What could make the single player experience fun?

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    I've been thinking, single player is boring. We only use it to build, or test, or if you are trying the game for the first time. NPC's are cool, but are annoying and have no purpose. I've seen the traders NPC's at spawn shops mention quests. I've tried to explore this further, but it doesn't seem to exist. When I though of quests, my first though was little scenarios, bounty missions, courier missions, etc. Then I though random events would be cool too. Like anomalies, other than wormhole. Super nova, nebulae, space monsters. Or a mysterious message from some shady guy dropping off illegal weaponry. Or a trading guild distress call. Aftermaths of battles and graveyards of ships. In the intro video in the f8 tutorials section, this is what I thought of when it said you can explore. But there isn't much to explore. Pretty boring. The fun is in factions and PvP. But not everybody is into that. So we need to make all playstyles for the game as fun as the other playstyles. (Building can still be boring, not way to really make that fun).
    [doublepost=1543964768,1543964683][/doublepost]Add on: making the game more survival like, like eating food, and oxygen. (I'm more for food bar or somthing that forces you to grind so you aren't sitting around.
    [doublepost=1543965010][/doublepost]Another add on: I also advocate for this, just so the game can still be fun even when multiplayer is dead.
    [doublepost=1543967172][/doublepost]So what I'm trying to say: please make these things exist. It may be a lot of work, but it's worth it.
     
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    I do agree with what you say....now with that said:

    I also do know (from doing a bit of research and finding the Development Roadmap) that some of what you suggest is either planned, in development, and/or suggested.

    It would it be great to have more content for the game, but development does take time.

    So, patience young one.
     
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    Agreed. Just a little taste of what is to come, not just what's in the dev build, but it would be quite interesting, to say the least.
     
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    It would be nice to have an update, just, so you know schema is alive and well, and didn't get sucked into the code.
    [doublepost=1543968623,1543968584][/doublepost]Then again, it's nice to have a surprise. Then it feels like Christmas.
    [doublepost=1543969540][/doublepost]So yeah, I also don't want the devs to forget we are here, and these cool ideas.
     

    NeonSturm

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    It would be nice to have a like-meter of suggestions.

    Devs and staff team votes 1-10, so you even get feedback that your suggestion was not completely shit (gets only 2-4 points but less than 5) when not accepted. Then these suggestion could be used as roadmap. 8-10 is likely implemented, 5-7 maybe later.

    Armor type beneath a shield hit must count. Optional shields musst not be 100% strength per hit, but let 20% damage pass and use max. 10% charge for a single hit (other charge for other hits). This enables better balance of alpha weapons and better combat.
    * You still have 100% global shields, but they are more for catching a stray shot or when you don't min-max shielding for civilians.
    * Global is easier to install, but 15% weaker and additional 20% against pure ion-weapons which are considered "dedicated PvP and military".

    Economy should be buffed by environment.
    Sectors near the sun produce more power on stations (50-100 default, maybe 200-900% buff on some servers which like strong stations)
    Void sectors most distant from stars can have upgrades to stealth and gates and scan.
    Sectors in asteroid belts can yield more refinery-products in station factories.
    * You will have at least 5 types so that players are encouraged to build attackable outposts and use attackable trade ships on a regular basis.

    Stations accross sectors (not accross systems) should have shared power/shielding when they are in the same system.
    It doesn't change a thing - kill one station and you kill a bit of that pool - rather than having players lag-cluster ships in one spot.
    You would still need weapons on each one, but really big stations would need more weapons too because they are longer than 1/2 weapon range.

    Building should separate between millitary, civilian and "scavenger/survival" blocks.
    Military is adv. armor, vector shields, etc - everything with special rules or reserved for PvP because of min-maxing.
    Scavenger/Survival is everything which reduce mass or ressource cost. Scafolding and Player-equipment are examples.
    Military is costly (uses rare minerals with 20% yield - 80% side-products can be used for non-advanced hull and all scavenger/survival).
    Civilian gives 10% side-products being rare minerals required for military-grade modifiers like ion, punch, vector-shield settings block.​
    That way, you can keep min-max out of your mind when building ships which aren't combat ships. These will just be a bit bigger.
    You also get some civ ships out of military-focused production and some military ships out of civilian-focused production.

