- Joined
- Dec 18, 2020
- Messages
- 7
Without a doubt, at least some have noticed that Starbase is a tad big.
Could be by design, could be that someone slept on the zero key while making the world. Who knows.
What is certain is that it brings a number of interesting challenges, enhanced by the ability to optimize your own ships. However, these challenges all come with a hefty cost of entry. That being time.
In this post I’d like to go over a possible solution to that entry cost. The main goals of this solution are to:
Cut down on monotonous travel time
Setting fcuforward to 100 and activating asteroid avoidance is how you spend most of the time in world. With point to point auto pilots emerging, this will only become more dull. Not a very engaging gameplay loop in my opinion. If a new player realises how little engagement is required, he is unlikely to get invested long term, regardless of how many rookie features are added. People, generally, don’t want to sit around doing something they don’t want to do, after spending most of the day doing something they don’t want to do.
Make the rest of the belt into something that isn’t just there in theory
Right now, most of the action happens starting from the respective spawn point, directly into the belt. With the capabilities of ships, there is neither the need nor a good way to go to the other 90% of the belt. Capitals will make rest of space more accessible. However, not in a way that helps new players or in a way that fosters cooperation between players. When you’re at a point where you start thinking about capitals, getting a downsized moonshot ship for the jump location is just a side step.
Foster cooperation between players
Currently, there is some active cooperation in Starbase and a bit of passive cooperation. Active cooperation would be things like mining/hauling together or hunting with fighters. However, there is little in terms of passive cooperation. The best we have right now is allowing people to dump stuff in your station and to use it as a parking space.
Enough with conceptional ramblings, here is what I’d like to suggest:
Make stations and capitals into a fast travel network for player ships
Players can move to a nearby station or capital and use it to fast travel to a select number of nearby stations or capitals. Fast traveling may not be the shortest path but the fastest, cutting down on monotonous forward thrusting and replacing it with something the player actively engages in. Of course, it is the decision of the owner of the capital or station to decide to whom, to open fast travel access to.
Adding to that the large exclusion zones around stations and you get a situation where factions will want to grab the best spots for themselves, building up their fast travel network to cut down on travel time for their faction members. In turn, vital transit hubs will develop into strategic locations and pvp/station siege hotspots.
For those who are not utterly disgusted by the idea, here are further ramblings, rambling on about a possible implementation in a hopefully not too rambling manner:
Implementation would take place mainly by adding two modules (placeholder names):
the slingshot module:
built on stations and capitals
opens the station up to the fast travel network
requires rare materials to build
the slinghook module:
built on ships
allows ships to use the slingshot module to fast travel
made of somewhat common ores
In world use:
The slingshot is built on the capital or station.
Setup of the slingshot:
One option could be to simply link the module to ones at other stations with a budget. The budget could be a function of number of stations linked and their distance to the slingshot increasing the cost to link to that station.
The more interesting option in my opinion would be to set rotation, elevation and distance on the slingshot relative to the station. Ships using the slingshot then fast travel to where it is set. This would make slingshots one way only and only one location per slingshot, placing more importance on station building.
The slingshot also transmits a shortrange signal for slinghooks to interface with, similar to station transmitters. This is the ID of the slingshot
Setup of the slinghook:
The slinghook is what allows shipside yolol to interface with the slingshot. You’d have a yolol field where you enter the ID of the slingshot you want to use. For added complexity, the slingshot could only be able to pick up the slingshot through a radio receiver and needs to be connected to a ship transmitter to get through a possible whitelist on the slingshot. The slinghook could also check if the ship is pointing towards the fast travel target. If not, target accuracy could be decreased. Asteroid density along the path could also cause a decrease in accuracy. That way, long range fast travels into the belt would have you likely end up in the middle of nowhere due to asteroid interference. Striking a balance between straight flight tedium and the challenge of belt navigation.
How using the system could look like in practice:
You fly near a station or capital with one or more slingshots installed.
