The Starmade's main problem

[Omni]

I find some of the defense of the game in its current state in this thread flattering, but let\'s be honest, people. Most people don\'t want to place 1 million cubes if the only thing to do after that is admire the massive size of your... ship... and show it off to others to see whose ship is bigger. StarMade is currently an amazingly fun and very technically impressive creative sandbox, but only that.


Hello, I play starmade for a while now and I really like the game because of all the creation possibilities. After talking with my friends and other starmade players we all think its main problem is you have nothing to do once you built your ship (that\'s why 90% of the people stop playing), even in multiplayer mode you have no real reason to attack another player.


Ne3zy, I have to agree with you completely on this one. The good news is, with the addition of NPCs and creatures, that\'s exactly the sort of issue being addressed. First of all, I don\'t play multiplayer. I am a strictly PVE guy. The only time I\'ve connected to a multiplayer server was during a livestream when Luclin was talking with the developers. (You have permission to feel smug, Luclin.) Otherwise I\'ve always spent my time in singleplayer, building ships and stations and fighting with pirates here and there. And the fact of the matter is, even I find the lack of things to do leaves me playing the game far less than most of you would expect!

StarMade as it is now is much like how Minecraft Classic was. There\'s certainly more to StarMade currently than Minecraft Classic had, but deep down there\'s still not much \"game\" there. Multiplayer opens up possibilities, but there\'s not much to do in singleplayer. There are toys, but there\'s not much challenge, not much to work for and little sense of progression.

While I think your ideas are interesting, Ne3zy, they aren\'t really what StarMade is about. As Zyrr said, this would be a great thing for a modder to explore as more and more becomes possible. But at its heart, StarMade is a Space Sim. It\'s about trying to eke out a living in a galaxy amidst the many factions and varied economy, find a valuable place in that galaxy and the cultures living there, and if you see fit, maybe make that galaxy your own in a war of galactic conquest. This kind of attitude is the heart of Space Sims as a genre.


It\'s crazy that some of you are latched onto the idea of not making Starmade more interesting. After you build a ship or building or whatever, you have to be REALLY interested in playing with your digital legos to want to keep playing. At the moment there isn\'t much of a game here at all. Neezy is simply suggesting ways to expand it.

I imagine planets fleshed out with creatures(some hostile, some helpful) spawned buildings, more interesting space stations with NPC communites, quests, better economy, etc. This program needs those things to even be considered a game in my opinion.


Here are examples of the kinds of things that have the potential to turn the robust, well-designed sandbox of the current StarMade into a true \"game\". There need to be things to do, things to find and things to challenge yourself against. These kinds of things weren\'t possible to do well without the models I provide to Schema\'s needs and specifications. For years, Schema has been building the amazing things that drive the core behavior of StarMade. My timing in joining was very fortuitous. StarMade has developed enough that it may be just starting to make that change into being a \"game\". So Ne3zy, you\'re absolutely right, and we\'re absolutely aware. It\'s not that this issue is an actual \"problem\", just the nature of building a game. And, though this excuse is used all the time for things, it IS an alpha.

If you find you don\'t want to play it so much for now, put it aside for a month or two. You\'ll be happy when you come back, haha. And that will only be the start. Never forget, though, that what really makes everything tick is Schema. He is the one who made the fantastic creative sandbox we all know and love, and the one who will turn that into a truly breathtaking game as well.

 

[Lozdy]

So lets say you meet another player and he kills you. There goes all the credits and your beginnership.

To avoid this, make 1 huge area (4 sectors big for an example) beginner protected. Now all you need it to finish the first phase of the game(survival on your own as you explain it or some other alternative way)
and get through the little \"questline\" to grant permission so leave the beginner area when you got a ship big and fast enough to leave(1000 mass?).

This would be good for the survival mode.

 

[Firrion]

First off, Ne3zy, good one. Had the similar idea a while back, and it would definately make for a pretty awesome gameplay. I suppose that part would have to be short in order to quickly get to space (still amazed by the number of people who dislike the idea), if only to let the players play the \"main part\" of the game (seeing as it\'s a sandbox game, one can always add creative mode and be done with it).

While I would personally like the option to get the materials and techs necessary for your first lift-off on your homeworld, I suppose trade guild could also supply you with materials. They should visit planets from time to time, no? Plus it would make a game more challenging, not simply grab a core add some power and a thruster and lift off.


And for the civilization part, have it so that the player can command one, but does not really have to. So ideally, you could begin the game making your own main base, ships, etc, or you could simply buy them from the trade guild. Interaction with npc factions (civilizations for those of you who missed the point in this topic) would still remain a necessity, if one wishes to stay alive in an universe full of things trying to kill you.


