Rogue Drones or, Adding More Game-Driven Content

[IronGremlin]

So I want to address a few things common to both of these posts, together:

Activities first, AI second
This suggestion thread is primarily about adding game-driven activities in the world in a cohesive and expandable way. Competent combat AI ships are secondary, and nonessential, to that. The three examples I gave intentionally do not require autonomous combat ships. At minimum they require implementation of an AI turret that can track and shoot players and of a ship hull that can fly in a direction and avoid asteroids in the process. Both of these exist to some degree in YOLOL form already, but I want to say here that rogue drones should absolutely, emphatically, not be programmed in YOLOL or limited by its constraints -- they don't have to be, and they would be completely hamstrung if done that way. These drones are game mechanics and really ought to be implemented in game code the way other game mechanics are, which leads into my next point that...

Rogue drones aren't endos
Rogue drones don't need to be bipedal robots walking around and using devices like players do. They don't need their ships to be fully wired up and driven by YOLOL. They don't need to play by the rules set for players. They are entirely different creatures and they aren't playing the game the way we do. If anything, they're more a form of hostile wildlife than a player-like NPC faction. A rogue drone autoturret doesn't need to look or act like an endo on a tripod; it can just be a self-contained turret that shoots at nearby players. A rogue drone ship can just fly on its own without any distinct pilot or accessible script. Rogue drones don't exist to populate the world with fake players, they exist to make the world more challenging and interesting for players. They don't need to use the same devices and logic that player ships do, nor do all their ship parts or weapons need to be player-usable or player-compatible (some should be, but not all). The advantage of using insane, malfunctioning AI with bizarre hardware as a narrative device is that it helps to explain away game balance considerations like making certain ship parts NPC-only ("this device is too unusual to connect to your ship's systems"). This helps to explain to the player why...

Rogue drone rewards are different
The developers can have complete control over how much or how little of a rogue drone ship or installation is salvageable or usable by players. They also have complete control over where and how often these things appear. Compared to the fields of near infinite asteroids full of resources that don't shoot at you, rogue drones wouldn't be a good source of raw resources, nor do they have to be a good source of normal manufactured ship parts. For one thing, rogue drone ships don't even have to have player-usable weapons or devices like MFC/FCU boxes on them, since they play by different rules. There may be some electronics on rogue drone constructions that can taken and used as-is, others that can't be used but instead refine into desirable materials, and some that are simply worthless once removed from their host drone. This still provides rewards for salvage-oriented players (who currently have precious little to salvage on a day to day basis) without hurting industry-oriented players or making rogue drones an easy ship part farm. Rewards-wise, rogue drones should mostly do the things asteroids can't, like provide unique cosmetics, decorative parts, rare limited-run ship part blueprints, and so on. Things with uniqueness and flavor. Maybe even little bits of lore, for people who are into that sort of thing. But most importantly, bulk resource gathering and ship part acquisition will already be well handled by asteroids, moons, and factories, rogue drones won't (and don't need to) compete with this.

---

I really want to underscore the point above about these drones being more like hostile wildlife than fake players. Their sole purpose is to create more fun in the game world. They don't need to worry about furthering their own goals or collecting resources or even having survival instincts. They aren't created by players for minmaxed personal gain on a traditional reward structure. They're created by game developers with a vision to provide interactive activities, to get people to log in to the game every day and get out into space to do things. I don't think player-sourced autoships would be as effective in accomplishing the same goals, especially if they're designed by players who are optimizing to a reward rather than to the attacker's fun. Not to say it's a bad idea on its own, but I think it would yield pretty separate results from what I'm trying to suggest here. Starbase really isn't lacking in things for ship designers to do. If anything, ship design is the game's strongest and most robust pillar. What I find lacking in Starbase is the variety of things for everyone to get out of the ship hangar and go do out in the wild, and I don't believe player-created content alone can sustainably fill that gap.

Dude what you're talking about is directly contrary to the core design conceit of the game.


The "player driven content" thing isn't a gimmick, it's core to how the game was built from the ground up, and, very relevantly, core to how it was sold.


What you're talking about is a totally different game that is not the game we all bought - this isn't like an expansion pack or a riff on concept, it's a completely separate game that you expect to sit alongside this one.


