Dynamic Galaxies/Universe

[Blaza612]

Magical Weekly Bump of Bumpiness

 

[Reilly Reese]

This probably belongs in an expansion of some sort.


Great idea but like so many don't seem feasible until Starmade is optimized and polished.

 

[Blaza612]

This probably belongs in an expansion of some sort.


Great idea but like so many don't seem feasible until Starmade is optimized and polished.

It is possible to add this in Starmade's current state, we have discussed different ways of optimization in earlier replies which involving turning the whole system into a few variables changing every now and then, allowing this to be able to run beyond smoothly.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Well the AI themselves are rather basic and any viewed battles would be somewhat laggy still.

 

[VaporStrike]

This is interesting, but it would be a long way off from right now. And I mean a looooooong time off. This is VERY advanced compared to even the most advanced systems already in the game. I can't imagine this coming any time in the next year, if it's even decided upon.

 

[Blaza612]

This is interesting, but it would be a long way off from right now. And I mean a looooooong time off. This is VERY advanced compared to even the most advanced systems already in the game. I can't imagine this coming any time in the next year, if it's even decided upon.

Honestly I'm tempted to create my own little version of this in a different engine and send it to the developers, if that'll increase the chances of it being implemented. :P

 

[Reilly Reese]

Visual representations always increase likely hood of convincing people of anything :p

 

[Blaza612]

Magical Weekly Bump of Bumpiness

 

[Blaza612]

Bump

 

[Knack]

Bump

Should i tell you a secret?

I hate people who periodically bump their threads for no reason.

 

[DivineEvil]

I agree on the bumping part. It's a bad manners in most forums. Your idea is great and has a good informational value, but it doesn't mean it has a special place in Suggestions to manually promote it. Thread bumps also reduces the average informational value of your thread, and having your thread in recent posts will not increase community interest in your suggestions in any way. Please avoid doing it, and refer your threads when similar discussions arise after you've provided your feedback on them instead.

Being on topic, I can relate to the author's point of view. It's a growing thrend to use periodical math iterations to simulate a breathing game universe. Nonetheless, as previously stated, the suggested complexity of the system is a bit overkill to what might be implemented as a core part of the game.

