Dynamic Galaxies/Universe

[Endcar]

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.

Ouch, dude if you can mod this I give you props. However I bet you 5 dollars that from those actions you just listed my computer would explode in 3 seconds. (This is what I understand)

You gave ship "A" an action; "move to destination". Now from what your asking the AI needs to calculate overall threat level of path and overall threat level of sector while determining what ships and how many should escort it (not to mention how those ships would interact with each other and what it encounters). Thats currently 3+ things its trying to calculate (not including the galaxy calculation of ship speed, block count, etc.) and finally 1 passive action its trying to complete once it reaches its destination; "to mine".

Now comes the hard part, having the AI capable to understand what it should mine.... Okay now you need to determine how far it can venture to find asteroids (since thats where you'll get ore). So lets say you've got all that; it's beginning to mine. You've now got a mining action, ship escorts, how those ships interact with each other, how they interact with other entities, speed/distance calculations between objects, and finally threat level adjustments. Lets not even think about what would happen when this small fleet goes into combat. You can use starmades basic code to understand the combat but, they usually fly around aimlessly then eventually disappear.

Okay the ship is full of resources finally. Now it must go to destination B and complete its new action. Now because this is all supposed to be a "Dynamic Galaxy" the AI should be able to do this on its own without you interfering. So you request that it pick the closest destination to complete said task; lets say sell wares at trade port (lets not think about planets).

As you can see having the trade guild and pirates and maybe a couple other factions are fine but, unless you somehow know how to obscure all other actions unless player is there your computer will fry in a matter of a few minutes. Theres just way too many things for it to try and understand on its own while the player is doing his own thing of galaxy wide domination.

You can see what I mean when a player (on a server) takes a hulk of a salvager and tries to eat up a planet... Thats just one ship with probably a hundred beams. Now if this was just with one galaxy in starmade or a few planets I might see a completely dynamic galaxy working. But at the moment you'd be lucky to add in 3 neutral factions with little interaction that won't make your computer shoot itself.

 

[Blaza612]

Ouch, dude if you can mod this I give you props. However I bet you 5 dollars that from those actions you just listed my computer would explode in 3 seconds. (This is what I understand)

You gave ship "A" an action; "move to destination". Now from what your asking the AI needs to calculate overall threat level of path and overall threat level of sector while determining what ships and how many should escort it (not to mention how those ships would interact with each other and what it encounters). Thats currently 3+ things its trying to calculate (not including the galaxy calculation of ship speed, block count, etc.) and finally 1 passive action its trying to complete once it reaches its destination; "to mine".

Now comes the hard part, having the AI capable to understand what it should mine.... Okay now you need to determine how far it can venture to find asteroids (since thats where you'll get ore). So lets say you've got all that; it's beginning to mine. You've now got a mining action, ship escorts, how those ships interact with each other, how they interact with other entities, speed/distance calculations between objects, and finally threat level adjustments. Lets not even think about what would happen when this small fleet goes into combat. You can use starmades basic code to understand the combat but, they usually fly around aimlessly then eventually disappear.

Okay the ship is full of resources finally. Now it must go to destination B and complete its new action. Now because this is all supposed to be a "Dynamic Galaxy" the AI should be able to do this on its own without you interfering. So you request that it pick the closest destination to complete said task; lets say sell wares at trade port (lets not think about planets).

As you can see having the trade guild and pirates and maybe a couple other factions are fine but, unless you somehow know how to obscure all other actions unless player is there your computer will fry in a matter of a few minutes. Theres just way too many things for it to try and understand on its own while the player is doing his own thing of galaxy wide domination.

You can see what I mean when a player (on a server) takes a hulk of a salvager and tries to eat up a planet... Thats just one ship with probably a hundred beams. Now if this was just with one galaxy in starmade or a few planets I might see a completely dynamic galaxy working. But at the moment you'd be lucky to add in 3 neutral factions with little interaction that won't make your computer shoot itself.

You seem to be misunderstanding both how technology works, and how the actual system will work.