It's like walking up to the counter at Katzs deli and having someone hand you a McDonald's big Mac. The problem there isn't that burgers are bad. That is like a 4 year olds idea of the ideal restaurant.

 

[Delizin]

Recatek makes some really good points and these are great ideas. Right now the game feels dead and stagnant to me. Everyone that I played Starbase with is waiting until there is more content to come back and try it again. There just isn't a lot to do right now besides building ships, mining and sitting around for hours hoping to find pvp. It was the exact same problem in Dual Universe and pretty much any other sandbox game that decides to have everything player driven.

I would love to build combat ships and take them out immediately to test against some NPC opponents so I can refine my designs. I don't want to spend 6 hours sitting at a gate waiting for another player to show up that may or may not be able to put up any kind of fight.

I also really like the Recatek's idea to use NPC content to draw players together to specific areas. That is something that is sorely lacking right now. The system is massive, travel takes forever and player pvp interactions mostly occur just by chance if they aren't preplanned. Even if we don't have NPCs to fight, things like a massive ore deposit discovered notification or a wrecked capital ship distress beacon to draw people in would be nice.

As far as balancing loot from NPCs, I don't think players should be able to salvage an entire ships worth of parts. Like Recatek said though, these do not need to be built like player ships. I really like the idea of it being made of some kind of alien/foreign technology that it is unusable for player characters. On the other hand, I really like salvaging wrecks. I think a neat gameplay element could be that these ships can be salvaged, but you get like xeno-parts or materials that you can then take back to a station to sell to the market for credits. This would create a risk/reward scenario that keep players in pvp hot zones longer if they want to maximize the amount of loot they get from a wreck. It would also encourage them to bring larger salvage and transport ships to the area varying the player encounters.

What you're talking about is a totally different game that is not the game we all bought - this isn't like an expansion pack or a riff on concept, it's a completely separate game that you expect to sit alongside this one.

You are right about it sounding like a totally different game. It sounds like a game that people would actually play and enjoy instead of being a mostly empty dead game a couple months after release.

 

[ChaosRifle]

Regarding salvaging.. something something refining ore into materials that can be used as an armour could be the way. I know FB seem to have ditched refining materials for alloys, but I wouldnt be opposed to both systems. More layers is more interesting to build a factory with, and could lend itself to player ships made of refined materials while ai ones are of ore, which the value of can be controlled by refining efficiency.

Personally I hate mining right now in starbase. The most interesting part is breaking the rocks with a pick, which instantly gets replaced with a laser that is more boring + less interactive, and then replaced by just hauling the rocks. Spending hours looking at rocks for the ones not moving, to then escourt-quest them back home...
Words can't describe how much I hate mining right now in starbase, and I normally dont like mining in games in general. Escourt-quest the game isnt fun, but hunting players/npc's for money is, IMHO. Id be okay with allowing salvage of AI, given a bit of balance to it so its a choice of what to do for your cash, rather than 'the best way'.

Currently I also fail to understand FrozenBytes plans for player driven content regarding seiges. I have no interest in waging a war over territory in Starbase, because its territory they would be mining - thus it would be less valuable than just going and minding my own buisness, which wouldnt cost money to attack in the first place.

As for it not sounding like the game I bought - I bought autocad with combat mechanics and a damage system. Sounds the same to me.
Id prefer better opponents (players) for my combat but really I could not care less about who is shooting me(even in a mining ship). I just want them shooting me, and for me to be interested in playing. Make a game not a full-time job FrozenByte, and we will all love it regardless of who does the pewpew. <3

 

[BlackAndWhiteBird]

We have unfinished construction, unfinished stations, no production chains, a dead ersatz economy and a game cycle that is extremely far from completion, and you require NPC bots...

Dear developers, please focus on core mechanics.

 

[CalenLoki]

Rogue drones aren't endos
Rogue drones don't need to be bipedal robots walking around and using devices like players do. They don't need their ships to be fully wired up and driven by YOLOL. They don't need to play by the rules set for players. They are entirely different creatures and they aren't playing the game the way we do. If anything, they're more a form of hostile wildlife than a player-like NPC faction. A rogue drone autoturret doesn't need to look or act like an endo on a tripod; it can just be a self-contained turret that shoots at nearby players. A rogue drone ship can just fly on its own without any distinct pilot or accessible script. Rogue drones don't exist to populate the world with fake players, they exist to make the world more challenging and interesting for players. They don't need to use the same devices and logic that player ships do, nor do all their ship parts or weapons need to be player-usable or player-compatible (some should be, but not all). The advantage of using insane, malfunctioning AI with bizarre hardware as a narrative device is that it helps to explain away game balance considerations like making certain ship parts NPC-only ("this device is too unusual to connect to your ship's systems"). This helps to explain to the player why...