1. To represent the working structure, only a few simulated faction should exist. Players are the ones, who are supposed to represent the bulk of the faction that you have suggested. Crowding the universe with AI-controlled faction would make player's involvement a lot less significant. Travellers, Empires and Defectors are all unnecesary concepts, which currently are and should be henceforth represented by Players.
2. Trading Guild. An existing and necessary entity in Starmade, Trading Guild should be more dependant on player's actions. Trading Guild should not persist in sectors largely occupied by Pirates simply by the virtue of random chance. The whole "station is gone, lets spawn another one" thing has to go, forever. Players has to actively fight off the pirates for Trading Guild to claim a sector for their Trade Stations and protect them by responding to attack warnings in order to keep them at their place. Trading guilds in return will provide a credits source for player and other AI factions as well as redistribute the goods troughout the universe. The "police force" is completely pointless at this point, as whatever you call them doesn't change their allegiance or function. You can as well call them Private Security or anything else, which bring us to...
3. Mercenaries. This definition already describes the function thoroughly. It's a faction of AI controlled ships, that can just chill out near Trade Stations looking for contracts, perform offensive raids against pirates in nearby systems, or to be hired by players to defend certain positions, accompany players or to patrol the systems which these players claimed. The same way as with any other AI faction, the bulk of their activity is run off-screen, unless a player personally enters the sector where the virtual event has been created. All the possible interactions and effects is pointless to discuss, until the viable AI algorithm is introduced.
4. Miners Guild. The mostly peaceful faction, which intergates into relatively safe systems and perform virtual routines to provide players with resources they would have to harvest themselves, thus allowing players to produce items without spending most of their own time mining necessary materials. Miners would only settle withing systems with a certain number or asteroid sectors, and their output would directly represent the actual probabilities of different materials to appear within that system. They would actively interact with Trade Guild and supply them with these materials. If they persist and gain a fortune trough Trade Guild and Players, they will hire mercenaries to guard their installations.
5. Commonwealth. Representing the bulk of the civilian popuation, Commonwealth is represented by Towns and Colonies that would be generated ocassionaly on undiscowered or at least untouched planets. They would also interact with Trading Guild and sometimes the Miners Guild directly to obtain raw resources, and translate them into finished items over time, and the amount of resources they acquire would represent the items they will offer in return, thus providing players with necessary parts and equipment. If the planet is claimed by Commonwealth, the mining is impossible until it's installation is destroyed. Player can willing choose to dedicate a planet for himself by mining it before Commonwealth sees it as an opportunity to settle there. Their function can be spiced up even more by implementing some items that only they produce, such as locked containers of rations, tools, medicine etc., which players can resell to other colonies, which were established on planets, where these goods are not readily available. Commonwealth would probably protect themselves with their own stationary defenses, but might still be defeated with major Pirate raid, if players cannot control their expansion into corresponding sectors.
6. Remnants. A haywired machines of destruction left from a long-gone alien species. Their ships are designed to challenge even experienced players, while their stations hold a strong grip over the periphery systems they usually occupy, keeping solitary players from effortlessly crossing the void to reach new galaxies. They have a hivemind connection making it impossible to casually farming them, and cleansing of their system requires a collaborative effort of highly developed players forming raid parties. The reward is blocks of alien equipment, armor and decorative elements, that cannot be obtained by any other means. This gives players a definite reason to develop and join forces under the same banner. Their raids are rare and not particulary dangerous, but systems that are not occupied by any other faction will be eventually claimed by them. They will slowly develop depending on how rich the occupied system is, and if left untouched for waaaay to long, will terminate the Star of the system, turning it into the Void sector with Remnant Nexus in its place.

Even this minimal interactive framework is a big leap for Starmade.

 

[Blaza612]

I agree on the bumping part. It's a bad manners in most forums. Your idea is great and has a good informational value, but it doesn't mean it has a special place in Suggestions to manually promote it. Thread bumps also reduces the average informational value of your thread, and having your thread in recent posts will not increase community interest in your suggestions in any way. Please avoid doing it, and refer your threads when similar discussions arise after you've provided your feedback on them instead.

Being on topic, I can relate to the author's point of view. It's a growing thrend to use periodical math iterations to simulate a breathing game universe. Nonetheless, as previously stated, the suggested complexity of the system is a bit overkill to what might be implemented as a core part of the game.