    Factions should get changed a lot.
    Every player should have multiple playable characters.
    No logout and re-login required, just swap inventory and camera position to another sector.
    Every player can join many factions this way - or even play more characters in one faction.​
    Your account name is the "family name" of all characters.
    The chat send command is limited to the character's permissions you currently play,
    ... but you can watch all news from all factions you got an invite into.​
    Original players in a faction provide food for 3 side-characters, these need food to be played or act like NPCs. On survival, donate any plants.

    Trading/Missions can easily be buffed.
    Each scan can be sold to the trading guild. It will then become available for all players after 1 minute to nearby players, 3 minutes to players in the galaxy and 5 minutes to players which were out of galaxy or didn't got that update jet. (local copy of the newest-scans).​
    Each player can contribute to get daily (15 minutes of mining extra) and weekly (4 hours of mining extra) rewards to stay active, but it's per account+server, not per character. Additional tasks should reward less, comparable to a trader-with-NPCs and a miners income.

    Chat and logic transmissions needs to connect players and encourage logic computers:
    Server-chat should access Discord-chat or SM-chat / starmade global. (to bring in some life to game seassions)
    2nd channel is server-wide.
    3rd channel is listening-range of 3 sectors, near all trade hubs in 3 systems with one is in range and to other player locations with available gates. 4th channel is "local group" with a range of 3 sectors only.
    5th+ channels are encrypted by "factionID+password+playerID+text" or groupID respectively.

    Logic can parse messages and transform them before distributing them over gate networks, but players will see "interrupted message transmission" or "hacked message + text" when someone does not know the password (first 2-4 standard channels are player-input only).

    Wireless modules also chat.
    From ship to ship, asking for docking permission so that plex-doors are opened, or as a ship's broadast message to all targeting it.
    To search for a target via logic you can use a channel provided by your scanner array.
    Channels are integer values, but can have a name shown to players and which players use to select the fitting integer-value.

    Logic may be used to send allies a critical-shield-value warning or report station status on a regular basis when a sector gets loaded and the clock is ticking. (transmissions are parsed once a destination sector is loaded again)
    This cause missions to look for installations (with a little reward for loading that sector)
    Logic should get an easy database ingame.
    All entities logic and display blocks are stored and loaded from either 4 entries:​
    1. Reset to build defaults (manual save-state of #4).
    2. Permanent setting (logic-defined default save-state of #4)
    3. Temporary setting (logic-defined last save-state of #4)
    4. Running cycle (can manage #2 and #3, but not #1)
    This alone allows us to make all computers we want. #3 and #4 are only in RAM, not on hard drive.
    Bonus credits to shema if #2 / #3 are exportable under names specified in some display block which can reduce block-count a lot.

    Note: Made a lot of logic suggestions, but this is the most simple, most refined so far.
    Default-Content like cargo-pods:
    Shine staff should provide 4 standard fleets and update them regularily. (TG, scavengers, pirates, military)
    They may accept help from builders in the community.

    Because shine does not have time for that, they themselves can do a 2D sketch and add a length-number to it.
    Peoples get an idea what to build and can use their own creativity to make alterations to it.

    They can also add a list and numbers of what they thought of for that role of ships (number of beds, total weapon size % of the turret-weapon blocks % of small or big turrets, etc - whatever they like). But these should should be in the standard-catalogue in a shine-folder at least as 2D-planes with some displays and wall-lines on it in grey hull.

    I don't ask for more, but it would really solve many problems of "having no aim in game".

    Various HUD-improvements:
    Select colour-sheme of your cockpit (first, second, third, colour).

    Link your helmet's status display to a ships internal broadcast system. (Connect to broadcast "shipID+broadintern+channel names").
    Depending on your status (pilot, owner, friend, faction-mate, guest, visitor), your helmet decodes all information that status can access.