I disagree here. Making NPCs be very close to player ships would be beneficial.

1. Devs could leave creating new NPCs to players, which proven to produce better and more diverse ships. Just compare sunny ship center with all the other shops. Moderation would be needed (just as ship shops), not an automatic system. And no reward is needed for creating meta ships.
2. There is entire vehicle building game where all the NPC ships are player made, and even player's own ships are mostly AI controlled. Talking about From the Depths. So it's a proven working concept.
3. If NPCs use the same game mechanics (except magic box that detects players, ships, asteroids and calculate their movement vector) then existing ships can be easily adapted to become NPCs (and vice versa)
4. Making NPC ships similar to player ships also encourage using similar tactics and equipment against both. So serve as a less lethal combat tutorial for new players.
5. Creating entire new non-compatible components seems counter productive. Not only it requires extra dev time, prevents ship creators from adapting existing designs but also unnecessarily nerf salvaging. You'd get better effect by just using standard cheap parts, marginally more valuable than asteroids all around them.

So IMO the only new ship parts devs need to add to SSC are:
Ballistic computer that can detect player position and predict linear movement at set muzzle velocity, then output it in turret yaw+pitch.
Navigation computer that can detect asteroids, waypoints and friendly ships

Rest can be done with yolol. Making NPC ships is for SSC veterans anyway.

 

[Recatek]

1. Devs could leave creating new NPCs to players, which proven to produce better and more diverse ships. Just compare sunny ship center with all the other shops. Moderation would be needed (just as ship shops), not an automatic system. And no reward is needed for creating meta ships.
2. There is entire vehicle building game where all the NPC ships are player made, and even player's own ships are mostly AI controlled. Talking about From the Depths. So it's a proven working concept.

This is not proven for autonomous ships in Starbase, nor is it proven for ships designed to make the game more fun for other players, rather than being effective and useful for the pilot. Remember, NPCs aren't in the game to compete with players, they're there to add fun to the game in the best way possible. "Let's get the players to make the strongest enemy ships possible!" misses that point. Yes, you want challenging ships, but more importantly, you want to design the entire encounter to be engaging as a package -- that's something players can't do, at least not without developer-level tools. Also, as I said earlier, ship designers already have more than enough to do in this game, we don't need to hamstring the design of AI activities to make ship designers happier than they already are. They're the ones still playing. FB should be the least concerned about these types of hardcore ship designer players because the game already has them hooked. It's time to focus the attention on the other 9,700 CCU players that FB lost in the past 4 months, and look for ways to bring them back.

3. If NPCs use the same game mechanics (except magic box that detects players, ships, asteroids and calculate their movement vector) then existing ships can be easily adapted to become NPCs (and vice versa)

...

So IMO the only new ship parts devs need to add to SSC are:
Ballistic computer that can detect player position and predict linear movement at set muzzle velocity, then output it in turret yaw+pitch.
Navigation computer that can detect asteroids, waypoints and friendly ships

Rest can be done with yolol. Making NPC ships is for SSC veterans anyway.

YOLOL is not up to the task and never will be for creating engaging autonomous combat ships. Players have had well over a year now to challenge this assertion and the best I've ever seen is a barely capable autonomous turret that has no provisions for leading its target or making any reasonable target selection decisions. Players would need far more capable tools than YOLOL in order to do anything interesting here, which I'm not opposed to, but I want to underscore that it would need to happen. Once again, for the audience in the back, trying to do this in YOLOL will fail. This isn't an "Oh how dare you, I'll show you!" challenge, it's a statement of fact. YOLOL is intentionally handicapped to make this impractical. YOLOL is not up to this task by design. That's not a bad thing in general, but it is a bad thing if one were to expect YOLOL to make this concept work. It won't, and tying this proposal to implementation in YOLOL is the best way to sabotage it entirely.

