time ago and 2. not near the Persean Sector (given the Persean Sector was a relatively new acquisition), so any local evidence of aliens are probably unrelated to the (to my mind, fictional) Domain-Alien war.

[Gothars]

It's strange in itself that a technical civilization could supposedly "forget" an alien encounter, not to mention a war, isn't it? The only way I could imagine that is extremely heavy handed information suppression across generations. What would motivate the Domain to do that?  Maybe they saw the logic of their conservative approach to technology threatened by the existence of an outside reason to hurry up the technological ladder.


One factor that makes alien encounters slightly more likely is the whole premise of the game, the unexplained gate failure. Alien influences of some kind are at least one possible path of explanation. Although even here I think I'd rather have some kind of internal Domain conflict, maybe a conspiracy for the player to uncover. 

[Alex]

In my experience the one thing proc gen excels in is topography. When it's about generating shapes and and short cuts to navigate through, I often find auto generated stuff more interesting than handcrafted landscapes. I think part of it is that you have certain expectations for handcrafted maps; every formation supposedly has some meaning, every path leads to a point of interest, every potential danger was carefully placed so as to not be overwhelming. There is a clear path or hints to everything the designer wants you to see, you feel more like being guided than really exploring. The hand-holding is inherent to hand crafted worlds.

That's not how it is in real life. If you go hiking, there are lots of dead ends, recursive paths and unexpected dangers or beauties to be stumbled upon (or missed!). That makes it feel much more meaningful if you really discover something great (or dodge some dangerous thing), you did it yourself! Proc gen content feels much closer to that. It's wild and unpredictable! Which is just what you want for adventures exploration, right?


Although I'm thinking mainly of games like Subnautica, Terraria and Minecraft here, were you actually have terrain - not sure how that principle would work in Starsector's open space.

Hmm - that's an interesting perspective. Counter-examples: Ultima VII, Morrowind. Fully hand-crafted worlds, they felt great to explore - and would wreck you without a second's hesitation. On the other hand, you have something like Oblivion, which to me didn't feel good at all. The hand-crafted content was so dense it felt more like a clean-up chore than discovery, and the procedural elements (i.e. the enemy level-scaling) took all the teeth out.

I think maybe both approaches home in on "good" from different directions. Hand-crafted content has to work more on danger and unpredictability. Procedural content has to work more on meaning.

[Thaago]

On 'forgetting' - I think it depends on the timescales involved and how data is stored. Were Onslaughts first constructed a few thousand years earlier, or a few hundred? There is debate on whether electronic records are good or bad for data retention - at present they are very bad, as the rapid tech progress and formatting changes make actually reading data on a drive from just 30 years possible only by specialists. Then again, if technology "settled down" in the Domain, then perhaps they have been using the same data format for thousands of years and the only problem is the physical degradation of media.

Heavy handed misinformation could also be the case, though you'd think rogue historians would have at least tried to keep the truth known. (And now I want to write a short story about a rogue historian resistance cell, stowed away in one of the cavernous internal cargo bays of an Onslaught. Sleep deprivation + coffee = inspiration of dubious quality...)


About Procgen: I think the mix of procgen and scripted sounds good - as long as the implementation is up to Alex's usual excellent standards (no pressure). The devil is in the details, but I know how I want the procgen stuff to FEEL:
(I know you already covered this in the other blog post, but just thought I'd chime in as it seems like the discussion has turned to it.)

I want there to be some reward and danger.

I want procgen "story" to be reasonable: how did the stuff get there, if there is stuff? Can I headcanon an explanation, or does it make no sense? (An empty habitable world not too far from the core would be weird without some reason why its empty, for example.)

I want to interact with it: even in empty systems, I want there to be something for me to do there, like dodging solar flares/ hiding in corona shadows on the way to exploring a planet, or independent markets, or pirates, ruins etc. I know this isn't 'realistic', but --> game.

[PCCL]

Can't comment on the rest of it, but onslaughts were a part of taskforce Pollux, who was in suspended animation for around 3000 years, iirc

[xenoargh]

Ultima VII, Morrowind. Fully hand-crafted worlds, they felt great to explore - and would wreck you without a second's hesitation. On the other hand, you have something like Oblivion, which to me didn't feel good at all. The hand-crafted content was so dense it felt more like a clean-up chore than discovery, and the procedural elements (i.e. the enemy level-scaling) took all the teeth out.

