You post... a lot, often very rambling and incoherent, with a tone of simply already knowing the answers to everything but once you're pressed for actual solutions to the problems they raise, you simply respond with "this is a SUGGESTIONS forum, I don't need to have solutions". It's pretty bizarre to simply make counterpoint after counterpoint, and as soon as anyone brings up something you can't just talk at or around, to claim that they're expecting too much from a man who's written several essays of ideas absolutely dripping with the tone of self-assured "wisdom" in the past couple days.
And in case you'll reflexively claim otherwise, I'll also include your quote on this exact matter:
This isn't a 'I have solutions pre-packaged for you' forum.
It's a Suggestions forum. For ideas.
Ideas are not solutions. Ideas are not always conveyed in the best language. Ideas are not always expressed in a way that is pleasing to you, or even necessarily 'helpful'.
They are meant to be pondered, like drinking a rich mulled cider. You're supposed to linger on the overtones, consider the spices and seasonings, and compare to other things.
I'd be posting this on the 'Mod Updates' forum if I had a solution pre-packaged, and I was just letting folks know that I 'had it all taken care of'.
It also doesn't help to drown people in text while ignoring half of what you quote and directing it to an entirely different topic. Yes, ideas don't have to be perfectly formulated essays, but you consistently shift away from actually answering the questions.
That said, while I'm still convinced that this is impressively elaborate shitposting (either that, or some of the stranger quotes are fascinating examples of life imitating art), a good few of these are brought up fairly seriously now and then either way, so it doesn't... hurt, to discuss them even if you are. It also just serves as a mildly entertaining distraction while it's too hot to do much else here.
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I broke this down a bit better on another post. It's definitely not 'add a bunch of new items'. Most of them are already there! ^_^ If anything, it would be 'add a bunch of new Support Skills' so that Combat oriented folks can get one sort of experience, and Exploration folks can get another. I definitely know what the official explanation is supposed to be on what Supplies are. And if the AI actually used them, the current implementation would be PERFECT for a quick-and-dirty, good-enough AI stat. But as a Player concern? It just feels rough. Like the game has moved past that point. Now that we've got Ship Parts, and still more Fuel that we could possibly ever use (except for when we don't) it wouldn't be hard to move some of the current, flat Supply requirement into Fuel, Metal, Ship Parts, etc.
Maybe laser weapons run on Volitiles. Maybe kinetics run on Metal. And maybe crew run on Food.
Sure, there'd still be Supplies floating around, but from a Player standpoint it should be a lot, lot less. That's just my opinion.
Only because when you run OUT of something right now, especially Fuel or Supplies, the penalty for it just... doesn't... quite... make sense if you really think about it.
Unless Supplies is something like 'anti-psychosis space drugs', and crew will just go off the rails if they don't get 'em! **LAUGHS**
I think you're missing the point here. I don't know if it's intentional, though the following response addressing only the positive half and ignoring the raised issue of tedium entirely makes me question, but the point isn't about adding new items. It's about requiring the player to
track new items. Things making sense when you think hard about them should generally be secondary to gameplay, at least unless you're trying to make a simulator - which, Starsector is not by any stretch. (Also, we don't have ship parts. The only ones I know of are from a mod.)
Let me break down two examples of things that don't make sense, but could be solved in ways that would not necessarily add to gameplay (and may actually take away from it):
Supplies as the core resource that acts as a box of whatever you need.This sort of abstraction
can be eliminated, but doing so requires a vastly greater amount of effort from the player just to do the exact same things and reach the more directly enjoyable parts of gameplay. While I actually enjoy this kind of over-detailed element when it's a core aspect of the gameplay loop, it just... isn't, here, and wouldn't really create engaging gameplay by suddenly being part of it now. While I don't expect you to actually have a solution to the suggestions you make, as you've made it clear not to bother expecting them to be thought through, adding a bunch of support skills that just make it a moot point simply means nearly every player will be "taxed" skill points to not deal with a part of gameplay that most of them simply don't want to have in the first place.
Black holes, stars, etc not being deadly.You could make them deadly, but what this does is makes exploration and roaming much more punishing (especially on black holes and neutron stars) without it being particularly interactive. Run out of fuel? You're already probably screwed but have a chance of escape; while now, if you're near a black hole you've lost everything, and other stars will still do massive damage and rip out a huge chunk of your fleet, at least unless the damage is so negligible it essentially doesn't matter.
I'd almost say that this would be "fine" as an idea for a sort of difficulty setting, except that exploration can be punishing anyway; you could just as readily be ambushed by a pirate fleet while salvaging that tears you to shreds and be forced into a death spiral as you could simply have not planned well, and you have to be downright masochistic to enjoy uninteractive punishment loops where you could walk away, make lunch, and then come back and assess the same damages as if you were there.
The point I'm trying to get across here is that simply "adding detail" and "making things make sense" causes a domino effect wherein each change causes new problems, which need new changes, which cause new problems, which... etc, etc.
I'd try to explain the tedium issue in more depth, but you've actively avoided responding to it thus far, so I'm not sure it's actually worth it.
Story points - Agents/diplomats are Nex features, no? Three out of the five bullets here have no bearing to vanilla and shouldn't even be in this thread.
Are we trying to make the game more interesting/engaging/full of life, or not? ^_~ 'Cause Nexerlin is featured in its own little category, and adds SUCH flavor to the game! WHY is it simply a mod? It's ALREADY got a special shelf. It's already right on top. And it add features and dynamics to the game WITHOUT having to go reinvent the wheel.
Why have 'official mods'..? Because some of this stuff SCREAMS to be Vanilla, takes nothing AWAY from Vanilla, and does nothing but take away from the empty spaces in Vanilla.
And that means that any Dev attempt to fill those spaces (so well covered by Nexerlin, for example) would mean direct COMPETITION with Nexerlin, which would be devastating to everyone!
Because official mods mean:
- Bug reports that are "vanilla" but not really vanilla and actually need to be fixed by one of a dozen different people who may or may not even be able to fix it or have any way of knowing it was the result of their mod.
- Having to coordinate updates with the various authors of said "official" mods, who may be unable for weeks or months to get an update done due to personal circumstances, potentially dramatically delaying game updates.
- Alex having to actively direct content in those mods (and mod authors having to compromise their intentions) to a certain degree to keep them from reaching a point where they don't fit whatever criteria are made for them.
- Much more direct association of the mod authors' actions, words, etc with Alex and the game.
Among many other things.
Filling in every conceivable empty space just isn't a good goal. Games get bloated and lose a coherent feel if you try to do so.
Leaving out things that don't need to be there and tack on extra layers or systems and letting mods fill them out as desired is perfectly reasonable.
And I'm not sure why people continually insist Nexerelin in particular ought to be vanilla; it's a wonderful mod, to be sure, but it adds multiple extra layers of complexity, different systems that assume a robust understanding of various vanilla ones, a much steeper learning curve, a variety of extraneous features that aren't part of any central design, et cetera. I love it, but I don't see why people keep deciding it should be vanilla or packaged with it.
Also, it doesn't really fit anywhere here, but it was bugging me: The reason fuel is continually consumed even while moving in a straight line is that the hyperdrive bubble used to allow FTL travel is very hungry for it. It makes sense once you read things a little closer.
