- Joined
- Dec 1, 2014
- Messages
- 33
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- 153
Some universe 2 ideas
Over the years i have played this game i have seen many updates, most i liked, some i did not, and others were questionable if they are a “benefit” to the game experience. But something most of the update (excluding a few) all share a common similarity that fits into these 3 category, Building, combat, bug fixes. Something i wanted to really think and debate about for a long time is one of starmades major draws for new players, not the building or combat but the exploration.
I've been relatively laid back in the shadows when it comes to the community, bu i have seen and know of a lot of new players being excited by the idea of exploration and discovery. But i have noticed that quite a lot of new players now only come to the game for the building, and recently i've seen its because there is nothing worth doing other than that. Granted the current power situation is not helping with PVP, if anything it has made most leave because of it but that is a temporary thing in the long run, very little is offered to promote starmades vast open universe which litruly has inspired clans to unite and war against one another. I have listed below what i think are some major points that would be nice to see addressed in the future i think these points may really help the game as a whole become more playable and attract a wider playerbase, and add some much needed diversity into the games randomly generated maps.
Exploration: currently the way exploration works is by a set of community made stations (5 each) that cover 3 categories, them being pirate stations trade stations and abandoned stations. This is spread over a grid of sectors and systems which are all randomly generated in what locations they spawn in and in ludicrously commun quantities. Granted you can change the amount of stations that spawn per system, but for the average player, after 30 minutes of exploring you suddenly run into the fact that you have seen all there is to see for the game, that's it you seen everything. For me that seems like a real waste, especially the stations that were made by the community to fill the role which was then suddenly outdated after 2 updates. I believe the problem there is actually boils down to 2 factors, Quantity of structures you find, and the risk/reward of finding them.
Quantity of stations:
The quantity is a simple factor to fix, due to the large amount of structures that generate in a single map, you often find yourself finding 10-20 stations in each system, due to the size of each system, the likelihood of you running into one by random is quite high, especially traveling long distances or using a jump drive, at least 1 in every 10 sectors i cross will have a station on my navigation. What needs to be looked at is a sweet spot between making a station harder to find and not making it to hard to find to create a problem where the galaxy is barron. Which brings me on to my next point.
Risk and reward:
Part of the problem with the large amount of stations is that finding offers you little to no reward. The only real stations you would want to find are pirate stations if you want to pick a fight, or trade stations if you need some resources. But the stations themselves do not have enough reward for offering the time to deal with one, on the pirate station hand you fight the station cripple it fight off its reinforcements and you are then left with a derelict husk of a station which is turned into scrap, a resource to useless to justify its existence. And trade stations which seem to always stock less and at higher prices than normal shops which you can never sell to due to the fact that they never have much money in stock.
A simple way to fix this problem is to look at it in a players point of view, what does the player need/want. Resources are a common goal for players new and late game, and offer a typical anchor point for a task at hand, mining, raiding, fighting, all offer the same reward from the job resources, some unrefined and basic, and others a trophy of triomphe from your recent victory ready to be melted down into your bases storage.
If you applied some incentive, or lure to have exploration benefit them in some way resources is something all players can relate to in starmade. Which brings me round to Risk and reward.
If you the player had seen a station nearby, you would like to go investigate, the risk to the player is what type of station it is, if it's a tradestation the risk is minimal the reward they get from finding that is the shop it has available. If it is a derelict station the risk is somewhat moderate, this could be altered by having derelict stations have a chance to spawn scavenger (i don't mean the NPC faction specifically) fleets around them, looking to pillage what treasures lie inside it. The reward inside the stations may be small crates of loot, the station itself and maybe if you're lucky a ship docked inside it. Depending on what you find depends on the reward you could recieve, offering a sort of luck based system to go with exploring. For pirate stations the risk is high, you most likely gonna die if you are not prepared, but the reward is substantial, huge amounts of loot or if you're lucky complete blueprints of custom ships ready to go could be found inside your recent victory, the effort you would need to put into raiding the station will also help with the reward you get, i could even go as far as to design Pirate stations with defences that require you to bring along friends to crack it effectively.
In short adding a system like this into the game where the station spawn amount is much lower (2-4 station if you are luck in a single system) with a more detailed look into what you get from exploring them, would really help make the game more enjoyable and worthwhile.
