Brainstorm This Exploration and Information Trading

[Griffin Alden]

So I was talking with a friend who likes to play minecraft (and to lesser degree Terraria and Starbound) but can't get into Starmade.
When I asked him why exactly he said,
"I love it that, in Minecraft, you can just pick a direction of the endless world, start walking and discover so much new. Places no Player was before, Mountains, Oceans, Forests, Caves, Dungeons, Tempel, Villages nobody set foot in. In Starmade you have this endless World with 90% nothing, and everything you find looks the same. From and early point on you didn't even spend time checking out a Planet, you just Salvage it right away."

I thought about that and had an idea that didn't solve that issue but might make the game far more interessting for "Explorer".
Every Planet, Station and Asteroid should have (and probably has allready) a view values, like what kind, position, what resources are on it, owner, blocks, size, ...
Even Stars should have a value how close you can get before burning up.

Now imagine you can buy "Starmaps", Maps for each Sun System, a "Planetmap", "Asteroidmap" and "Stationmap", but those are per default blank. You need to go and scann objects in space so they get an entry in your map.
Then, you can share/sell that Map finsihed or not, to the public, and every other player who buys a Map from then on can chose the blank version or your partly- or completed one.
Of course the data on the Map can get old, planets can be mined, stations destroyed, so those Maps need to be updated now and then. (Also Money sink if wanted/needed)

Like Blueprints it should also be possible to share/sell your maps just to faction members or everybody.

 

[Zaphord]

I like this idea, but with so many maps to make, update, and store your inventory and storage blocks would fill up fast.

Just have the maps available through the nav menu, and have the option to make a tradable map that can update someone else's maps when used.

 

[DivineEvil]

Well, first of all the idea of "undiscovered" must be introduced. There's no exploration in Starmade becuase everything is already explored. The only things there's to discover are where are the shops, who owns the stations and how big the planets are. No point skipping a step here.

 

[Griffin Alden]

I like this idea, but with so many maps to make, update, and store your inventory and storage blocks would fill up fast.

Just have the maps available through the nav menu, and have the option to make a tradable map that can update someone else's maps when used.

I don't think you need to make the maps physical present like blueprints, more like simple entries in a table, i mean in the starmade age, you would store maps like that digitaly anyway.

Well, first of all the idea of "undiscovered" must be introduced. There's no exploration in Starmade becuase everything is already explored. The only things there's to discover are where are the shops, who owns the stations and how big the planets are. No point skipping a step here.

Well yes, but that's the point, adding more of an exploration aspect to the game.

 

[DivineEvil]

Well yes, but that's the point, adding more of an exploration aspect to the game.

You cannot add anything to the aspect that isn't there to begin with.

 

[kiraen]

The Roadmap includes the following card:

Expanded Stellar Diversity - Adding much more into the galaxies for players to discover, add in rarity levels and stellar events for more to go find and explore and potentially capitalize on.

Maps might be needed at some point, so not a bad idea to start thinking about it now.

 

[Griffin Alden]

You cannot add anything to the aspect that isn't there to begin with.

That's funny because per default any open world game, specially those with huge computer generated maps have per default and exploration aspect.
You said it yourself, what makes this funnier since you contradicting yourself.

The only things there's to discover are where are the shops, who owns the stations and how big the planets are.

And there is far more, when you visit a planet nobody tells you what resources are on a given plate, when you visit a star system nobody told you were the asteroids are and you don't know what all those "undiscovered stations" are.

The game already is full with stuff to discover and explore,
the only thing, thus my suggestion, is about storing that knowledge and sharing it with an ingame function.

 

[Ithirahad]

And there is far more, when you visit a planet nobody tells you what resources are on a given plate,

Does not matter seeing as it only takes a bit of poking around in a shuttle to find which two resources are there.

when you visit a star system nobody told you were the asteroids are and you don't know what all those "undiscovered stations" are.

The stations are all one of 15 types of station, not very interesting once you've seen them all, which tends to happen pretty quickly. The asteroids are governed by orbit distance and there are only like 7 or 8 kinds, all asteroids of one kind are effectively identical.

tl;dr: Divine is right.

 

[GenericFleetCommander]

I don't think this so much a problem of who has the information rather how it's presented. Right now we get told that it's a station and we get told where planets are etc etc. I think that simply adding a question mark in the place of said icon could help. So instead of "Space Station #xxxx" you get "?" and no image. Like the scanners picked it up but we don't know what it is. This could go for planets and stuff like that. Then a map sharing ability would make more sense because there would be so much to explore, and enemy faction territory you don't know about yet. Then information becomes valuable as you could bribe enemy faction people to loosen their lips. It would have a practical use besides a road block.

Now this is only a band-aid for the issue. I think the major underlying issue here is that these stations have no use beyond resources. If they were inhabited by people and say the basic hanger station gave a reduced repair cost or hull cost, then there would be incentive to go out and explore in hopes of finding an out post you can use that no one knows about, but kiraen posted that road map point, and I think that if they can add enough diversity, adventuring will get a huge upgrade and this problem might become obsolete.