Respawning, offline binding, cooperative play, and exploration

[PopeUrban]

Hello. I'm pretty excited for all the various elements of starbase but one thing is bothering me.

As far as I can tell the stated setup for all things ship revolves around stations. You respawn Exos in stations, and dock ships in stations to de-rez them when you want to go offline to keep them safe.

So, if you need to crew a ship with multiple people, the assumption here is the whole crew operates out of the same station, and you have a basic operational range of whatever fuel can comfortably get you to and from a station, or to an objective and to another station (say, cargo movements or mining)

Great setup as long as all of your friends have exos on all of the stations in question, and everyone logs on all at one time before embarking.

Not so great if you're trying to build a crewed ship for exploration.

The idea here is a classic "No one has Gone Before" exploration ship as one might see in classic sci fi ala Star trek or Battlestar Galactica. A lone ship that has the industrial capacity to refine its own fuel, process its own ammo, launch smaller utility ships, etc.

This is what I'd generally consider the archetypal 'exploration ship' a large design that isn't particularly built to be super efficient at any one thing, but is in stead moderately competent at all the things so it can be self sufficient on long journeys far away from stations. I'd think ships like these would be crucial in finding new and valuable resource fields so factions know where to put up new stations.

In theory, Starbase allows the creation of such a ship, but in practice the systems we've heard of are problematic for such a ship.

Players Respawning/going offline - If I can not build some sort of respawn facility on ship, my entire crew essentially suffers permadeath. This is going to cut any long term exploratory mission short really quickly if any time a single crew member has an accident they are lost permanently as they respawn back at the station we departed from. How can I run an exploration vessel if I need to leash myself to operational range from a station to maintain my crew compliment?

Spaceship Offline Protection - If my ship remains in universe even when all crew members are offline, engaging in such a mission is essentially suicide. While in science fiction these ships have crews or AI capable of round the clock monitoring, Starbase substitutes this with hard derezzing of ships and players so people can be assured their stuff won't be blown up while they're at work. This makes sense in station range, but how am I to boldly go if every time I boldly go I log back in to everything being torn down by pirates or blown up by random meteors?

Galactic Speed Limit - This one compounds the other two issues. If I'm limited to a relatively low galactic speed limit, need to remain close enough to stations to collect dead crew members, and have no ability to somehow protect the ship while I'm offline, I don't forsee explorers actually doing much exploring.

Solutions

Hibernation Pods - People have discussed this already. Allow the construction of a bindable respawn system on spaceships, require a significant amount of fuel, material. This should be costly for the ship and limit its operational range if people are constantly dying. This is preferable to raw materials I think as additional fuel storage automatically equates to making the ship more vulnerable, right? This would mean if my crew experiences heavy losses I might need to pull an emergency refueling operation, but if I'm lucky I might still be able to stay on course. Each Pod is keyed to one entry in the Crew Registry, and as such you need one additional pod for each crew member who may need to respawn. These pods also function as safe logout points for the crew. These pods are quite large and as such a ship with a large crew would need to devote a substantial amount of its power and internal mass to housing a large number of these pods. Hibernation pods are also responsible for scanning and writing the player data to the YOLOL chips in the Crew Registry.

Crew Registry - Required to use a Hibernation Pod, This is a mission critical YOLOL chip rack tasked with storing the consciousness/connection of all crew members. This device must remain powered and networked to respawn pods for them to function. Sabotaging the Crew Registry and eliminating the crew is probably the fastest way to steal an exploration ship. The Crew Registry stores its data on YOLOL chips, one for each member. This allows crew to be effectively transferred from one ship to another, but also adds the risk that a saboteur could access the registry and add/change the vessel's crew without your knowledge (ex. one stowaway with a pocket full of crew chips waits until you're all on a mineral run, replaces your crew with his, murders the original crew, and now his friends can respawn in the pods while your guys are all stuck respawning at station)
Storing crew data as YOLOL chips also allows that data to be transmitted wirelessly or copied, allowing a single player to crew multiple ships at once if the owners can afford the space in the crew registry.

