The Roadmap, and how it may need a rethink.

[blazemonger]

August was a good month in Starbase land. I'd say the game launched successfully and fairly painless. Many, including myself were pleasantly surprised by the stability and quality of the game in the current state of development.

Clearly, some priorities had to be reshuffled at Frozenbyte to accommodate for immediate concerns and need for adjustment and fixes which is entirely to be expected. From the launch and from what we have seen so far though, a few things have started to show which I believe would call for a rethink of the roadmap as it exists and there is nothing wrong with that as far as I am concerned.

I believe a few big priorities could be served well by a reshuffle. For one, I think the company changes planned for September may need to become a priority and some game functionality would greatly enhance the experience. And I honestly feel these will have a bigger immediate impact that bringing g in Capitals or moon mining and bases/building, even if I can't wait to see what those will bring.


Some things I feel would benefit the game:

Better provisioning and management tools
It would be great to see an easier way to join an org, players being able to apply to a company in game for one would be a great help. An easier way to accept player into a company another. In general, you see many miss messages in chat and the method of right clicking there is not optimal.

Proper support for company ships, sharing ships with company members and provision of (starter) ships by companies to (new) members.
It should be possible to give access to ships owned by the company based on role or even just generally and companywide. Renaming ships would certainly be something that would be needed here as seeing massive lists of the same ships on the spawn screens is confusion, at least a colour indicator here would help

Fleet organisation
There is a lack of options to organise fleets. Here it would be great (even when fleets may not get as big) to have an EVE style setup with a FC, wing or functional subgroups and squads of the same type of function under that. In each case the leader of a squad can talk to their squad, other squad leaders and their wing commander. Wing commanders in turn talk to each other and the Fleet Commander while the latter can communicate to wing or squad leaders (individually) or the fleet as a whole. I get this would be quite some work and likely would need to be staged/phased as far as an implementation goes, but it would be awesome to have such a structure in the game before capitals arrive for what I think are obvious reasons.

Communication options
VoIP is already shown to be something that is sorely missed (and not just within a company). I've seen quite a few interactions where due to the lack of VoIP, immersion is less and messages/gameplay opportunities are missed in the heat of being under attack, having to fix a ship and being told to fork over some money to not get blown up. There has been some great interaction RP wise even, but the effectiveness got lost because much needs to go through chat, both with the local crew, company mates and with the attacker. VoIP would make a huge difference here in many ways and as the communication is between several groups, deflecting this to Discord or Guided is not a viable or effective option. While VoIP could eventually become a deep and nested thing, just being able to have the option to have VoIP open between ships, on a ship itself and in a fleet would be great. A pirate hailing a miner for ransom would be much more effective and immersive than having to use chat AND be more fluid. There will always be incidents, people abusing the system or trolls, but the fun and gameplay that comes from a good VoIP system in the hands of players that know how to use it (of which there are many already in the game) should IMO outweigh this.

Waypoints and bookmarks
There needs to be a way to set waypoints/bookmarks. Right now, yes there is ISAN but that is not really a solution as it really does not offer an easy access to "go here". Unless I missed it, there is no plans for such a toolset which I feel is an oversight. Waypoints and bookmarks would allow for, and I believe incentivize more travel in possibly a more organized way with more ships, going back to the fleeting options. All this would also play into... more targets and generally more gameplay

Joystick control and camera options
Yes, I know... it's being worked on (at least he joystick part). But I really think the game asks for this, and the experience will get massively better once it arrives. And while this is being worked on, I really hope Frozenbyte will look at implementing support for SpaceMouse and 3rd person cameras for ships as that will massively increase the options to create content and cinematics. From some of the videos I can't help but wonder if this is already in place and if so, giving access to players would be massive. SpaceMouse would also be a great tool in the designer.


There are more options I can think of, and I hope we can have a good discussion around this and build on these ideas. From my perspective the above suggestions would greatly benefit the arrival of capitals in several ways and even benefit moon travel and the activities there. From that I feel these may need to be prioritized.

I for one would be fine with a reshuffle of the roadmap and seeing capitals and moon mining being pushed back a bit to allow for additions with more immediate impact for the game, while also setting up a better platform for these other options and to the game overall.