Story: what i like about starmade is the fact that the Players make their own story. So far there has been very little input on story from the developers of the game which i kinda see as a good think. It has allowed to birth this open faction network that has taken its own form over the years. But i've always liked a good bit of lore to immerse myself in from time to time. This somewhat ties in with the Risk/reward idea for stations i had above, but more on the NPC trader side of things.
An idea i liked which is old and forgotten now is the Logbooks you used to get from defeating old pirate stations and pirate ships. They used to follow the adventures of a crew from the Valiant. If you collected them all (or were lazy and just found the notepad file in the starmade folder) you could piece together a captains log of his adventures around the galaxy. I've never been able to get them all in one single game/server but i liked the idea of a little backstory to a travelers log.
A think that might really benefit stations if you were exploring them is to find logs ties to the station itself. E.g. this station i'm in is a medical station its long abandoned something happened the log books detail what happened over a course of a couple of weeks. Some little nod of lore that the creator of the station can add that allows the player to immerse themselves in what happened at the station they are exploring. Or on a more advanced scale if possible, NPC traders can offer missions to retrieve logbooks form specific stations to offer a reward for “finding out what happened” and will direct you to where the station is, this might also offer a sort of mini mission as such, which could get a random encounter of pirate ships trader ships NPC transports, salvage ships, the dredded quads so on in or around the station for your to deal with as a bonus. Encounters like these could tie in ot what happened to the station or be a aftermath of sorts or what happened, but all pointing to a set of goals and rewards to collect.
This also help make a more enjoyable experience with exploration as mission taking. This could also be applied for example to random encounters as to destroy X pirate station missions from NPC traders if you accept them, or destroy X fleet around trade station so on. Mixing in a bit of risk with the story and a bit of reward will help encourage the player to do it (they don't have it if they don't want to it's all optional) offers a some of extra credits along with a loot run to sweeten that pot a little and explore with a little more emersion.
Trade: The final idea that i had to put on the table is Trade itself. To be honest it kinda sucks in starmade. The game has no real unified grater trade network and relies on a set of local shops to grab items you need or cannot craft. There is a small sort of universal trade concept in the game but does not work and in my opinion is unfriendly to new players and can be refined into a more friendly experience.
I loved the idea of a player driven market, but from what i have seen over servers most people find it easier to trade between them face to face rather than over a station shop system. There are 2 things i think should be added / changed that will make things much easier for player to do what we do, them being a inventory trade option. And refined unified exchange.
Inventory trade tab:
This is quite common in a lot of multiplayer games, take star trek online's for instance which allows you to transfer credits, materials guns, tribbles whatever to a different player by inviting them to a trade, which opens your inventory and a trade tab along with it. You can then both add what you want to the trade inventory to send to the other player and confirm it. Once you have both added and confirmed what you are looking to trade between each other, you can accept the trade and the items will transfer between you. This would be super handy for Server gameplay because i see a lot of inventory/storage based transfers where one just drops into space and the other “picks it up” and gives something back (well most of the time). A system like this will help make this quicker and easier, as well as avoid that really annoying bug where you drop your credits into space for someone else and they are just gone forever and neither of you has the credits (same with blocks). In short trade streamlining.
Unified exchange:
Honestly i think the shop block system is fine, but there are a couple of refinements it needs to work even better. The first being a Auto fill button for blueprints inside any shop system, this would find what blocks you need and maximum amounts the shop can provide, and then the total cost of the transaction. This is to just remove the tedious and time consuming faf that is the blueprint fill system. But this is really a quality of life improvement. A idea i had as well is a Shop licence, this can be purchased at any shop once per player and can be added into your shop block on your own station, this would add that shop to the trade market, so you and other players in your faction can access the stock from them shops from your own station. The cost would have to be High and very between shops for the licence, but it would allow people to progress a little easier than usual.
These are some of the things i think could be really nice to see in the universe 2 update, i know that some of these are already in the list and some have already been suggested but i feel it's necessary to reinforce the fact that from what i have gathered this is what some would like to see in the new update. i also cannot stress enough how the risk and reward exploring system, is a good idea, it could really improve how players approach the game and offer a lot more options for community designs and station diversity.
