Thank you Metroidude for your constructive feedback! And thanks for all the supporters of the idea too!
Ok I'll bite
*stretches before engaging in debate*
I will counter point your argument point by point as you have done. Thank you for being so thorough with your thoughts!
1) The Codex's original intention.
I believe that the original intended purpose of the Codex was as a complete reference tool for all in-game entities; how else could you learn about their statistics?
It provides a great graphical interface for each ship's parameters and abilities, and is currently the best and easiest way of knowing what a ship is like. It's nice to have it built in to the game, and not having to consult a wiki every time you want to know how a ship performs.
There are also missions, and a codex outside the context of the singleplayer campaign.
One doesn't normally read an encyclopedia like this: but if you do, more power to you.
When thinking about changing it, we must keep it's original purpose in mind.
While perhaps you can make an argument that there should be a reference encyclopedia and I wouldn't disagree, there are two things that come to mind here. The first is a misconception of the original intentions of the idea. I am not advocating that you should start the game
tabula rasa without ANY information in the codex that would be relevant to a new captain. Most pirate ships, common military ships and many civilian ships would already be listed there like in real life. So the starting fleets you encounter would be easily available to look at and size up. It would actually be easier since you wouldn't have to sift through so many entries and most things would pull up far easier.
The second is that, in my opinion, a reference encyclopedia should not even be necessary as long as the tutorial is sound enough to get the player started in an easy and free flow manner. The fact that you are using it speaks more to the current lack of tutorial and presentation of the games mechanics and the need to use an encyclopedia as a crutch to get you through. Alex himself has addressed this issue where the difficulty of new players stems from lack of clear information being presented to them while they are doing what they are doing.
So the encyclopedia part of it is then moreso for advanced players wanting a reference book to compare stats and keep track of things. In this case I agree and my vision of the codex certainly fulfills that role.
2) Starsector has a little bit of a learning curve: the Codex helps ease it.
The Codex actually helped me as a new player. A lot.
Starsector has a little bit of a learning curve; You're just thrown into the galaxy to go where you please. But this can be a little overwhelming at first.
It didn't take long for me to figure out to avoid the big fleets, and pick on the little fleets that I knew I could defeat to gain resources.
The Codex allowed me to look up what a ship can do without having to meet it in battle. It is what let me know if it were a little fleet I could defeat, or if it was going to annihilate me (because the size of the bubble is determined by the number of ships in the fleet, not the power of it.) I knew the parameters of everything that existed; It allowed me to alleviate a lot of the learning curve if I wanted to, by knowing the capabilities of ships without having to engage them in battle first.
It acted much like a wiki or a guidebook, providing stats and useful information on every ship class and weapon.
This directly means that I would be able to compare the hypothetical enemy's ship to my own, and make an estimate of how well I would do when pitted against him.
I touched on this a little bit in the last point, but I would like to elaborate that again an encyclopedia should not be the tool here and rather a better way of sizing up an opponent. I want to put it this way. In an action game, or an mmo, or an rts, do you pause the game and look at an encyclopedia reference to size up your opponent before you engage him every time? You certainly shouldn't have to. Thats because the game uses other cues to tell you that information in a streamlined way. A level number relative to your own, the size of the enemy, its color, and myriad other indicators tell you, at a glance, roughly how hard of a fight you are in for. Constantly researching you enemy prior to combat breaks the flow of the game and becomes tedious until you have mastered the knowledge.
So what then, is the codex good for? This brings me to your final point.
3) The Codex fits into the "storyline continuum."
In a fictional universe, you have to assure that entities adhere to the established boundaries.
The Codex makes sense in the setting: a future where space travel is not only possible, but common.
But let's face it: Right now, Starsector has no story. It may have lore, but no story that the player is involved in.
Let's compare the Codex to a Pokedex. In Pokemon, the Pokedex is actually used as a plot device. Professor Oak (or whoever) tasks you with filling it and coming back to him, this is essentially a secondary objective to becoming the Pokemon master by defeating the Elite Four. The Pokedex is essentially a log of the Pokemon you encounter.
The same cannot be said about the Codex. You're not tasked by anyone to fill it. It's used as a tool, not an objective. It serves no purpose in the story, because none exists yet.