Let's discuss.

 

[Salbris]

If you mean to say that you think all that should come before other QOL features and things like capital ships I have to strongly disagree. At the moment there are very few things to actually do (that matter) and adding things like VoIP doesn't make it better by a meaningful amount.

Before we have better fleet organization we need an actual reason to form a fleet (station seige). Before we get VoIP we need salvaging to be a worthwhile endeavor and we need ways to hunt other players.

Hell we don't even have stations yet that are actually worth building...

Before we get waypoints we need something valuable to put a waypoint on.

 

[Cavilier210]

Capital ships shouldn't be even on the drawing board until stations function properly.

They shouldn't have been an idea to add to the game to begin with tbh. There were so many good alternatives to capital ships, and incentivizing nomadic hit and run attacks from pirates that obtain a capital ship.

I honestly hope that idea goes by the wayside, and we get something that helps current ship sizes travel around better in some manner. We have the asset. Give it a power consumption and an effect, and we'd be golden, and not need the capital ships at all.

Stations should mean something. With capital ships they just don't.

 

[blazemonger]

Before we have better fleet organization we need an actual reason to form a fleet (station seige). Before we get VoIP we need salvaging to be a worthwhile endeavor and we need ways to hunt other players.

I understand you perspective while I do not agree. For fleets to be effective, they need structure and organisation. so that should come first. ANd I am not sure how the xistence of VoIP woudl depend on salvaging being in game, care to explain how you see that?

And @Cavilier210 .. How would capitals in their current form incentivize hit and run? You can't just jump in and get out, that is not how they work according to what we know.

 

[Salbris]

I understand you perspective while I do not agree. For fleets to be effective, they need structure and organisation. so that should come first. ANd I am not sure how the xistence of VoIP woudl depend on salvaging being in game, care to explain how you see that?

And @Cavilier210 .. How would capitals in their current form incentivize hit and run? You can't just jump in and get out, that is not how they work according to what we know.

I agree fleets won't be effective but they also have basically zero purpose. There aren't any ways to find other fleets let alone any reasons to fight other fleets (besides for fun). We first need a reason for fleets then better ways to organize them. Those two things can come at the same time but one has a much higher priority. Imagine if we got fleet organization but no one used it before there was no point to it.

As for salvaging, well you said you want VoIP to talk to non-group players. Well the biggest reason for that is being a pirate. Problem is that being a pirate isn't worth while so you will slowly see less and less players even doing that. Why would they bother working on VoIP when they could be fixing salvaging and therefore piracy instead?

 

[Cavilier210]

And @Cavilier210 .. How would capitals in their current form incentivize hit and run? You can't just jump in and get out, that is not how they work according to what we know.

They can move regularly. The other thing is that they nullify the very idea of borders in the game. Which I think is something important to be reflected. They can bounce past all your defenses and appear deep inside your territory.

Hitting and running doesn't really have a time limit. Mongols did hit and run, but they'd loiter in a town here and there. Thats what I mean by hit and run.

It honestly detracts from the game and adds another resource sink. Many would argue we have too many resource and money sinks as it is.

 

[Cavilier210]

I agree fleets won't be effective but they also have basically zero purpose. There aren't any ways to find other fleets let alone any reasons to fight other fleets (besides for fun). We first need a reason for fleets then better ways to organize them. Those two things can come at the same time but one has a much higher priority. Imagine if we got fleet organization but no one used it before there was no point to it.

As for salvaging, well you said you want VoIP to talk to non-group players. Well the biggest reason for that is being a pirate. Problem is that being a pirate isn't worth while so you will slowly see less and less players even doing that. Why would they bother working on VoIP when they could be fixing salvaging and therefore piracy instead?

The pirates i know ingame are having the time of their lives and have hit over 1000 targets thus far. So idk if I can agree with you there.

 

[Salbris]

They can move regularly. The other thing is that they nullify the very idea of borders in the game. Which I think is something important to be reflected. They can bounce past all your defenses and appear deep inside your territory.