You sweep the radio frequencies to see what slingshots are available.
You enter the ID of the slingshot you want to use into the slinghook.
You orientate your ship to point towards the fast travel target.
You turn on the slinghook and wait as the slingshot charges.
If there are a couple of ships waiting to use the slingshot you could be stuck in a queue. (Yay, space traffic!)
When the slingshot is charged, you enter warp, similar to the warp gates.
At your location (or wherever you end up at due to inaccuracies) you leave warp and can continue your business.
This concludes the main part of what I wanted to say. Following are just some random thoughts I have about this in relation to various aspects of the game:
PvP:
Obviously, there are quite a number of strategic options opened up by such a system.
From rapid response pirate hunting to launching a strike group from a catapult carrier type capital ship. The viability of these utilisations would be up to how well the numbers work out. Whether this is something wanted in the game, I don’t know. Could limit the catapults purely to stations.
Something like a Slinghook jammer could be a possible counter. When fast travelling into a jammed area, you get pulled out of warp. The narrower of an area it is tasked to jam, the further the jamming reaches. I.e. you know the enemy is likely to come from a certain hemisphere so you focus your jamming there. However, your enemy expected you to focus your jamming and sent in their forces from somewhere else. To prevent that, you have stations further back covering the blind spots, and so on. The jammer could give out a yolol signal whenever it jams something.
Piracy would also likely change. I’d guess it would evolve to camping popular fast travel end points. Deliberately decreasing your fast travel accuracy by not pointing perfectly to the fast travel target could be a possible counter.
Organisation and faction play:
If slingshot whitelists were to become a thing, grouping up and sharing slingshots would be a benefit to everyone in the group. To avoid slingshots being a purely positive affair, they could come with an energy cost for every slung ship. When your station has access to solar power you can get your energy that way. Powering a slingshot network reaching all the way to the core of a belt could be something only the largest of factions can manage. Making faction owned stations a thing could also open up the possibility of slingshot tolls.
Tl;dr: YEET ships across space!
Thank you for your time and for attending my TED talk.
Could be by design, could be that someone slept on the zero key while making the world. Who knows.
What is certain is that it brings a number of interesting challenges, enhanced by the ability to optimize your own ships. However, these challenges all come with a hefty cost of entry. That being time.
In this post I’d like to go over a possible solution to that entry cost. The main goals of this solution are to:
Cut down on monotonous travel time
Setting fcuforward to 100 and activating asteroid avoidance is how you spend most of the time in world. With point to point auto pilots emerging, this will only become more dull. Not a very engaging gameplay loop in my opinion. If a new player realises how little engagement is required, he is unlikely to get invested long term, regardless of how many rookie features are added. People, generally, don’t want to sit around doing something they don’t want to do, after spending most of the day doing something they don’t want to do.
Make the rest of the belt into something that isn’t just there in theory
Right now, most of the action happens starting from the respective spawn point, directly into the belt. With the capabilities of ships, there is neither the need nor a good way to go to the other 90% of the belt. Capitals will make rest of space more accessible. However, not in a way that helps new players or in a way that fosters cooperation between players. When you’re at a point where you start thinking about capitals, getting a downsized moonshot ship for the jump location is just a side step.
Foster cooperation between players
Currently, there is some active cooperation in Starbase and a bit of passive cooperation. Active cooperation would be things like mining/hauling together or hunting with fighters. However, there is little in terms of passive cooperation. The best we have right now is allowing people to dump stuff in your station and to use it as a parking space.
Enough with conceptional ramblings, here is what I’d like to suggest:
Make stations and capitals into a fast travel network for player ships
Players can move to a nearby station or capital and use it to fast travel to a select number of nearby stations or capitals. Fast traveling may not be the shortest path but the fastest, cutting down on monotonous forward thrusting and replacing it with something the player actively engages in. Of course, it is the decision of the owner of the capital or station to decide to whom, to open fast travel access to.