I think a great deal of the difference was that both of the earlier games weren't at all afraid to just straight-up kill players who went into areas above their level, whereas with Oblivion (and to an extent, Skyrim / Fallout 3-4 series) there's been an attempt to have the transition not feel so jarring, especially when players are over-leveling constantly. 

This is a major problem all RPG designs have to deal with constructively; players want progress, but they want the game to remain reasonably challenging.  I felt that the leveled-enemies approach in Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3-4 didn't work well, though; it was the same ol' same ol', but with more hitpoints / better gear (Oblivion was quite ridiculous about that with crazy gear on high-level guards when the player leveled up enough that broke all semblance of economy).

I don't think this is a problem that procedural worlds "solve"; it's a separate domain.  Procedural worlds solve the problems associated with hand-crafting, in terms of labor hours spent.  They don't solve the problems of having enough interesting things to do. 

This is where hand-built usually wins out; yeah, there's hand-holding, and yeah, in AAA titles it's usually aimed at Average 13-Year-Old (so it looks terribly obvious to older gamers) but there are layers of Things to Find that tie in with Things to Do; this is where RPG games are at their strongest.  Whether we're talking about the almost-totally-linear Final Fantasy 7 or Fallout I, this approach gives players more things to gradually uncover / reveal / revisit. 

That's where procedural systems often fall flat; everything from Minecraft seeds that put the player somewhere inherently boring to the bland sameness of the procedurally-generated star systems in SPAZ.  The best way to counter that, imho, is to have bigger systems that bring order and a sense of dynamic motion to the overarching gameplay and have a strong central plot or plots that gives the player a goal.  Without that, it's a bit dull; either it's a ledgerbook conquest sim or there's nothing constructive to do past midgame unless you're just into grinding.

[Gothars]

Hmm - that's an interesting perspective. Counter-examples: Ultima VII, Morrowind. Fully hand-crafted worlds, they felt great to explore - and would wreck you without a second's hesitation. On the other hand, you have something like Oblivion, which to me didn't feel good at all. The hand-crafted content was so dense it felt more like a clean-up chore than discovery, and the procedural elements (i.e. the enemy level-scaling) took all the teeth out.

I think maybe both approaches home in on "good" from different directions. Hand-crafted content has to work more on danger and unpredictability. Procedural content has to work more on meaning.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, obviously you can archive everything per hand that procedural generation can, and more. And I have good memories of the worlds of Morrowind and some other games of the time (Gothic, Outcast). But those were experiences I had a long time ago, and I'm wary about depending on them - I was more impressionable and much less capable of "peeking behind the curtain" back then.
Recent experiences felt all comparatively dull and predictable (Witcher 3, Skyrim, Far Cry 3). With the exception of procedurally generated games (which means at least It's not just that I'm a grumpy old man now - it get's you thinking when seemingly everyone else loves those new titles).
So maybe proc gen is not necessarily better than humans at topography, it is just the place where it is most competent - and as a side effect avoids some of the pitfalls which with modern hand-crafted worlds struggle (IMO) at the moment.
When doing topography it feels like an algorithm can generate something really new, as opposed to just rearranging set-pieces.

On 'forgetting' - I think it depends on the timescales involved and how data is stored.

Can't comment on the rest of it, but onslaughts were a part of taskforce Pollux, who was in suspended animation for around 3000 years, iirc

The Domain is about 1000 years old (at least according to Ivaylo's lore).

I want to interact with it: even in empty systems, I want there to be something for me to do there, like dodging solar flares/ hiding in corona shadows on the way to exploring a planet, or independent markets, or pirates, ruins etc. I know this isn't 'realistic', but --> game.

I think that's a very good point. Maybe the campaign layer could stand (even) more movement based gameplay, with which procedural generated content could interact. Maybe something like clusters of huge, radiating asteroids which have to be individually and actively dodged. Or ancient orbital defense systems, where you have to navigate through a (spotty) sensor network to not get engaged.  Or a destabilized wormhole than generates repulsive eddies and can only be approached in a very specific way. Lots of possibilities

[Tartiflette]

I'd say it's not with the "human built" part of map making that procedural stuff shine but on the terrain itself. Most notably when using procedural erosion because it is too complex to do right by hand short of assembling real places together. Morowind was very interesting to explore, but the place didn't made much sense topography-wise.

[Gothars]

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean.