Sector Exports Spawn Similar to Stations

[Commander Viztastic]

I have been playing Starmade for a few years now and something I always wanted to see was more content. Through station contests and ship contests it is steadily growing but that is only half of what the universe needs to be more filled. Something I had always wanted in the game was stumbling across a debris field, derelict ships, imminent fleet battle, Dungeons, etc. Players have always been a great source of content for starmade. Why not use more of that creativity.

My suggestion is sector exports spawning similar to how stations spawn in game. Right now when you create a new world you are able to select what stations and pirates can spawn simply by adding or removing a blueprint from the folders. I think it would be a great idea to sectors do the same thing. Have a folder for randomly generated sectors so players can fill it with sector exports. and then select how much of the universe custom sectors fill. ( 1%, 10%, 50% etc) This could greatly achieve some of the players wanting more explorative opportunities and really make the universe a little more alive than the empty place of which it currently is.

If you like or agree with this idea please leave an agree with a comment. I would really like to see more more and different variations of player content fill the starmade universe.

P.S. Also while this may have been mentioned before, Can you make warp gates have a logic toggle. It would be nice to have warp gates with multiple rings. especially for very large ships. Essentially you can turn on or off warp gates with a logic toggle and select which ring is the primary, saving on a lot of warp gate clutter.

Thank you,

Viztastic

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I would love to discover such things. I've posted about debris before somewhere.

I've been steadily building a debris field around a Pirate station I used for weapons testing.
All the ships are mine but there are a large variety.
Others could do the same and provide as download. Although a sector can be big download/upload.

 

[Erth Paradine]

...
My suggestion is sector exports spawning similar to how stations spawn in game.

I support this idea. As an admin, we've been spicing things up on our server, by automatically importing various pre-made pirate fleet arrangements, asteroid fields, etc. Players can activate these sectors by running a command, after which the server responds with the nearby (randomized) coordinates of where to find their challenge.

Our system even goes so-far as to effectively eliminate the game's built-in pirate spawn feature: currently, game-engine launched pirate fleets lack support for scaling attack fleets to the size of a player's current ship, which makes it pretty much useless when you're trying to accommodate the normal spread of ship designs/sizes that various players use. By using a sector import feature, our scripts simply determines the size of a player's current ship, and then it scales the size of an attack fleet appropriately. All in a mere ~20 lines of a bash shell script (it even checks to ensure its not overwriting an already populated sector)...it's too bad the game engine itself can't manage the same thing.

Anyways - it would certainly be nice to have more ideas out there, for pre-made importable sectors.

 

[terra mining corp.]

This is a great idea,exploring needs to be more fun.Structures on planets, rare minerals, booby trapped asteroids,space wrecks to explore.

 

[TheGT]

YOSSSSSSSSSSS! This would be AMAZING, and not that hard to stick into the game. Though there should be some limitations:

1. Sectors will not appear where there are already stations or ships (obviously)
2. Some of the spawned sectors will not appear within a handful of sectors close to a player station
3. Some of the spawned sectors will not appear within a handful of sectors close to where a player was in the last week

The reason I say Some sectors is due to while it makes more sense for active sparring battle fleets to fight next to your homebase, it does not make sense for the ancient ruins of a long dead civilization to stop by to ask for a cup of sugar. A smoldering, lava-y wreck would make sense though. A set of rules would have to be made for every sector, whoch should not be too hard once some parameters are laid down.

Also, do we want sectors to generate on world startup, or in real time?

Also, how would we create these sectors? Competition? Would contestants be allowed to use ships that they did not create? (perhaps you would have to create all of the ships yourself unless they are from the fleet competition)

Also, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH THIS WOULD ADD TO THE GAME! EXPLORATION, COMBAT, FLEET BATTLES, STAR TREK TYPE ENCOUNTERS. GHUUUUUUUUURRRRR.

