With the advent of 1.0 and the complete storyline and story quest, i think is prudent to start thinking about the future of the game so we can push devs into interesting and awesome paths. I have a gripe with sandbox games; after completing the main Story/Quest and the (boring FOR ME) Collector aspect of it; there is nothing to come back, no mechanized motivation to the player to keep fighting building etc; aside from servers or modded games, which are awesome, but usually don't scratch the itch i have. I'm looking to have all sorts of adventures, fix a wide array of problems and conflicts, and to be motivated to build further and further; and i feel that while the current side quest are a great start, it do not give us the ultimate sandbox experience this game can bring. So i offer a more a more mechanized solutions to this problems, hoping their development would not be excruciatingly difficult to program and be implemented as an option to survival AFTER defeating the main storyline. DYNAMIC COLONY While the colony system is acceptable, the quests generated still feel like a paint coated, flavor texted, fetch quest. So i propose a more mechanic oriented system that keeps you engage. Habitability Coefficient: Colonies should have a limit of tenants according to the Size/Number of Farms, Guard posts and Clinics. If this limit is broken the habitability will go down accordingly, making the pixel/item reward go gradually but consistently down, some tenants go away and others become hostile (maybe). If the habitability reaches 0 all tenants will leave, making the colony deserted and useless. If a colony goes deserted the criminal activity will go dramatically higher in the system. WORKERS: New tenant classes, Doctors, Farmers, Miners. Plus a context aware rewards: Miners give Ore (Planet Related), Farmers give Crops(Near Farm related), etc. This will give the Ability to the player that doesn't like underground exploration and gather resources a way to generated materials and useful items. BUILDING BUFF: Creating variety of buildings (Restaurants, Stores, Parks, Arcades, etc...) will BoostTenants Pixel or item reward linked to Tenant Type. Creating specialized colonies will give a bigger boost but also more danger to certain colony events. The more happy your tenants the more likekly they join to your ship crew TRADING / ECONOMY: Creating and sustaining colonies in the same system will decrease the chance of Invasion that affect the colonies (will never go to 0), reduce pixel cost of merchants and boost slightly pixel revenue from tenants. This will motivate the player to keep building and exploring planets. Also it would be greatly helpful to make crops flourish better/faster in certain planets. SUSTAINABILITY & EVENTS: Semi randomly, the colonies will be affected different events that reduce their Habitability, as an example: -Pirate/Cultist/Monster Invasions: That can Hack/Break Doors and kill tenants. -Droughts: That kills all the crops and makes Chef and Farmers unable to produce. Forcing player to find new colonies -Plagues: That semi randomly make tenants be on bed all day unable to sell or give the player rewards. -Faction settling: Each system will be controlled in its majority by a Race faction, the miniknog, Avian cultist, Floran hunters etc... The player have to destroy their base to stop them from converting tenants to their cause. TENANT RELATIONSHIPS: This is something not for all, but i cannot come up with a better way to make players emotionally invested in colonies. The current tenants interact very vividly with each other and show some of their personality and the side-quest shows you that some Tenants try to befriend with each other. It would be very interesting that the player can help and/or Guide how this relationships go; Shipping in media is really powerful and engaging. This should affect the habitability if the player fails in paring Tenants (lovingly or friendly) together or helping fix a dispute; there cannot be a colony if everybody hates each other. This changes should encorage player to build and explore more and be engage emotionally in the colonization process of the universe. Next Post: FACTIONS Thanks for reading have some of my Fanart!
I really like the idea of a dynamic colony system, especially a relationship system (hopefully and possibly with the player as well) but I feel forcing players to find new colonies would be opposite of what colonies should be; having your player create a kind of home and "settle down" or have a form of income. BUT the idea could be reimplemented as a colony trade system, requiring you to creating multiple colonies on different planets in the same star system (or multiple). Droughts would require your colony to trade more between your own colonies and make them more desperate for food causing them to trade with the nearest, unaffected, colony with a farm. The trading system would be put in place and take time for colonies to trade with each other (if it takes 1000 fuel to get between colony A and B then it'll take an hour or so for the person trading with colony B to get back to colony A while to get to Colony C from Colony A would take 500 fuel and only take 30 minutes). Also inter-colony relationships would be a decent idea too. It would also take only five with an item called an "inter-system transportation device" which would teleport goods to colonies making trading wait times next to nothing, but would also be expensive to make.
Yeah, i think a trade system that help you maintain the happiness and income of pixels would be better.
I'm down for a major revision/enhancement of the colony system. first and foremost: make groups of npc's not kill performance so badly. it artificially restricts colony size. i tried making a supercolony at one point, and it was painful. i dunno. maybe 1.0 will fix a lot of that with optimization?