First of all, a potato is capable of processing three variables. While it may not be able to calculate what exactly determines them, you would need an Atari console to have even the slightest amount of lag for processing these things. This is a single variable, a single number, and the strength to get the variables is next to nothing for a computer, even one that is 5-10 years old. There is a difference between loading ships and loading a few numbers. If you load a ship, then you have to process all of the blocks the ship has on it, those blocks then need to form a mesh together, and then the game does it's physics stuff involving the ship. Collisions are the worst, as they are so poorly optimized, whereas this can be very easily optimized from the ground up.

Second of all, that is a random encounter. The way everything works, is a simulation based on the faction ticks, that simply adds up some numbers and changes the galaxy accordingly, something that really shouldn't cause any lag on most things. The random encounter, is something that is experienced in the sector alone. Everything involving that encounter would've spawned at that sector and been at that sector only, because of the fact that the player is there. Once the player leaves, it despawns, and these encounters will be rather uncommon.

There are no physical entities all over the galaxy doing stuff to make a faction do factiony things. It is simply a bunch of numbers, I'll give you an example of what the equation to determine total ore yield could look like (chances are, it'll be calculated at a local scale, then added up to the global scale), and that is how ore would be gained.

R = amount of sectors which host a refinery
Ra = total amount of asteroid sectors surrounding refineries
Pm = mining population
Q = average quality of refineries/how much yield can come out of the ore refined
Qs = quality of mining ships (how much the ships can haul back every tick)
O = total ore

((Ra/R) * (Pm*Qs)) * Q = O
​

That take an instant for a PC process. They're much better at math than humans, considering they're made of it. Binary is how any electronics functions, 0 is an off signal, 1 is an on signal. That can become 1 or 2 I believe. Computers have thousands of signals going everywhere, math is simply a few signals going somewhere, and then the output being displayed, which is still nothing but signals going to microscopic projector thingies, making up pixels.

And with that, I shall sleep...

 

[Endcar]

You seem to be misunderstanding both how technology works, and how the actual system will work.

And with that, I shall sleep...

Night my friend. Your right when it comes to numbers the most basic machine can understand and compute thousands of different variations compared to the computers now-a-days. I was talking about how physical objects interact with other physical objects (collisions, distance, speed, etc.). Basically everything you stated. I like how enthusiastic you are about this, though can you get it working before the end of the year? Time is a major factor and adding one line of code could break several as a programmer like yourself commonly knows and stress testing is over looked a lot.

If a group of you programmers are able to join together and schine chips in. I might see this be a reality very quickly. I have an interest to see how this turns out but, I'm an artist and I can only contribute artistic content at the moment. So if you need concepts or designs drawn up let me know.

 

[Zaphord]

I'd imagine a simpler solution would be to allow server admin to create npc factions and set their roles according to a set of values.

Instead of the random, unorganized pirates we have now, the admin could make a few named pirate bands that could even go to war with each other over territory or fight over a tg caravan and its spoils.

Just a thought.

 

[Blaza612]

I'd imagine a simpler solution would be to allow server admin to create npc factions and set their roles according to a set of values.

Instead of the random, unorganized pirates we have now, the admin could make a few named pirate bands that could even go to war with each other over territory or fight over a tg caravan and its spoils.

Just a thought.

I few, predetermined factions is yes, simpler, but is also the lazy way out when it comes to a sandbox game. For any RPG, pre-determined factions are better, but for a Sandbox game, you'll want as much of it to be as dynamic as possible, this system would allow for more random to happen, and would fit in much better in a sandbox game, such as Starmade. It would create more interesting and unique stories, defectors from one faction could eventually influence another so much, that the new faction changes to become very similar to the one the defectors are running from. So much more can happen with this system, it would create so much content on it's own, and with the current content problem player's are complaining about, this system could attract many more people into joining the game.