Thanks for reading
Plaz out.
Over the years i have played this game i have seen many updates, most i liked, some i did not, and others were questionable if they are a “benefit” to the game experience. But something most of the update (excluding a few) all share a common similarity that fits into these 3 category, Building, combat, bug fixes. Something i wanted to really think and debate about for a long time is one of starmades major draws for new players, not the building or combat but the exploration.
I've been relatively laid back in the shadows when it comes to the community, bu i have seen and know of a lot of new players being excited by the idea of exploration and discovery. But i have noticed that quite a lot of new players now only come to the game for the building, and recently i've seen its because there is nothing worth doing other than that. Granted the current power situation is not helping with PVP, if anything it has made most leave because of it but that is a temporary thing in the long run, very little is offered to promote starmades vast open universe which litruly has inspired clans to unite and war against one another. I have listed below what i think are some major points that would be nice to see addressed in the future i think these points may really help the game as a whole become more playable and attract a wider playerbase, and add some much needed diversity into the games randomly generated maps.
Exploration: currently the way exploration works is by a set of community made stations (5 each) that cover 3 categories, them being pirate stations trade stations and abandoned stations. This is spread over a grid of sectors and systems which are all randomly generated in what locations they spawn in and in ludicrously commun quantities. Granted you can change the amount of stations that spawn per system, but for the average player, after 30 minutes of exploring you suddenly run into the fact that you have seen all there is to see for the game, that's it you seen everything. For me that seems like a real waste, especially the stations that were made by the community to fill the role which was then suddenly outdated after 2 updates. I believe the problem there is actually boils down to 2 factors, Quantity of structures you find, and the risk/reward of finding them.
Quantity of stations:
The quantity is a simple factor to fix, due to the large amount of structures that generate in a single map, you often find yourself finding 10-20 stations in each system, due to the size of each system, the likelihood of you running into one by random is quite high, especially traveling long distances or using a jump drive, at least 1 in every 10 sectors i cross will have a station on my navigation. What needs to be looked at is a sweet spot between making a station harder to find and not making it to hard to find to create a problem where the galaxy is barron. Which brings me on to my next point.
Risk and reward:
Part of the problem with the large amount of stations is that finding offers you little to no reward. The only real stations you would want to find are pirate stations if you want to pick a fight, or trade stations if you need some resources. But the stations themselves do not have enough reward for offering the time to deal with one, on the pirate station hand you fight the station cripple it fight off its reinforcements and you are then left with a derelict husk of a station which is turned into scrap, a resource to useless to justify its existence. And trade stations which seem to always stock less and at higher prices than normal shops which you can never sell to due to the fact that they never have much money in stock.
A simple way to fix this problem is to look at it in a players point of view, what does the player need/want. Resources are a common goal for players new and late game, and offer a typical anchor point for a task at hand, mining, raiding, fighting, all offer the same reward from the job resources, some unrefined and basic, and others a trophy of triomphe from your recent victory ready to be melted down into your bases storage.
If you applied some incentive, or lure to have exploration benefit them in some way resources is something all players can relate to in starmade. Which brings me round to Risk and reward.
If you the player had seen a station nearby, you would like to go investigate, the risk to the player is what type of station it is, if it's a tradestation the risk is minimal the reward they get from finding that is the shop it has available. If it is a derelict station the risk is somewhat moderate, this could be altered by having derelict stations have a chance to spawn scavenger (i don't mean the NPC faction specifically) fleets around them, looking to pillage what treasures lie inside it. The reward inside the stations may be small crates of loot, the station itself and maybe if you're lucky a ship docked inside it. Depending on what you find depends on the reward you could recieve, offering a sort of luck based system to go with exploring. For pirate stations the risk is high, you most likely gonna die if you are not prepared, but the reward is substantial, huge amounts of loot or if you're lucky complete blueprints of custom ships ready to go could be found inside your recent victory, the effort you would need to put into raiding the station will also help with the reward you get, i could even go as far as to design Pirate stations with defences that require you to bring along friends to crack it effectively.
In short adding a system like this into the game where the station spawn amount is much lower (2-4 station if you are luck in a single system) with a more detailed look into what you get from exploring them, would really help make the game more enjoyable and worthwhile.