Going Dark - Allow ships at a long distance from all stations and other ships to "Go Dark" on the spot. Like derezzing is used to emulate docking a ship in a safe place, "Going Dark" is used to emulate using the vastness of space and lack of EM emissions to hide a ship. Essentially, any ship that is outside a predefined range from any station can shut down all generators, and will be removed from the game world as if docked on the spot once all crew members have logged out for, say 10 minutes. The station range limit should prevent this from being abused to "Pocket" warships and other such things in combat areas, and the "distance from other ships" should prevent it from creating "ambush alts" designed to log a larger more expensive ship in only when a smaller and cheaper ship has found a target for it.

 

[Zijkhal]

I agree with most of the concerns except the pirate one. If a pirate can get to your long distance exploration ship, then there is no need for a long distance exploration ship in the first place.

 

[PopeUrban]

I agree with most of the concerns except the pirate one. If a pirate can get to your long distance exploration ship, then there is no need for a long distance exploration ship in the first place.

Replace "pirate" with "other exploration ship that happens to be online" if that helps.

The basic point being if docking at a station is the only way anyone can safely log out a spaceship there is what seems to me an unreasonable expectation for explorers to be online 24/7 while people living out of stations can log out and go to work like functioning adults.

 

[The Dungeon Master]

I like the idea of "Going Dark", but I wouldn't have it logged out the ship. Instead I think it should make it semi-invisible (dark) to a certain point. The ship will only be rendered if you are at X meters from it, thus decreasing the chance of being discovered unless someone is actively scanning the area.

 

[PopeUrban]

I like the idea of "Going Dark", but I wouldn't have it logged out the ship. Instead I think it should make it semi-invisible (dark) to a certain point. The ship will only be rendered if you are at X meters from it, thus decreasing the chance of being discovered unless someone is actively scanning the area.

This doesn't solve the primary issue facing explorers versus station sitters. Namely, getting your entire spaceship trashed/looted/stolen while offline. This would be like adding a "ship theft device" that you can use at a safe station that only works when the user is logged out.

Is it less likely the user loses their ship because not everyone can walk up and take it? Sure. Is it still a possibility that someone with zero risk and zero effort can just walk off with our spaceship because you are offline? Also yes.

As long as you force that risk on undocked ships the only viable means of exploration will be limited to fueling range from a station that people can round trip in a single play session. This means exploration is dead on arrival as an occupation, as it is in stead replaced by the much more expensive and time consuming method of building hundreds and hundreds of tiny stations just to fuel and dock ships in a zerg-like creep across the cosmos.

That should certainly be an option, and its a great way to build an empire, but should it be the ONLY option?

This makes exploration a gated activity, limited only to those who already hold the capital to engage in rapid expansion, which is a huge competitive slippery slope problem. It ensures only the people who already have great econ and access to resources can gain further access to new high quality resource fields.

Its nice to lean on "realism" but we've got to remember we're playing a video game here. That's why we have things like safe zones and ship derezzing on dock. To ensure players only assume risk when they can act on threats.

If you expect people to build and use long range exploration vessels while also expecting them to risk complete loss of that vessel every time they log out nobody is going to build and use those vessels for long range exploration.

 

[Atsuい]

There's another perspective to it. Logging off when outside of safe zones to hide yourself from (anticipated) harm can just as well be exploited to nullify combat. Attaching a log-out timer is a crude solution in other MMOs I know of. Having persistent in-game ships, endos and other objects has a certain elegant charm to it. I understand long range exploration has to be viable, so can we invent solutions without introducing more invincibility mechanics?

1) Warp gates. Think of Babylon5. Players can construct these expensive structures to act as connected "nodes" to quickly move across vast distances. Ideally you explore a fair distance around these gates, then return back and warp home station when you're done playing. Takes many hours to build even for a small group of people and are unable to be towed (lol) with you. The potential pay-off for pirates comes from ambushing&destroying these gates.

2) Pay for protection. A more social solution, like the opposite of bounty hunting. When you're about to log out, broadcast your location to players who have a good standing (criteria and details can be defined). I mean those who haven't been aggressors in PvP for some time. Bodyguards who arrive get rewarded a split for every minute your ship isn't harmed. Of course this requires game mechanics to help recognize pirates and such possible threats.

