I've grown to love the spirit of the 2.0 changes but there's one thing in particular that keeps bugging me: AFK operations reward and even encourage me to not play the game. I'd like to see if we could get things to where operations always funnel into actively playing more, to where that active playing feels like it matters a lot, and to where leaving my computer on overnight for no reason but getting ticks on guaranteed resource timers isn't a thing.
This is long, but it's just an elaboration of a few, almost certainly contentious, suggestions:
Get rid of operations that can give lots of "stuff" AFK with zero risk and replace them with the ability to safely increase the output of future (non-zero-risk) operations
Let operations simulate without the game running to remove/reduce the motivation to leave the client or even computer idle just for operation progress
Add a little more risk, like Trade has, to operations like Mine/Salvage so that the bad outcomes aren't as predictable and inconsequential
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Concrete example of why I think this is a problem: in my current 2.0.2 insane playthrough, I'm losing a lot of ships. Which is way more fun than I expected, but it's also *very* resource hungry. Running out of iron and titanium after sacrificing captains to Swoks, here's what I did:
Pumped out a few copies of a cheap mining ship
Put some accumulated miner captains on each and whatever mining turrets I could find
Started 6h-8h "safe mode" mining operations on each
Turned off the screen and went to bed
After waking up and grabbing a cup of coffee, I turned my screen back on and saw exactly what I expected and was even guaranteed: several hundred thousand iron and titanium conveniently deposited to my account, which was more than I had collected in total so far with my "active" gameplay and enough to satisfy all my early-game material needs for a while without really "doing" anything.
---
Contentious statement 1: nothing that gives significant amounts of "stuff" (materials, credits, items) should be fully AFK'able. Operations should be a low-micromanagement way to complement (not replace) active player gameplay and being able to get too much, too quickly, with too little interaction can be demotivating. After my example experience above, if I run out of materials again it's going to be hard to not think "maybe I should just stop playing today and let operations AFK some more," which inevitably disengages me from the game further and further.
Contentious suggestion 1: in this spirit, "safe mode" operations with 0 risk (via ambush chance) could be replaced with something like the "rest XP" concept that MMOs pioneered: a way I can passively make the next time I "actually play" yield more rewards for a bit. Rather than being able to do "safe mode" mining operations for 8 hours at half yield, a captain could do an 8-hour "preparation" mining operation (lore: researching asteroid fields, doing maintenance on systems/mining equipment, planning optimal routes, whatever) that would (arbitrary numbers as an example) increase the yields of the next 2 hours of "real" mining operations by 100%. That way, I still get something from this AFK behavior, but it's not a realized gain until I take a risk and actively play more. It doesn't "replace" me playing the game, it can just speed things up when I play later.
---
Contentious statement 2: anything fully AFK'able shouldn't require the client to be running. If I can just turn the screen off and go to bed, I should be able to just turn the computer off and go to bed. The game should ideally not feel like a small-scale bitcoin mining operation.
Contentious suggestion 2: allow operation simulation to continue while a player is offline and, in the case of single-player, fake it with the system clock. Warn when quitting if any active operations have >0% ambush chance but allow those to continue, too. That way, I can decide if I want to take the risk of a 5% ambush not going well without me able to intervene.
---
Contentious statement 3: everything with big, leveraged upsides should have some scary risks I care about. Trade operations have started to get this into a very good place: if my merchant is ambushed after buying all the goods, I could lose the entire trade shipment and its value, which is probably worth a lot more than the ship is. I really care about the safety of the ship on a big trade run and I don't view that ship and captain as expendable. In the same way, miners and scavengers should be able to make me "hurt" if I don't take care of them (lore: ambushed on the way to my big, central depot of resources, which lets the pirates raid my "bank") and I shouldn't feel like the loss ceiling on throwing a miner at things is capped to a tick or two of resource income (adding the crew, this is remarkably even the case with permadestruction!).
Contentious suggestion 3: like trade, every operation that "gives me lots of stuff" should have what's effectively a "critical failure" that has bigger consequences than just "the ship blew up, oh well." The risk/reward of sending a miner or scavenger into an area without sufficient escort or armament should make me hesitate when I see a 15-20% ambush chance just like I hesitate a bit when a merchant has a higher ambush chance as it's sent on an operation with a bunch of my credits. That keeps me mentally engaged with the operations and stops them from becoming a "click here every few minutes for more free resources" button.
