More space stuff and less space gold and ore

[eduty]

Floated this idea on r/avorion and the feedback was positive.

 

Right now, a player ship can survive on ore and credits alone. There's no reason to ever have to stop at a station if you don't want to - and that feels like a missed opportunity.

 

It's a big, vibrant, galactic economy, and the player should participate (at least a little).

 

To do this we decrease drop rates for ore, credits, and turrets.

 

We modify wrecks to drop cargo when destroyed or salvaged, with that cargo being a mix of generic supplies and turret components.

 

If the player wants to cash in on their loot, they'll need the cargo space to store it, and they'll need to find stations to buy it.

 

With the availability of turret drops decreased and turret components increased, the player will need to make greater use of turret factories to stay armed.

 

There are more suggestions on the r/avorion thread, but changing the loot spawns is the core of the idea. Hopefully a not-too difficult modification that will make the habitable sectors seem more important and necessary.

 

 

[Wanderer]

Please dont make drops rarer, they are already useless compared to factory made guns. As for the stations, you still have to hire crew and how should you earn enough credits (to make guns, build your ship etc) without docking and trading? I dont think it is usefull to change it the way you suggest, because it wouldnt change how often you go to the station, unless you want to spam cargowreckages everywhere... If you change it to your suggestion, it becomes to much a trading game and thats no fun, at least for me.

 

What ore droprates do you want to lower? Mining? Please dont they are already in disadvantage compared to salvaging. Salvaging is being worked on

[NerArth]

A player ship can survive on ore and credits alone, sure... but is there a user-base that is actually actively avoiding stations?

 

I already find the turret factories annoying as they are, and I can't be the only one, because they are such a chore with a massive shopping list, if you want to make even a small number of turrets. It's not that it's difficult - it's that it's very time-consuming in a way that doesn't feel particularly fun (to me). I don't avoid them, but I certainly don't use them as often as I'd like.

 

If those components are dropping, that might help. Your idea could probably work to some extent, but I can see it turning your own production chains into something pointless, depending on how common the drops would be. If the drops are too common, you might not bother making factory chains, and if the drops are too rare, aren't you making players have less turrets available anyway? This would need really careful balancing and probably a lot of playtesting, since it's a big change to how things currently work.

 

But looking at the rest of the suggested points in the reddit thread, it feels like a lot of them are a bit strangling; there's a lot of: this should take space, x should require y to do z or to keep x. I like the freedom that the game does give you, and I think a lot of those points would be detrimental to this player freedom. Inventory management isn't a hassle in Avorion, which is a nice change of pace for me, and it seems to me it could easily become a hassle with some of those points.

 

The trading and factory system should be getting better anyway once players can assign full-bodied crafts to go on specified trade routes, because that's a crucial bit of mechanics that's currently missing to make things work, as the factory system works pretty much like in the X games, where interaction with the economy is mostly through indirect passive trading, apart from at the start, where you do some combat or trading to get the capital to start making trading fleets.

[Perq]

Making money on ore/drops alone will take ages to make anything bigger than basic ship. If you want to make money, you need to interact with stations.

[eduty]

Thank you for the feedback. All good points. The r/avorion felt a little one sided.

 

Perhaps do nothing with the current drop rates, but make cargo loot a bit more common from pirates and wrecks.

 

As a player, I've found friendly stations superfluous after Na space. I typically pull enough credits and ore from vigilante justice and salvaging to keep the fleet afloat.

 

Only time I really need stations is to pick up crew and craft the occasional fighter.

 

The rest of the Galaxy feels like a novelty outside the space combat and endless ship tinkering, but that could just be a personal play style issue.

[DracoNB]

I'd be all for weapon [parts dropped frequently from ships that had turrets you destroyed. But they should take up no space (separate from cargo) and be more of a currency. That way you could build your own more frequently, as especially early game, trying to build a turret isn't something most people will do.

 

It's odd how we can have infinite turrets / systems, but to build turrets we need a lot of cargo space, and have to have it on the right ship, while the turret itself can be moved across the galaxy by sector swapping.

 

So turret parts as a type of currency? Yes please!

[eduty]

I'm in agreement that the way the game handles turret storage feels very inconsistent with ore, cargo, fighters, and torpedoes.

 

I can understand modules being near infinite (I always think of them as software), but I have an aesthetic desire for homogeneous handling of physical cargo.