Developers needs to focus on getting the most important gameplay loop finished.

[oophus]

Priority number 1 is to make the game fun for content-creators. Thats often players who loves crafting, and progressing through that sort of stuff.

Here is my example of a gameplay loop that would generate content for everyone else.

1. Start out like now, you mine manually. Fly back and forth between Origin and starter astroid belt.
2. Start to get hold of larger ships, with more automation in lasers and ore collectors.
3. Start to build stations, with factories to automate crafting.
4. Automate mining ships so you don't have to do the mining your self, so you free up more time to min/max your factory for more automation.
5. Advance down to moons, and rince and repeat part 3-4.
6. Factories are now advanced enough to build complete objects, and its placed in player owned Ship-Shops, and items are shipped through automation in ships to Auction Houses - like the origin stations and others that will come.
7. The more automation a player controlled station/moon-station have, the further they have advanced through technology. The less its own safe zone is needed, as they will have advanced enough to start to build automated support systems against pirates.
8. The core of Stations is always within a safe-zone, which can only be sieged, but as more and more stuff is automated, the area around the station is smaller until some of the station has to be build outside with defenses. This include transport of ore, minerals and gas pluss crafted object tranfered through automated ships.


What this gameplay loop would do for the game over all, is it would create content. Both for companies, but most importantly for solo players.

Player owned, crafted, min/maxed and automated NPC ships would fly around in the now empty void, and is possible targets for everyone else. The reward for the advanced automation is larger cash-flow, but the risk is they can be captured, shot down, salvaged and sold off as they would be flying outside of safe-zones to maximise possible profit. The tech they have would also be available to steal and copy for others less advanced "automation experts" to get to make shop somewhere else.

The road-map should focus on this. Make it clear for those types of players that those things will be available soon. I don't think really advanced automation would be possible with current YOLOL, so maybe a more advanced system would need to be developed. Personally I like node-based systems. "NODAL" could be the next step of YOLOL, and YOLOL chips can be brought into NODAL as nodes and built together to produce more and more advanced automation. We would also need access to more advanced sensors like radar and lidar.

For example:

A player with a moon-base becoming more and more advanced with more and more effective automation for his factory and mining, could set up 3 receiver sensors at his station, and one transmitter. The transmitter is set to transmit at X frequencies, and the 3 reciever is also set to listen to the same frequency. By triangulation (coded through YOLOL or the more advanced version of math+logic system NODAL) he can detect astroids and movable objects. The astroids X,Y,Z position is used to send off automated drones who gets a simple vector coordinate to travel to, mine and go back. Movable vector space points is possible Pirates and can be used to automate turrets. Problem is, do you code the turrets to lead its target, or shoot stright on? Automation will never be as good as players, but its important its possible. Friendly fire is of course active, but friendly players can transmit within the "secret" frequency to let the system know they are friendly players. This is of course open to exploits through spies etc who leaks the frequency. Vector Space coordinates for Auction Houses can be put in memory chips, and fed the system so that NODAL can bring it forth, to be used to send automated drones to sell off crafted items, goods, gases, ships, blue prints - what have you, to the AH.

All of this would make the game way more "life-like". And having robots making robots is just nice progression, and I strongly feel this type of gameplay loop is whats needed to keep everyone else. Those types of players are the most important types of players to satisfy for a game such as this to succeed. It creates policies, better PvE, and PvP, more stuff for Pirates etc.

Having a company owning a big ass automated factory with 100's of drones automated would be such a big target for other companies who wants to sieges and steal all that work. In the meanwhile, such companies provides excellent content for solo players as well, that keep taking one of those drones down. For the company, they don't care. They have automated the production of drones, and keeps sending them off to farm and get richer. They only care if they suddenly see 100's of drones are wiped off the server in a short time, as only big companies are able to do that, so who did it, and lets declare war!

 

[Vanidar]

Only skimmed here, but plenty of factory work is being prioritized on the roadmap. Complete automation for some things, while other things like completely automated mining/flying I believe is a thing FB isn't supporting by design choice. Personally, I think NPC ships are not a substitute for incentivizing those ships being actual players in a player-driven sandbox. This game is only part Satisfactory/Factorio and I think the amount of NPC/automation that you're wanting is limited by design and not lack of imagination.

Also, there are many other competing ideas on what a barebones minimal "gameplay loop" would look like -- think from the lens of more small scale pvp-based or larger conquest and territory controls that don't need any of what you're discussing here and they themselves are large efforts.

Lastly, and no offense, everyone has their own ideas on what the roadmap should look like, what the priority of the game should be, and what crowd the devs should try to please first. Pointing at "crafting and progression" and saying that's where the game should be focusing on because (my opinion) is fine, but this usually turns into us just arguing about why my preferences are more important than your preferences. For example -- why not try to address the upside down risk/reward function and promote conflict outside the SZ first? I could argue that this would help balance our supply/demand, give more opportunities for dynamic interactions, add more content that risk-keen people would enjoy, serve as a resource sink to upright the economy that the rest of entire the game relies on, make the game feel more "alive" just like you say, and to add a loop to keep people engaged indefinitely.