1. To represent the working structure, only a few simulated faction should exist. Players are the ones, who are supposed to represent the bulk of the faction that you have suggested. Crowding the universe with AI-controlled faction would make player's involvement a lot less significant. Travellers, Empires and Defectors are all unnecesary concepts, which currently are and should be henceforth represented by Players.
2. Trading Guild. An existing and necessary entity in Starmade, Trading Guild should be more dependant on player's actions. Trading Guild should not persist in sectors largely occupied by Pirates simply by the virtue of random chance. The whole "station is gone, lets spawn another one" thing has to go, forever. Players has to actively fight off the pirates for Trading Guild to claim a sector for their Trade Stations and protect them by responding to attack warnings in order to keep them at their place. Trading guilds in return will provide a credits source for player and other AI factions as well as redistribute the goods troughout the universe. The "police force" is completely pointless at this point, as whatever you call them doesn't change their allegiance or function. You can as well call them Private Security or anything else, which bring us to...
3. Mercenaries. This definition already describes the function thoroughly. It's a faction of AI controlled ships, that can just chill out near Trade Stations looking for contracts, perform offensive raids against pirates in nearby systems, or to be hired by players to defend certain positions, accompany players or to patrol the systems which these players claimed. The same way as with any other AI faction, the bulk of their activity is run off-screen, unless a player personally enters the sector where the virtual event has been created. All the possible interactions and effects is pointless to discuss, until the viable AI algorithm is introduced.
4. Miners Guild. The mostly peaceful faction, which intergates into relatively safe systems and perform virtual routines to provide players with resources they would have to harvest themselves, thus allowing players to produce items without spending most of their own time mining necessary materials. Miners would only settle withing systems with a certain number or asteroid sectors, and their output would directly represent the actual probabilities of different materials to appear within that system. They would actively interact with Trade Guild and supply them with these materials. If they persist and gain a fortune trough Trade Guild and Players, they will hire mercenaries to guard their installations.
5. Commonwealth. Representing the bulk of the civilian popuation, Commonwealth is represented by Towns and Colonies that would be generated ocassionaly on undiscowered or at least untouched planets. They would also interact with Trading Guild and sometimes the Miners Guild directly to obtain raw resources, and translate them into finished items over time, and the amount of resources they acquire would represent the items they will offer in return, thus providing players with necessary parts and equipment. If the planet is claimed by Commonwealth, the mining is impossible until it's installation is destroyed. Player can willing choose to dedicate a planet for himself by mining it before Commonwealth sees it as an opportunity to settle there. Their function can be spiced up even more by implementing some items that only they produce, such as locked containers of rations, tools, medicine etc., which players can resell to other colonies, which were established on planets, where these goods are not readily available. Commonwealth would probably protect themselves with their own stationary defenses, but might still be defeated with major Pirate raid, if players cannot control their expansion into corresponding sectors.
6. Remnants. A haywired machines of destruction left from a long-gone alien species. Their ships are designed to challenge even experienced players, while their stations hold a strong grip over the periphery systems they usually occupy, keeping solitary players from effortlessly crossing the void to reach new galaxies. They have a hivemind connection making it impossible to casually farming them, and cleansing of their system requires a collaborative effort of highly developed players forming raid parties. The reward is blocks of alien equipment, armor and decorative elements, that cannot be obtained by any other means. This gives players a definite reason to develop and join forces under the same banner. Their raids are rare and not particulary dangerous, but systems that are not occupied by any other faction will be eventually claimed by them. They will slowly develop depending on how rich the occupied system is, and if left untouched for waaaay to long, will terminate the Star of the system, turning it into the Void sector with Remnant Nexus in its place.

Even this minimal interactive framework is a big leap for Starmade.

First of all, I'm bumping for the devs to see this, and to at least give it a recognized tag, since this would be a MASSIVE addition to the game.

Second of all, no offense, I personally hate your idea of only a few factions. This entire system I came up with was to allow the singleplayer experience to be like a dynamic space RPG which revolves around the story you make, I designed most of this to be for singleplayer, and the fact that it's all done mathematically allows the config to change almost every aspect. What I want to experience, is a massive galaxy full of different alien races who are just trying to thrive in their regions of space, I want to be some guy who's apart of a big empire, who eventually helps so much that he quickly moves up the ladder, creating a large story about the galaxy myself.

Your idea of just a few preset factions effectively rules out what my entire post is about, DYNAMIC factions, factions that change dynamically based on a multitude of different factors, plenty of which you can influence. The point of the travelers is to provide any faction, including player-made ones, with NPCs for it to grow and become a living network that is the faction, the defectors are something that would happen IRL, and would provide more depth, such as a rebellion against some horrible faction.

All in all, I'm not stopping the bumps until I've had some closure to whether this has been considered by the devs or not, and your ideas destroy the original idea. If you only want one or two factions, there would be a config option for that. :P

On a side note, I find it hard to believe that the devs will not at least consider this, as we have presented a lot of the ways it could be done to an optimized level, as well as how much this would add to the game. I'd probably prefer the world I create in Starmade than reality. :P

 

[Knack]

@OP

Spoiler: OT about the bumps

The council has seen this, most players here have seen it and i'm sure the devs have seen it.
Something similar is on the roadmap
https://trello.com/c/6hbRZZ7L/15-expanded-stellar-diversity
Maybe you want to refer to this per comment on the roadmap. (I think everybodye is able to comment)

And if you still want to bump, pls bump lesser. Once a month should do it.
Also if the last few posts are only bumps you are doing it wrong.

