Future changes and thoughts... For 1.0.8

[JetJaguar2000]

These are good changes.

By far the most interesting, in my opinion, is the attempt to put production and research on a mutually exclusive axis. I really like the idea of being able to focus on either a robust production platform, or a robust research platform, or something in between. I think your goal here should be to foster different play styles. Instead of having everyone blasting through the same research, and ramping up production simultaneously, create diversity by giving players the option to focus on research rather than production or combat, etc. The proposed changes sound good, but you should make sure that these options are well balanced; you may want to consider changing some of the research technologies, for example, to work better "on their own" as an alternative to production. I think this will take some time to sort out, because it's not totally clear yet what sorts of things a "researcher" could do better than a "producer," since the main mechanism of interaction and progress in the game is the production of ships.

I also like the idea of the Planetary Control Center, but I would take it a couple of steps further: PCCs should only grant you the ability to control planets within some radius of where it is built (say, 5 - 10 squares). Coupled with the expense of building them in the first place, I think this would add a HUGE strategic element to the game that doesn't exist now. If you actually had to make hard decisions about WHERE to create expansion opportunities, things would be a lot more interesting, especially when led to contention over particular areas of space.

Which brings me to another related suggestion. One aspect of the game I find a little obnoxious is how ships have unlimited range. What this means is that geographic location has very little meaning in the game. The most extreme example of this is how an opponent can send a fleet directly to your home world and blow it up, regardless of how big your empire is, or how far away it is from the enemy. This has always struck me as pretty artificial.

What I would LOVE to see is the concept of "contest fronts." Having a radius-based PCC could be one aspect of this. I would also propose that the range of your ships be limited in a similar way. Maybe they can only travel 2x the radius of your nearest PCC from it (modified by ship type). Alternatively (or in addition), create another orbital unit, the Refueling Station, that could further extend the range of your ships. What I'm looking for here is a way to establish geographic relevance. For someone to invade your territory, they should need to have built up a refueling "supply line" from their territory to yours. Ideally these refueling stations are defensible, but not ridiculously so. REALLY ideally would be for this mechanic to provide some balance between hardcore players and more casual ones. If a casual player is facing an invasion from a superior force, they may not be able to defend against the attack, but they should be able to muster the forces to destroy the invader's fueling stations, thus cutting them off and delaying invading ships while the refueling station is rebuilt. (A third super-interesting step in this direction would be to allow players to grant or deny access to one another's refueling stations -- maybe this casual guy can't even destroy a link in his invader's supply line, but maybe he can convince a third guy to deny the invader access to an open refueling station he is using!)

Obviously, these would be significant changes to the mechanics, but I think they would be good ones. I've been playing Starbase Orion again recently, and it struck me that the ship movement limitations are a big part of the strategy involved. Having to make decisions about where to build outposts in order to get your ships to where they need to get makes things interesting. Again, give meaning to specific regions of space. Right now it doesn't matter where you start, as moving ships around is just a matter of time (and avoiding black holes). Make expansion be grounded in the physical space of the galaxies.

That's all for now.

[zarkwizard]

JetJaguar2000 : You bring up good points. While I am not totally against saying ships can only fly a certain distance from a world, or a ship has a certain amount of fuel for distance it can travel it might make the game a little restrictive. I'm not sure how that would play out. While I personally don't have a major issue, I think it might cause some fundamental problems. We would have to give it some thought.

I like the PCC thoughts.. We would have to go through some universe big bangs and try to determine proximity for systems. Either we create more planets or have to change the algorithm for the way the big bang generates a universe. Some good thoughts though.

You certainly bring up some interesting points about the space travel. If ships were give a limited range for how far they could travel it would make things a lot more interesting. You would have to slowly acquire planetary hops to get somewhere. I would think a few things would have to happen for this though...

1 - We would probably undo the fog of war. So you would see all the stars. If you want to travel somewhere you would "jump to a system". Once you were in warp you are locked in to the time it takes to travel to that system. How far you can jump depends on the type of ship/fleet.

2 - How would people encounter a black hole? If you are warping along and go past a hidden black hole does the black hole expose and you lose your ship, or are they visible and destroy everything passing by in a given radius?

3 - Using a jump gate to jump to a beacon, would this still allow you instant travel to a planet you control with a beacon bypassing single jumping from system to system?

Obviously waypoints would have to be introduced to the game to allow that kind of navigation.

Just some thoughts about the future of the game, not something we are currently planning.. If input is enough for it, they are certainly things we would consider implementing in the future.

[VanderLegion]

JetJaguar2000 : You bring up good points.
2 - How would people encounter a black hole? If you are warping along and go past a hidden black hole does the black hole expose and you lose your ship, or are they visible and destroy everything passing by in a given radius?

One possibility for this would be to have the black hole just show up as a star until you discover what it actually is. Maybe you use Gravity based sensors to see where the stars are that you haven't explored yet so black holes just appear as stars because of it (large gravity field)? Then, it could eithe rwork similar to how it does now where you lose the ship and get a notification that it died there due to an anomaly, and you don't actually SEE the black hole until you have hyperspace physics, or else once you end a ship there and lose it the black hole now shows as what it is and you have to route everything around the system until you get HP.