Opinion about the game and suggestions

[Sirian]

Hi, I enjoyed playing the 0.3 demo and I'd like to share with you the post that I made on another forum about my impressions. I know now that some of the features I'm suggesting are already planned, but here's the post anyway :

 

I'm kind of enthusiastic about this game, I think it has a lot of potential if improved upon, but right now my most pressing concern is the way various materials are treated, as straight tier upgrades from the previous ones. It goes Iron -> Titanium -> Naonite -> Trinium -> Abattium -> Urgium -> Xanion -> Ogonite -> Avorion, that's 9 steps during which the same gameplay repeats, you have to travel to a higher level area, kill friendly ships (?), steal their weapons/mining lasers, and then mine the higher tier of metal, to build a stronger ship to kill stronger NPCs.

Granted, you can probably burn a few steps, but that seems to be the general path laid out for you. I think that as far as upgrades go, 9 tiers is at least 4 too many.

 

Also, the way ships work means that you're far better off flying a huge monolithic brick than a detailed ship, because each block has it's own HP, and if it breaks, everything attached to it breaks free (premade ships are vastly inferior because of that). So far you can't sell metals or guns, but I hope this will get added to the next version.

 

What I'd like to see : the ability to build our own stations, some way to research, build and/or buy guns/mining lasers, more modules (like better hyperspace drives, shields, maybe tractor beams and more types of guns)...

 

If the planets were more than just backdrops, that would be great as well. I'm guessing there are some technical limitations to what would be possible, but even if it was just an abstracted menu where you manage planetary installations and the ownership grants you some sort of income, that would already be great. Maybe this could be done by building a special kind of space station (and you would have to destroy it in order to take over the planet).

 

Instead of infinite storage, I would also like it if we had a cargo hold block to include in our ship designs (and to stations). This way, trading and stations would take more importance. We can also imagine long-distance travel gates that would have to be built by players with large amounts of resources, so as to link rich core sectors and fringe areas. In general, I think that asteroid mining shouldn't be the best way to get resources, only the most easily accessible. Planetary installations should provide the bulk of resources, otherwise on older, more populated servers, there would be a risk of resource depletion.

 

Since I made this post, I played a lot more and I quickly realized that asteroid mining isn't the best way to get resources (shipyard destruction is), but that's the same issue for populated servers, even if I can imagine that there are a lot of core sectors with avorion to loot, at some point it will all be gone.

 

The resource progression tiers aren't bothering me as much as they did previously, but I'd still like to see more variety in the use of different resources for different purposes (and maybe also having to process minerals in order to use them, like for instance mining iron and processing it into useable steel).

 

Something else that would be cool, would be the ability to build/buy more of a specific type of turret, once you have the schematics. This way you wouldn't be stuck when you lost your last weapon turret, losing a very good weapon wouldn't be as punishing as it is right now, and you also wouldn't have to use mismatching turrets.

I would, however, be eternally grateful if there was a way to get rid of turrets, right now the clutter is really annoying, and scrolling down that list gets more and more tedious as I loot more and more weapons.

 

Anyway, thanks for making this game, I think it could go very far, and I hope to see newer versions soon =)

[koonschi]

Hey!

Don't worry, the current state is not at all how I want the game to remain. As stated on the website the game is far from finished, these are merely alpha demo versions for testing and first impressions. You listed quite some features that are already listed on the wiki, too.

 

I'm kind of enthusiastic about this game, I think it has a lot of potential if improved upon, but right now my most pressing concern is the way various materials are treated, as straight tier upgrades from the previous ones. It goes Iron -> Titanium -> Naonite -> Trinium -> Abattium -> Urgium -> Xanion -> Ogonite -> Avorion, that's 9 steps during which the same gameplay repeats, you have to travel to a higher level area, kill friendly ships (?), steal their weapons/mining lasers, and then mine the higher tier of metal, to build a stronger ship to kill stronger NPCs.

Granted, you can probably burn a few steps, but that seems to be the general path laid out for you. I think that as far as upgrades go, 9 tiers is at least 4 too many.

 

I made that many materials to keep my options open in the future. Different materials will be necessary to build different blocks. They are not that far away from each other, and I as a player prefer being able to rather skip a tier instead of having no other choice than to use it.

Stealing technology from friendly factions seems quite mean and it's not the way some players want to acquire turrets. It surely won't stay the only way to get them. It was simply the easiest one to implement for now, to at least have some way of getting them.

