- Joined
- Jun 20, 2018
- Messages
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With regards to this, I reviewed this post:
https://starmadedock.net/threads/devblog-18th-july-2017-end-goal-document-part-2.29251/
TL;DR:
I) Yes, space feels too small and non-FTL movement is totally viable for interstellar travel, and this needs to be changed. The star grid is terrible, but I think it's only a placeholder.
II) Our galaxy definitely has regions with varying characteristics, and StarMade could certainly simulate that and make it fun.
III) Your proposed algorithm sounds plausible to me; it would be a great way to create varying star density and make space unpredictable and more fun to explore.
So my hope is that they have this issue in mind to be addressed. I definitely agree that space does not feel nearly as big as the real cosmos, not even close. Part of that is the inevitable simulation factor, that a simulation must be abbreviated in order to be represented at all. But another part is that the game is still not developed on every front, at least in terms of the End Goal Document. (We still haven't seen the other parts of that document.) Distances are measured in kilometers. Planets are not particularly large. Generally, nothing is astronomically large. I find this acceptable for the moment, but I'm still new to this game (fewer than 30 days) and I'm still working on building my own explorer ship and discovering how ship systems work. I expect that large portions of the game are still placeholders.
I agree that we need more variation in the makeup of galaxies. Again, the End Goal Document mentions that the procedural generator has a cost, that recycling and remixing content so that players see the same things again and again, and that this is not ideal but is largely unavoidable. I think it is clear by now that there is a community of people who are ready to build content and submit it. Unless I'm wrong, some user-created content has already been included in the stable releases. The Traders Home space station seems to have USD Type-1 airlocks that are a community-designed structure. (I love the USD Type-1 and always use its interface standard in my designs!) If there was a call for user-designed content to be submitted to create a reservoir to add variety to the procedural universe generator, I would love to contribute, and I think many others would also.
Specifically, I would definitely like to see procedural galaxy generation imitate reality whenever possible. Your proposal for creating "zones of control" to scatter and size star systems is a good one. At the very least, it is easily translatable into an algorithm.
Something to keep in mind is that much of space is vast stretches of sparse particles. I see that there are two ways to regard this in StarMade. A- It can be actually represented with spatial addressing (having it actually occupy coordinates at a unique location that can be visited), allowing space to possess that quality of feeling inconceivable immense by actually being immense.
B- It can be represented theoretically and therefore abbreviated, allowing the game to avoid devoting resources to dealing with it, and possibly resulting in a resource savings of some kind.
At present it seems like StarMade is geared for option A, except that the distances are not large enough to provide the real world immensity of space. I would really like space to feel truly immense, but I don't know the cost in terms of StarMade resources. Would it require shifting to a concept style like option B? Or could it be done like option A, just scaled-up? The only value that matters is the distance between the primaries (the distance from one star to another star, or one planet to another planet, at whatever scale you are currently dealing with), and this distance is so vast that traveling to another star by a means other than hyperspace jumping is unthinkable. This fact could actually make it easier to design planetary systems and distribute stars because at each scale, the only value that matters is the distance between the objects at the scale of interest. That is, the position of Earth along its orbital path is irrelevant until you are closer to its star than you are to any other star; the position of Earth's moon along its orbital path is irrelevant until you are closer to Earth than to any other planet in the system. Therefor, beyond that distance, it is unnecessary to display any information that is more detailed than the dominant object on that scale. Showing a sector scan with the position of planets while you are not in that sector isn't only pointless, it's unknowable, or at least it should be.
One solution here could be to create a game domain hierarchy (something like planet surface, planet orbit, star system, star cluster, galaxy) and wrap them as instances, but allow contiguous interaction between domains of adjacent level. So if player E is on the surface of Earth and player O is in Earth orbit, and player L is on the surface of Luna, players E and L could both see player O, but not each other, while player O could see both players E and L. A specialized scanner could be created to break this boundary with selective focus.
This entire subject is also inextricably linked to navigation and energy consumption, and StarMade has gamified that in a way that is intuitive and fun but totally unrealistic. You point your ship toward the place you want to go, and you move in that direction. Real world space travel involves using computers to calculate the intricate and precise series of departure times, thrust vectors, and fuel quantities required for moving from one place to another. But we also don't have jump drives or regenerating power plants, let alone beam weapons or energy shields.
The End Goal Document implies that a player might need to work to uncover information about the galaxy before trying to explore it. In the real world, there is quite a bit of sky for us to examine, and we have spent a great deal of effort looking and mapping. There is definitely room in StarMade to create activities that center on this. Charting stars, doing planet-based telescope surveys, being employed by PCs or NPCs to explore. "Go to Beta Eridane and scan all the planets, then report that information to the guild." I could make a full-time (play) job out of that! And the total size of the galaxy would make the distance to the frontier of unexplored space a very important value. No matter how large a galaxy we create, given a long enough playtime, all stars might be explored eventually, so maybe the age of the survey data could increase its value. (Fresh data is more valuable than stale data. "Nobody has visited Beta Eridane in years. Go perform another survey for the guild to update our charts.") There would also be room for some more ship tools to facilitate exploration. (The Recon chamber seems to be designed exclusively to counter Stealth for ships at the moment, but it could easily have a sub-tree added for stellar and planetary surveys, or maybe add a separate Survey Reactor Chamber.) In any case, I would like to stop finding stations in weird scattered places throughout star systems, not orbiting anything at all, but just hanging in space without concern for their relative locations to a star or planet. (I have been thinking of trying to build a station in the orbital path of a planet to see what happens.) We need some more logical constraints on where things can spawn in a star system. Gravitationally untethered objects should be rare.
https://starmadedock.net/threads/devblog-18th-july-2017-end-goal-document-part-2.29251/
TL;DR:
I) Yes, space feels too small and non-FTL movement is totally viable for interstellar travel, and this needs to be changed. The star grid is terrible, but I think it's only a placeholder.