4. Making NPC ships similar to player ships also encourage using similar tactics and equipment against both. So serve as a less lethal combat tutorial for new players.

This is an anti-goal. The point here is to create new and diverse experiences for players that don't currently exist. This isn't a combat tutorial, it's a retention and engagement tool for players that right now just jump ship after the tutorial.

5. Creating entire new non-compatible components seems counter productive. Not only it requires extra dev time, prevents ship creators from adapting existing designs but also unnecessarily nerf salvaging. You'd get better effect by just using standard cheap parts, marginally more valuable than asteroids all around them.

This is also an anti-goal for the reasons I stated above. Rogue drones should be alien and inscrutable, not recognizable player-made ships. Their strangeness gives the designers direct control over what is and isn't salvageable or usable, and disarms any player expectations to the contrary. The idea that you can get an effective (if damaged) player-designed ship every time you kill a rogue drone is a pretty significant economy problem, and going down that route would cause trouble.

---

The underlying message here is this: Frozenbyte, you're going to have to make some interactive world content for this game yourselves. Outsourcing everything to players, or expecting players to generate it all, is not going well and is not going to go well. Players have fundamentally different goals from game developers and can't be expected to take the entire health of the game into account for their decision-making. Players just want to have fun, usually selfishly, and that's okay, because they're paying for that. For any game, but especially for an inherently competitive MMO, it's up to the developers to take care of the health of the game without personal goals. The sooner Starbase can abandon this notion that all content in the world is somehow provided by players doing the work, the sooner the game will be on a healthier track.

 

[IronGremlin]

Outsourcing everything to players, or expecting players to generate it all, is not going well and is not going to go well.

Insufficient data to draw conclusion.


That's the key part of this whole line of reasoning that is deeply flawed - your entire bottom line is derived from observing a half-baked tech demo that is nowhere near the full product.


The motivating factors for any interactive content do not exist yet, and claiming that your crystal ball is clearer is trite and tired.


Again, this is a core design conceit of this game. If you want that manicured and prepackaged interactive experience please go find another game and pitch it there. This game is being designed and sold with the core selling point that it DOES NOT HAVE what you're suggesting. It's not a deficiency to fix, it's literally the core concept of the world.


If you have ideas about how to integrate these concepts in a way that doesn't run contrary to the game that we all bought, then by all means, let us discuss those merits, but your reaction to people pointing out friction between these concepts seems to be doubling down on the aspects that make this contrary instead of trying to figure out how to integrate this shit into the design of the game.

 

[Recatek]

Again, this is a core design conceit of this game. If you want that manicured and prepackaged interactive experience please go find another game and pitch it there. This game is being designed and sold with the core selling point that it DOES NOT HAVE what you're suggesting. It's not a deficiency to fix, it's literally the core concept of the world.

It... really isn't. I would take another look at the Steam store page. The phrase player-driven only refers to the economy (this wouldn't change that), and there's no suggestion that all world activities are exclusively player-driven. That's a pretty extreme stance even for this genre, and basically every comparable game has some sort of NPC or hostile fauna element used as a device for content generation. I don't want to litigate the wording of the Steam store page, but it's the clearest statement of purpose we have for the game, and I see nothing on there that precludes the addition of NPCs to Starbase. If anything, they suggest that exploration is a core pillar of the game, which this proposal would slot into perfectly. Right now, exploration for the sake of discovery isn't terribly exciting unless you like standing on differently colored barren moon wastelands.

I find it hard to imagine that there's a majority among the playerbase saying "oh, finally, thank goodness, a game that has no NPCs" as their primary selling point. I certainly don't see that sentiment while scrolling through the positive reviews. I know a handful of people say that here and on the discord, but I think that's wildly overrepresentative of what most lapsed players want to come back to the game for. People generally seem to have bought this game to build cool space ships and mostly just want something meaningful to go out and do with them. That's the core fantasy that Starbase is selling, and it's also what's sorely missing from Starbase right now. Sieges/taxes and the other roadmap items alone won't fix that, just as they don't in other games in the genre that have far more content on offer.