 

[Zaphord]

I few, predetermined factions is yes, simpler, but is also the lazy way out when it comes to a sandbox game. For any RPG, pre-determined factions are better, but for a Sandbox game, you'll want as much of it to be as dynamic as possible, this system would allow for more random to happen, and would fit in much better in a sandbox game, such as Starmade. It would create more interesting and unique stories, defectors from one faction could eventually influence another so much, that the new faction changes to become very similar to the one the defectors are running from. So much more can happen with this system, it would create so much content on it's own, and with the current content problem player's are complaining about, this system could attract many more people into joining the game.

That's a given. Dynamic NPC factions would make the game more interesting, imagine pulling into an NPC station with a hold full of booze or something and getting fined because they consider that contraband? Good reason to research who you're trying to sell what goods to before setting off.

I do think that the Trade Guild shouldn't be it's own race though, but rather a collective of races that join the guild for mutual protection and profit. However, one race could be more prominent in the Trade Guild, something like the Ferengi in Star Trek maybe?

They could have trade agreements with even the most agressive empires. Even the most ambitious of warlords still needs business partners to maintain an empire. The only exception I could see to this would be an outright hostile race of xenophobes, or a hive mind collective like the Zerg or the Borg.

Game play wise, each galaxy could have a random number of factions generated, but only those flagged as agressive or expansionist would claim territory outside thier home galaxy. I'd love to take part in a war against a zerg-like race that's slowly consuming galaxies as they expand. That would be awesome.

 

[Blaza612]

Bump because the single thing the game needs most is something to do other than build 'n' battle. If this can at least be started, then the game will have improved massively [gameplay wise].

 

[SilverAgeFan]

I like the spirit of the OP. But I'd prefer these factions, the weights on their narrative behaviors, and even their names to be procedurally generated. That would then create a sense of exploration, discovery, and uniqueness to each galaxy.

In such a case though, I would like to see those factions, their number, names, and attributes all fully customizable and able to be set/imported at the time of galaxy creation allowing a server admin to create precisely the sort of galaxy they would like to host in terms of factions. This way you could create this very list of factions, something near it, or something entirely different.

I see that factions are already a planned feature. Are alien species with different skins (and shapes?) planned as well? Faction body types would be great to set and change too, if we wanted to make factions divide along different species lines.

 

[Blaza612]

I like the spirit of the OP. But I'd prefer these factions, the weights on their narrative behaviors, and even their names to be procedurally generated. That would then create a sense of exploration, discovery, and uniqueness to each galaxy.

In such a case though, I would like to see those factions, their number, names, and attributes all fully customizable and able to be set/imported at the time of galaxy creation allowing a server admin to create precisely the sort of galaxy they would like to host in terms of factions. This way you could create this very list of factions, something near it, or something entirely different.

I see that factions are already a planned feature. Are alien species with different skins (and shapes?) planned as well? Faction body types would be great to set and change too, if we wanted to make factions divide along different species lines.

Procedurally generated factions that do stuff on their own is literally the entire post. Everything on the main post is pretty much just traits and what the individual factions can do. :P

Since the factions would be generated from a series of procedurally picked numbers, I don't see why the factions wouldn't be customizable. When the player creates his own faction, all of the traits/attributes that a faction may have could be completely customized by said player.

Fauna is currently being worked on, which is aliens and ecosystems, so I would expect different looking races when it comes to the factions, even if they don't become dynamic.

 

[Dire Venom]

+1 From me.
The ideas sound, however itd need a lot of refinement and revising before itd actually be plausible to implement.

 

[Andem]

Anew faction type (maybe) the heirarchy! The heirarchy would attack every faction they meet, and would (probably) take it over. the invaded factions ships, members, and species would join the ranks of the heirarchy. the heirarchy would not have defectors, and wouldn't bother with propaganda, choosing to simply invade and take over everything.

 

[Blaza612]

How the shit are people still managing to dig this up and rate it? Gotta give 'em credit for looking through the ocean of suggestions. :p

 

[kookster]

How the shit are people still managing to dig this up and rate it? Gotta give 'em credit for looking through the ocean of suggestions. :p

Cause its a good idea.

 

[Andem]

How the shit are people still managing to dig this up and rate it? Gotta give 'em credit for looking through the ocean of suggestions. :p

Good ideas never die. they just grow more awesome as time progresses...