They cannot move regularly. They are basically stations that can teleport from place to place (with some restrictions). Also you must acquire the location you want to jump to before jumping their with a capital ship. So in order to jump "deep inside your territory" they must first fly there with a conventional ship and escape with the coordinates. But yes I agree it's a problem even though I can be "mitigated". The fact that you could have "territory" and they can just jump anywhere within is pretty disappointing.

The pirates i know ingame are having the time of their lives and have hit over 1000 targets thus far. So idk if I can agree with you there.

Quantity over quality I'm afraid. How many of those are labourers out on their first journey past the safe zone as opposed to wise players that just fly over the belt?

 

[blazemonger]

We first need a reason for fleets then better ways to organize them.

As for salvaging, well you said you want VoIP to talk to non-group players. Well the biggest reason for that is being a pirate.

I could see fleets become a thing where big miner/haulers start moving through unsafe areas. And even in fleets, not everyone needs to be on the same voice channel, having a structure in place which in turn ties into VoIP would kill two birds with one stone..

I also think thath the game has good potential for RP communities and there VoIP is pretty much a given. The game has some great potential to drive RP, even within an environment which is mostoly non RP. Accomodating it will bring in that group of players.

For me the thing is I feel it wil be beneficial in the lonng term to get these functions in before you start adding features and options that use iit or can be driven by it. I get the point that this mean that "things to actually do" can take longer sure, but we are talking Alpha game development here so "things to do" should really not be at or even near the top of the list anyway as it creates a situation where you commit to a path without having first built the road there.

 

[Salbris]

And even in fleets, not everyone needs to be on the same voice channel, having a structure in place which in turn ties into VoIP would kill two birds with one stone..

Discord already solves this problem, why would devs want to waste time re-implementing it in-game when they have a thousand other things to work on?

but we are talking Alpha game development here so "things to do" should really not be at or even near the top of the list anyway as it creates a situation where you commit to a path without having first built the road there.

Keep in mind that the devs need a revenue at this point. They can't just implement "nice to have" features for months on end.

 

[blazemonger]

Keep in mind that the devs need a revenue at this point. They can't just implement "nice to have" features for months on end.

FB has a fairly decent revenue stream of about €7m/year outside of SB so they would at least not be as depending on income from the game as they would if it was all they do. Also, they are on a B2P model so they have your money already and will not get more until a possible DLC or the cosmetics shop opens.

Functionality like VoIP may actually sell them more copies.. potentially lots more, as the RP community will take notice. So it would actually be a very possible additional source of revenue to prioritize over what players who already bought the game prefer.

 

[Vanidar]

August was a good month in Starbase land. I'd say the game launched successfully and fairly painless. Many, including myself were pleasantly surprised by the stability and quality of the game in the current state of development.

Clearly, some priorities had to be reshuffled at Frozenbyte to accommodate for immediate concerns and need for adjustment and fixes which is entirely to be expected. From the launch and from what we have seen so far though, a few things have started to show which I believe would call for a rethink of the roadmap as it exists and there is nothing wrong with that as far as I am concerned.

I believe a few big priorities could be served well by a reshuffle. For one, I think the company changes planned for September may need to become a priority and some game functionality would greatly enhance the experience. And I honestly feel these will have a bigger immediate impact that bringing g in Capitals or moon mining and bases/building, even if I can't wait to see what those will bring.


Some things I feel would benefit the game:

Better provisioning and management tools
It would be great to see an easier way to join an org, players being able to apply to a company in game for one would be a great help. An easier way to accept player into a company another. In general, you see many miss messages in chat and the method of right clicking there is not optimal.

Proper support for company ships, sharing ships with company members and provision of (starter) ships by companies to (new) members.
It should be possible to give access to ships owned by the company based on role or even just generally and companywide. Renaming ships would certainly be something that would be needed here as seeing massive lists of the same ships on the spawn screens is confusion, at least a colour indicator here would help

Fleet organisation
There is a lack of options to organise fleets. Here it would be great (even when fleets may not get as big) to have an EVE style setup with a FC, wing or functional subgroups and squads of the same type of function under that. In each case the leader of a squad can talk to their squad, other squad leaders and their wing commander. Wing commanders in turn talk to each other and the Fleet Commander while the latter can communicate to wing or squad leaders (individually) or the fleet as a whole. I get this would be quite some work and likely would need to be staged/phased as far as an implementation goes, but it would be awesome to have such a structure in the game before capitals arrive for what I think are obvious reasons.