Starbase doesn't exist in a vacuum, and isn't as unique as I think some would like to believe it is -- there are lessons here that just aren't being learned from other similar games, and it's showing in the kind of feedback you can find all over Steam, these forums, the subreddit, and so on. There really is a good amount of data to draw conclusions from. I could always wait N months/years until the current roadmap is finished, the state of the game is roughly the same, and I can bump this thread then. But the reason I'm suggesting it now is because I'm guessing Frozenbyte is starting to consider what comes after the current roadmap, and it's the right time to start thinking about adding some more content to the game. I don't think we should wait for a second round of "we'll consider it once the current roadmap is finished".

 

[Xylch]

There are people who consider the lack of NPC's an attractive feature and I'm one of them.

 

[Recatek]

Sure, I'm not denying that, but I don't think that's representative of a large portion of the playerbase, and I see just as many complaints about the lack of NPCs and the content they would bring from reviews and forum/reddit posts discussing the game.

 

[IronGremlin]

You're beyond high if you think "player driven world" only applies to the economy.

Like I don't know what else to tell you, you're either ignorant or just completely insane.

You could try reading like any of the dev blogs or watching any videos or attempting to understand the design ethos of the game you are suggesting we butcher.

Like did you even read Lauri's response to your idea, where he says he'd only consider this if it were (in some fashion) player created content? Do you think he pulled that position out of thin air? Or maybe it's because, as has been said a million times all over everything that's been written about this games development, that the idea of a player run world is central to every feature and to the whole concept of the game?


You don't have to like the concept, I'm not going to evangelize it to you, but if you're trying to pretend this isn't a core design principle you're just factually incorrect - this isn't a subjective point to be argued, it's a matter of record.

 

[Recatek]

You're beyond high if you think "player driven world" only applies to the economy.

Like I don't know what else to tell you, you're either ignorant or just completely insane.

You could try reading like any of the dev blogs or watching any videos or attempting to understand the design ethos of the game you are suggesting we butcher.

Do you have examples? Because like I said, the Steam store page, which goes into a lot of detail on the stated goals and purpose of the game, doesn't say the game's content is exclusively player-driven at all. I've certainly watched all of the trailers and dev feature highlight videos and I don't recall them making this kind of statement. And what dev blogs?

Like did you even read Lauri's response to your idea, where he says he'd only consider this if it were (in some fashion) player created content? Do you think he pulled that position out of thin air? Or maybe it's because, as has been said a million times all over everything that's been written about this games development, that the idea of a player run world is central to every feature and to the whole concept of the game?

This post? Because I'm not getting "we'd only consider this if it was player created content" from that at all. It just looks like some brainstorming ideas for how to go about it. Lauri has also been open to the idea of NPCs on the subreddit as well. So I'm not sure where you're getting this impression from but I don't read that from his posts myself. Maybe I need something spelled out to me here?

If Frozenbyte has come out somewhere and unequivocally said something to the effect of "this is an exclusively player-driven world and all of its content will be player-driven" then I'd be curious to see it. So far the only thing I've seen that is assuredly intended to be player-driven is the economy, and this proposal doesn't interfere with that at all (it's also not strictly true, given the existence of NPC market stations). Nothing about adding some sort of adversarial AI to the world seems to conflict with what Frozenbyte has stated as their goals for the game, at least from what I've read and watched over the years. I certainly don't have every Frozenbyte quote in an indexed archive though, so if there are things I missed then I'm happy to stand corrected.

 

[IronGremlin]

Do you have examples? Because like I said, the Steam store page, which goes into a lot of detail on the stated goals and purpose of the game, doesn't say the game's content is exclusively player-driven at all. I've certainly watched all of the trailers and dev feature highlight videos and I don't recall them making this kind of statement. And what dev blogs?


This post? Because I'm not getting "we'd only consider this if it was player created content" from that at all. It just looks like some brainstorming ideas for how to go about it. Lauri has also been open to the idea of NPCs on the subreddit as well. So I'm not sure where you're getting this impression from but I don't read that from his posts myself. Maybe I need something spelled out to me here?

If Frozenbyte has come out somewhere and unequivocally said something to the effect of "this is an exclusively player-driven world and all of its content will be player-driven" then I'd be curious to see it. So far the only thing I've seen that is assuredly intended to be player-driven is the economy, and this proposal doesn't interfere with that at all (it's also not strictly true, given the existence of NPC market stations). Nothing about adding some sort of adversarial AI to the world seems to conflict with what Frozenbyte has stated as their goals for the game, at least from what I've read and watched over the years. I certainly don't have every Frozenbyte quote in an indexed archive though, so if there are things I missed then I'm happy to stand corrected.