Saying "developers need to do X" isn't really a good look in this context.

 

[oophus]

Saying "developers need to do X" isn't really a good look in this context.

The point of this thread is to reach an agreement in what the most optimal "gameplay-loop" would be to provide content. My reasoning for my idea is that it pleases the PvE'ers first. Without PvE, you won't get much of PvP outside of sieges and larger and larger groups forming. Being able to provide something for solo players fuels everything else, and fills in the gap between the solo to small scale and big scale content imo.

Personally, I think NPC ships are not a substitute for incentivizing those ships being actual players in a player-driven sandbox.

NPC ships won't decentivize Player ships? Building content and growing its wealth also means to protect it. If you need to transfer between Player Station A to Player Station B because resources have become scarce at A you've got options. Options is important.

You either:
A: Hire Players to protect you. Nice for players who is above average in player to player communication.
B: Build a hauler-ship fleet to do it all in one swoop your selves. So while the NPC ships travel slowly (A NPC ship using sensors will always be a "lagging"ship in terms of handling, as there is 0,2 seconds lag between each YOLOL or "NODAL" line/node anyway) with some Fighters and you your self in a Fighter to protect the Haulers.

Options is good in a game such as this, and the player who really wants to solve most stuff him selves, or with his small group of friends (Its important to provide a gameplay loop that fits the solo to large company groups sizes) should be able to do so. It creates long lasting goals to aim for, something that keeps players around. If you can keep players around that at the same time build content for everyone else, then you've got a successful game.

Also, there are many other competing ideas on what a barebones minimal "gameplay loop" would look like -- think from the lens of more small scale pvp-based or larger conquest and territory controls that don't need any of what you're discussing here and they themselves are large efforts.

All of this would create PvP content. Seeing a NPC drone should be easily recognizable as it lags in its decisions before doing stuff. If you see one, you'll got several options.
1. Salvage it, as it will be an easy target.
2. Tell your friends to come, and follow it "home" which will reveal where it came from. Someone who has gotten to the point of making NPC drones should be a good PvP target. They are most probably wealthy as they've also probably automated a lot of their factory.
3. Start to farm them as you now know their location of origin.
4. If its a moon-base, you'll get way more to do, as storage locations between NPC drone hauling will be accessible. This creates conflict, politics and counter-measures which is all PvP.

Remember that a Station only have a small safe zone. A factory on a moon would expand further and further and eventually outside the safe zone. Meaning people who scale by autonomy, will more quickly scale outside the safe sones, and that in it self creates interest, conflict and PvP alongside PvE.

For example -- why not try to address the upside down risk/reward function and promote conflict outside the SZ first?

Because I would argue its not important. Current Safe-Zones will quickly be obsolete, as the economy will progress outside of it. Think if a "bell curve". The Origin Safe Zones are only there for entry level game play, and the amount of players there will quickly go above the peak in a bell curve as the medium player advances above it to their first Player Station/Moon, and onwards. Remember that more and more Moon's will open, and players will scatter more and more away the starting zone, to where more and more players end up at "end-game" over time.

If you want quicker access to PvP content as a middle-ground, then add entry-level features instead to introduce players to PvP quicker.

For example:

A Fast-travel gate (FTG) is located behind the Origin Stations pointed towards EOS planet. Thats a location most entry-level players would explore, and when they do, they quickly learn that this is a vager "Battle Royale" type deal. The rules are simple. When you enter it, you get more options vs normal FTG's.

1. Enter a Battle Royale type battle with some money.
a. The amount of money depends on the ship you enter with. Larger ships with more parts costs more to insure.
b. After the Battle Royale, you've got a Blue Print that works only once, to rebuild your ship - if you lost.
c. If you win, you get a percentage of the money spent for players to enter, and the BP to repair.
d. 50% of the price-pool is towards the winner, 25% is costs linked to insurance, and 25% is a money sink (numbers are just examples).
2. Enter as a spectator.

Rules are simple:
Every 60 minutes, the FTG activates, and everyone in the queue fast-travel together towards EOS. Once there, close to the effects of its gravity (both space and gravity based combat) the players who have entered with money are placed in their ships with equal distance between eachother, and its last man standing. At the same time you've got spectators who may or may not have placed bets on the victors, this is just good for YT and Twich content to build hype around the game.

Point being. I agree that PvP are scarze, but we have to remember the goal of the game. The game in alpha is bad PvP vize because there isn't a complete game-play loop here yet. We have no where to do, outside of grinding astroids. Once moon-bases etc arrives, there will be more focus towards PvP, but my main argument is that the initial complete gameplay-loop should focus on PvE and crafting, as that gives the game a headstart with economy, player made content and ultimatilly more targets for pirates, scavengers and PvP in general.