Communication options
VoIP is already shown to be something that is sorely missed (and not just within a company). I've seen quite a few interactions where due to the lack of VoIP, immersion is less and messages/gameplay opportunities are missed in the heat of being under attack, having to fix a ship and being told to fork over some money to not get blown up. There has been some great interaction RP wise even, but the effectiveness got lost because much needs to go through chat, both with the local crew, company mates and with the attacker. VoIP would make a huge difference here in many ways and as the communication is between several groups, deflecting this to Discord or Guided is not a viable or effective option. While VoIP could eventually become a deep and nested thing, just being able to have the option to have VoIP open between ships, on a ship itself and in a fleet would be great. A pirate hailing a miner for ransom would be much more effective and immersive than having to use chat AND be more fluid. There will always be incidents, people abusing the system or trolls, but the fun and gameplay that comes from a good VoIP system in the hands of players that know how to use it (of which there are many already in the game) should IMO outweigh this.

Waypoints and bookmarks
There needs to be a way to set waypoints/bookmarks. Right now, yes there is ISAN but that is not really a solution as it really does not offer an easy access to "go here". Unless I missed it, there is no plans for such a toolset which I feel is an oversight. Waypoints and bookmarks would allow for, and I believe incentivize more travel in possibly a more organized way with more ships, going back to the fleeting options. All this would also play into... more targets and generally more gameplay

Joystick control and camera options
Yes, I know... it's being worked on (at least he joystick part). But I really think the game asks for this, and the experience will get massively better once it arrives. And while this is being worked on, I really hope Frozenbyte will look at implementing support for SpaceMouse and 3rd person cameras for ships as that will massively increase the options to create content and cinematics. From some of the videos I can't help but wonder if this is already in place and if so, giving access to players would be massive. SpaceMouse would also be a great tool in the designer.


There are more options I can think of, and I hope we can have a good discussion around this and build on these ideas. From my perspective the above suggestions would greatly benefit the arrival of capitals in several ways and even benefit moon travel and the activities there. From that I feel these may need to be prioritized.

I for one would be fine with a reshuffle of the roadmap and seeing capitals and moon mining being pushed back a bit to allow for additions with more immediate impact for the game, while also setting up a better platform for these other options and to the game overall.

Let's discuss.

I'll agree that many of us are pleased by the SB launch and that just as many of us want a repurposing of the roadmap for our own vision of the game.

Me personally, I disagree with basically every point you made here. Discord can accommodate 3/5 of your points, waypoint and bookmark functionality literally already exists in the game via custom YOLOL alongside existing systems like ISAN, and joystick and camera options are a really obvious nice-to-have rather than any kind of priority. Supporting any kind of "fleet hierarchy" system is really questionable right now when there is literally no reason to be outside the safe zone or fight in the first place. Addressing that underlying issue first is a must before stacking anything on top of it.

If you ask me, the roadmap is pretty decent as-is. Since we're all throwing our opinions in the ring, off the top of my head I'd ask Santa to prioritize radiation detection tools and making salvaging more profitable. This would really help smaller scale pvp in both the frequency and the reward. Small-scale is probably more important than large-scale since it theoretically happens more often and is cheaper in theory, but hey, that's my opinion. More than anything, the risk/reward balance in this game needs to be given a nod to -- it is faaarrr too profitable to just mine the SZ and gives the game a really empty feeling.

 

[Venombrew]

The pirates i know ingame are having the time of their lives and have hit over 1000 targets thus far. So idk if I can agree with you there.

you can count me as one Cav, i have made so much credits off other peoples ships. while i can't take their whole ship i prefer to take out the endos, preserve much of the ship and rip apart the best pieces. dude i got several warp drives i never even sold just sitting in all my different stations i own, ive banked so much off thrusters and tier 2 items. and not to mention any rare ore that they may have. if it wasn't so profitable, i wouldn't be doing it this much, why my stations are basically on the silk road of the out of safe zone farmers.

not as easy as some think, trying to not take out their ship and not take out mine from asteroids in the process of a chase.