II) Our galaxy definitely has regions with varying characteristics, and StarMade could certainly simulate that and make it fun.
III) Your proposed algorithm sounds plausible to me; it would be a great way to create varying star density and make space unpredictable and more fun to explore.
So my hope is that they have this issue in mind to be addressed. I definitely agree that space does not feel nearly as big as the real cosmos, not even close. Part of that is the inevitable simulation factor, that a simulation must be abbreviated in order to be represented at all. But another part is that the game is still not developed on every front, at least in terms of the End Goal Document. (We still haven't seen the other parts of that document.) Distances are measured in kilometers. Planets are not particularly large. Generally, nothing is astronomically large. I find this acceptable for the moment, but I'm still new to this game (fewer than 30 days) and I'm still working on building my own explorer ship and discovering how ship systems work. I expect that large portions of the game are still placeholders.
I agree that we need more variation in the makeup of galaxies. Again, the End Goal Document mentions that the procedural generator has a cost, that recycling and remixing content so that players see the same things again and again, and that this is not ideal but is largely unavoidable. I think it is clear by now that there is a community of people who are ready to build content and submit it. Unless I'm wrong, some user-created content has already been included in the stable releases. The Traders Home space station seems to have USD Type-1 airlocks that are a community-designed structure. (I love the USD Type-1 and always use its interface standard in my designs!) If there was a call for user-designed content to be submitted to create a reservoir to add variety to the procedural universe generator, I would love to contribute, and I think many others would also.
Specifically, I would definitely like to see procedural galaxy generation imitate reality whenever possible. Your proposal for creating "zones of control" to scatter and size star systems is a good one. At the very least, it is easily translatable into an algorithm.
Something to keep in mind is that much of space is vast stretches of sparse particles. I see that there are two ways to regard this in StarMade. A- It can be actually represented with spatial addressing (having it actually occupy coordinates at a unique location that can be visited), allowing space to possess that quality of feeling inconceivable immense by actually being immense.
B- It can be represented theoretically and therefore abbreviated, allowing the game to avoid devoting resources to dealing with it, and possibly resulting in a resource savings of some kind.
At present it seems like StarMade is geared for option A, except that the distances are not large enough to provide the real world immensity of space. I would really like space to feel truly immense, but I don't know the cost in terms of StarMade resources. Would it require shifting to a concept style like option B? Or could it be done like option A, just scaled-up? The only value that matters is the distance between the primaries (the distance from one star to another star, or one planet to another planet, at whatever scale you are currently dealing with), and this distance is so vast that traveling to another star by a means other than hyperspace jumping is unthinkable. This fact could actually make it easier to design planetary systems and distribute stars because at each scale, the only value that matters is the distance between the objects at the scale of interest. That is, the position of Earth along its orbital path is irrelevant until you are closer to its star than you are to any other star; the position of Earth's moon along its orbital path is irrelevant until you are closer to Earth than to any other planet in the system. Therefor, beyond that distance, it is unnecessary to display any information that is more detailed than the dominant object on that scale. Showing a sector scan with the position of planets while you are not in that sector isn't only pointless, it's unknowable, or at least it should be.
One solution here could be to create a game domain hierarchy (something like planet surface, planet orbit, star system, star cluster, galaxy) and wrap them as instances, but allow contiguous interaction between domains of adjacent level. So if player E is on the surface of Earth and player O is in Earth orbit, and player L is on the surface of Luna, players E and L could both see player O, but not each other, while player O could see both players E and L. A specialized scanner could be created to break this boundary with selective focus.
This entire subject is also inextricably linked to navigation and energy consumption, and StarMade has gamified that in a way that is intuitive and fun but totally unrealistic. You point your ship toward the place you want to go, and you move in that direction. Real world space travel involves using computers to calculate the intricate and precise series of departure times, thrust vectors, and fuel quantities required for moving from one place to another. But we also don't have jump drives or regenerating power plants, let alone beam weapons or energy shields.
The End Goal Document implies that a player might need to work to uncover information about the galaxy before trying to explore it. In the real world, there is quite a bit of sky for us to examine, and we have spent a great deal of effort looking and mapping. There is definitely room in StarMade to create activities that center on this. Charting stars, doing planet-based telescope surveys, being employed by PCs or NPCs to explore. "Go to Beta Eridane and scan all the planets, then report that information to the guild." I could make a full-time (play) job out of that! And the total size of the galaxy would make the distance to the frontier of unexplored space a very important value. No matter how large a galaxy we create, given a long enough playtime, all stars might be explored eventually, so maybe the age of the survey data could increase its value. (Fresh data is more valuable than stale data. "Nobody has visited Beta Eridane in years. Go perform another survey for the guild to update our charts.") There would also be room for some more ship tools to facilitate exploration. (The Recon chamber seems to be designed exclusively to counter Stealth for ships at the moment, but it could easily have a sub-tree added for stellar and planetary surveys, or maybe add a separate Survey Reactor Chamber.) In any case, I would like to stop finding stations in weird scattered places throughout star systems, not orbiting anything at all, but just hanging in space without concern for their relative locations to a star or planet. (I have been thinking of trying to build a station in the orbital path of a planet to see what happens.) We need some more logical constraints on where things can spawn in a star system. Gravitationally untethered objects should be rare.
