What SM really needs

[Byamarro]

I really would want You to ask important question. There are a lot of suggestions but let's talk about what SM needs most in Your opinion.

I'll start.

Most important things:

1. Something that will give players more things to care about:
Food, water, oxygen. It will also make players a little bit more focused on astronauts than ships. Of course ships will be also important but player will need to start care about himself.
It also gives You a lot more things to do. If You need many food then You will need to somehow automate it's mining. If Your faction will grow larger You will need to mass product Oxygen etc.

2. Something that will give more sense for exploring universe:
More celestial objects. Some of them should be rare and would be source of rare resources.
Also it needs some kind of feeling that You really explore galaxy not sectors with random skyboxes:
http://starmadedock.net/threads/remove-stars-from-procedural-background.7033/


These two things are most important for me I think.
Rails are cool but they will not shape our currently shapeless gameplay. And SM gameplay really need to be shaped because currently it's:
Throw player somewhere near shop mid between stars and order him to develop untill He will be able to fight pirates.

Not much things to do isn't it?

 

[CyberTao]

Things on the wait list?

1) Hp revamp, Thrust revamp, Scaling Armour and Shipyards. Why? Because most of the time people will be in ships (I think anyways) and most of the community like a good fight. It's just not pleasant to be stuck with shitty flight and fight mechanics. You can add all sorts of things to building and all sorts of fancy destinations, but you will still have to fly from Point A to point B and potentially deal with players and pirates along the way. I'mma ignore the presence of Jumpdrives entirely, because the current game just does not seem ready for them.

2) Oddly enough; Fuel and Alternate Power. The current game has a slight issue where you can just kind of romp wherever you want, which is good from a sandbox perspective, but it isn't fun from a PvP, Balance or even Game perspective. We have a council now, so I feel we can probably finally have a long in-depth discussion over the topic. Could probably tie this together with a resource/shop distribution overhaul as well. I like trade, sue me.

You'll notice how 1 and 2 are both ship based. That's because I want ship maintenance and handling to feel good. Doesn't matter what all else you have if the main part of the game feels like shit, and the main part is ships (Followed by stations/planets/asteroids and all their specialties)

 

[Draeke_Forther]

Personally, I am looking forward to when Schema revamps the player mechanics. Thinks like smoothing out movement or making the mining laser's range more intuitive. Just simple stuff that make interacting with the world a bit friendlier.

 

[RoyalWolfe]

everyone is trying so hard these days to tell scheema what his game needs. the problem isn't what it needs its how it needs it. hes asking us that all the time OK i know what you want, so how do you want it done. Try asking yourself that, and rethink the problem wont you?

 

[Shadar]

I agree, the game needs more than just ship building and fighting pirates. Eventually you get to the point where pirates are nothing more than fodder to be vaporized. I would like to see more exploration in the game. Be it exotic life, space anomalies, alien fleets, etc. Add to that the ability to sell spaceships through space yards or shops for a more interesting trade system.

 

[therimmer96]

FP system needs an overhaul. It just currently feels unfinished and not very well thought through.

Shipyards and repairing. There is no reason to keep a ship if you can just break it down and respawn it.

Finish the universe redesign. Sure, we have planets and galaxies... but what really changed? There is still very little to do, very little that makes you want to go somewhere. Wormholes just need to be redone. They are just all disadvantage. There is no reason to want to control one. They could have been something that factions need to control, a source of conflict, but no. they are a minor annoyance to anyone with a jump drive, and a game breaker for those who do not. Planets are even worse than the disk ones. Sure, they make nice screenshots, but they are so unplayable it's silly. What happened to the oreo style ones we was promised?

Fuel. I'd rather it be fuel than oxygen or food. It would allow the developers to do something unique for farming it, such as nebula's, and the having to refine it before using it. And then dock to a station and refuel. Simply cool RP stuff ^_^

Optimization. The game is so poorly made at this point. Its so bad that its a valid tool for stress testing new PC's. I know that its alpha, and that comes later, the difference between this and a normal alpha though? This is a playable game. This is a product that is relying on people buying it to continue development.

 

[Ithirahad]

2) Oddly enough; Fuel and Alternate Power. The current game has a slight issue where you can just kind of romp wherever you want, which is good from a sandbox perspective, but it isn't fun from a PvP, Balance or even Game perspective. We have a council now, so I feel we can probably finally have a long in-depth discussion over the topic. Could probably tie this together with a resource/shop distribution overhaul as well. I like trade, sue me.

The game can be made better without removing the ability to roam freely... But if we must, then it should come in the form of needing food, oxygen sources, or something. Not fuel.

Resource and shop distribution should definitely change though - There's a reason I wrote a really long topic about this. XD

 

[CyberTao]

The game can be made better without removing the ability to roam freely... But if we must, then it should come in the form of needing food, oxygen sources, or something. Not fuel.

Resource and shop distribution should definitely change though - There's a reason I wrote a really long topic about this. XD

If you've seen my last posts on the topic of fuel, I've mentioned wanting various types of power. I mostly want to be able to tell the difference between a civvie ship and a Military battleship. If there was an alternate form of power that used fuel and gave a better output, military grade giants would not be able to roam freely as they do now.

I still stand by my thoughts on food. The only way it would work is if it was optional and just gave buffs in astronaut mode, which would require enough features on that side of the game to make it worth the time to add it.

 

[jayman38]

The core game mechanics need to be moved into an API structure that is available for anyone to modify. Then, instead of asking for changes, users can make their own changes and report the results and upload to community content for others to test and enjoy. Almost anything desired by the community can be built from a fully formed API. That is the #1 thing this game needs. It's a huge undertaking which will result in huge changes and the further democratization of the game's design. It will allow Schema to multiply his development base for free, and the voting mechanic in Community Content will allow the best features to bubble to the top and become default game features.

The sooner the API is built, the better. The longer it is delayed, the harder it will be to implement later.