"The game world itself is too big, too empty and too boring", and other stories about how sieges and capitals themselves ain't the saving grace.

[Seat-Weld]

I wouldn't say that's inherently inevitable, although I do understand and agree with your concern. It's something they need to keep in mind going forward for sure.

The main deciding factor is going to be how far the general population ends up spreading out, and how many/what kind of reasons you'd have for traveling great distances. If we see clusters of stations form "neighborhoods" then it shouldn't be an issue. If your destination is a mere fifteen minute flight away then traveling by capital is obviously going to be needless overkill regardless of charge time. It only really starts to unbalance there's some unavoidable reason for you to constantly be going from one far away place to another, and not doing so puts you at a clear disadvantage.

It's kind of hard to predict in advance how that sort of thing will play out, so I imagine some trial and error is unavoidable before they're properly balanced. That should be a given with a game of this size and scope.

Will they make manual freighters obsolete? Sort of, probably? Personally I think the ability to transport large amounts of resources over great distances is a suitable reward for building the thing in the first place. That's probably going to be beneficial in the long run, as it will hopefully make spreading out a lot less painful for people and encourage a more inter-connected economy. If it makes you feel any better you can think of it in terms of capitals being cargo ships and manually piloted freighters as trailer trucks: The cargo ship being able to transport more stuff farther doesn't make your job as a truck driver obsolete. They're similar but still distinct niches.

Will they invalidate stations? Doubtful. There's plenty of things that can be made exclusive to stations if everyone starts minmaxing themselves into space Mongols. Stations are currently just glorified storage units so I expect people will probably live out of capitals for a period once they're added, but that's less to do with capitals being superior and more to do with stations specifically just being bad right now.

 

[Cavilier210]

One example of having to go far away no matter what is the moon resources. They're exclusive to certain moons. Most likely the only viable way to do it will be with caps. Which I believe takes from the game tbh.

But strangely enough, your cargo ships to trucks analogy does make me less antagonistic.

 

[Captain Garp]

How I see them being implemented now is that they'll make stations and tramp freighters obsolete. Unless they make the charge time obnoxious, or the fuel requirements larger than the smaller ships by proportion, its just plain cheaper to do everything with a cap. And they're linking every major feature to cap use.

So guys like me who want to fly their ship, not ride along as the game plays itself (imo) are made less viable in playtime.

You will still need to take off and return to the capital so having a large ship to do this will benefit you

 

[Cavilier210]

You will still need to take off and return to the capital so having a large ship to do this will benefit you

let me say my gripe in another way. I want my ship to move. I like large ships. Caps don't move outside of teleportation. Civcaps can't fly in the belt either.

Meanwhile they take a niche the large ships actually perform better than small ships, and replace that utility with caps.

I also don't think other groups logistics should be impervious to destruction. Civcaps are invincible. So you plop one out there and it protects everything, no matter what. WHich leads to a whole mess of potential griefing and harassment possibilities that I never really see addressed.

Howeve4r, we did have the same problem with harassment stemming from stations, and that one has been addressed conceptually.

 

[Seat-Weld]

So you plop one out there and it protects everything, no matter what.

I don't think that'll be a problem so long as the ships are limited in a way that they're not functionally identical to stations. Civ caps don't disable safe zones like military caps do (assuming they can even teleport directly into station safe zones) so you won't have to worry about people abusing them as indestructible fortresses.

Definitely the kind of thing that's hard to anticipate in advanced, though. It's a safe bet that they'll end up needing to be tweaked once they've been in players hands long enough to see what all they can be used or abused for.

Meanwhile they take a niche the large ships actually perform better than small ships, and replace that utility with caps.

Civcaps can't fly in the belt

Doesn't that open up a fairly substantial area for large ships to operate in? You have to actually get the ore out of the belt before you can load it up into a capital.

 

[TERACOOL]

hardcore and only hardcore will make the game a masterpiece. Ultima Online was such a hardcore masterpiece at the time. A slightly different genre, but still. This means that there must be a principle (concept) that says if you died, then you died, if you lost a ship outside the safe zone, then you lost it. There are no drawings of the ship, build anew. Respawned at the base - lost everything that was in the cormans. If the base was taken away, then you were left without a base. Everything should be simple and clear. And no mercy. Then there will be no fake adrenaline and a desire to survive. If this is not the case, then the game will lose its main trump card, will face competitors who bypass it in terms of graphics and number of content, and will die. Hardcore is the main trump card of the game, because coding on YOLOL is hardcore. Because designing a decent ship to solve the mining problem (at least) is hardcore. To fly to another planet and build a gate there (I hope it will be so) is super hardcore. And the players will fly... they will fly because it's hardcore and there will be hundreds of such players... thousands. There are already such (I personally know them) who, despite bugs and without any goals, fly to just look and screen other planets. Developers should just add variety to these platens and make the journey to them a challenge. And then those of us who will fly first and will be able to build gates on these planets should be carved in gold on the walls of Starbase (well... in wikipedia for example... yes, this should be monitored). And it will be a great motivation. I would like to remain in the history of Starbase, as the discoverer of something. That's cool!

