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OverthinkingThis

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  1. Now that we have docking, along with the old pull/push turrets I feel like we can some more fun with ballistic interactions. It would be pretty cool to have a rare event of a meteor running tangent to a sector's 'center' that could have a lot of goodies inside (large quantities of material, trade goods like gems, etc) that players could capture by either stopping its motion via force or even by matching its speed and docking with it to carry it to a resource depot or similar. I could easily see some people even creating 'meteor catcher' ships that are huge baskets with force turrets and docking blocks, or just generally having fun with a rare non-combat event. I would think you would want the projectiles lifespan to be temporary in some form, either via projectile time (until stopped of course), or by an eventual 'exit distance' where it despawns.
  2. ------ The Problem ------ One of the primary reasons I have a hard time staying interested in Avorion is the late game costs. They are by no means unmanageable but the simple fact that I lose a large (I like playing big ships) amount of money at set intervals never lets me relax. It's that same sense of forced efficiency that makes people play to their first win of the day or use up all of their bonus experience in MMO's, except significantly worse because it's fighting to not lose something as opposed to fighting to gain a bonus. Any time not making money feels wasted. ------ The idea ------ Boiled down, the easiest thing to do is to reverse the trend. Stop making the player *lose* money. Don't get me wrong, maintenance costs are necessary to prevent afk progress among other things, but there is a way to introduce maintenence costs without putting a constant countdown over a player's head. Income garnishing. What I mean by this is to introduce a modifier to money earned. For example, say this modifier is 10%, that means that a player would only earn 90% of the listed amount of money for any income source, where the 10% would thematically be going to maintenance costs. Going one step further if you keep the current interval cost of ship/crew/stations, you can dynamically alter this modifier depending on if they hit this cost or not. If they don't you increase the garnish modifier until they do hit the cost threshold and if they do hit it you can decrease the modifier. Here's an example scenario: Player A has a cost of 1000 and a garnish modifier of 5%. He makes 100, which puts 5 towards cost. 5<1000 so his modifier goes up. Let's say to 15%. He makes 10000 next interval so 1500 goes towards costs. 1500>1000 so his modifier goes down. Naturally you would need a maximum garnish modifier to prevent people from being completely locked out of profit but you could make it decently high (80% or so) and significantly punish people who don't keep up with their costs. By the same token you can also use this to significantly reward people who build efficient, cost-effective ships by giving them a much higher rate of income(<5% garnish). This system still incentivizes a player to stay in the game and earn consistent income to keep or improve their current modifier but doesn't put the pressure of "how long will my current money last?" on the player every time they log in. Not to mention it also spreads sudden cost increases over a longer period of time rather than instantaneously. A major ship upgrade will just increase the garnish modifier over a few months as opposed to forcing you to pay several times more money immediately.
  3. As much as I love the game I was somewhat worried about it not having enough pushing power to break into any kind if scene if it was released now, so I'm glad this decision was reached and I hope it gives you guys some breathing room. High hopes and best of luck!
  4. Update: As it turns out stations can produce money in conjunction with the out-of-sector production update. It took me this long to realize because I had to go back and visit the water mine I had made as a test for a trader to start functioning. Judging by the amount I am getting from a single hobbled together water mine I can see this being a viable way to combat the associated crew costs of large stations and ships. However I am sure there are factors to how automated trade routes are formed and performed that I have not found yet. I will continue to fiddle.
  5. Friend and me discussing the issue of keeping lower tier material relevant later in the game. Answer we mutually agreed on is a way to incorporate different materials into the same block, and since each block has certain metrics (i.e. weight, HP, power consumption, volume towards upgrade slots, etc.) it would make sense that different materials push different metrics. So as an example: Iron - (HP+++) (Weight +++) Titanium - (HP++) (Weight +) Naonite - (Power Use---) Trinium - (HP++) (Power Use-) (Weight++) So if you'd like, in this rough example, an engine that uses very little power you can use a pure Naonite, but it would have paper thin HP. If you'd like a large armor plate with a lot of HP but not stone-level of weight you'd blend Iron and titanium. Most of all you can have materials specialize in a metric or have an exclusive mechanic. The above rough example doesn't show it well but you could have Xanion require less crew (Engys and Mechs) or Iron regen significantly faster and so on. And as for actually using it, a tool similar to the current transform tool could be used. Place a block of full Iron, for example, and use said hypothetical tool to bring up a slider menu where you can inject different materials. I wouldn't be surprised at all if this or a similar idea hasn't already been discussed, but hey, it's a thought.
  6. Simple question, probably not so simple answer. After you beat the guardian the main thing that I'd like to do is build stations and pretty much start my own fully functioning faction. However once you get a few stations out crew costs get more than a little ridiculous. Is there a way to automate money generation as of yet? Or am I going to have to deal in trades equivalent to the entire production quota of large NPC faction?
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