    Broadcast your logo (ascii-art using text).
    Modify your ships logic or helmet to display that boradcasted logo for your selected target.

    Advanced target information and filtering using display block regex as parser of player/faction-defined message formats.

    ...​
     
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    It would be nice to have a like-meter of suggestions.

    Devs and staff team votes 1-10, so you even get feedback that your suggestion was not completely shit (gets only 2-4 points but less than 5) when not accepted. Then these suggestion could be used as roadmap. 8-10 is likely implemented, 5-7 maybe later.

    Armor type beneath a shield hit must count. Optional shields musst not be 100% strength per hit, but let 20% damage pass and use max. 10% charge for a single hit (other charge for other hits). This enables better balance of alpha weapons and better combat.
    * You still have 100% global shields, but they are more for catching a stray shot or when you don't min-max shielding for civilians.
    * Global is easier to install, but 15% weaker and additional 20% against pure ion-weapons which are considered "dedicated PvP and military".

    Economy should be buffed by environment.
    Sectors near the sun produce more power on stations (50-100 default, maybe 200-900% buff on some servers which like strong stations)
    Void sectors most distant from stars can have upgrades to stealth and gates and scan.
    Sectors in asteroid belts can yield more refinery-products in station factories.
    * You will have at least 5 types so that players are encouraged to build attackable outposts and use attackable trade ships on a regular basis.

    Stations accross sectors (not accross systems) should have shared power/shielding when they are in the same system.
    It doesn't change a thing - kill one station and you kill a bit of that pool - rather than having players lag-cluster ships in one spot.
    You would still need weapons on each one, but really big stations would need more weapons too because they are longer than 1/2 weapon range.

    Building should separate between millitary, civilian and "scavenger/survival" blocks.
    Military is adv. armor, vector shields, etc - everything with special rules or reserved for PvP because of min-maxing.
    Scavenger/Survival is everything which reduce mass or ressource cost. Scafolding and Player-equipment are examples.
    Military is costly (uses rare minerals with 20% yield - 80% side-products can be used for non-advanced hull and all scavenger/survival).
    Civilian gives 10% side-products being rare minerals required for military-grade modifiers like ion, punch, vector-shield settings block.​
    That way, you can keep min-max out of your mind when building ships which aren't combat ships. These will just be a bit bigger.
    You also get some civ ships out of military-focused production and some military ships out of civilian-focused production.

    Factions should get changed a lot.
    Every player should have multiple playable characters.
    No logout and re-login required, just swap inventory and camera position to another sector.
    Every player can join many factions this way - or even play more characters in one faction.​
    Your account name is the "family name" of all characters.
    The chat send command is limited to the character's permissions you currently play,
    ... but you can watch all news from all factions you got an invite into.​
    Original players in a faction provide food for 3 side-characters, these need food to be played or act like NPCs. On survival, donate any plants.

    Trading/Missions can easily be buffed.
    Each scan can be sold to the trading guild. It will then become available for all players after 1 minute to nearby players, 3 minutes to players in the galaxy and 5 minutes to players which were out of galaxy or didn't got that update jet. (local copy of the newest-scans).​
    Each player can contribute to get daily (15 minutes of mining extra) and weekly (4 hours of mining extra) rewards to stay active, but it's per account+server, not per character. Additional tasks should reward less, comparable to a trader-with-NPCs and a miners income.

    Chat and logic transmissions needs to connect players and encourage logic computers:
    Server-chat should access Discord-chat or SM-chat / starmade global. (to bring in some life to game seassions)
    2nd channel is server-wide.
    3rd channel is listening-range of 3 sectors, near all trade hubs in 3 systems with one is in range and to other player locations with available gates. 4th channel is "local group" with a range of 3 sectors only.
    5th+ channels are encrypted by "factionID+password+playerID+text" or groupID respectively.

    Logic can parse messages and transform them before distributing them over gate networks, but players will see "interrupted message transmission" or "hacked message + text" when someone does not know the password (first 2-4 standard channels are player-input only).

