So what I'm getting from that picture is that Alpha cores are susceptible to some combination of theft and/or flight... ("What happened to the Alpha Core that was supposed to be running this place?" "...As near as we can tell, it hacked its own security system, got itself installed on a newly-built cruiser, and took off for parts unknown." Cue bounty mission to hunt the thing down again.)
<scribbles a few notes> Oh who what where? No totally unrelated to this do carry on.
"Voltaire Collective"
Don't think I'd let that Expanse reference slip by
Good to know the reference was not in vain
Ooooh @ ending
!!!
- Is the level cap being raised to accommodate the new industry skills available to the player? (I suspect such a thing would mainly serve to make pure combat players even stronger, but I like to dabble in all the skill trees)
I have some
thoughts about a minor refactoring of the skill system. Stuff in spoiler because it might not happen or it might happen differently or, well, anything.
Spoiler
Basically reducing the total number of skills per aptitude to 6 or so, and compressing some skills (such as Salvaging + Surveying = Exploration) and strenthening some others (such as the remaining Combat skills, where I have some further thoughts), and probably reducing the level cap to 30. Overall reducing the number of skills from 32 to 24, which roughly matches going from 40 to 30 for the level cap. (Only roughly because of the impact of aptitudes.) But, again, this is tentative at this point.
I'd like to eventually add a few character points as rewards for major campaign things happening, but we'll see.
- Can we put officers in storage to temporarily reduce salary costs, if we don't need them right now? (For that matter, how are crew in a Storage submarket handled?)
Can't put officers into storage. Crew will cost the 1% storage fee, same as cargo, no salary.
- What happens if the player becomes insolvent?
Currently nothing, but I'd like to add a chance of crew/officers leaving if you're in debt for a few months, and of course anything major relying on a steady tick of credits coming in would fail, too.
- Is that colony in the second screenshot on a decivilized world? I guess the -10 stability effect went away.
Is there a benefit to building a colony on planets with one of the Ruin conditions?
If you colonize a deciv world, that condition gets converted into "Decivilized Subpopulation", which increases hazard, reduces stability, and increases population growth.
- The tooltip of other factions' markets with storages in the list could stand to include the rental fee.
Good call, added to todo list.
First of all, this is pretty much exactly what I've been hoping for since I bought the game. Super excited!
Are there going to be other ways of obtaining survey data besides surveying planets yourself? In the current version of the game, it feels like a lot of planets that have compelling resources require level 3 surveying skills and that an unskilled player can't really survey anything beyond barren worlds. If you could just buy or steal some surveying data though, I think that would be a reasonable way to extend the content to players who don't choose to take surveying skills without invalidating the skills.
Well, you can already get survey data from derelict probes and such, which is pretty much exactly the point. But also, the benefit of the surveying skill is to give you a wider range of options of what to colonize - if too much of that data was available otherwise, I think it *would* invalidate the skills. They should provide an endgame benefit to be worth putting the points in. I'm open to adjusting the range of what the player can survey w/o skill, though - I'd been thinking that it might be a bit too low at the moment.
Interesting stuff, but I've noticed you still haven't touched on military markets or manufacturing ships.
Is something like a blueprint mechanic planned for ships? That would be one of my in-game goals in establishing markets to be honest.
That's very likely, though I still need to nail down the details. Planning to get into this aspect of it in the near future. If all goes to plan, then finding blueprints would be a major part of how salvaging/exploration feeds into stronger colonies.
Also, can I assume that selling/buying from local markets will incur no tariff from our own stations?
I mentioned this in the blog post - briefly, if you build a "Commerce" industry, there'll be an independent Open Market you can trade with, with tariffs. Not having tariffs would incentivize the player to only sell stuff at their own market and that'd be annoying to always have to do. Plus it'd just break a lot of stuff as far as prices and what's profitable.
On the other hand, you can take stuff the colony produces for free, from the Local Resources submarket.