3) Cloaking, automated ship defenses, insurance when you're offline etc. It's up-to the devs to give players tools to prepare for every occasion. Unfortunately everything mentioned in this thread is years of development time away from their current scope. The game isn't even out yet! What do you think realistically is the most exciting thing made possible in the alpha/beta?

 

[Fingle]

Im just going to hook up high yield explosives to a random button on my ship that is labeled (engines on) or something. No ones gunna steal my ship and get away with it. XD

 

[The Dungeon Master]

This doesn't solve the primary issue facing explorers versus station sitters. Namely, getting your entire spaceship trashed/looted/stolen while offline. This would be like adding a "ship theft device" that you can use at a safe station that only works when the user is logged out.

Is it less likely the user loses their ship because not everyone can walk up and take it? Sure. Is it still a possibility that someone with zero risk and zero effort can just walk off with our spaceship because you are offline? Also yes.

As long as you force that risk on undocked ships the only viable means of exploration will be limited to fueling range from a station that people can round trip in a single play session. This means exploration is dead on arrival as an occupation, as it is in stead replaced by the much more expensive and time consuming method of building hundreds and hundreds of tiny stations just to fuel and dock ships in a zerg-like creep across the cosmos.

That should certainly be an option, and its a great way to build an empire, but should it be the ONLY option?

This makes exploration a gated activity, limited only to those who already hold the capital to engage in rapid expansion, which is a huge competitive slippery slope problem. It ensures only the people who already have great econ and access to resources can gain further access to new high quality resource fields.

Its nice to lean on "realism" but we've got to remember we're playing a video game here. That's why we have things like safe zones and ship derezzing on dock. To ensure players only assume risk when they can act on threats.

If you expect people to build and use long range exploration vessels while also expecting them to risk complete loss of that vessel every time they log out nobody is going to build and use those vessels for long range exploration.

Space is big, and the likelihood of find an offline ship, especially if it's far away from everything, should be the same as finding a needle in a heystack.

Like Atsu's third option, it could be some kinda of a cloaking device that would be easy to build (that would of course add new tactics like ambushes).

Because there should always be an element of risk in my opinion. It raises the stakes and consequentially the enjoyment of the game.

One last suggestion, based on what Fingle posted. Boobytrap and automatic defence systems could be implemented for good measure. Maybe even a distress beacon to alert nearby security forces while the enemy is still fighting the defences.

 

[Stanky]

I've seen some discussion of automatic weapons. I personally think weapons should only be auto if the owners of the vessel are offline. Otherwise they have to be manual or Yolol controlled.

Also warp gates or something of the like are gonna be key.

And as far as I know we won't be able to make stations at EA release. Personally I think stations should be added at the beginning because of how important they are, and I'm perfectly willing to accept a delayed release to prepare stations.

 

[PopeUrban]

There's another perspective to it. Logging off when outside of safe zones to hide yourself from (anticipated) harm can just as well be exploited to nullify combat. Attaching a log-out timer is a crude solution in other MMOs I know of. Having persistent in-game ships, endos and other objects has a certain elegant charm to it. I understand long range exploration has to be viable, so can we invent solutions without introducing more invincibility mechanics?

1) Warp gates. Think of Babylon5. Players can construct these expensive structures to act as connected "nodes" to quickly move across vast distances. Ideally you explore a fair distance around these gates, then return back and warp home station when you're done playing. Takes many hours to build even for a small group of people and are unable to be towed (lol) with you. The potential pay-off for pirates comes from ambushing&destroying these gates.

2) Pay for protection. A more social solution, like the opposite of bounty hunting. When you're about to log out, broadcast your location to players who have a good standing (criteria and details can be defined). I mean those who haven't been aggressors in PvP for some time. Bodyguards who arrive get rewarded a split for every minute your ship isn't harmed. Of course this requires game mechanics to help recognize pirates and such possible threats.

3) Cloaking, automated ship defenses, insurance when you're offline etc. It's up-to the devs to give players tools to prepare for every occasion. Unfortunately everything mentioned in this thread is years of development time away from their current scope. The game isn't even out yet! What do you think realistically is the most exciting thing made possible in the alpha/beta?

