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[SCC]

I don't remember where I said it, but just making the sticks more interactive would be nice. If averting an expedition could be done through a contact favour, an exploration mission, a false-flag operation or some favourable to the enemy faction trade, it wouldn't be "it's the expeditions again". Especially if expeditions became rarer and stronger and you were notified of them earlier. Currently, we can only pay them off, fight them or iirc raid their rallying point colony.
It wouldn't hurt if expeditions had different goals, too. Hegemony could perform a run of the mill OSHA compliance inspection with their 4th, 5th and 6th fleets as they do already, Tri-Tachyon could dispatch some Totally Independent Pirates raiding your convoys you would have to find and destroy, the Church could fund Pathers against you more rigorously than usual, something like that.

P.S.  Some items are better than others.  Some items merely make a bad world good enough to colonize (like fusion lamp for dark worlds) or improve a less important stat.  Others make good worlds even better (like Dealmaker for Commerce).  Beyond the two necessities, the only items I want for the rest of my colonies are Dealmakers, and maybe the biofactory for the drug lab too.  In any case, adding all of these frivolous items makes finding the necessities like pristine nanoforge a luck-based mission.  (Never found one, so I raided the core worlds for it.  Could have bought it from historian, but I do not want to spend 2^n SP on historian except for the Legion XIV blueprint and more Dealmakers.)

Spools and pristine nanoforges are some more obviously better than others colony items.

1.) Lack of "permanence" in any way, shape, or form. The goal of the game prior to 0.8 was to have a perfect fleet. Anything that jeopardized the fleet was clearly not "worth it."

I have difficulty figuring out what you mean. If you mean "if you lose your fleet, you lose everything", then that's true only so long you don't stash anything away just in case. Unless you're playing iron man, however, there's little incentive to.

[SafariJohn]

I think Starsector should have strategic warfare like Nex does, but I think the player should not be able to steamroll their desired outcome because it undermines suspension of disbelief for the gameworld. If some random mook can slap together an empire and overthrow the Hegemony, then it makes the lore a joke.

But you can just steamroll everything in Nex too. I don't really see how Nex fixes that at all.

You misunderstood me - I'm complaining that Nex let's you steamroll. Vanilla does too, but raiding/bombardments can be hamstrung by tweaking required/available marines/fuel, whereas ground invasions fundamentally undermine the setting.

[SCC]

More marines, more fuel required is boring difficulty.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Peeps just like options, just let game system develop some maturity.  Committed now, so a better question is... will a new resource be added in order to add another new industry?

[Megas]

Game already has too many commodities.

[IonDragonX]

Game already has too many commodities.

Eh? Ye blaspheme? Where's my Furniture, Alex?

[FooF]

I have difficulty figuring out what you mean. If you mean "if you lose your fleet, you lose everything", then that's true only so long you don't stash anything away just in case. Unless you're playing iron man, however, there's little incentive to.

Fleet composition was an end to itself, i.e. the endgame was becoming the curator of your favorite ships. Losing even a single vessel meant that you lost the metagame because it may be very difficult to recover/equip the ship again. You also lost your weapons upon ship death (or most of them) so rare weapons were also part of the collection. There was nothing more important than your ships/weapons so risking them was a non-starter. Colonies made it so you could more easily (though not "easily") replace prized possessions via your own manufacture and there are now objectives in the game that many of us are willing to sacrifice a ship or two to get. That was not the case prior to 0.8.

[SafariJohn]

More marines, more fuel required is boring difficulty.

I agree completely. That is not difficulty, it's grinding. I think on the marines side:
- low end defenses generally need to be higher
- high end defenses lower
  - AKA flat bonuses instead of multipliers
- repeat raiding should multiply marine requirements
- getting a large number of marines should require commitment: a commission, a colony, something
  - a small number of marines should be about as easy to get as now


On the bombardment side, if defenses were flattened out then I'd suggest a mult on the fuel requirements so it isn't too easy to bomb high defense colonies. Other than that? I don't know.