 

[Blaza612]

@OP

Spoiler: OT about the bumps

The council has seen this, most players here have seen it and i'm sure the devs have seen it.
Something similar is on the roadmap
https://trello.com/c/6hbRZZ7L/15-expanded-stellar-diversity
Maybe you want to refer to this per comment on the roadmap. (I think everybodye is able to comment)

And if you still want to bump, pls bump lesser. Once a month should do it.
Also if the last few posts are only bumps you are doing it wrong.

Alrighty then, the bumps will change to monthly, again, just wanting the devs to at least recognize this. :P

 

[DivineEvil]

First of all, I'm bumping for the devs to see this, and to at least give it a recognized tag, since this would be a MASSIVE addition to the game.

Devs are not limited to look for suggestions on the first page. Do not judge them by your own standards. It's also not in your responsibility to decide which threads should or should not be tagged. Thinking someone's work should be recognized is a valid standpoint, but zealously trying to promote your own work is not. Being MASSIVE does not automatically makes something justified. In most cases its just makes it a dream never to come true.

Second of all, no offense, I personally hate your idea of only a few factions. This entire system I came up with was to allow the singleplayer experience to be like a dynamic space RPG which revolves around the story you make, I designed most of this to be for singleplayer, and the fact that it's all done mathematically allows the config to change almost every aspect. What I want to experience, is a massive galaxy full of different alien races who are just trying to thrive in their regions of space, I want to be some guy who's apart of a big empire, who eventually helps so much that he quickly moves up the ladder, creating a large story about the galaxy myself.

Simply copy-pasting the structure of an existing, unrelated game that you like and applying it to Starmade is not that much impressive to me, and not something you should consider as your own creation. The core problem though, is that the suggested system most likely will push player's effect on it to the rock bottom. Factions are fundamentally player-driven aspect, and AI factions are there to provide players with essential environment to interact with. They are not there to randomly generate more and more factions and other content without player's direct involvement, and consume server's performance to simulate activities in areas where players have not even expanded into. Organized player's Factions can do all of that and more, and Starmade, considering it's scale, is player-oriented and developed for them to be creative and competetive, not for the AI.

Your idea of just a few preset factions effectively rules out what my entire post is about, DYNAMIC factions, factions that change dynamically based on a multitude of different factors, plenty of which you can influence. The point of the travelers is to provide any faction, including player-made ones, with NPCs for it to grow and become a living network that is the faction, the defectors are something that would happen IRL, and would provide more depth, such as a rebellion against some horrible faction.

And what factors I can influence actually? As it seems, these data structures are just too massive for players to have any significant effect on. Incorporating AI Travellers makes solo-players redundant for making your own faction, and Defectors are nothing but Travellers with a faction they left set as enemies, which make the whole concept insignificant.

All in all, I'm not stopping the bumps until I've had some closure to whether this has been considered by the devs or not, and your ideas destroy the original idea. If you only want one or two factions, there would be a config option for that.

That is your idea which has to stick to the config files. It is fine to suggest a configuration framework, that would allow these simulations and off-screen interations to occur, but unless there's a solid foundation for economy and PvE environment, which can be used to test the limits of the engine, it is just silly to assume the suggestion specific as that would be considered in any realistic future. Foreshadowing your reply, what you've wrote is not equates to "mkaing an example". Instead, you should skip the specifics and elaborate on the parameters of such wramework were it to be implemented, not on the potential products of that framework.

On a side note, I find it hard to believe that the devs will not at least consider this, as we have presented a lot of the ways it could be done to an optimized level, as well as how much this would add to the game. I'd probably prefer the world I create in Starmade than reality.