    Wireless modules also chat.
    From ship to ship, asking for docking permission so that plex-doors are opened, or as a ship's broadast message to all targeting it.
    To search for a target via logic you can use a channel provided by your scanner array.
    Channels are integer values, but can have a name shown to players and which players use to select the fitting integer-value.

    Logic may be used to send allies a critical-shield-value warning or report station status on a regular basis when a sector gets loaded and the clock is ticking. (transmissions are parsed once a destination sector is loaded again)
    This cause missions to look for installations (with a little reward for loading that sector)
    Logic should get an easy database ingame.
    All entities logic and display blocks are stored and loaded from either 4 entries:​
    1. Reset to build defaults (manual save-state of #4).
    2. Permanent setting (logic-defined default save-state of #4)
    3. Temporary setting (logic-defined last save-state of #4)
    4. Running cycle (can manage #2 and #3, but not #1)
    This alone allows us to make all computers we want. #3 and #4 are only in RAM, not on hard drive.
    Bonus credits to shema if #2 / #3 are exportable under names specified in some display block which can reduce block-count a lot.

    Note: Made a lot of logic suggestions, but this is the most simple, most refined so far.
    Default-Content like cargo-pods:
    Shine staff should provide 4 standard fleets and update them regularily. (TG, scavengers, pirates, military)
    They may accept help from builders in the community.

    Because shine does not have time for that, they themselves can do a 2D sketch and add a length-number to it.
    Peoples get an idea what to build and can use their own creativity to make alterations to it.

    They can also add a list and numbers of what they thought of for that role of ships (number of beds, total weapon size % of the turret-weapon blocks % of small or big turrets, etc - whatever they like). But these should should be in the standard-catalogue in a shine-folder at least as 2D-planes with some displays and wall-lines on it in grey hull.

    I don't ask for more, but it would really solve many problems of "having no aim in game".

    Various HUD-improvements:
    Select colour-sheme of your cockpit (first, second, third, colour).

    Link your helmet's status display to a ships internal broadcast system. (Connect to broadcast "shipID+broadintern+channel names").
    Depending on your status (pilot, owner, friend, faction-mate, guest, visitor), your helmet decodes all information that status can access.

    Broadcast your logo (ascii-art using text).
    Modify your ships logic or helmet to display that boradcasted logo for your selected target.

    Advanced target information and filtering using display block regex as parser of player/faction-defined message formats.

    ...​
    That's pretty cool. Yeah, I wish they would implement ALL OF that.
    [doublepost=1544008249,1544008012][/doublepost]Also, what would be cool, if they had people (NPC people) to talk to whip on missions and stuff. They should also add multiple methods of getting power. Solar power, etc.
     
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    jayman38

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    Starmade implemented a very light Lua base for programming NPC conversations, I think. However, it has not been documented, expanded, or improved in years. I have campaigned several times to implement a scripting engine (could start with Lua, but could be something else) to build up things in the game for ourselves. The players could create a wide variety of interesting quests and scenarios, beyond kill 10 x or buy 100 y or go see npc z to get a reward or to continue with the next leg of the quest.

    There have always been concerns about people not being programmers, but the Starmade playerbase has several programmers by trade or hobby that could pump out great quests, if we only had a documented, scriptable method to do so. It's great if Schine wants to program all the quests by themselves, without help from the community, to avoid any copyright hangups.... but they haven't.
     

    NeonSturm

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    beyond kill 10 x or buy 100 y or go see npc z to get a reward or to continue with the next leg of the quest.
    Weekly (every pilot): Get some reward to look at everything you already made (gates, stations, ships, etc).
    For maintenance and intel on own property.

    I'd like if SM can run blueprints of logic like a real docked version of logic - perhaps requiring equal idle logic blocks of that type.
    You could place a 8x8x8 chunk of ands, another of ors, hook it to the blueprint-executor and load foreign blueprints as software.

    The last thing required is to have logic scan for ship descriptions (in display block linked to core) matching a pattern, extracting a channel name out of it (channels are active in systems or whole server) use SM's display block bb-code "[channel]name[pass]xyz[listen/insert/regex/checkfor]hello".