 

Also, the way ships work means that you're far better off flying a huge monolithic brick than a detailed ship, because each block has it's own HP, and if it breaks, everything attached to it breaks free (premade ships are vastly inferior because of that).

 

This is one of the first things I though of - Why build a beautiful ship if it is not stronger than its smallest block?

I took care of this - to to make a part of the ship break off, you have to inflict more damage than just that single block would take. You have to inflict as much damage as all attached sub-blocks together would need to be destroyed.

 

So far you can't sell metals or guns, but I hope this will get added to the next version.

 

What I'd like to see : the ability to build our own stations, some way to research, build and/or buy guns/mining lasers, more modules (like better hyperspace drives, shields, maybe tractor beams and more types of guns)...

 

Yup, this is all planned.

 

If the planets were more than just backdrops, that would be great as well. I'm guessing there are some technical limitations to what would be possible, but even if it was just an abstracted menu where you manage planetary installations and the ownership grants you some sort of income, that would already be great. Maybe this could be done by building a special kind of space station (and you would have to destroy it in order to take over the planet).

 

That's a cool idea, I like it! I'll see what I can make of it.

 

Instead of infinite storage, I would also like it if we had a cargo hold block to include in our ship designs (and to stations).

 

Cargo blocks are planned. Haven't thought about it yet how I could combine them with a limited resource storage, I will need some time for that. Maybe some kind of ship inventory that gets bigger by having lots of cargo blocks. But that implies that when your ship gets destroyed, the player gets punished. Very badly. So I'm not sure if this might be a good idea.

For now it's simply the typical strategy-game approach, you have a global storage and that can be accessed from everywhere.

 

In general, I think that asteroid mining shouldn't be the best way to get resources, only the most easily accessible

 

My thought exactly.

 

Planetary installations should provide the bulk of resources, otherwise on older, more populated servers, there would be a risk of resource depletion.

 

On the planets providing resources: Could be a cool feature.

On resource depletion: I have no idea yet on how quickly the resources of a server might actually get depleted, but rest assured, there will be some kind of way of getting resources, even if all asteroids have been emptied ;)

For instance, soon there will be resource traders where you can buy and sell resources.

 

Something else that would be cool, would be the ability to build/buy more of a specific type of turret, once you have the schematics. This way you wouldn't be stuck when you lost your last weapon turret, losing a very good weapon wouldn't be as punishing as it is right now, and you also wouldn't have to use mismatching turrets.

 

Yes there will be some kind of weapon factory in the future.

 

I would, however, be eternally grateful if there was a way to get rid of turrets, right now the clutter is really annoying, and scrolling down that list gets more and more tedious as I loot more and more weapons.

 

Yeah that's really annoying, isn't it? You can expect that to change.

 

 

Most of the features aren't in the game because I simply haven't had the chance to implement them yet. I hope you know that it will take quite some time to add all those features to the game.

 

Thank you very much for the feedback, it's highly appreciated!

[Sector 347]

If the planets were more than just backdrops, that would be great as well.

I thought that the impossibility of landing on the planet is not made by accident. It's pretty ridiculous, if a relatively small spacecraft dictates its will to the whole planet. Seemed to me that, for whatever reasons, the conditions of life on planets have changed dramatically, so that all beings were forced to escape into space.

Maybe it would be wiser to leave it as "feature" and not try to make exaggerated control of the whole planet (think about this again). We will have space stations, mining bases and the incredible spaceships... whether you need something else?

IMHO :-\

[Sirian]

If the planets were more than just backdrops, that would be great as well.

I thought that the impossibility of landing on the planet is not made by accident. It's pretty ridiculous, if a relatively small spacecraft dictates its will to the whole planet. Seemed to me that, for whatever reasons, the conditions of life on planets have changed dramatically, so that all beings were forced to escape into space.

Maybe it would be wiser to leave it as "feature" and not try to make exaggerated control of the whole planet (think about this again). We will have space stations, mining bases and the incredible spaceships... whether you need something else?

IMHO :-\

 

I understand what you're trying to say, but I didn't mean it like you would govern the planet's population, more like you'd build some mines on the largest mineral deposits and you'd get a small but steady stream of resources from that, or maybe another type of resource like research points from building laboratories... I don't know, many things could be done by stations instead of planetary installations, but I though that would be the best way to have inexhaustible minerals, plus it would add something to defend, etc...