[Megas]

Without a large colony of your own, getting hundreds of marines is tedious enough already.

I need about 2000 marines plus as many Phantoms as I can cram in my fleet, in addition to knocking out the enemy battlestation, to lower defenses enough and steal blueprints from Culann or more heavily defended targets, and I lose hundreds of marines, so I need to shop all of the black markets I can find (and my colony resources too) to get more marines after each raid.  Stealing all of the exclusive blueprints from Culann is tedious.

- low end defenses generally need to be higher

Especially for breaking out the NPC from Kanta.  It is easier to break her out than it is to steal blueprints from the easiest target, New Maxios.  So much for that intimidating wall of text.  Kind of like asking the player to kill the dragon with his bare hands in Adventure Colossal Cave (and the correct answer is "yes" to solve that puzzle).

- repeat raiding should multiply marine requirements

Stability penalty ought to be enough, although there are targets where that does not matter (like that pop-up pirate base inflicting -1/-10% to the player's colonies that the player would kill anyway after the raid.)

[pairedeciseaux]

Trying to bring issues and ideas together, I can't pick all great details you guys provided without breaking a wall of text length world record, so below is an attempt at building a summary.

Colony growth gameplay, purpose in a believable game world

Need something beside money, storage, production and getting-into-trouble.

One (or more) specific quest line(s) related to colony building (and some goals/purpose)?

A set of fun contact missions and specific player actions that help... or rather... are mandatory to develop colonies past a some thresholds? I mean rather than all of this being almost automatic and all.

To be defined strategic power? Would requires careful mechanic balance so that "lore" and player progression don't conflict with each other. Looks like we already have a problem here with Alpha Core farms and putting those to use on a large scale.

In any case, bringing player to more interactions with core worlds, more exploration outside of core worlds, and more combat is probably the way to go here. Game design wise, have less unfun conflicting systems and more purposeful/motivational stories.

Exploration

The game already has a bunch of exploration <-> colony building synergies. Suggested improvements:

• have some more of those, some may be done through missions to obtain unique colony items
• (hmm, have research station obtained blueprints that would allow building special industries/structures?)
• less negative consequences to the use of colony items (everything that triggers Hegemony inspections or Luddic Path interest)
• less restrictions to the use of some colony items
• more combats / harder combats / with appropriate rewards according to difficulty
• new resource for a new industry?

Defense events

Events predictability:

• pirate raids could be less frequent, less regular
• current pather interest system can be mostly controlled by player by choosing colony industries (and upgrades), could use a more chaotic approach
• AI core inspections are boring-predictable instant responses from Hegemony, shouldn't those be decoupled from the actual AI core use in colonies? (I mean, having insections whether AI core are used or not)
• actually the response to player using AI core from both Hegemony and Ludic Path feels gamey/artificial: have randomly one of those but not both together, in a less predictable way?
• faction expeditions based on market situation: maybe there should be variable/random delay before that happens (also: free port balance)
• have rare once-in-a-campaign events, rather than just recuring events
• (basically: entropy, less sticks)

Events variety:

• pirate raids could use various different forms
• further improve raiding fleet diversity (theme, goals, and fleet composition): random explorer/looter fleet, TT elite phase fleet, false flag / false pirates, remnants, omegas
• have an initial system bounty event for first colony built in a system
• mercenary job where player fleet could be involved in raid event from faction A to faction B (... on either side!), we already have system bounty to help defend faction B and be rewarded with money, but this sure could be expanded
• (more entropy)

Player agency:
There should be compelling ways to complete some raid events without fighting the raid fleets, requiring advanced diplomatic actions / following specific contact quests in a time-limited way (uhh, the way it's currently done is non-gameplay and should be removed from the game IMO).