Point of clarification -

What I am saying is a central design conceit is not "there will be no AI and no form of PvE," it is that the world and it's content are "player driven."

My personal subjective opinion is that those are largely incompatible concepts - not impossible outright, but very difficult to do properly. I am not making the assertion that this opinion is an objective fact (but I do believe that it is an opinion shared TO AN EXTENT by FB).

I am making the assertion that "player driven world" and "player generated content" are fundamental core concepts in this design, and my evidence for that is in all kinds of dev communication, forum posts, discord, dev videos, etc. It's basically impossible to miss, so I'm not going to bother citing sources for that.


I will ALSO assert, though this is something of a matter of subjective interpretation, that Lauri seems concerned with precisely the same shit I am concerned with (Breaking consistency of world mechanics / difficulty balancing reward curve) , which implies that even though he may not see these concepts as mutually exclusive, he is observing that they do have a relatively high degree of friction. This doesn't seem at all a stretch given the communication you yourself has linked here, but I will admit this is technically subjective interpretation.


Furthermore, although I will admit this is shakier ground, any time this comes up, it is met with a HEAVILY caveated suggestion that involves the players building something. I don't believe for a moment that this is a coincidence.


So that's my argument -

An AI controlled PvE experience doesn't mesh gracefully with a "player driven world with player generated content" as a core design principle.

Your suggestion generates inherent design frictions that you refuse to engage with meaningfully - you don't acknowledge most of the points of conflict, and the one thing you have acknowledged (the reward curve) you've just handwaved away as "oh the devs have total control so that's a solvable problem" which is kind of like saying that because a man can lift 5 lbs he can lift 500 lbs.


Also, for the sake of fairness, I will admit there is prior art to draw from here in which this is done well - and it's usually done with a passive AI threat that yields some resource needed by players, and so ends up becoming kind of an environmental hazard or a resource gathering mechanic. Unfortunately this setting makes that pretty much impossible to do with narrative or mechanical consistency.

 

[Cavilier210]

It's sad to watch people plead with the devs for things to do because they can't be bothered to create their own events. NPC's are boring fodder meant to assuage a false sense of superiority and be farmed. Not something I want in the game. NPC crewmen we can utilize is a different story. They give us more freedom to play, while making the interactions still between, and guided by players.

What you essentially seem to want is the generic mmorpg bot farming. That's lame and boring. Kill a player and salvage them. Follow pvp'ers into battle and pick up the pieces. Killing mindless automatons so you can farm resources? Blah.

 

[pavvvel]

I understand that you're not hinting at a specific change in PvP mechanics, but I read your text in full... There's good stuff in it, but one point I have to make:

Second, many fun encounters are asymmetrical. It's way more fun to stalk and blow up a trade ship than it is to have your trade ship stalked and blown up. Players don't always want to be on the butt end of someone else's fun. But do you know who doesn't care about whether or not they're having fun?

The player should not care what the "other player" wants.
If the "other player" doesn't want to get blown up, then he should make a good ship, choose his route wisely, and learn to defend himself.
No emphasis should be placed on the fact that one player's actions might not please the "other player." Players should deal with other players on their own, not with "extra game mechanics"

 

[LauriFB]

A few notes from our perspective:

Traditional NPC's are widely used for a reason

All the points made in this threat in favor for traditional NPC's are valid and verified in every other game. It's not that we disagree with this, but instead that we want to achieve more depth, and we have a planned route for that.


Traditional NPC's, or any other totally new feature is not something which will fix the game instantly

The simple reason is that any new feature at this scale will take at least 1-2 years to make at any fun, or even functional level. It's not since our tech, it's not since we are somehow bad at it, nor that we would lack resources to do it. It's just very, very, very time consuming to do such complicated and large features.


We have a planned and almost completed set of large features which we will see first

We have been working on moons and moon mining 2 years, capital ships over an year, and siege for about an year. (and before siege we did around 4 iterations to station tech before that). We've spent basically 8 years building the foundations for the features we are bringing into the game in the next 2-6 months. We are not scrapping all that to begin another multi-year endeavour with something else. It would be virtually madness to dump work worth a medium-sized game just before it's completed. Furthermore, game will stay stagnated and void of new content until the large features are done, as any quick fixes at this point would just cause pointless delays to almost completed large features.