That's super long and thanks for reading if you got through it all--hopefully it makes sense and it's really just some rough ideas to help make operations "part of the game" and not "replacement for the game!"
Suggestion
Nyrin
I've grown to love the spirit of the 2.0 changes but there's one thing in particular that keeps bugging me: AFK operations reward and even encourage me to not play the game. I'd like to see if we could get things to where operations always funnel into actively playing more, to where that active playing feels like it matters a lot, and to where leaving my computer on overnight for no reason but getting ticks on guaranteed resource timers isn't a thing.
This is long, but it's just an elaboration of a few, almost certainly contentious, suggestions:
---
Concrete example of why I think this is a problem: in my current 2.0.2 insane playthrough, I'm losing a lot of ships. Which is way more fun than I expected, but it's also *very* resource hungry. Running out of iron and titanium after sacrificing captains to Swoks, here's what I did:
After waking up and grabbing a cup of coffee, I turned my screen back on and saw exactly what I expected and was even guaranteed: several hundred thousand iron and titanium conveniently deposited to my account, which was more than I had collected in total so far with my "active" gameplay and enough to satisfy all my early-game material needs for a while without really "doing" anything.
---
Contentious statement 1: nothing that gives significant amounts of "stuff" (materials, credits, items) should be fully AFK'able. Operations should be a low-micromanagement way to complement (not replace) active player gameplay and being able to get too much, too quickly, with too little interaction can be demotivating. After my example experience above, if I run out of materials again it's going to be hard to not think "maybe I should just stop playing today and let operations AFK some more," which inevitably disengages me from the game further and further.
Contentious suggestion 1: in this spirit, "safe mode" operations with 0 risk (via ambush chance) could be replaced with something like the "rest XP" concept that MMOs pioneered: a way I can passively make the next time I "actually play" yield more rewards for a bit. Rather than being able to do "safe mode" mining operations for 8 hours at half yield, a captain could do an 8-hour "preparation" mining operation (lore: researching asteroid fields, doing maintenance on systems/mining equipment, planning optimal routes, whatever) that would (arbitrary numbers as an example) increase the yields of the next 2 hours of "real" mining operations by 100%. That way, I still get something from this AFK behavior, but it's not a realized gain until I take a risk and actively play more. It doesn't "replace" me playing the game, it can just speed things up when I play later.
---
Contentious statement 2: anything fully AFK'able shouldn't require the client to be running. If I can just turn the screen off and go to bed, I should be able to just turn the computer off and go to bed. The game should ideally not feel like a small-scale bitcoin mining operation.
Contentious suggestion 2: allow operation simulation to continue while a player is offline and, in the case of single-player, fake it with the system clock. Warn when quitting if any active operations have >0% ambush chance but allow those to continue, too. That way, I can decide if I want to take the risk of a 5% ambush not going well without me able to intervene.
---
Contentious statement 3: everything with big, leveraged upsides should have some scary risks I care about. Trade operations have started to get this into a very good place: if my merchant is ambushed after buying all the goods, I could lose the entire trade shipment and its value, which is probably worth a lot more than the ship is. I really care about the safety of the ship on a big trade run and I don't view that ship and captain as expendable. In the same way, miners and scavengers should be able to make me "hurt" if I don't take care of them (lore: ambushed on the way to my big, central depot of resources, which lets the pirates raid my "bank") and I shouldn't feel like the loss ceiling on throwing a miner at things is capped to a tick or two of resource income (adding the crew, this is remarkably even the case with permadestruction!).
Contentious suggestion 3: like trade, every operation that "gives me lots of stuff" should have what's effectively a "critical failure" that has bigger consequences than just "the ship blew up, oh well." The risk/reward of sending a miner or scavenger into an area without sufficient escort or armament should make me hesitate when I see a 15-20% ambush chance just like I hesitate a bit when a merchant has a higher ambush chance as it's sent on an operation with a bunch of my credits. That keeps me mentally engaged with the operations and stops them from becoming a "click here every few minutes for more free resources" button.
That's super long and thanks for reading if you got through it all--hopefully it makes sense and it's really just some rough ideas to help make operations "part of the game" and not "replacement for the game!"
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