Story: what i like about starmade is the fact that the Players make their own story. So far there has been very little input on story from the developers of the game which i kinda see as a good think. It has allowed to birth this open faction network that has taken its own form over the years. But i've always liked a good bit of lore to immerse myself in from time to time. This somewhat ties in with the Risk/reward idea for stations i had above, but more on the NPC trader side of things.
An idea i liked which is old and forgotten now is the Logbooks you used to get from defeating old pirate stations and pirate ships. They used to follow the adventures of a crew from the Valiant. If you collected them all (or were lazy and just found the notepad file in the starmade folder) you could piece together a captains log of his adventures around the galaxy. I've never been able to get them all in one single game/server but i liked the idea of a little backstory to a travelers log.
A think that might really benefit stations if you were exploring them is to find logs ties to the station itself. E.g. this station i'm in is a medical station its long abandoned something happened the log books detail what happened over a course of a couple of weeks. Some little nod of lore that the creator of the station can add that allows the player to immerse themselves in what happened at the station they are exploring. Or on a more advanced scale if possible, NPC traders can offer missions to retrieve logbooks form specific stations to offer a reward for “finding out what happened” and will direct you to where the station is, this might also offer a sort of mini mission as such, which could get a random encounter of pirate ships trader ships NPC transports, salvage ships, the dredded quads so on in or around the station for your to deal with as a bonus. Encounters like these could tie in ot what happened to the station or be a aftermath of sorts or what happened, but all pointing to a set of goals and rewards to collect.
This also help make a more enjoyable experience with exploration as mission taking. This could also be applied for example to random encounters as to destroy X pirate station missions from NPC traders if you accept them, or destroy X fleet around trade station so on. Mixing in a bit of risk with the story and a bit of reward will help encourage the player to do it (they don't have it if they don't want to it's all optional) offers a some of extra credits along with a loot run to sweeten that pot a little and explore with a little more emersion.
Trade: The final idea that i had to put on the table is Trade itself. To be honest it kinda sucks in starmade. The game has no real unified grater trade network and relies on a set of local shops to grab items you need or cannot craft. There is a small sort of universal trade concept in the game but does not work and in my opinion is unfriendly to new players and can be refined into a more friendly experience.
I loved the idea of a player driven market, but from what i have seen over servers most people find it easier to trade between them face to face rather than over a station shop system. There are 2 things i think should be added / changed that will make things much easier for player to do what we do, them being a inventory trade option. And refined unified exchange.
Inventory trade tab:
This is quite common in a lot of multiplayer games, take star trek online's for instance which allows you to transfer credits, materials guns, tribbles whatever to a different player by inviting them to a trade, which opens your inventory and a trade tab along with it. You can then both add what you want to the trade inventory to send to the other player and confirm it. Once you have both added and confirmed what you are looking to trade between each other, you can accept the trade and the items will transfer between you. This would be super handy for Server gameplay because i see a lot of inventory/storage based transfers where one just drops into space and the other “picks it up” and gives something back (well most of the time). A system like this will help make this quicker and easier, as well as avoid that really annoying bug where you drop your credits into space for someone else and they are just gone forever and neither of you has the credits (same with blocks). In short trade streamlining.
Unified exchange:
Honestly i think the shop block system is fine, but there are a couple of refinements it needs to work even better. The first being a Auto fill button for blueprints inside any shop system, this would find what blocks you need and maximum amounts the shop can provide, and then the total cost of the transaction. This is to just remove the tedious and time consuming faf that is the blueprint fill system. But this is really a quality of life improvement. A idea i had as well is a Shop licence, this can be purchased at any shop once per player and can be added into your shop block on your own station, this would add that shop to the trade market, so you and other players in your faction can access the stock from them shops from your own station. The cost would have to be High and very between shops for the licence, but it would allow people to progress a little easier than usual.
These are some of the things i think could be really nice to see in the universe 2 update, i know that some of these are already in the list and some have already been suggested but i feel it's necessary to reinforce the fact that from what i have gathered this is what some would like to see in the new update. i also cannot stress enough how the risk and reward exploring system, is a good idea, it could really improve how players approach the game and offer a lot more options for community designs and station diversity.
Thanks for reading
Plaz out.
