It's nice to see a lot of posts adressing the issues from devs.
Universe generation will have to change too in order to create a more engaging world, especially focused around MP. It's safe to assume that not many empires or players would go beyond the starting galaxy or its neighbours so this procedural world is in fact "limited", not by hard limits but by boredom. No sane player would fly this far out to make an empire especially when he's alone against a ton of NPC enemies and where no player is around him to keep things interesting.
If you've ever met an MMO player you'll know boredom doesn't stop anyone. People spend T H O U S A N D S of hours doing the most boring menial trash so they can get the biggest endgame stick. Some will hate doing it, but stick it out anyway to progress, some crazy fuckers downright enjoy sitting around watching some tiny meter go up for hours, days, years...
Clicker Heroes Q.E.D.
If it's not necessary for the game, why is it there?
As for the core few galaxies being used, by adjusting generation values and creating different unique systems, we can create Points of Interests. These are of course randomly placed within your galaxies but they'll attract both NPC and player factions that want to grow. If every system has a daily quota of asteroid output, you'll want to control and protect your best ones.
This is the larger scale objective, control more resources to make more to take even more. In a player only world, it will result in an imbalance if left unchecked. It would only take a few days before 2 major factions manifest and wage war with each other (because that's what we love ^^). In less than a week, 1 major faction might survive and you get a stale world till that big faction splits up themself because of internal disputes.
Either way, this isn't the best course of action especially for new players that would need to either join a big faction or stay small and unnoticed.
The problem with this large scale mentality is that starmade's strength is in the details. I'll end up spending all my time in map menus and ordering fleets around, never touching the actual game. If the game is only about territory control and faction expansion, why does it even need a voxel engine? You could've just made another browser based strategy game like
Landing - Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances - Official EA Site or
Stronghold Kingdoms . If you look at those games, you'd never in a million years think "This really needs a voxel engine and unit design!" because that contributes nothing to the games. If the large scale faction operation is what the game ultimately boils down to then all the ship design and piloting won't matter.
This is why i'm worried about the game's vision; the new additions are running counter to the old stuff or not contributing to it in any meaningful way.
Well I think everyone will agree the biggest cause for this is the time it's taken to get here. Were we more immediately successful, I imagine the pace would be quickened early on. Instead we have seen steady growth with occasional spikes (afaik). If we received the attention space engineers got a few years ago, well we certainly would be seeing more players, servers and work being done.
No. The cause is problems being left out while you add more features. I haven't seen anyone complaining about sound not being in, because we DO understand this game is in early access and not finished.
It's probably not the most comforting thing, but I am going to link
this. I understand that 75% of this is censored at the moment. However, behind the scenes, that entire form is filled out. We have every feature we want for StarMade on that list. Now that's a lot of stuff, and it will take lots of work and discussion to get there. We aren't going to promise something big only to find out later that it won't work. That is why it's censored until we know we can achieve it. We also shouldn't be spending time fleshing it out entirely just yet, since we need to focus on the upcoming updates.
But they're just high level features! Critical current systems like the power system, weapon ballance and thrust are currently in dire need of overhauls.
As for this update, I would argue that this update is a core mechanic of the game. This is the foundation for the PvE end of the gameplay, which is non-existent right now. If you have specific questions I am sure we could answer them. It's frustrating seeing some players loose faith. I don't know how much we can say but we should be able to clear a few things up.
I'd argue that if the game is playable without it's not a core system. As far as i'm concerned the core systems are
- Building
- Moving
- Shooting
- Damage
And that's it. The game is playable without mining, without rails, without factions or lighting or shipyards or crafting. They all add to the game, all mehanics should add to the game, but they can't all be CORE mechanics. Again, take
Starsector as an example. That game is missing mining, station building, faction warfare for player and multiple fleet controls, but the core combat is rock solid. It has a good foundation it can expand upon and everyone playing it knows what kind of game they're in for, and there hasn't been any major changes to combat while the game has added trading, sensors, multiple starsystems, multiple factions, officers, quests and fleet abilities. I also suspect that having a solid base made adding these systems much easier, like sensors and officers, since they knew how the ships will work, and what the standards are.
If we received the attention space engineers got a few years ago, well we certainly would be seeing more players, servers and work being done.
You won't get space engineer attention because your game isn't fun to play. It's fun to build spaceships, but there's nothing to really do with it. I have like 5 friends i've shown this game to, initial impression is always really good but as soon as they're in the game and they get all the factories instantly and see there's no point to what you're doing they lose interest.
In space engineers you're always working towards something: your first miner, your first refinery, your first builder, larger miner, larger refinery, mobile refinery, defense ships, etc.
I for one would love some insight into the methodology, techniques and thought processes that Starmade goes through, There seems to be a major lean towards Schine as a whole being 'incompetent' and inexperienced. Providing some insight into your workflow should alleviate this, as many of the elements in the games engine is rather complicated, yet not well known. (current rendering comes to mind, so many visible faces and elements in memory, yet still producing high FPS)
I have zero doubts in schine's technical ability to create a game, this would do nothing to change that. I admire both the engine and their conduct. I'm worried about their ability to design and prioritize game mechanics.
Consider this alternate approach:
- Reballance the core mechanics to make fighting and combat ship design solid
- Launch ROBOCRAFT like gamemode with servers where players fight in a single system.
- Now you can expand the game with the larger scale exploration and faction building
How much work would this take compared to all the faction stuff? The reballance needs to happen one way or another, the game cannot stand with current mechanics because they're simply too weak, and this way you might get more people playing it without spending the next 2 decades in development hell.