Dear FrozenDevs, don't listen to these whiners. Do the maximum hardcore, challenge us, you will always have time to simplify.

 

[MoneylooJr]

hardcore and only hardcore will make the game a masterpiece. Ultima Online was such a hardcore masterpiece at the time. A slightly different genre, but still. This means that there must be a principle (concept) that says if you died, then you died, if you lost a ship outside the safe zone, then you lost it. There are no drawings of the ship, build anew.

Yeah, because nothing says fun like designing a single spaceship for 2 weeks, losing it, and then having to design the same ship over again.

Hardcore is the main trump card of the game, because coding on YOLOL is hardcore.

One mechanic is hardcore, so every single mechanic must be hardcore? Even when 90% of that mechanic's use boils down to "tell lever to make thruster go harder" or "tell button to make light go on" by copy-pasting some names into fields and turning a 0 into a 1?

To fly to another planet and build a gate there (I hope it will be so) is super hardcore. And the players will fly... they will fly because it's hardcore and there will be hundreds of such players... thousands.

Yeah, because nothing says "hardcore" like pushing the forward lever to max and sitting there for 3 weeks. That'll definitely bring back the dwindling playerbase. All because a single game doing well because it is hard means that there must be a principle that hard games are just better than all the others, right? And because that's the only way Starbase can beat such fierce and thriving competition as Space Engineers and Dual Universe, right? Yeah, this definitely can't backfire. Let's just scrap the last, what, 6 to 8 months at least of development time spent on designing, programming, creating assets for, implementing, and bug-testing things like capital ships, ship repair, and build mode, so we can make the game harder by padding out the most time-consuming parts, because if there's one thing all these months since EA launch have taught us it's that everyone loves Starbase's long drawn out mechanics like research and flight time.

 

[Recatek]

The game already has its hundreds of hardcore players right now and it's not nearly enough to deliver on the player-driven MMO element of Starbase. Doubling down on a tiny hardcore audience is I think the exact opposite direction of what's needed here.

 

[Cavilier210]

Yeah, because nothing says fun like designing a single spaceship for 2 weeks, losing it, and then having to design the same ship over again.


One mechanic is hardcore, so every single mechanic must be hardcore? Even when 90% of that mechanic's use boils down to "tell lever to make thruster go harder" or "tell button to make light go on" by copy-pasting some names into fields and turning a 0 into a 1?



Yeah, because nothing says "hardcore" like pushing the forward lever to max and sitting there for 3 weeks. That'll definitely bring back the dwindling playerbase. All because a single game doing well because it is hard means that there must be a principle that hard games are just better than all the others, right? And because that's the only way Starbase can beat such fierce and thriving competition as Space Engineers and Dual Universe, right? Yeah, this definitely can't backfire. Let's just scrap the last, what, 6 to 8 months at least of development time spent on designing, programming, creating assets for, implementing, and bug-testing things like capital ships, ship repair, and build mode, so we can make the game harder by padding out the most time-consuming parts, because if there's one thing all these months since EA launch have taught us it's that everyone loves Starbase's long drawn out mechanics like research and flight time.

Have you even played the game? You design a ship once. Then you save it and can build as many times as you want after. Just what?

 

[kiiyo]

Have you even played the game? You design a ship once. Then you save it and can build as many times as you want after. Just what?

Cav my dear honey I think the person was replying to the comment about "hardcore", the post of which reads "there are no drawings of the ship, build anew". I am fairly sure that MoneyLoo has put quite some time into building ships already.

 

[Cavilier210]

The game already has its hundreds of hardcore players right now and it's not nearly enough to deliver on the player-driven MMO element of Starbase. Doubling down on a tiny hardcore audience is I think the exact opposite direction of what's needed here.

Thats just plain disingenuous.

 

[Cavilier210]

Cav my dear honey I think the person was replying to the comment about "hardcore", the post of which reads "there are no drawings of the ship, build anew". I am fairly sure that MoneyLoo has put quite some time into building ships already.

I was all the baffled. I walk away from here for a week and boom. Moneyloo doesn't know how the game works XD

 

[ForeverParal1el]

I have written this post about 5 times, each time deleting it and starting over. This is how I feel FB should proceed with Starbase.
It is to my belief that capitals and sieges each will bring content for a good 2-3 weeks before user count falls to near-nothing again.
The following suggestions will try to give sieges a reason for happening, provide PVP opportunities and player-interaction, and generally just more things to interact with.