Whether or not it can be optimized is Devs business. Prefering a game to reality, what a shame.

 

[Reilly Reese]

Prefering a game to reality, what a shame.

In all honesty "reality" is a pretty bleak place right now. >_>

But on topic having dynamic stuff is a lot better than a few things that require player interaction. As someone who has seen the under the hood of Skyrim anything dynamic is good because that game was hiddenly rigged like 4th of July Fireworks.

 

[Blaza612]

Devs are not limited to look for suggestions on the first page. Do not judge them by your own standards. It's also not in your responsibility to decide which threads should or should not be tagged. Thinking someone's work should be recognized is a valid standpoint, but zealously trying to promote your own work is not. Being MASSIVE does not automatically makes something justified. In most cases its just makes it a dream never to come true.

I would expect them to look on pages other than the first, I know I'm not the one who decides what gets tagged or not, what I'm doing is just trying to increase the odds of this getting tagged, I've agreed to at least slow down the bumps to monthly, hopefully that is more middle ground for what we both desire.

Simply copy-pasting the structure of an existing, unrelated game that you like and applying it to Starmade is not that much impressive to me, and not something you should consider as your own creation. The core problem though, is that the suggested system most likely will push player's effect on it to the rock bottom. Factions are fundamentally player-driven aspect, and AI factions are there to provide players with essential environment to interact with. They are not there to randomly generate more and more factions and other content without player's direct involvement, and consume server's performance to simulate activities in areas where players have not even expanded into. Organized player's Factions can do all of that and more, and Starmade, considering it's scale, is player-oriented and developed for them to be creative and competetive, not for the AI.

Which game exactly has this system? Because I now want to play that game. I have never seen a dynamic factions systems in any game, let alone one that reaches the detail I put into the idea. I understand that you wish for players to be the central focus, thats the point of a sandbox. It's a game that you can change to what you want, again, considering the mathematical ways of figuring out what happens, it would be idiotic to not add configs for this, you would be able to have player driven factions, and I could have my NPC driven factions, we both get what we want. Again, this game is a sandbox game, it is not a game that is meant to be based around the player, it is a game that is meant to be what it's genre describes, a sandbox, it's a game that changes in different ways to provide different players with different experiences, it is not a game entirely about competitive and creative gameplay, those are just two things that can be achieved within the game. I hope I managed to explain that last part right. :p

And what factors I can influence actually? As it seems, these data structures are just too massive for players to have any significant effect on. Incorporating AI Travellers makes solo-players redundant for making your own faction, and Defectors are nothing but Travellers with a faction they left set as enemies, which make the whole concept insignificant.

First of all, I can't exactly say what factors you would be able to influence, you got me on this one. :p

However, you may be able to influence by doing missions or something, maybe talk to some people, get jobs and eventually move up the chain of command, to the point where you make war decisions or something, again, you got me on this one. :p

Defectors aren't just travellers with an enemy, they're a source of change within a faction. The defectors carry over their previous factions traits with them. Enough defectors from the same faction and some serious change could happen within a faction. It also makes factions to actually care for their citizens, rather than warmonger. (I can't remember exactly what causes defection, and going back a page will cause this to be deleted, I may edit to incorporate what causes defecting.)

That is your idea which has to stick to the config files. It is fine to suggest a configuration framework, that would allow these simulations and off-screen interations to occur, but unless there's a solid foundation for economy and PvE environment, which can be used to test the limits of the engine, it is just silly to assume the suggestion specific as that would be considered in any realistic future. Foreshadowing your reply, what you've wrote is not equates to "mkaing an example". Instead, you should skip the specifics and elaborate on the parameters of such wramework were it to be implemented, not on the potential products of that framework.

Again, it would be idiotic to not include configs with this. This may not be considered until a year or so later, but it will still be considered. My goal isn't to have this implemented in the next update, my goal for this is provide the devs with a suggestion that I personally and many others (according to poll I put up) would love, it would completely change Starmade, for the better. If the devs really want, I could create a massive list of parameters for them to use, but until then, they are more professional and would probably do a better job at finding the parameters for this. They've had more experience.

