Stuff is floating everywhere. Wrecks, pieces parts, life pods..? No, not yet... (pick them up, store in cargo hold, return to the nearest Military base or Shipyard for Faction niceness and a small reward...)
Ships projectile vomiting, spitting lightning and laser fire everywhere you look. It's full on Faction brawl block war with a side of Pirates, and the large group of Aliens just showed up because that's what they do.
And into this mess comes Dilbert T Yiojhgdbopudhfnpsvchgpmsrghepwrhgewpurhgp...
"Hi everybody..! I here to sell stuff..! Come take a look..!" I wait patiently for the "dur hur" or something similar in whatever dialect of space speak they use...
First off, if I'm living in my ship plying my wares sector by sector like poor Dilbert here, the absolute LAST thing I'm going to do is fly my Space-a-bego into a mess such as this. I don't care what you need. I don't care what my quotas are. I am not deading myself or risking a serious case of air deprivation by flying into the middle of hell off Earth. No... I'm turning right around and flying the hot place back to wherever I came from and going around.
Secondly, I have to say I really dislike that they show up like clock work. Some things it's nice to be regular. This isn't one of them... When I can (almost) set my watch by them showing up that's too regular, too formulaic, too "gamey"...
I realize this may be a down the road kind of thing, that there are priorities etc... But eventually this game will reach a point where how it does certain things will either set it apart or keep it as just another space opera light show with a side of explosion noises.
This was one of the things Rebel Galaxy got both right and wrong. In the end, the game was the same over and over, and no matter how good that is it gets old. In the case of RG, that was pretty quick as there just wasn't any more to it.
So how do we combat that..?
One way is to make these seemingly innocuous chance meetings more diverse. Anytime you can make the mundane more interesting you add a little life cycle to the game's air scrubbers. (at least in my world...)
How do we do that..?
With some "simple" randomization to the encounters.
For starters, pick a number between 1 and 10, multiply it by 3 and that's when they show up. Somewhere between 3 minutes and 30 minutes isn't an earth shattering wait for something that's more a bonus than a necessity. This kind of spawn shouldn't tax the system at an exorbitant rate, isn't hard to code compared to all the other complex sub routines yet makes a big difference in removing the stale same old same old from a galaxy play through.
In addition it would be nice to have a couple different greetings as well. This is a place we can make a difference. I'd write a few. I'm sure others here would too. It's not like you need a metric ton. Five would work, ten would be better. Twenty would make it so it would take a long while before you realize they're repeating. We have enough people here that can string a few words together that can be copy pasted and plugged in. This too isn't a big coding deal, I did these in BASIC in high school back when the mainframe took up a room next to the library.
Randomize a text string, jumble the timing a little and *spoof*; instant galaxy that feels that little bit more alive instead of obviously on a train schedule.
Once you have something like this in place, it's not a stretch to work it into events for Pirates and Aliens as well. Times, number of ships and the lines they speak. Simple stuff, but so much more alive than 3 ships, 5 ships, small group, big group, mix and match.
Them is my thoughts. As always YMMV. What do you think about it...?
Suggestion
Doc Savage NDMF
Stuff is floating everywhere. Wrecks, pieces parts, life pods..? No, not yet... (pick them up, store in cargo hold, return to the nearest Military base or Shipyard for Faction niceness and a small reward...)
Ships projectile vomiting, spitting lightning and laser fire everywhere you look. It's full on Faction brawl block war with a side of Pirates, and the large group of Aliens just showed up because that's what they do.
And into this mess comes Dilbert T Yiojhgdbopudhfnpsvchgpmsrghepwrhgewpurhgp...
"Hi everybody..! I here to sell stuff..! Come take a look..!" I wait patiently for the "dur hur" or something similar in whatever dialect of space speak they use...
First off, if I'm living in my ship plying my wares sector by sector like poor Dilbert here, the absolute LAST thing I'm going to do is fly my Space-a-bego into a mess such as this. I don't care what you need. I don't care what my quotas are. I am not deading myself or risking a serious case of air deprivation by flying into the middle of hell off Earth. No... I'm turning right around and flying the hot place back to wherever I came from and going around.
Secondly, I have to say I really dislike that they show up like clock work. Some things it's nice to be regular. This isn't one of them... When I can (almost) set my watch by them showing up that's too regular, too formulaic, too "gamey"...
I realize this may be a down the road kind of thing, that there are priorities etc... But eventually this game will reach a point where how it does certain things will either set it apart or keep it as just another space opera light show with a side of explosion noises.
This was one of the things Rebel Galaxy got both right and wrong. In the end, the game was the same over and over, and no matter how good that is it gets old. In the case of RG, that was pretty quick as there just wasn't any more to it.
So how do we combat that..?
One way is to make these seemingly innocuous chance meetings more diverse. Anytime you can make the mundane more interesting you add a little life cycle to the game's air scrubbers. (at least in my world...)
How do we do that..?
With some "simple" randomization to the encounters.
For starters, pick a number between 1 and 10, multiply it by 3 and that's when they show up. Somewhere between 3 minutes and 30 minutes isn't an earth shattering wait for something that's more a bonus than a necessity. This kind of spawn shouldn't tax the system at an exorbitant rate, isn't hard to code compared to all the other complex sub routines yet makes a big difference in removing the stale same old same old from a galaxy play through.
In addition it would be nice to have a couple different greetings as well. This is a place we can make a difference. I'd write a few. I'm sure others here would too. It's not like you need a metric ton. Five would work, ten would be better. Twenty would make it so it would take a long while before you realize they're repeating. We have enough people here that can string a few words together that can be copy pasted and plugged in. This too isn't a big coding deal, I did these in BASIC in high school back when the mainframe took up a room next to the library.
Randomize a text string, jumble the timing a little and *spoof*; instant galaxy that feels that little bit more alive instead of obviously on a train schedule.
Once you have something like this in place, it's not a stretch to work it into events for Pirates and Aliens as well. Times, number of ships and the lines they speak. Simple stuff, but so much more alive than 3 ships, 5 ships, small group, big group, mix and match.
Them is my thoughts. As always YMMV. What do you think about it...?
Cheers..!
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