Let's first recap what the game world currently contains:
- An endless sea of roids in different sizes, with a very lazy implementation of material spread.
- The occasional player ship wreck if you're either lucky or close to the safe zone edge.
- The occasional player station, that is only explorable from afar due to safezones.
- A few developer stations to visit.

Let's, for good measure, also recap what kind of activities is currently possible in the game:
- Ship building
- Station Building
- Mining
- Salvaging
- PVP

A few game concerns many users have stated before:
- Time to do X activity is too long, they don't want to travel for 5 hours for a mining trip etc.
- PVP is only happening around the Elysium warp gate, where well-off users are seal-clubbing mostly lesser informed newbies.
- It's too hard to find other players outside the safe-zone. Like a needle in a haystack.
- Ore Hotspots were promised, but are way, way too weak to notice.


Let's try to imagine a different game-world where real estate was important and player retention was higher, and how it would look:

1. Spread of Materials
Materials are not uniformly spread into the Zone 1 thru Zone 5 that we know today, where the player simply have to fly in a linear distance for X KM to get to an area where the material they're seeking exists.
Instead, we can re-use the Zone 1 - Zone 5 material compositions, but spread the zones randomly into very large zones (3D voronoi perhaps, of course jacketed due to the nature of the 5x5x5 km zone tech.).
Doing so, allows players to travel much less to get to Zone 5 materials for example, however, such a zone must be located first by exploration players.
It is also highly likely that the closest hotspots of good ore are known by the pirate players, making it a risk versus reward. Less travel time versus potential pirates.

2. Ore Hotspots
Simply have some of these above zones be MUCH RICHER. More high-class asteroids, More of the rare material, perhaps re-introduce C11's
Perhaps some of these zones are super-rare, but contain materials that are otherwise only available on moon surfaces. This gives the player more choices.
It should be obvious that this enables a new form of gameplay that we have not really seen for some time, exploration/prospecting.
A player could fly out and prospect/find these lucrative areas, and either use them with their company, or sell off the coordinates.
If you are feeling fancy: You could make a device similar to the nav. chip saver, that can give you the material composition of all asteroids in a 1km radi or so.

3. New Types of mining
Some of the zones could contain different mining opportunities.
Perhaps Crystals that grow on asteroids that must be carefully laser-cut with the handheld tool and transported in cargo lock frames, used in recipes or sold to the station. Perhaps Gas clouds that must be sucked up and stored in tanks, used in alloying perhaps.
Will provide more content, mechanics and opportunities for ship builders as well.

4. Radiation Technology
I don't understand why we don't have this yet..
The ability to scan for other spaceships and track them down. A way to find other players and create PVP.
PVP shouldn't only be happening at the moon warp-gate, or in planned sieges/events.
You are way too safe outside the safezone at the moment, primarily due to the sheer scale of the asteroid belts.
It should be a danger to leave that safezone, it creates thrill.


As you can imagine - Implementing the above will create lucrative areas that will funnel the playerbase together, be it thru pvp, trade opportunities or the like.
I don't know why sieges would happen if not to fight over real estate, and this real estate doesn't exist today.

We are far too spread out, and adding easy travel or mining opportunities to the remaining moons will only spread us out even further.
I like that we are getting moon mining and all that, but I think we would all appreciate it if the asteroid belts received some major love. Lord knows it needs it, and these suggestions seem like low hanging fruits.

I fully agree with this post, and agree with almost every point made. BUT I think you are missing a fundamental point of why sieges and capital ships are being added.

I don’t personally have any faith in the new update holding people for more than a month, I think you outline this well. But the point I want to make is that the new update was never intended to retain players (I’m going to assume that Frozenbyte knows this, but who knows, maybe they think this will be the saving grace). In the far far future of finished Starbase, capital ships, stations, and sieges will be of huge prominence. They will be the thing every faction builds/captures for more materials, or territory. If anything it will be the driving factor behind player retention. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be like that from the start.
If Frozenbyte has any hope of finishing the game they need to get core mechanics done, even at the detriment of current playerbase, will sieges be fun right now? Maybe, will they have any point? No. But Frozenbyte can’t survive by only adding things that make people happy now, they need to think on the larger scale.
Station sieges need to be added to fulfill a larger picture, it won’t save the game by any means, it probably won’t even make people happy for longer than a week. But it’s the price that has to be paid if Frozenbyte wants to get any closer to the game they seem to be working on. They can’t have a core mechanic if it’s only tacked on at the very end of development.

 

[kiiyo]

I fully agree with this post, and agree with almost every point made. BUT I think you are missing a fundamental point of why sieges and capital ships are being added.