(I apologize for my use of caps, however, I feel as if they were well placed seeing as I yelled in joy irl)

 

[StormWing0]

I support this idea. As an admin, we've been spicing things up on our server, by automatically importing various pre-made pirate fleet arrangements, asteroid fields, etc. Players can activate these sectors by running a command, after which the server responds with the nearby (randomized) coordinates of where to find their challenge.

Our system even goes so-far as to effectively eliminate the game's built-in pirate spawn feature: currently, game-engine launched pirate fleets lack support for scaling attack fleets to the size of a player's current ship, which makes it pretty much useless when you're trying to accommodate the normal spread of ship designs/sizes that various players use. By using a sector import feature, our scripts simply determines the size of a player's current ship, and then it scales the size of an attack fleet appropriately. All in a mere ~20 lines of a bash shell script (it even checks to ensure its not overwriting an already populated sector)...it's too bad the game engine itself can't manage the same thing.

Anyways - it would certainly be nice to have more ideas out there, for pre-made importable sectors.

Why not send the code to the devs or post it up in a suggestions thread? Might give them ideas.

 

[EricBlank]

I like what Erth Paradine has going with his script. Implement a simple thing like that to show players where to go to find something, and either point them at what already exists or spawn one just for them when asked (or not asked??)

Also, do we want sectors to generate on world startup, or in real time?

Also, how would we create these sectors? Competition? Would contestants be allowed to use ships that they did not create? (perhaps you would have to create all of the ships yourself unless they are from the fleet competition)

1) Should be able to do it in real time, loaded on the fly based on the galaxy RNG seed.

2) Allow sector exports to be downloaded and added by server admins as they see fit, as well as pre-implemented ones from community contests. Then you can pull anything interesting from community content, modify its spawn parameters if you don't like them, and then let the game place that sector as needed based on those parameters.

 

[Erth Paradine]

Why not send the code to the devs or post it up in a suggestions thread? Might give them ideas.

I thought about it - but its a bash script: basic if/then routines, a few StarNet commands, a couple of variable range checks, and basic algebra. All of which is essentially programming 101: fundamentally basic java capabilities. Quite-frankly, the only way someone couldn't figure out the same themselves, is if they simply were not trying. There's no real ideas to convey, just the illustration that its absolutely possible to accomplish, today. I will at some point share our server's PAFKA toolkit, but I'm not hijacking someone's thread going into detail on that

 

[StormWing0]

I will at some point share our server's PAFKA toolkit, but I'm not hijacking someone's thread going into detail on that

That's what another topic is for. :P

In any event yep maybe they are too busy to the point of forgetting about it or are leaving it for some date when they can make use of it. Never hurts to poke them every now and than to make sure the lights are on and they are having it in mind. :P

 

[Ghent96]

It's a great idea, and imo best implemented upon first world generation to avoid any problems with sectors already populated by sector objects. What Viztastic is talking about anyways is a way to create new content in a server post-wipes, to allow easier, faster setup of a new galaxy for players to enter and get started with their career of choice.

Sure, we can have derelict stations, trade guild stations, and pirate stations, but that's about it. These are entities that are randomly chosen to spawn inside of a randomly generated sector. We need a way to randomize in an entire sector of entities pre-laid-out: station, ships, asteroids, overheating states, NPC / MOBs walking around, factions pre-set... A better, and more "trustable" sector import /export tool would accomplish this. Historically, we've had a very broken sector import/export feature. It has destroyed entire world files very fast and very easily. If it is made to work well, a lot of new opportunities are open to players and admins - graveyards or debris fields being but one of many.

Pirate auto-spawning is broken. Other factions are broken. Outside of scripting such as Erth mentions, there's no way for players to mod or fix these things... and player really are adept and interested in this community to provide our own content and mod things. We don't need the devs to give us content such as new blocks, new textures, new glows, new shadows, new default ships or stations for certain factions, etc - we need a working FRAMEWORK in which to create our own content. We need the sandbox from the devs. We'll provide the sand. Sometimes our devs loose sight of this reality, and get too focused on the wrong types of content / features.