Station Priority Poll

[MacThule]

It was suggested that I run a poll regarding community opinion on prioritizing Station/Planetary Facility functionality before the Galaxy 2.0 push once weapons are released from the dev build. Without any reference to particular solutions - because I firmly believe there probably a dozen or more ways stations can be made right - I've copied over the part of my Suggestion post relevant only to this issue of priority. Please review and vote if you have a minute.

Proposal:

If Schine releases the new Galaxy 2.0 before doing work on stations, they could be ensuring that they spend the next 6 months chasing down gameplay issues that seem to be related to the galaxy but are actually rooted in problems with stations.

This is because stations (including actual stations and planetary facilities hereafter just "stations") are an essential element of how players interface with the galaxy:

• Stations strongly affect how we access resources, and therefore what levels of irregularity in resource distribution can be seen as tolerable within a server's economy, and what cause undue hardship.
  
• Stations strongly affect how trade is conducted, being the basic tool for conducting trade whether through shops directly or through the trade network, which incorporates distance between stations directly into cost factors.
• Stations moderately affect travel times through jump-gates, as well as availability of repairs and reinforcements, which in turn affects potential for force projection for access to and control of resources.
• Stations affect the safety of mining and salvaging operations in near sectors.

A faction's ability to deploy viable secondary stations will fundamentally change how they are able to acquire and trade resources, and the functionality of our stations will be the lens through which we experience Galaxy 2.0, but as soon as the Power and Weapon upgrades are stable, there's no reason stations can't be finally made well.

User interface with stations does not depend upon the functionality of the galaxy, rather the user experience of the galaxy depends upon the functionality of stations.

Therefore if stations are ever intended to be made more functional, then I think that once Weapons 3.0 is stable enough to push Schine would be wise to spend a cycle to make stations functional before even dropping Galaxy 2.0 to dev build for community input.

I know that this probably doesn't fit with their development timeline (I get the sense they want Galaxy out of dev and in release before 2019). Failure to address stations once power and weapons are stable will undermine a lot of development effort for the Galaxy release though, leading to a massive long-term loss of manpower and very likely forcing many of the changes made to balance Galaxy in release to be reversed after stations are working.

Primary issues with stations that must eventually be addressed at some point:

• Shipyards need extensive troubleshooting to be made 100% functional. They also need to be balanced to Power 2.0.
  
• Jump Gates need to be made useful. Hardly anyone uses the because they aren't worth the effort. They also need to be balanced to Power 2.0.
• Warp Inhibition needs to work for stations.
  
• Recon & Stealth need to be usable by stations.
  
• Survivability is non. They need improvements to balance them against mobile fleets that can wave and overwhelm them.

Regardless of the specific steps taken, something should be done to fix stations before pushing on to the Galaxy testing.

 

[alterintel]

I see your point Mac, but most the primary issues that you site as examples will also be affected by the Universe update. I'm assuming that the universe update will come with buffs and de-buffs to sytems, and planets and so forth. Would this not mean that when Jump Gates, Warp Inhibition, Recon & Steath, and Survivability is worked on, they will be greatly affected or need to depend on data from the universe update buffs and de-buffs to function properly. This will mean that these systems will need to be updated again after the universe update.

However I totally agree with you on Shipyards. No reason I can think of why shipyards can't be fixed now. Unless they will take advantage of some kind of "Instancing" or cyberspace that may happen with the Universe Update?

 

[Non]

Survivability is non

I don't see what this has to do with me.

 

[Scypio]

While i agree that stations need something, it shouldn't be done until later. Because stations are tied to factions. Only a faction will need to spawn in several stations, a lone player doesn't need more than one. Aaaaand i am pretty sure factions are far from being finished now.

 

[Nosajimiki]

...However I totally agree with you on Shipyards. No reason I can think of why shipyards can't be fixed now. Unless they will take advantage of some kind of "Instancing" or cyberspace that may happen with the Universe Update?

This is actually pretty simple. Shipyards make links and organize things out of the blocks and physics models in the game, and unlike BPs they don't do it all at once; so, certain things need to be instanced differently than in "real space". If you don't do shipyards last, then something as simple as fixing a rare docking glitch, or optimizing turret collisions could cause fatal errors with this system just breaking it all over again. It is better to leave it broken until they can fix it and leave it fixed, than to fix it for just long enough for people to lose a lot of work due to the next shipyard bug.

 

[MacThule]

I see your point Mac, but most the primary issues that you site as examples will also be affected by the Universe update. I'm assuming that the universe update will come with buffs and de-buffs to sytems, and planets and so forth. Would this not mean that when Jump Gates, Warp Inhibition, Recon & Steath, and Survivability is worked on, they will be greatly affected or need to depend on data from the universe update buffs and de-buffs to function properly. This will mean that these systems will need to be updated again after the universe update.

However I totally agree with you on Shipyards. No reason I can think of why shipyards can't be fixed now. Unless they will take advantage of some kind of "Instancing" or cyberspace that may happen with the Universe Update?

Wow, yeah - good point about jump gates and station recon/stealth being co-dependent with the galaxy! Ok, so... those items really can probably go either way. Thanks for the counterpoints on those. I'm not seeing where stationary entity survivability is very dependent upon galaxy settings any more than ship survivability does though, so I think I'm still missing something in that department.

I don't see what this has to do with me.

Oh, I think you do... -_-

;-D

While i agree that stations need something, it shouldn't be done until later. Because stations are tied to factions. Only a faction will need to spawn in several stations, a lone player doesn't need more than one. Aaaaand i am pretty sure factions are far from being finished now.

You are right, Scypio - stations and factions are also co-dependent and rely on each other and faction improvements could cause station changes. I hadn't considered that facet; stations/facilities tie into so many parts of the game.

Personally, I disagree that an independent player wouldn't want multiple facilities (think Elon Musk), if an individual would want a single facility in the first place, and it's probably a good point of discussion whether fixing stations should be put off until factions are fully fleshed out. I don't like the idea. If we have to wait until after Galaxy for station fixes I think it's fine, but will probably just bog down galaxy balancing. Useful stations would make the game more playable and fun though, even if fixing them now required an update round after factions get improved (but we don't even have a major change planned as coming soon for player factions, so that could be a looong time to wait for something as vital and tied into every aspect of this game as stations/planetary facilities). Thanks for responding - I'm interested to see if there are more opinions on having station improvements wait on improvement to factions!

 

[dwwojcik]

What if stations were worked on in the galaxy update? After all, stations are in the galaxy...