I don't think its unreasonable to expect "invincible log out" mechanics when they're already in the game in the form of docked ships. They exist to cut server load by making sure people are incentivized to NOT have their ships be persistant, and to make sure people have a reasonable expectation their stuff isn't mangled unless they're present to do something about it. That's also why stuff decays in space in stead of all debris sticking around forever. it would be cooler and more realistic if all those bolts and wrecked plates just floated around forever and made building a micro-debris scooper ship a viable job. Unfortunately its also functionally impossible to allow your players to litter the game with an unlimited amount of stuff, so you have to have some mechanisms to limit how much stuff is persistant in a given area at one time. Stuff like logout docking is a good implementation because rather than placing a speed limit you're giving the players a bump to help themselves by helping you run the server efficiently. Dock your ship because its safe and that's good for you, while also being good for server performance.

The tried and true solution of "log out here and vanish, but you can't do it in the middle of a fight because timers" seems like the most direct, server performant, and elegant solution compared to the balance implications of cloaking devices, automated weapons, etc. when you consider that any device can be attached to any ship. Sure, it has its own set of "exploitables" but they're the exact same exploitables that exist with the ship docking systems, right? Its a commonly used method in open PvP games because it works better than the alternatives. Adding automated weaponry, cloaking devices, etc. radically shifts the balance paradigm of the game by simply existing.

The "community guard" solution is also a dead end. To put it bluntly, players don't like doing boring stuff, guarding things is boring, and there is no method to prevent a player from using a "good standings" alt account to find targets for their pirate account. Bounty systems in MMOs are notoriously ineffective as they invariably result in the targets collecting their own bounties, or the bounties not being worth the money spent on them. Players aren't going to take you scraps to do nothing for four hours if they can just do whatever you did to make that money and not do nothing for four hours. This is an idea that comes up in MMO designs constantly, and it never ever pans out. if you want players to defend a thing, you have to make defense either predictable (e.g. vuln windows, timers, or EVE style invulnerability phases) or easy to get to in a small amount of time with an objective that won't be already dead by they time they get there (Alert system)

In addition, the idea of the PvP mercenary is a fiction. It simply doesn't work in a sandbox because anyone that can afford to hire mercenaries can in stead afford to just recruit their own soldiers. People that play "mercenaries" have a miniscule market of players both rich enough to cover their expenses and poor enough to not be effective at just recruiting more for their organization. Mercenary is not and has never been a really viable occupation in a pvp sandbox and is relegated primarily to a small number people that just like to RP the lifestyle. It simply isn't reliable as an expected wide scale implementation for holistic systems balance.

Even without fuel constraints, assume that the average session time is four hours with no in-ship respawns means that nowhere you need to go can really be more than four hours away at maximum galactic speed limit, and if where you're going isn't a station, and under two hours as you need time to get there, do the thing, and get back.

That can seem like a very long or very short amount of time depending on who you ask, but it does impose an effective cap on the explorable area of space until someone builds a new station within that zone.

That said the question is whether or not FB even wants long range exploration to exist. We expect it to exist because its the pattern we're used to from similar simulations like EVE, where one takes a scout long distances to find the juiciest place to set up a new base.

The systems we've been shown and which we have been told are planned indicate this may not actually be an activity FB WANTS us to do in the first place. Much has been made of how it will be hard to get to and land on the moon. Is that because its so far away from resources that the difficulty is in effectively fueling the trip, or simply because its so far away it is effectively unreachable without building a string of support stations on the way there?

Perhaps the intended paradigm is that long range exploration does not exist at all in order to encourage players to place their exploration priorities on real world style resupply logistics rather than star trek style adventures of discovery.

 

[Verbatos]

Im just going to hook up high yield explosives to a random button on my ship that is labeled (engines on) or something. No ones gunna steal my ship and get away with it. XD

That sounds like a funny idea, consider it stolen!

 

[Lionard Freezer]

1. Logging off with you ship is only possible when in a safezone (or so i read).
that doesnt mean you need to be docked with a station but just need to be in the vercinety of it.
2. you cant steal ships in safezones anyways wich is the only reason they allowed the despawn mecaninc of ships to be implemented.
Im not necicary against despawning of ships i just dislike the implemention of unlogical game-physics. sure some limitations need to be set but i dont thing adding weired things will improve this game.