To all of you who only came here to say this makes the game look like minecraft or civilization, you may have missed the point. Civ for one has nothing to do with this, and if farming resources in any kind of way other than with spaceships reminds you of minecraft, tough luck. Cause that too is planned. And it can only make the game better.

 

[Visitor]

While I may not agree on all the details, I do believe that the OP is making a good point. While currently some people are quite satisfied with flying around some behemoth and leveling planets/behemoths of other players, I do agree that for majority it\'s the goals like building their next ship, expanding empire and so on that are the centerpiece of the game. Even in Minecraft, father of sandbox voxel games (as far as current century goes) for great, great majority it was the process of getting from 0 through overcoming hardships and gathering resources to creation of magnificent constructions.

I really think the same applies here.

The idea of starting on a planet with little to nothing was mentioned. I do not think there\'s big chance of getting that scenario without adjustments - we simply lack lot of mechanics and items for comfortable and enjoyable creation of starships from refined base materials one can find on unpopulated world.
However, as planets get expanded and offer more and more features, something akin to such may be incorporated. I certainly would find it enjoyable if instead of building a ship as the first thing in a new game, I\'d have to gather some necessary components, cash and equipment in a few ways.

- Wreckages, leftover components as a rare feature on some worlds that can be picked and repurposed
- NPC that can be traded with and - if offered enough parts/ore/etc and some money - can function as crafting blocks, creating basic elements.
- \'Mob\' NPC to fight - for cash and, rarely, some block/block recipe part that can be sold/used for spaceship building.
- Very rarely some hostile, small ship could spawn near the planet and land for a bit - taking out the crew could allow the capture of the vessel
- Once added, quests for basic supplies could be completed.

This way there would be more to do for players, yet those who\'d rather jump straight into building and fighting would be always able to change amount of starting credits (in single player game) or simply request a pick up (in multi) while in general the feature would make the whole game longer.

Fuel is tricky. On one hand, it would severely limit players mobility. On the other, it would allow a few interesting scenarios - crash landings on closest planet or drifting in space awaiting help, logistics of bigger battles where less prepared/stocked ships become sitting ducks, have to rely on emergency propulsion or dock and get towed by bigger, still operational units.
Especially in regards to the emergency propulsion, I wouldn\'t mind if there\'d be several different types of drives - very weak and very slow (player character\'s speed when not pressing shift?) fuel-less backup drives, rather efficient but requiring proper planning-of-design directional thrusters and our current magical boxes of flying which would consume rare/lot of fuel.
Adding weak-but-free thrusters or ability to refuel without harvesting anything at spacestations (shops) would be especially important - otherwise all servers will have limited lifespan without admins artificially providing fuel. I think about situations where long-lasting servers will have all the planets in span of many sectors completely harvested or - probably after some desperate fighting - dooming all players to soon end without fuel or making the universe humongeous (lagging and crashing) as players spread in all directions looking for more planets to pillage.

Ultimately though, I\'d rather have fuel being a toggle-able for different servers, rather than hardcoded.

 

[James2568]

If you are starting on a planet, who says it needs to be an uninhabited planet? I mean that hardly makes sense anyways, since how would you have gotten to the planet in the first place?

How about starting it on a planet, with a city. That way, you have some resources you can cannibalize, if you need to. And you have a starting base.

 

[FlyingDebris]

You\'re welcome!

 

[ne3zy]

Do you atleast read my suggestion ?

 

[Ultraviolet Dugong]

You can\'t have everyone start out on different planets, as the immediate area around spawn would get filled with planets... but if everyone starts on the same planet, the spawn planet would be cannibalized by the first couple players on the server.

 

[Omni]

Just so you know, there are enough good ideas in this thread that I\'m going to stick them in my brain for future use. Schema is obviously the one who would be able to make it and thus it\'d be his call, but I\'m actually starting to think of an interesting gamemode idea.

The current universe assumes it is already populated. What if you\'re the first one in space? It would require a complete rework of many mechanics (so you\'re not going to see it any time soon), but is another kind of space sim. And once you\'ve reached space, factions can start forming and you\'d have to deal with it, it\'s just you\'re already the biggest player in the galaxy. (No pun intended.) This would be a form of the game highly reliant on logistics. Even your first foray into space would require careful logistics. But it would make for an extremely compelling experience. No promises whatsoever, but I\'m keeping this concept in mind. Too cool to forget completely. Wouldn\'t be surprised if Schema has already thought about it or run into a very similar suggestion before, but it still might be something worth reconsidering at a later date.