I don’t personally have any faith in the new update holding people for more than a month, I think you outline this well. But the point I want to make is that the new update was never intended to retain players (I’m going to assume that Frozenbyte knows this, but who knows, maybe they think this will be the saving grace). In the far far future of finished Starbase, capital ships, stations, and sieges will be of huge prominence. They will be the thing every faction builds/captures for more materials, or territory. If anything it will be the driving factor behind player retention. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be like that from the start.
If Frozenbyte has any hope of finishing the game they need to get core mechanics done, even at the detriment of current playerbase, will sieges be fun right now? Maybe, will they have any point? No. But Frozenbyte can’t survive by only adding things that make people happy now, they need to think on the larger scale.
Station sieges need to be added to fulfill a larger picture, it won’t save the game by any means, it probably won’t even make people happy for longer than a week. But it’s the price that has to be paid if Frozenbyte wants to get any closer to the game they seem to be working on. They can’t have a core mechanic if it’s only tacked on at the very end of development.

I have to agree here. I don't think sieges are meant to "revive" the game or anything, not in their current state - they're just another floor to the "mining and building" pillar of the game. For the game to fully stand, it'll need more stuff, of course (cough cough like Recatek's PvE suggestions cough cough), but perhaps sieges and capitals provide vital backend features that will become the foundations of those new pillars of gameplay, and if not as tech, they will still be valuable in the future as large infrastructure pieces for people to work toward constructing.

 

[Cavilier210]

I have to agree here. I don't think sieges are meant to "revive" the game or anything, not in their current state - they're just another floor to the "mining and building" pillar of the game. For the game to fully stand, it'll need more stuff, of course (cough cough like Recatek's PvE suggestions cough cough), but perhaps sieges and capitals provide vital backend features that will become the foundations of those new pillars of gameplay, and if not as tech, they will still be valuable in the future as large infrastructure pieces for people to work toward constructing.

Recatek wants a completely different game than was sold to us. I wouldn't support much of what he proposes.

The seige system is supposed to be a core feature. Not another floor in the mining and building pillar. It's supposed to be a significant amount of the activity and driver of the games economy. While it's not gonna save the game on its own, it's a significant part of the game.

 

[kiiyo]

Recatek wants a completely different game than was sold to us. I wouldn't support much of what he proposes.

Well, you've also stated that "the push for NPCs and extravagant automation is an insult and an emulation of mobile gaming trends", so you know - воду вы носите дырявым решетом, сэр кавильйер.

The siege system is technically an end-game resource drain, serving a purpose of both bringing players together and giving them guns to shoot each other's wealth with. The resources that will need to be amassed for them to happen are quite big, both in man-hours and online members, and they therefore by definition cannot be a "daily login" activity for any player. Players will need to repeatedly participate in the mining and building loop in order to construct and prepare for these sieges - and afterward, the gas left over after the siege can be collected too, only further putting it as a block that lies right between the PvP pillar and the Mine&Build pillar.

Features similar to those that Recatek proposes are needed for the game - to provide players with a daily activity to look forward to, to draw them together into scenarios that encourage emergent gameplay, and to just make the world feel less like a space model Pripyat'.

 

[drong]

Recatek wants a completely different game than was sold to us. I wouldn't support much of what he proposes.

Sorry, but i would love to know what you see as Starbase.
Cuz ngl, you remind me of the people that, on every Minecraft Update Announcement, say that it is too much like mods.

 

[Recatek]

Personally, I don't believe the current roadmap alone will put the game on a path to playerbase recovery. I think the game's long-term survival is going to depend on what's on "roadmap 2" or whatever set of features they pursue after the current roadmap features are released. The current roadmap focused on doubling down on and reinforcing the things the game already has developed systems for (building and mining). I think it's critical that "roadmap 2" focuses on shoring up the game's weaknesses, like exploration and content -- both of which are very lacking in Starbase right now. If Starbase wants to invite players into its world, it needs to give them more things to go out and do in it, and players can't be expected to provide all of the reasons for doing so.

 

[ChaosRifle]

players can't be expected to provide all of the reasons for doing so.

Even more true in an MMO, where doing so is to ask players to burn money for their own fun. My corp runs game nights on PTU so were not burning tens to hundreds of millions of credits weekly, on having something to do. We can't even do all the things we would like to do because of the excessive safezones everywhere, so even with infinite money, it still can't be expected for players to make the fun because of mechanics Frozenbyte has implemented themselves. MMO relies on THEM making the content, not the players.

To paraphrase W4stedSpace, which I think put it quite succinctly: FrozenByte has paired sandbox mechanics and game design with the least sandbox friendly type of game: MMO.

 

[Cavilier210]

воду вы носите дырявым решетом, сэр кавильйер.

I'm pretty sure its a rule here to communicate in english.