 

Or maybe one planet could be like your seat of power and you could build a colony on it and slowly build it up with the resources you bring back home and get bonuses from it, I'm just throwing ideas here. Heck I don't know how moddable the game will be, but this could be a mod too.

[koonschi]

I think IF I am to implement planet interaction, it will feature trading (like with a trading station) but on a bigger scale. Another interaction possibility would be that sectors with habitated planets with races capable of exploring space would be very difficult to conquer, as there would be constant supply of ships from the planet.

[koonschi]

BTW: Explorable planets will almost certainly not make it into the game.

[Sirian]

BTW: Explorable planets will almost certainly not make it into the game.

 

Yea I sorta figured, since that would be like another game in itself...

 

I understand how hypothetical the implementation would be, don't worry, I can imagine that you already have a lot on your plate ^^

 

Anyway, thanks for your very extensive answer to my suggestions, it's nice knowing how much the gameplay will evolve from it's current state.

[Gibbonici]

Cargo blocks are planned. Haven't thought about it yet how I could combine them with a limited resource storage, I will need some time for that. Maybe some kind of ship inventory that gets bigger by having lots of cargo blocks. But that implies that when your ship gets destroyed, the player gets punished. Very badly. So I'm not sure if this might be a good idea.

For now it's simply the typical strategy-game approach, you have a global storage and that can be accessed from everywhere.

 

Perhaps if you keep the global storage but make it so that players can only trade from cargo ships? Similarly, cargo blocks could be required on stations before they're able to trade with players and NPC ships.

 

Cargo blocks would need to be loaded with whichever resource(s) the player wants to trade, and when the trade is complete the cargo block's inventory is updated as required. If a cargo block is destroyed in combat a proportion of it's cargo would leak from the ship, allowing for some cargo resources to be destroyed with the cargo block.

 

The main kink in this idea would be where and how do you load your cargo blocks? The obvious answer would be from an owned station (with its own loaded cargo blocks) but that would mean that a player wouldn't be able to trade until he's built a station. Maybe that's not a bad thing though - it would certainly encourage players to build stations and it would force them to defend them too. Especially if resources loaded onto a station couldn't be sucked back into global storage.

[koonschi]

Cargo blocks will be introduced with the trading system. They will be necessary for trading. Players can mount trading goods onto their cargo blocks, and they can then fly them to another location. Now that is what I've planned for sure. This will have nothing to do with the resources so far.

 

But I think a player could build storage stations for resources. To raise the maximum amount of resources they can store.

 

The resource + cargo block thing is tricky. It can lead to severe punishment of a player, especially if you have griefers or trolls. This issue exists anyway, by the way. I will implement some kind of safe zone - where ships of players can't be damaged by other players.

[Gibbonici]

Yeah I know what you mean about the punishing players thing, especially in a multiplayer environment. One of the most horrible things in Minecraft was dying in lava during a deep mining expedition and losing the lot ;) Mind you, it did make those mining expeditions really, really tense!

 

Speaking of Minecraft, the thing that impresses me most about Avorion is that it has that same elegant immediacy to it as Minecraft has. The gameplay (so far) is simple and stylised yet easy to relate to in the same way that Minecraft is - it all makes perfect sense and every interaction is instantly rewarding. That's a rare thing in space games, as most of them tend to confuse complexity for depth (the X games for example, and even Eve Online) and all of them have multiplied what Elite had back in the 80s without actually adding very much to the formula.

 

What you've done with Avorion right from the start is take a different direction with the space-sim gameplay. I've got to say, as a gamer whose been gaming ever since there were videogames to play, it's really exciting to see someone doing something different with a genre that could be awesome but has been pretty much stagnant for decades. Keep it up and you could have a killer game on your hands here :)

 

Anyway, I don't want to hijack the thread so I'll leave it there ;)

[vladiskov]

this post its old as hell...

 

 

yet i had to say, its a shame that the creator dindt think about explorable planets, maybe made of indestroyable material with somewhat destroyable buildings...

 

 

while yes that wouldbe more of the same, it would enable to create server wide combats in a whole planet :D!

[koonschi]

I did think of explorable planets for quite a while, but those are features that are just too much. As pointed out by other members of the forum, making explorable planets would mean making a second game. The engine is not laid out for this.

I would have to put a lot of effort into making something that would most likely not turn out the way I would want it, and it wouldn't have the quality that I would like it to have.