We will work on existing and new features until the game is fun (and beyond that)

I think everyone agrees on high level what the game is missing. These massive flaws will be fixed once the features needed for them are completed. To be clear, some of the missing core mechanics include:

• Lack of meaningful interactions
• AFK time between interactions is way too long
• Reasons for activities, such as building stations
• Conflict drivers
• Risk-reward imbalance
• Too high cost of loss, especially in early game
• Exploration and content
• QOL, including SSC, tutorial, etc.
• EBM and SSC disconnection
• Bugs

I understand that the suggestions include proven solutions, as they seem to be easiest way to remedy the flaws. However, as Starbase is built around it's own approach, the planned path is much more faster to execute first. If that is not enough, we will keep on adding features until the above mentioned flaws have been solved.

 

[Recatek]

A few notes from our perspective:

Traditional NPC's are widely used for a reason

All the points made in this threat in favor for traditional NPC's are valid and verified in every other game. It's not that we disagree with this, but instead that we want to achieve more depth, and we have a planned route for that.


Traditional NPC's, or any other totally new feature is not something which will fix the game instantly

The simple reason is that any new feature at this scale will take at least 1-2 years to make at any fun, or even functional level. It's not since our tech, it's not since we are somehow bad at it, nor that we would lack resources to do it. It's just very, very, very time consuming to do such complicated and large features.


We have a planned and almost completed set of large features which we will see first

We have been working on moons and moon mining 2 years, capital ships over an year, and siege for about an year. (and before siege we did around 4 iterations to station tech before that). We've spent basically 8 years building the foundations for the features we are bringing into the game in the next 2-6 months. We are not scrapping all that to begin another multi-year endeavour with something else. It would be virtually madness to dump work worth a medium-sized game just before it's completed. Furthermore, game will stay stagnated and void of new content until the large features are done, as any quick fixes at this point would just cause pointless delays to almost completed large features.


We will work on existing and new features until the game is fun (and beyond that)

I think everyone agrees on high level what the game is missing. These massive flaws will be fixed once the features needed for them are completed. To be clear, some of the missing core mechanics include:

• Lack of meaningful interactions
• AFK time between interactions is way too long
• Reasons for activities, such as building stations
• Conflict drivers
• Risk-reward imbalance
• Too high cost of loss, especially in early game
• Exploration and content
• QOL, including SSC, tutorial, etc.
• EBM and SSC disconnection
• Bugs

I understand that the suggestions include proven solutions, as they seem to be easiest way to remedy the flaws. However, as Starbase is built around it's own approach, the planned path is much more faster to execute first. If that is not enough, we will keep on adding features until the above mentioned flaws have been solved.

Lauri, no part of this suggestion is asking you to drop whatever you're doing and do it now, or cancel upcoming features. That's been stated from the start. I know this forum has a lot of "cancel the roadmap and do this" threads, but this really isn't one of them. I'm specifically posting this now because we know you are relatively close to delivering on the roadmap items and working your way towards the end of it. I'm suggesting that content like this be added to the next roadmap.

I'm also not suggesting "traditional NPCs" (which I'm guessing you mean to be AI endos, as you described earlier). I'm suggesting specifically the opposite of that -- non-endo-like discoverable things in the world that add activities, threat, and danger in encounter-oriented ways. Essentially the Starbase space sci-fi equivalent of hostile wildlife. This has been proven to add activities and content in way too many games to enumerate. Dismissing it as a bandaid or a quick fix is pretty flippant, seeing as there are entire genres that revolve around these mechanics and have a great deal of depth to them. I don't think Starbase exceptionalism is going to do the game any favors here.

To be honest this seems like a canned response more than something written in reply to a reading of the thread, since it overlooks several major points I repeated throughout. Regardless, I hope you'll consider adding something like this kind of content to your next set of roadmap items. The game needs more things to do, and players clearly aren't keen on doing all the work to make that happen.

 

[LauriFB]

Lauri, no part of this suggestion is asking you to drop whatever you're doing and do it now, or cancel upcoming features. That's been stated from the start. I know this forum has a lot of "cancel the roadmap and do this" threads, but this really isn't one of them. I'm specifically posting this now because we know you are relatively close to delivering on the roadmap items and working your way towards the end of it. I'm suggesting that content like this be added to the next roadmap.