Whether or not it can be optimized is Devs business. Prefering a game to reality, what a shame.

Alright, now you're just insulting me. I honestly dream of being some guy in a galaxy full of sentient races, all interacting with eachother, a massive network similar to ours on Earth, but on a more galactic

In all seriousness, this can be very easy to run, for a significant amount of factions at least. The fact that most of the factions change is going to be determined by a few variables changing every now and then, it would take up very little power to be able to run through the simulation. While I said I'm not as experienced as them up there, I still understand the basic programming behind this, such as how the simulation won't take much power to run.

 

[hunterRAE]

I do appreciate the slowing of your posts, because even though I enjoy the idea, for I am one of those guys who want to live in a galaxy that is dynamic in the sense that it will change without even the users effort, it will happen based of random generation, you need to allow those who have added new posts a chance for their words to be seen as well. I agree that their needs to be more factions, I would even say procedurally generated by the upcoming creature system, making unique factions for each server and making it like what people eventually hope out of something like this. This said, I don't believe that there should be defined pre-built characteristics, but should be like something from the game of Spore where factors through the creatures development like feeding and territorial patterns to make up how they would act at a galactic level, thus adding really a level of depth that would make exploring a true pleasure and slightly dangerous. Thank you for making this suggestion, it is rather impressive and worth the effort to be added eventually into the game.

 

[Endcar]

Please refer to my Dynamic Galaxy suggestion for a more complete version of what you've proposed. :p

I read what you suggested and yes there's some merit to this. Though it was hard to understand the function of what you proposed and the how it can be implemented in the game. Creating a working AI sounds easy but, creating a functional AI that interacts with a player on a nonlinear scale is extremely difficult.

Many games have tried to make it so the galaxy functions on its own and you the player is a piece of a large puzzle there to co-mingle with that galaxy. This doesn't work that way (at least not yet), the player controls all actions the AI can take allowing the player to create custom path/road for the NPC to take (think of blueprints inside of UE4). This makes it easier to control the workload your system can handle since it has less to compute and very little to spawn on its own.

Having a police force or "Dynamic Galaxy" is better left as a neutral party with a constant path (much like the trading guild already). Doing something like X Rebirth (the AI sucked btw) is just not feasible with as few members schine has at his disposal. Thats why my last suggestion as far

 

[Blaza612]

I read what you suggested and yes there's some merit to this. Though it was hard to understand the function of what you proposed and the how it can be implemented in the game. Creating a working AI sounds easy but, creating a functional AI that interacts with a player on a nonlinear scale is extremely difficult.

Many games have tried to make it so the galaxy functions on its own and you the player is a piece of a large puzzle there to co-mingle with that galaxy. This doesn't work that way (at least not yet), the player controls all actions the AI can take allowing the player to create custom path/road for the NPC to take (think of blueprints inside of UE4). This makes it easier to control the workload your system can handle since it has less to compute and very little to spawn on its own.

Having a police force or "Dynamic Galaxy" is better left as a neutral party with a constant path (much like the trading guild already). Doing something like X Rebirth (the AI sucked btw) is just not feasible with as few members schine has at his disposal. Thats why my last suggestion as far

It would be entirely possible to program a proper simulation, especially with the environment Starmade provides, as it would be a few equations on the global scale. Random encounters would be based on a few factors, as follows below:

Faction1's need (in this case, ore, if attacked, will be full of ore)
Closest faction trading ore (faction2)
Direction between borders
Overall threat level of path (determines escort that comes with it)
Threat level of sector found (determines if there are pirates, and the quality of the pirate attack)
​

I would use those factors to determine an appropriate encounter involving faction1.

If Schine doesn't decide to implement this into the vanilla game, then as soon as the API is released, I'll make my own mod of all of this.