That being said, it makes no sense for you to need to mine resources to get into space if there are already space-faring cultures and you don\'t have to deal with a \"first contact\" scenario. It would be extremely illogical to go through every aspect of the process of manufacturing when there will be companies already set up providing those services. Unless you crash landed, it\'s either all or nothing; either you are the first person in space, or you\'re in an economy where buying space ship equipment is way too convenient to make personal manufacturing logical. If NPCs exist, we can assume there is a culture and society beyond what we immediately see, and they would have already taken care of everything needed to sell you higher quality parts than you could ever make on your own. And if you don\'t have the money to buy them, it makes more sense to make the money doing simple jobs than try to reinvent the wheel.

The type of game suggested in this thread sounds great when you truly extrapolate its possible game mechanics, but it\'s not StarMade. A game like Spore, except take away the creature part and just start with early humans, would be a blast to play. Developing such a game would be wonderful, but that would be a completely different project. And if you wanted to be able to make creatures like Spore that you can turn into spacefaring civilizations, that\'s a whole different world of gameplay and technical mechanics, vastly expanding the scope of the project to possibly something unmanagable.



Bottom line: this is a space sim, not a civilization sim or a 4x strategy game. In the future StarMade may push the boundaries of what \"space sim\" can include, but it\'s still built around that core concept and genre. Though if someone eventually mods the game into more or less a 4x strategy game, you bet I\'d play that! If need be, I\'d have two installs of StarMade, one for the vanilla game and one for the mod. Sounds like tons of fun.

Also, disclaimer: I am speaking from what I currently know and personal speculation based on the current version of StarMade. All of the above paragraphs should not be considered the \"official\" standpoint of StarMade, only unofficial personal opinions and ideas from one developer. The game is in alpha, and nearly anything may be subject to change at a further date. I am also not stating any of these as my \"official\" opinions, and would like to make it clear that opinions (including my own) are also subject to change in light of new information, development or situations and over the passage of time.

--

As a side note, however, you can get some of the same conceptual experience with the (sadly seemingly dead) Corneroids game. I consider it the true \"Minecraft in space\", as you have to build everything from scratch. (Except your suit and the most basic form of drill, the only starting item.) Fun and interesting game, I really recommend trying it.

http://www.corneroids.com/

Watch out, though. The progression doesn\'t last too long before you reach the top tier, there\'s a lot of grinding for resources (no drill-related pun intended) and development seems dead. Consider having both Corneroids and StarMade on your computer, and get back into StarMade when the \"game\" aspects are better fleshed out in the coming months. (And future in general.)

Also, Corneroids is moddable in the sense that you can completely redesign the mineral tier system if you want, a great way to pass the time if you\'re into that sort of thing. I was starting to make a little Tiberium mod for it right before I became involved with StarMade. That said, I think you\'ll all agree that my choice to work on helping StarMade reach its potential, including things like creating and animating the new player model and the necessary resources for the upcoming creatures, is a much better use of my time.

 

[ne3zy]

Nice to see some people understand and improve my idea ! That\'s why I posted this after all

 

[John Sheridan]

BRAVO to the OP (ne3zy).

This is one of the VERY few suggestions I have seen that is rock solid in most/all of what it says. Rock solid. I really hope schema pays attention to the first post in this thread. You have to EARN your way off the planet, and like omni said, would make for a much more \"compelling experience\". Absolutely agree. Make it so you have to dream about getting off the planet, get your ship ready. Hell I also suggested make gravity much more hardcore, only high thrust ships will be able to take off. Make this part a bitch, make the player earn leaving, they\'ll feel good too when they do.

I made my juggernaught ship. Now what? Nothing is glueing me back to this game. Sure it took a few months, but theres nothing for me now. Fuel, and making planets actually in demand and worth fighting for (and thus introducing all kinds war type of stuff and supply/demand/fighting etc) and his good idea of putting two sides to a planet (like I\'ve always said - plus his 1 indestructable layer of \"bedrock\" to avoid gravity issues - if required)

Solid. Well done.

 

[Visitor]

In all honesty, I was under the impression that starting not as a representative of a species, but simply as a shipless, stranded astronaut was the idea - it\'s certainly what I was meaning, at least.

Certainly Corneroids has some of that at the beginning of the game (though what I really like are more realistic, directional thrusters and designs that require some planning, taking mass, placement of different modules etc into consideration) though I was thinking of survival aspect more akin to what one can see in Xenominer.. just with, you know, ability to actually interact with other NPCs, buying necessary parts and not just crafting everything through refinement of the most basic materials.