    We can do pretty much with that stuff. Have a (quest) channel displaying text in your cockpit and programming quests ourselves.

    But it should be easy to setup: Copy+paste this template, load that blueprint, put this into your cockpits display block, then you can execute all my self-created missions (and others using this standard).
     
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    But this isn't just about logic, it's making the single player experience more fun, or when you are playing with a friend, say you two could go find a shop and get a courier mission and when you are done that you can get paid. Or anamolies, like distress calls, nebulae, space monsters, etc.
    [doublepost=1544098457,1544098302][/doublepost]But I don't understand logic at all, and having a lot of things logic based can get way more complex then it needs to be.
     

    NeonSturm

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    But I don't understand logic at all, and having a lot of things logic based can get way more complex then it needs to be.
    True. But this also applies to "how to close a WindowsXP-window".
    The tutorial then says: "Use your red X button. How did you even find this tutorial if you don't know already?"


    I imagine your "newbie-with-friend" experience like this:

    1a. You download some build with 5 stars which is made for SM-version X or later.
    1b. You see a mission-terminal in your default catalogue after installing SM.

    2a. You use that ship as mothership and can play all mission-scenarios from that server, as long as you don't change logic-stuff.
    2b. The terminal is a 7x5x9 module which you can dock in any ship.

    3. The mothership has heavy shields, some turrets, a forward-main gun and a big hangar plus some small ones.
    Install any small ships you like, accept missions with your carrier-mothership.​
     
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    technically? nothing, this game had great playability and good balance as even before the rail system.

    what is needed is to make the universe alive. a detailed economy where every block built need to came from some mine somewhere. more factions and subfactions. alliances and war. dynamic missions that target enemies of a faction (structures or fleet) and impact your standing across factions. ranks so that you can escalate the hierarchy of an npc faction and become a leader of one of their subfaction and eventually get elected to supreme ruler. the ability to pull rank and command npc faction ships and fleets. random event that are outside the faction system, like interstellar invaders or alien swarms to act as end game "big bads". select-your-own or randomized winning condition between travel to another galaxy, vanquish or escalate ranks of a particular faction, or just follow missions until you save the galaxy from the big bads.

    you know, shit to do with the ship you build.
     
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    technically? nothing, this game had great playability and good balance as even before the rail system.

    what is needed is to make the universe alive. a detailed economy where every block built need to came from some mine somewhere. more factions and subfactions. alliances and war. dynamic missions that target enemies of a faction (structures or fleet) and impact your standing across factions. ranks so that you can escalate the hierarchy of an npc faction and become a leader of one of their subfaction and eventually get elected to supreme ruler. the ability to pull rank and command npc faction ships and fleets. random event that are outside the faction system, like interstellar invaders or alien swarms to act as end game "big bads". select-your-own or randomized winning condition between travel to another galaxy, vanquish or escalate ranks of a particular faction, or just follow missions until you save the galaxy from the big bads.

    you know, shit to do with the ship you build.
    Yeah, that's what in going for.
     
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    technically? nothing, this game had great playability and good balance as even before the rail system.

    what is needed is to make the universe alive. a detailed economy where every block built need to came from some mine somewhere. more factions and subfactions. alliances and war. dynamic missions that target enemies of a faction (structures or fleet) and impact your standing across factions. ranks so that you can escalate the hierarchy of an npc faction and become a leader of one of their subfaction and eventually get elected to supreme ruler. the ability to pull rank and command npc faction ships and fleets. random event that are outside the faction system, like interstellar invaders or alien swarms to act as end game "big bads". select-your-own or randomized winning condition between travel to another galaxy, vanquish or escalate ranks of a particular faction, or just follow missions until you save the galaxy from the big bads.

    you know, shit to do with the ship you build.
    Also just roleplaying. Right now, role-playing on this game isn't fun. All the fun is in PvP, and some people don t like to get o to that stuff. I mean, I'm into PvP, but it kinda sucks rn.