Adding to that the large exclusion zones around stations and you get a situation where factions will want to grab the best spots for themselves, building up their fast travel network to cut down on travel time for their faction members. In turn, vital transit hubs will develop into strategic locations and pvp/station siege hotspots.
For those who are not utterly disgusted by the idea, here are further ramblings, rambling on about a possible implementation in a hopefully not too rambling manner:
Implementation would take place mainly by adding two modules (placeholder names):
the slingshot module:
built on stations and capitals
opens the station up to the fast travel network
requires rare materials to build
the slinghook module:
built on ships
allows ships to use the slingshot module to fast travel
made of somewhat common ores
In world use:
The slingshot is built on the capital or station.
Setup of the slingshot:
One option could be to simply link the module to ones at other stations with a budget. The budget could be a function of number of stations linked and their distance to the slingshot increasing the cost to link to that station.
The more interesting option in my opinion would be to set rotation, elevation and distance on the slingshot relative to the station. Ships using the slingshot then fast travel to where it is set. This would make slingshots one way only and only one location per slingshot, placing more importance on station building.
The slingshot also transmits a shortrange signal for slinghooks to interface with, similar to station transmitters. This is the ID of the slingshot
Setup of the slinghook:
The slinghook is what allows shipside yolol to interface with the slingshot. You’d have a yolol field where you enter the ID of the slingshot you want to use. For added complexity, the slingshot could only be able to pick up the slingshot through a radio receiver and needs to be connected to a ship transmitter to get through a possible whitelist on the slingshot. The slinghook could also check if the ship is pointing towards the fast travel target. If not, target accuracy could be decreased. Asteroid density along the path could also cause a decrease in accuracy. That way, long range fast travels into the belt would have you likely end up in the middle of nowhere due to asteroid interference. Striking a balance between straight flight tedium and the challenge of belt navigation.
How using the system could look like in practice:
You fly near a station or capital with one or more slingshots installed.
You sweep the radio frequencies to see what slingshots are available.
You enter the ID of the slingshot you want to use into the slinghook.
You orientate your ship to point towards the fast travel target.
You turn on the slinghook and wait as the slingshot charges.
If there are a couple of ships waiting to use the slingshot you could be stuck in a queue. (Yay, space traffic!)
When the slingshot is charged, you enter warp, similar to the warp gates.
At your location (or wherever you end up at due to inaccuracies) you leave warp and can continue your business.
This concludes the main part of what I wanted to say. Following are just some random thoughts I have about this in relation to various aspects of the game:
PvP:
Obviously, there are quite a number of strategic options opened up by such a system.
From rapid response pirate hunting to launching a strike group from a catapult carrier type capital ship. The viability of these utilisations would be up to how well the numbers work out. Whether this is something wanted in the game, I don’t know. Could limit the catapults purely to stations.
Something like a Slinghook jammer could be a possible counter. When fast travelling into a jammed area, you get pulled out of warp. The narrower of an area it is tasked to jam, the further the jamming reaches. I.e. you know the enemy is likely to come from a certain hemisphere so you focus your jamming there. However, your enemy expected you to focus your jamming and sent in their forces from somewhere else. To prevent that, you have stations further back covering the blind spots, and so on. The jammer could give out a yolol signal whenever it jams something.
Piracy would also likely change. I’d guess it would evolve to camping popular fast travel end points. Deliberately decreasing your fast travel accuracy by not pointing perfectly to the fast travel target could be a possible counter.
Organisation and faction play:
If slingshot whitelists were to become a thing, grouping up and sharing slingshots would be a benefit to everyone in the group. To avoid slingshots being a purely positive affair, they could come with an energy cost for every slung ship. When your station has access to solar power you can get your energy that way. Powering a slingshot network reaching all the way to the core of a belt could be something only the largest of factions can manage. Making faction owned stations a thing could also open up the possibility of slingshot tolls.
Tl;dr: YEET ships across space!
Thank you for your time and for attending my TED talk.