 

[Syzygy]

You have to realize what you want in the game isn\'t always what everyone else wants. If you are going to give specifics, you will have to give specific reasons to add them.

You are suggesting people have to play the game for a significant amount of time before being able to make a ship. This kind of completely changes the idea of the game. The point of the game is to make ships. You definately have to start out doing that. Minecraft ruined what it was and the feeling it gave by adding a way to end the game and making it feel like an RPG rather than a sandbox game. Don\'t make starmade have a story and end-game please.

It sounds like you want to play a different kind of game. Other games like starmade are appearing; you should check them out. Sure starmade can use some changes and singleplayer isn\'t that fun if you aren\'t just building different types of ships. But don\'t ruin starmade for me and others by changing what it is.



The game is boring, needs more. But don\'t change what the game is while fixing that.

 

[John Sheridan]

Syzygy, what you are saying is you want to keep the instant \"play time\" on Starmade, the problem is, this makes games boring more quickly, because you have to earn nothing much. Wheras starting off on a planet, seeing the odd player fly away, while you are marooned, gives you something to strive for, and the satisfaction of achieving it. Instant play time usually means quicker quitting with nothing to keep you.

This is a once-off affair anyway.

Starmade doesnt need an ending, but it should make the barrier to entry, harder. Which in this case is leaving your spawn planet. And of course the rest of the points, making planets actually useful...... and fixing the horrible lag with gravity + big objects so people are no longer scared of crashing servers by going near planets in their capital ship.

 

[Visitor]

I am quite sure that the ideas can be refined enough to allow different kinds of appraoch toward the game. I shared my own opinion about what and how things could be added without restricting others and I am sure that through discussion they can be improved.

As for ending though, I\'d say it\'s a matter of expectations and goals. I think that Minecraft pulled the end of the game really well actually. There were and are players who enjoy some sort of closuer to their adventure, yet even then the \'story\' was by no means obligatory and even afterwards players were allowed to continue as if nothing ever happened. While I agree that bigger plot or ending is not necessary for Starmade, I see no problem with considering it further down the development if it\'ll be done in the same fashion as I am certain that there will be people who\'ll enjoy some actual plot - and as long as it won\'t affect those who won\'t, I have no issue with it.

Though I\'d assume ending wasn\'t really part of the topic here. Oh well, it can be linked with the rest.

 

[MichaelSeph]

Cubatoms, of course. You got dirt, you can make your pieces with some flowers, grass for hulls, dirt for the faction module... :P

 

[Cboehme]

A game like Spore, except take away the creature part and just start with early humans, would be a blast to play. Developing such a game would be wonderful, but that would be a completely different project.


Imagine Nations on Kickstarter, exactly what you ordered.


Tiberium


Kane Lives! All hail the Brotherhood of Nod!

 

[theexplorinator1996]

Most of your ideas ranged from pretty good to really good. But that energy wars thing was fucking brilliant! I don\'t care if we don\'t get the rest of this, as long as something like that gets implemented.

 

[John Sheridan]

I agree, energy wars ftw... aka making planets vaulable to defend... although I wonder if energy wars really means dig it all out, move on.... meaning there will be no planets within 20km of spawn... not sure I like that idea... solutions? This will become like minecraft raidcraft / factions mod. Desolation everywhere except the furthest parts of the map... without any teleport ability...

 

[Sergeant Base]

I see much of criticizing about that there\'s no real story, no real point.

Just remember it\'s still BETA...B...E...T...A! You know what this is? That means it\'s in the state where current blockbusters aren\'t even available to play already (or at least not for everyone). I\'m not versus an Open-Beta essentially but you see what happens here? People just say \"we want this...and this\" even before the basic gameplay is fully working. It\'s cool that you are planning to implement stuff the community likes but how could you ever get out of beta-state if you always do this advanced stuff BEFORE the game\'s basic mechanics are fully functional? I mean 6$ is not much for a game and especially not one that\'s still in developement but I see Omni talking about MOBs or whatever and on the other side there are still those huge performance-problems and edgy transitions between galaxies aso.



If I where Schema I would still take note about the wishes of the community and also write some of them on my todo-list but at first work on the basic gameplay until I had a version of the game that\'s actually worth those 6$ and then continue with all those advanced feature. That even allows that you can raise the price continuously (even if you don\'t do this only for the money...everyone needs it and it\'s still cheaper than Minecraft ).



Just my opinion