Outcome:

• fighting off expedition having reputation penalty can introduces a strange campaign gameplay balance if those events are frequent enough, is that truely desireable? (if those events or not too frequent, that's not a problem)
• have defeated raiding fleets provide better rewards (not just "yay I defended") ... though this one would impove naturally with more raiding fleet diversity because of ship/weapon/item post-battle recovery
• (less sticks, more carrots)

Other gameplay opportunities

Having more events/missions thematically tied to colonization and/or the game world, but not being straight colony defense would help move away from the "babysitting" feeling. There is a great potential here.

See exploration and "mercenary job" above.

Player-initiated raids and bombardments:

• attack/defense balance come into question
• add conditions for attacks?
• tweak defense?
• what about consequences (stability, decivilisation) ?

I don't have any hands-on experience with raids and bombardments, so I won't be of any use in this discussion. Something comes to mind though: I wonder if the consequences were first and foremost designed for player colony, and applied to core worlds by mistake. Is there actually a point having the core worlds deteriorate, and encouraging some players to "babysit" / erase the whole core?

(maybe this is where we lack the full vision of where the game is going in future versions)

[JaronK]

One thing I'd really like would be if certain late game quests require producing something at advanced colonies.  Perhaps even requiring a full size colony with a pristine nanoforge to create a specific thing (terraforming stuff, a ship capable of moving terraforming stuff, etc).  Quest and explore to get the blueprints for this stuff, then build it with your developed colonies.  Maybe even quests that result in being able to make your own mods like XIV for your ships, so you can have special "player faction only" ships, and the like.

The nice part about this is it creates a new step in the game.  Currently, you have "build your tiny fleet of junkers" step, then "build a specialized fleet that does what you want and explore", then "do the main quest line and build colonies".  If you have the ability to do something that requires the quest line and a developed colony to get into it, now you have a whole new thing to explore and do.

Something like the Hypershunt Tap (which requires a ton of production and shipping and such) is a nice start, but that particular item doesn't do enough and doesn't lead anywhere.

[Sorbo]

I'd like to see something where there's certain items (like solar arrays) that are so big they require a special transport craft (like a super atlas) to go get them.

Thought lore mentioned that they were super light? Bet you could you use any cap ship to transport them with some preparation. Anyway, I remember asking Alex specifically for that feature and he shared that this would require a bunch of custom code and there are plenty of things to be done elsewhere. Making a perfect farm does sound fun though.

[JaronK]

They could be light weight, but large, requiring something really big to handle them.  I just like the idea of using improved colonies to improve them further, and going seeking cool stuff to make your empire stronger.

[JaronK]

Another fun thing colonies could do: just like the Hegemony can make XIV ships, your colonies should be able to construct better than normal ships, or get special refits that can only be done at your colonies.  These could be found by acquiring special blueprints while exploring or via quests, and might be very minor, but you can apply many of them.  Perhaps doing these special changes requires a pristine nanoforge.

For example you might find one that gives ships you build +3 to top speed, another that gives them +2 flux venting, another that lets you build in up to 5 more capacitors, etc.  Each one is minor, but they add up, so your heavy production colonies can make really cool ships.  The added advantage is this means your playstyle might want to change between games, as the random boosts to your ships favor one playstyle over another. 

[Ad Astra]

Game already has too many commodities.

Eh? Ye blaspheme? Where's my Furniture, Alex?

Oooohhh..... chHaAAiirr (the image link failed btw lol, so I assume you linked the furniture image from the game files)

I think I'd like if colonies meant "status" in the sector, right now everything is available always, and sure, there wouldn't be enough stuff to do if you start adding restrictions, but the more stuff is added in the future, the more you can gate cool stuff behind interesting challenges and milestones. When thinking of progression I think the Skyrim way of doing things (do everything anytime) is really bad in any and all games, when you compare it to a game like Gothic (where you need to build up trust to reach anyone important). Open opportunity games are good for casuals who don't want to put in the effort, but Starsector is merciless for the most part, people who play it will bother to level up contacts, build up their credits, and push towards far fetched goals if the reward is significant gameplay behind each hurdle. You should have to earn your right to do important quests the same way you need reputation to buy from markets, pleasant and addictive gameplay is all about investment and returns after all.