I'm also not suggesting "traditional NPCs" (which I'm guessing you mean to be AI endos, as you described earlier). I'm suggesting specifically the opposite of that -- non-endo-like discoverable things in the world that add activities, threat, and danger in encounter-oriented ways. Essentially the Starbase space sci-fi equivalent of hostile wildlife. This has been proven to add activities and content in way too many games to enumerate. Dismissing it as a bandaid or a quick fix is pretty flippant, seeing as there are entire genres that revolve around these mechanics and have a great deal of depth to them. I don't think Starbase exceptionalism is going to do the game any favors here.

To be honest this seems like a canned response more than something written in reply to a reading of the thread, since it overlooks several major points I repeated throughout. Regardless, I hope you'll consider adding something like this kind of content to your next set of roadmap items. The game needs more things to do, and players clearly aren't keen on doing all the work to make that happen.

My latest answer was a general clarification to all of the discussion in this thread and to various other threads. I did answer to your suggestions specifically earlier, which was very different in it's contents and included some speculation how the suggestion could be possible.

Now, to re-iterate, completely separate wildlife is that traditional NPC which is much harder to do than something which has players more involved. Nothing is off the table at the moment, but we must be very careful with what we are going to spend our next 1-2 years. Most likely we'll know a lot more once siege is on the live server.

 

[Recatek]

Fair enough. Thank you for taking the time to read and consider the thread.

 

[mrchip]

Haven't read this entirely yet, and this post is about what i'm thinking, so not necessarily connected to the original post, unless by coincidence it's the same.

If the drones can appear anytime, [not necessarily anywhere, there may be specific areas of space where they can and cannot spawn], this has an interesting effect for miners and haulers.
I think it's good, and i think there will be people that absolutely despise it.
If hostile NPCs can (and semi-frequently do) appear... you finally have a reason to make a combat capable mining ship!

The reason people never bother with armoring or weaponizing miners and haulers is that your opponent, a player that will come in a purpose built ship to outclass you, without the design restriction of having to dedicate most of the volume and mass of the ship for cargo space, should beat you every single time regardless of if you're armored or not. Not armoring is actually better, since if you do get an encounter (and therefore loose), the losses are lower, and your mining trips are more productive due to higher speed and/or better cargo space and/or better maneuvering, all for a lower price.

As long as NPCs are not dark souls bossfights, and it is relatively easy for players to beat them even in a mining ship, then... You should make your ship combat capable, because you will encounter combat, and if you have 0 combat capability, that is an automatic loss, if you have that small minimum required, you'll win almost every time.

As far as where they can spawn, there's many ways to handle this, one idea is to borrow from Minecraft and tie spawnable areas to something visual: in the belt, areas with thick fog (and outside a safezone) means spawning is allowed, and clear areas are safe.

This has side effects. If they're good or bad, if they need a fix or are a dealbreaker, is your decision.

1. Mining ships will probably want some space to hold and perform salvaging.
2. Salvage will give more resources to players, and may break/skip pieces of progression (similar to how loot and villagers in Minecraft can)
3. Combat capable mining ships are inherently less efficient at mining, which will reduce the resources players get.
4. Combat capable ships are significantly more expensive, which will reduce the class of ship people can afford, slowing down progression.
5. Unless you go out of your way to only navigate through "npc free" pockets of space, there is no such thing as "safe gameplay" anymore.
6. The "combat will happen" requirement adds a skill check for ship designers, and ship crew. I imagine NPCs to be relatively trivial opponents, but every player is different, and every ship is different. A few players might find this to be a wall they can't get past.
7. If you're only looking for safe space (or trying to minimize unsafe space), the combination of "where x resource i need spawns" and "is it safe to be inside, and is it safe to travel to and from" reduces your chances. Meaning you might give up on a specific resource, or travel bigger distances to find another spot that's safe, or because you fly a safe route dodging unsafe areas.

Basically, it makes it so starbase has combat at its core.
You can avoid it, but that will hinder you just as much as the combat itself.
Changes in how much players can gain vs how much players need to spend will likely require a rebalance of costs and availability.