One of the best and most detailed parts of Starbase is the ship design aspect and all the ships you can make. More ship roles and types means more fun for everyone. Conversely, the intricate damage model means blowing those ships up is also tremendous fun (and is heavily featured in many of the game's trailers). However, while it is fun to get blown up occasionally, it gets tiring if it happens all the time.
It would also be good to have more to spend ore on, and ways for players to populate the vast space the game takes place in.
I do realise right now that the developers are probably sweating away right now, and rather than wanting more ideas they likely want an extra 100 experienced colleagues who they'd been working with for ten years.
That said, hey, here's an idea for the future.
The basic idea is to have an AI core item that players can attach and link into their ships. With an AI core, a ship could be automated to mine, fight, and transport materials. Commands could be transmitted, if needed, back and forth to the ship using the existing "transmitter" and "receiver" items.
Better minds than mine can figure out exactly how the developers would want the AI to work. Maybe it's entirely through very complicated YOLOL. Maybe it's through visual programming. Maybe the AI is pre-baked by Frozenbyte, with certain parameters that could be adjusted by the players. Maybe you would have different cores depending on whether you want your AI ship to mine, fight, or just transport.
With AI cores, a player could send out a bunch of mining ships to automatically mine ore. That player could then log back in after a few days, and hey, there's a bunch of ore. Or they could set up automated transporting of ore back and forth to Origin, or between other trading stations.
The drawback would be the AI ships would be, by design, very visible. When turned on, imagine them as a huge beacon that anyone nearby would be able to see. In the current game, this would be transponders always on. Later on, this would be high levels of "radiation", whatever that is.
So maybe a player would want AI fighters to defend their mining ships in case hostile players came along. Or maybe a player would want to be online to shepherd their fleet of mining ships when they went out, in case someone attacked them.
Or they wouldn't be overly worried because the occasional pirate raid would only dent the profits they're making. So the pirates would be happy because they could blow up the ships and/or take the cores, and the miners could keep mining. Economic warfare between factions would be finding the each other's safe mining space and disrupting their income.
Players could build up fleets of AI ships to defend their space. The developer factions could do that as well. Everyone would be on an equal footing.
You would likely want a few other obvious protections; the mining AI couldn't operate inside safe zones. Maybe the AI cores themselves could be relatively expensive, requiring ores from several different parts of the game world.
If you allow players to safely travel on a ship while offline, players could set up automated transport ships between the hubs, that players could take while they're offline for (easier) transport. You just might wake up to find someone has hijacked your ship.
In this way, you have players able to generate PvE content for other players, in a way that's not artificial and where enemies are not simply created by a magic developer wand.
It also enables other parts of the game; having a production line carefully tuned to churn out a simple AI mining ship would be quite beneficial.
In terms of AI vs player balance, players will always be better at fighting. You might want to tune the game mechanics to make sure player mining was still more profitable than sending out an AI ship (because people do enjoy mining, after all).
It would also be good to have more to spend ore on, and ways for players to populate the vast space the game takes place in.
I do realise right now that the developers are probably sweating away right now, and rather than wanting more ideas they likely want an extra 100 experienced colleagues who they'd been working with for ten years.
That said, hey, here's an idea for the future.
The basic idea is to have an AI core item that players can attach and link into their ships. With an AI core, a ship could be automated to mine, fight, and transport materials. Commands could be transmitted, if needed, back and forth to the ship using the existing "transmitter" and "receiver" items.
Better minds than mine can figure out exactly how the developers would want the AI to work. Maybe it's entirely through very complicated YOLOL. Maybe it's through visual programming. Maybe the AI is pre-baked by Frozenbyte, with certain parameters that could be adjusted by the players. Maybe you would have different cores depending on whether you want your AI ship to mine, fight, or just transport.
With AI cores, a player could send out a bunch of mining ships to automatically mine ore. That player could then log back in after a few days, and hey, there's a bunch of ore. Or they could set up automated transporting of ore back and forth to Origin, or between other trading stations.
The drawback would be the AI ships would be, by design, very visible. When turned on, imagine them as a huge beacon that anyone nearby would be able to see. In the current game, this would be transponders always on. Later on, this would be high levels of "radiation", whatever that is.
So maybe a player would want AI fighters to defend their mining ships in case hostile players came along. Or maybe a player would want to be online to shepherd their fleet of mining ships when they went out, in case someone attacked them.
Or they wouldn't be overly worried because the occasional pirate raid would only dent the profits they're making. So the pirates would be happy because they could blow up the ships and/or take the cores, and the miners could keep mining. Economic warfare between factions would be finding the each other's safe mining space and disrupting their income.
Players could build up fleets of AI ships to defend their space. The developer factions could do that as well. Everyone would be on an equal footing.
You would likely want a few other obvious protections; the mining AI couldn't operate inside safe zones. Maybe the AI cores themselves could be relatively expensive, requiring ores from several different parts of the game world.
If you allow players to safely travel on a ship while offline, players could set up automated transport ships between the hubs, that players could take while they're offline for (easier) transport. You just might wake up to find someone has hijacked your ship.
In this way, you have players able to generate PvE content for other players, in a way that's not artificial and where enemies are not simply created by a magic developer wand.
It also enables other parts of the game; having a production line carefully tuned to churn out a simple AI mining ship would be quite beneficial.
In terms of AI vs player balance, players will always be better at fighting. You might want to tune the game mechanics to make sure player mining was still more profitable than sending out an AI ship (because people do enjoy mining, after all).