 

[PopeUrban]

1. Logging off with you ship is only possible when in a safezone (or so i read).
that doesnt mean you need to be docked with a station but just need to be in the vercinety of it.
2. you cant steal ships in safezones anyways wich is the only reason they allowed the despawn mecaninc of ships to be implemented.
Im not necicary against despawning of ships i just dislike the implemention of unlogical game-physics. sure some limitations need to be set but i dont thing adding weired things will improve this game.

The two things you just listed are already illogical physics. They're illogical because a video game needs to make concessions in the simulation to account for the fact that its users only spend a minority of their time in the simulation. How is the ability to actually log out anywhere that isn't a safe zone and not be worried that your stuff will succumb to disaster while you're asleep or at work any more weird than a magical bubble that literally makes everything invincible and theft proof?

I love pvp. I love high risk high reward systems. I don't love systems that dictate that I need to panic log in to the game in the middle of dinner or **** me over for going to the doctor or earning a living. That's not PvP or risk. That's a system that results in the most efficient method of existing in a pvp space being completely avoiding PvP, and that is exactly what happens when such a system is put in place. People won't fight you and your spaceship unless you give them no option. They'll just stalk your spaceship until you log out and then tear it all down while you're asleep.

I don't love worlds built around exploration and expansion that heavily discourage exploring and expanding by anyone that doesn't have the ability to be logged in 24 hours a day.

That is the system as currently designed. All gameplay centers around safe zones because people need to be in range of a safe zone to log out. If you can't make a round trip to a safe zone in one sitting, you're simply not going.

 

[Stanky]

The two things you just listed are already illogical physics. They're illogical because a video game needs to make concessions in the simulation to account for the fact that its users only spend a minority of their time in the simulation. How is the ability to actually log out anywhere that isn't a safe zone and not be worried that your stuff will succumb to disaster while you're asleep or at work any more weird than a magical bubble that literally makes everything invincible and theft proof?

I love pvp. I love high risk high reward systems. I don't love systems that dictate that I need to panic log in to the game in the middle of dinner or **** me over for going to the doctor or earning a living. That's not PvP or risk. That's a system that results in the most efficient method of existing in a pvp space being completely avoiding PvP, and that is exactly what happens when such a system is put in place. People won't fight you and your spaceship unless you give them no option. They'll just stalk your spaceship until you log out and then tear it all down while you're asleep.

I don't love worlds built around exploration and expansion that heavily discourage exploring and expanding by anyone that doesn't have the ability to be logged in 24 hours a day.

That is the system as currently designed. All gameplay centers around safe zones because people need to be in range of a safe zone to log out. If you can't make a round trip to a safe zone in one sitting, you're simply not going.

I think you hit the nail on the head. This is why it will be necessary for player made stations need to be added soon after release as well as some form of potential player made safezone. and later after that warp gates. These safezones however need to have some limits (like a timer/cooldown thing so enemy factions can fight eachother), but they need to exist to allow players to venture out into the great unknown.

 

[Quinc]

At first glance I don't like the idea of "dark mode", or ships despawning in deep space or becoming invulnerable because the crew logged off, but the more I think about it, it seems better than the alternatives. Like many games with a huge map, I think Starbase will "unload" a whole region of space if there are no players present, so that the data is backed up on the central server but is no longer simulated. When another player enters the area the region is reloaded. The protected ship would simply not be reloaded normally. The protected ship would instead suddenly re-appear when one of the "attached" players logs back in. Here "attached" is meant literally. When you use a seat or harness that is bolted to a ship, you are "attached" to the ship, when you log off your deactivated body/endoskeleton will persist and continue to move with the ship. So the ship itself can only go invulnerable and disappears when everyone in the region leaves or logs off, if any of the people that were sitting aboard the ship log in, the ship loses invulnerability and re-appears. This minimizes abuse, but makes it hard to be sure if the ship has actually gone invulnerable and disappeared.

 

[CalenLoki]

@Quinc sounds simple to fix.

But.