So in examination of the hypothetical change, I have 3 points.
Why would you need such detailed information then? You could simply then replace the pokedex with 12/150 that climbs to 150 as you catch more pokemon and give a checkmark next to each name and skip all the other unnecessary coding and artwork. Thats because the pokedex also served another purpose. To bring character and life to the pokemon by giving a brief account of their habits and nature as well as their stats. It was rewarding the sense of exploration to catch something new and find out its moves and more about it. If I had that all in front of me at the start it would have been far less rewarding to capture one.
1) Using a "discovered" codex causes annoyances, inconsistencies, and is illogical for how the game is now.
If we change, it will considerably harm the Codex's ability to be an efficacious catalog. What good is an encyclopedia if you have to discover what it would say before you can read it?
New players would be forced to battle ships they're completely unfamiliar with, and making them manually encounter every ship class if they want to learn about it. While it would be less overwhelming, the Codex is an encyclopedia/reference, not a book to be read from front to back.
Every time you start a new game, you'd have to fill out your Codex if you wanted to see the stats of a ship. This would be quite annoying for experienced players, because they know what ships exist yet they can't look up its exact stats.
A major annoyance would be not being able to fill up your "Codex" unless you want to make the entire galaxy hostile towards you.
He said scanning would be "rude at best, hostile at worst."
Right now, there's no way to improve relations: only degrade them. Once you've scanned them, the whole faction will be hostile towards you.
The shipyard is a major inconsistency. What if you want to look up how good a ship is before you battle it? Would the shop allow you to view it before you've discovered it, or would it remain blank? It makes sense that the shopkeeper would allow you to view its stats before you buy it, even if you've never encountered it in space before.
Another inconsistency is the Codex in the main menu. Would this be all ships you've ever encountered, or just the ones you've found in your campaign? What's to prevent a player from just going back into the main menu and viewing the ship from there, even if they haven't logged it in their save yet?
Right now, the game is a sandbox. There is no linearity. Limiting the scope of the Codex immediately would make no sense, because the rest of the world isn't limited at the beginning.
Again this is a misinterpretation of the idea. You would not be
required to scan something to learn about it and catalog it. That was a way to learn something more in depth for use in special circumstances. Such as knowing what weapons it carried to try and steal. Or maybe a precious commodity or important person. This is the same reason why it would sometimes be considered hostile. Though it could be used to learn more about a type of asteroid that would then be cataloged, but not be a hostile act. It adds depth to the game beyond combat.
Yes finding a ship in a shipyard would give you a codex entry and would be another way of finding information outside of engaging in combat. The codex on the main menu would only show those discovered before or simply be removed to make things easier.
The game is a sandbox yes, but a discovered codex doesn't change that. It simply gives it a reward to going off the beaten path and explore because new codex entries are valuable information. The current codex actually stifles exploration
because it gives you access to everything up front and there is no reason to work for it.
The world is limited up front. You can't solo a defense fleet right off the bat. You have to work up to it. The is just another element that can be explored and give increased depth.
2) There is no storyline to advance by limiting the Codex; even if there were, the current Codex makes sense
Like I said earlier, Starsector has no story. What good is changing the Codex to benefit something that doesn't exist yet?
Maybe if there is a story of some sort in the future, there could be a logbook or something that you gain through methods mentioned earlier. Or battle tactics, or something. But not the Codex. The Codex provides the stats for a ship with a little description; it should stay this way.
Even in there were a story, it would make sense that the captain could load his ship's computer with data from ship manufacturers in preparation before he took off. What kind of idiot would just take off blindly into space, especially after spending a couple thousand credits on a spaceship?
Again you would have information, just not all the information in the game, leaving spaces to expand the story into new territories outside known space or technology. The base of the story is about a lost empire and fading knowledge of technology. It simply doesn't make sense that you would have a codex detailing every ship weapon and object in that type of world. It would in fact indicate the opposite and part of the game's open ended plot would be to rediscover it.
The point of this idea is two fold:
1) It promotes exploration and gives more depth, purpose and life into the game while creating a device to articulate the story, atmosphere, setting and background in a non linear way.
2) It really gives modders a way to introduce new things into the game without letting the cat out of the bag so to speak by letting players see every ship, weapon and object up front.