- Joined
- Apr 17, 2015
- Messages
- 272
- Reaction score
- 133
The TL;DR Edition: By changing the pirate station content, and making pirate stations rarer, and ensuring that weak pirates with limited loot appear, we can have better PvE without any coding or design changes to the game as-is.
The Suggestion
So, I was screwing around with an idea for ship construction I had over the weekend (in short, I now make ships shaped like swords). I decided to try a new ship design out against a pirate station, because they're a reliable way to make ships appear. After some assault passes I jumped away, satisfied at my progress.
Reflecting on my strafing runs made me realize there's a relatively easy way to improve the PvE experiernce in this game...with minimal coding changes.
First, pirate stations need to be dangerous. The current pirate station designs should be retired in favor of more modern prefabs, not only to better showcase new systems like rails, but to have each prefab be a different combat challenge. Some bases should be well-shielded; others should have dangerous turrets. Others should release a swarm of pirate drones. There's all sorts of possibilities; best of all, this does not require a code change to implement!
The reason you attack a pirate station, is because of the loot that gets randomly generated in the chest inside. Stations need loot to be worth the time preparing an assault. I strongly encourage a shipyard design to be included in the loot table, as the ability to build a cool new ship easily is important in a game like StarMade. Some stations do in fact have loot that spawns in chests, so this may not require much coding either.
Pirate stations should always have a flaw that allows for a boarding action. That being said, boarding a station should be as daunting as a ship assault; pirate stations should be laced with traps and parkour puzzles meant to deter people on foot. When the Astronaut aspect of the game is better defined, you could have some FPS fun, but frankly, StarMade Mario itself can be an interesting challenge. Again, as this is a design consideration of prefabricated content, and players already know how to make traps, this is a code-less way to enhance the game experience.
Pirate stations, being a difficult target, should be rare. Indeed, pirate stations should serve as a place for new pirate vessels to be spawned in at, before they join pirate raiding parties. This also makes stations a priority, because leaving one up ensures that you never have full control over a sector. A good rule of thumb would be one major pirate hub per sector; two hubs would make a sector effectively hostile to players, unless a faction expands into that sector that can deal with it.
Even without stations, pirate raiding parties should spawn in every now and again. Pirates in StarMade are as foundational a danger - and reward - as monsters are in MineCraft. The pirates spawned in should tend towards being easily beatable, as these are in essence 'random encounters' that make a combative play style possible, and make more passive 'miner' and 'trader' play styles dangerous. One ship in any pirate formation that spawns should have some booty - not nearly as much as a station, of course - to reward the player, in the event that none of the ships can be salvaged.
Pirates that spawn should have an equivalent mass to your currently-piloted ship. Thus, if you're in a small ship, you should be dealing with small pirate ships, so that things aren't too imbalanced. If you're in a corvette, you should be fighting corvettes. If you have a super-titan, get ready to fight a fellow super-titan. Lastly, if you're in Astronaut mode, no ships should spawn. You need a ship in order to do much of anything useful in this game. Being on a planet should also not cause pirate spawns.
The Suggestion
So, I was screwing around with an idea for ship construction I had over the weekend (in short, I now make ships shaped like swords). I decided to try a new ship design out against a pirate station, because they're a reliable way to make ships appear. After some assault passes I jumped away, satisfied at my progress.
Reflecting on my strafing runs made me realize there's a relatively easy way to improve the PvE experiernce in this game...with minimal coding changes.
First, pirate stations need to be dangerous. The current pirate station designs should be retired in favor of more modern prefabs, not only to better showcase new systems like rails, but to have each prefab be a different combat challenge. Some bases should be well-shielded; others should have dangerous turrets. Others should release a swarm of pirate drones. There's all sorts of possibilities; best of all, this does not require a code change to implement!
The reason you attack a pirate station, is because of the loot that gets randomly generated in the chest inside. Stations need loot to be worth the time preparing an assault. I strongly encourage a shipyard design to be included in the loot table, as the ability to build a cool new ship easily is important in a game like StarMade. Some stations do in fact have loot that spawns in chests, so this may not require much coding either.
Pirate stations should always have a flaw that allows for a boarding action. That being said, boarding a station should be as daunting as a ship assault; pirate stations should be laced with traps and parkour puzzles meant to deter people on foot. When the Astronaut aspect of the game is better defined, you could have some FPS fun, but frankly, StarMade Mario itself can be an interesting challenge. Again, as this is a design consideration of prefabricated content, and players already know how to make traps, this is a code-less way to enhance the game experience.
Pirate stations, being a difficult target, should be rare. Indeed, pirate stations should serve as a place for new pirate vessels to be spawned in at, before they join pirate raiding parties. This also makes stations a priority, because leaving one up ensures that you never have full control over a sector. A good rule of thumb would be one major pirate hub per sector; two hubs would make a sector effectively hostile to players, unless a faction expands into that sector that can deal with it.
Even without stations, pirate raiding parties should spawn in every now and again. Pirates in StarMade are as foundational a danger - and reward - as monsters are in MineCraft. The pirates spawned in should tend towards being easily beatable, as these are in essence 'random encounters' that make a combative play style possible, and make more passive 'miner' and 'trader' play styles dangerous. One ship in any pirate formation that spawns should have some booty - not nearly as much as a station, of course - to reward the player, in the event that none of the ships can be salvaged.
Pirates that spawn should have an equivalent mass to your currently-piloted ship. Thus, if you're in a small ship, you should be dealing with small pirate ships, so that things aren't too imbalanced. If you're in a corvette, you should be fighting corvettes. If you have a super-titan, get ready to fight a fellow super-titan. Lastly, if you're in Astronaut mode, no ships should spawn. You need a ship in order to do much of anything useful in this game. Being on a planet should also not cause pirate spawns.
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