How do you want to prevent people from using it for setting ambush?
1. De-spawn battleship on a trade route
2. Send friend in vasama as scout
3. Re-spawn battleship when enemy convoy appears.

Or safe storage of whole fleet behind enemy lines.

Too many ways to abuse "magic" game mechanics.
KISS.
If it's too big to hide inside asteroids, it's too big for long range exploration. Or is big enough for several shifts. Or the exploration is not long range enough.

 

[PopeUrban]

@Quinc sounds simple to fix.

But.

How do you want to prevent people from using it for setting ambush?
1. De-spawn battleship on a trade route
2. Send friend in vasama as scout
3. Re-spawn battleship when enemy convoy appears.

Or safe storage of whole fleet behind enemy lines.

Too many ways to abuse "magic" game mechanics.
KISS.
If it's too big to hide inside asteroids, it's too big for long range exploration. Or is big enough for several shifts. Or the exploration is not long range enough.

Simple. It takes 2 minutes for all systems to come online after "powering on" from a dark ship. Easily long enough to see a logging on ship before it can do anything. In addition, "enemy lines" end at their territory, which is why you'd want to expand said territory, to prevent people that aren't friendly from actually occupying the space, as they can't log out safely in your space anyway.

All of the above problems already exist with station docking at player owned stations. its easy to theorycraft and say people will have 24 hour ship crews or that space is so vast they'll be able to hide, but it is demonstrably untrue. Your game and your faction will NEVER have 24 hour coverage. people always theorize "you could just have friends in other time zones" but in practice it doesn't happen. The average player plays a game between 2 and 6 hours a day. This means that to rely on this as a balancing mechanism you expect every single player to be part of a ship crew containing at LEAST 4 players who literally never want to play together, and ALWAYS play exactly 6 hours a day and ALWAYS log on at the same time. Bare minimum. No holidays. No sick days. No kids birthday parties or final exams.

For a ship designed for one person. Doesn't that sound unreasonable?

The alternative of "hide in an asteroid" or "space is so large nobody would find you" assumes that you're always close enough to an asteroid field to explore and return to it in a single play session (see my post above detailing the same anti-exploration problem this causes with station docking and respawns) OR that players do not naturally gravitate toward similar points of interest. No player is going to "explore" a cosmos with no indication that there's anything on their trajectory but empty space.

Nobody's going to fly a spaceship for a week straight through literally nothing on the off chance that maybe they hit an asteroid field or space junk. If your solution is that "finding a spaceship is like finding a needle in a haystack" that also implies that finding anything worth exploring for is ALSO like finding a needle in a haystack.

In reality, People are driven to explore places that already seem interesting. People explore in all directions in a ground based game because the terrain obstacles and volume of resources are inherently interesting everywhere, and for the most part sustainable exploration is covered. Its easy to pick a direction and walk in minecraft because the game is built around making sure you can meet your needs wherever you are. Need ores? Dig down. Need food or wood? Walk around the surface.

Space, on the other hand is largely empty. Combine that with the strictures on fuel use and you're not going to see people just "picking a direction" to explore in because if they don't find anything out there its a one way trip. You run out of reactor mass, your ship stops operating, and you're lost in space so its time to commit suicide, abandon ship, and respawn.

In reality, exploration is going to be a whole lot of people all taking the most direct route to the most interesting thing and spreading out when they get there, be it visually interesting, some sort of sensors, etc. and only deviating from that straight line specifically to avoid other players. Either exploration isn't worth doing because its essentially playing the lottery with the cost of an entire spaceship or it virtually guarantees other explorers and pirates are going to run in to your stuff when you're offline because there are only so many places to go and so many ways to get there.

In addition, what you've listed is already an issue, arguably a more impactful one because it takes place in the vicinity of stations.

1. dock battleship in "friendly" station
2. have friend watch for incoming trade convoy/army/whatever
3. undock battleship and open fire

This after scouting gate camps, this is the second trick every EVE cargo pilot learns to avoid, the dummy trade route, and why those organization do lots and lots of research on each other, historical data in the space, and straight up eyeballs and spotters. Because no matter what you do, the nature of video games is that there are going to be some "magic" systems to account for the fact that players spend a minority rather than the majority of their time in the simulation, and no matter what it has potential for deception.

Furthermore:

1. Ships require fuel. Ships venturing long distances need more fuel. Hence ships built for exploration MUST be larger ships in order to carry either additional generator mass or facilities for on site processing on materials to create it. You can not build a "small" exploration ship due to these factors. Size directly correlates to effective range, larger ships can go farther than smaller ships, and thus the longest range ship is also the largest.

2. Success in exploration and retention of frontier assets should not be a factor of whether or not you can stay logged in to the game for 24 hours a day. Giving people who already have more time to acquire material and build things such a significant advantage in keeping them creates a too-slippery slope, and is ultimately an unrealistic ideal in a video game. This is why every PvP game that thought these "always vulnerable, so make friends to watch your stuff" principal would be enough later implemented some form of timers or made actually robbing other players so time consuming that it wasscarcely worth the trouble. The fact is you will never have enough people playing your game to make this work in a balanced fashion, and always on vulnerability directly discourages players from engaging in combat with one another by making waiting for people to log out the dominant strategy. This isn't real life, and no matter who your opponent is, your opponent will log out.

3. You can either choose to have a game that gravitates toward long range exploration, or short range surveys and slow expansion through new stations. You can't have both. Whiever way we go is fine, but the systems as they are prevent "exploration ships" from being even remotely feasible.

4. Why are you more worried about an edge case of people doing logoffski shenanigans than the much more likely scenario of anything not docked in a station or parked in a safe zone being a complete waste of time and effort, especially when its simple to design around the one problem you just raised?

 

[damoran]

2. Success in exploration and retention of frontier assets should not be a factor of whether or not you can stay logged in to the game for 24 hours a day. Giving people who already have more time to acquire material and build things such a significant advantage in keeping them creates a too-slippery slope, and is ultimately an unrealistic ideal in a video game. This is why every PvP game that thought these "always vulnerable, so make friends to watch your stuff" principal would be enough later implemented some form of timers or made actually robbing other players so time consuming that it wasscarcely worth the trouble. The fact is you will never have enough people playing your game to make this work in a balanced fashion, and always on vulnerability directly discourages players from engaging in combat with one another by making waiting for people to log out the dominant strategy. This isn't real life, and no matter who your opponent is, your opponent will log out.

Couldn't agree with this more. I'm a gamer that has a full time job and a life outside of games and, well, I need to be able to turn the game off in a few seconds and leave sometimes. I really dislike games that require players to treat it like a job. We are paying to play, not the other way around.

There needs to be reasonable expectations of safety when logged out or your community will devolve into the likes of Rust or Ark etc. which completely discourages the types of players that want to design and build detailed ships and stations and create gameplay around these capabilities while it encourages a play style that favors players that can be online for as long as possible. For these players maybe Frozenbyte can offer Hard Core PVP Servers.

Quinc brings up a good point about the ambushing but I think this could be solved with a reasonable timer on ship weapons while providing some invulnerability to the ship spawning in. The ambush could go both ways. The person logging in would need time to react as well as the person already in game near the ship that is spawning in. Worlds adrift had a similar despawn mechanic. Ships would despawn after 2 minutes (I believe) of all players with active spawners on said ship having logged out, I don't remember there being a counter to spawn ambushes.

 

[Lionard Freezer]

The way you say this makes me consider the despawn function...
I guess this is a game and with that not everything needs to make sense... im for the way you guys kinda described it:
Letting a ship despawn after some time after everyone in the vecinety is offline. this makes it still a good tactic to follow someone you randomly see lost in space just in sight to find out when they log off becourse the ship would then not despawn (you are still in the area after all). this would make emty space quite a good log off place becourse you would be able to see any ship that would disable your abilety to "go dark". for the timer i would think of something simular to the "going dark" post. your ship gets more and more invisable the longer you are offline (and the... chunk? isnt loaded (so no other players in the area)) untill it despawns. I would also suggest bigger ships take longer to despawn then smaler. this would mean that a small one-player ship would be safer from beeing detected by people that found the ship while it is despawning, and more dangerus for gigant ships to be despawned (would make the "ambush by spawning the ship in" WAY more dangerous).