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Galactic cartography


5p34k3r

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Hey everyone!   Before I begin, wanted to express my apologies if this is mentioned.  I did attempt to sift through the idea box.

 

I think it would be great if the sensor info about the surrounding star systems and other astrological bodies that we would see in our personal navigation (ship, tool, HUD, console, whatever the case will be)

Were to be all unknown. This would allow people to trade star maps, allow for secret routes, (think star wars, the hyperspace routes) one could make a rather interesting and profitable living exploring various ftl routes, andd it would make it feel more real. :P

 

This is obviously a rather rough draft if the idea, but I feel the fundamentals are there for someone to expand on it if so inclined ^^

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The ftl drives will be vastly slower than the stargates that will eventually come along.

 

Were to start in a bootstrap stage of the world, the early pioneers of whatever Alioth is to become.

 

So after sending out probes to nearby stars it'll give you faction a limited number of ftl jumps to the source, with a one way ticket there. no return to Alioth until you have a stargate up and functioning on both ends. Necessitating the need to bring a Resurrection node with you on your colony ship.

 

Being unaware if we will have a star chart or not in the begining, i cant imagine it to be to expansive to begin with. likely not more charted than the star system Alioth is in, and possibly a very few nearby systems, or at best the path that the arkship took through the stars, but nothing else, assuming that the arkships sensors worked properly for the entire time.

 

Any stargate paths that do come into existence will depend on your relations with the owners of said gates. or if you have a lot of patience you can possibly send ships on a ftl path to bypass their gates, and maybe try to build a stargate of your own in secret right under whoever "owns" a system.

 

 

To your pleasure or dismay it will be much more eve than star wars as my understanding goes. Still, having good trade relations will do wonders for you plotting profitable trade routes.

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The initial idea was influenced largely by the exploration profession in elite dangerous.   being able to explore and sell your sensor logs was quite fun.   Can sell the logs to a faction you like, gaining reputation with them and effecting the back ground sim.  I realize it's not the same game, but that set of features was always quite intruiging 

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To further that your idea, I think if one was to be something of a professional explorer in DU then it would help to really focus the skills/abilities to that.

Basic level: send a probe and it tells you whats what.
Mid level: probes can differentiate planet types and stars, provide number of moons, etc
high level: planet readouts with pretty accurate locations of minerals and such
pro level: idk, locate wormholes? will gas mining be a thing? accurate details of everything.

It'd be cool if you had a limited amount of copies of your findings so it would be up to the buyer to pass along or retain the knowledge of the stars...  It would be interesting to see players needing to fill in the gaps of a galaxy wide map as opposed to it being set up for everyone.

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Have they said anything about how many systems they aim to create though? I got the notion they would add one system after the another, with said gates - not on such a massive scale which would make exploration a plausible thing.

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Exploration will definitely be lucrative. Even opening up one new system will bring millions of km^2 of new terrain, and later in the game when people have the resources to keep opening new stargates there could be dozens of new systems reached per month. 

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I also was thinking that there could be spy mapping satellites to get updates on the planetary surface on the map shown in the May DevDiary, and telescopes for detecting planets around other stars. They would be rather s***ty, and it just tells you the orbit and type(Terrestrial? Gas? etc), size, and the average temperature of the planet. To get extra details, we would have to send a probe. Speaking of probes, doesn't there have to be at least one person on ships for control? Say, we could have the probes be automated but is very fragile and cannot be edited, and needs connection by radio.

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That sounds like a good plan. You have telescopes that would tell you where other stars actually are to begin with. They should even only offer information about the position and size of the star. Next would be your classic stargate probe which would collect a little information about other planets. After that, people will be coming through with ships with sensors to perform better scans of the planets and moons.

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On 09/07/2017 at 1:41 PM, Thokan said:

Have they said anything about how many systems they aim to create though? I got the notion they would add one system after the another, with said gates - not on such a massive scale which would make exploration a plausible thing.

 

I thought the same thing too, they said planets would be proceduraly generated but only when they decide to add a new system, not like minecraft where the world generate as you progress...

Sadly i don't think DU will be a game where you explore new systems... There will still be planets to explore, i mean their surface, for example if a corporation is looking for a ressource deposit, they'll probably charge an explorer to go and find a good source of this ressource...

 

EDIT: I can't find where I saw this, I am probably wrong, Exploration will probably be a thing

Edited by Celivalg
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On 7/15/2017 at 11:14 AM, Celivalg said:

I thought the same thing too, they said planets would be proceduraly generated but only when they decide to add a new system, not like minecraft where the world generate as you progress...

 

I'm not sure where you saw that, but I believe you are incorrect. The world is completely procedurally generated so the systems all already exist

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On 9.7.2017 at 2:41 PM, Thokan said:

Have they said anything about how many systems they aim to create though? I got the notion they would add one system after the another, with said gates - not on such a massive scale which would make exploration a plausible thing.

From everything that I have heard of they aren't going to "create" or "add" systems or stargates. The world in proceduraly generated and to get new systems players have to go explore and discover them. Expansion of the world would depend on how much players go out there. To get stargates for those players have to build the gates themselves. They don't just exists like in eve for example. I'm actually hoping to have/be part of an organisation that builds and controls gates in multiple systems and cashes in by charging people for travel. 

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I'd love the idea of people having to create their own maps. One can use LUA for a lot of things. While mapping the planet might be interesting, mapping astroids for resources could be big business. Information has value. Map making or cartography can help with expanding mining operations and other adventures.

 

Translating coordinates to a 3D image is child's play if you know which spot is 0,0,0. The more detail you put on the map the more value it has. Afcourse there's also the matter of how accurate this information is.

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  • 1 month later...

I think we should only get individual maps, that grow and show only the places you have been.

That way Space is BIG. And exploring is more fun.

It is no fun to just fly to a point on the map: you want to pick a star in the sky and just go there and see what is there.

 

Also: as a small alliance you could move out deep, and let new members spawn at your base. They will not be able to betray the location (spies etc). Only a few trusted members know the way to the Hub and nearby trading centers. They can try to find out of course, but by flying out in random directions it is very unlikely the spies find their way back to the hub. They might try to follow the trusted traders, but that sounds like a nice cat & mouse game :)

 

That way you could build your empire up without being wiped out on day one by the neighbouring superpower.

I stopped with Eve Online because it was not possible anymore as a small group to own any deep space system on your own. Either fleet service, or high taxes where required from a larger power: made me feel like a slave.

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7 hours ago, Emma Roid said:

Also: as a small alliance you could move out deep, and let new members spawn at your base.

I believe this won't be possible in a way that you enter a corp, then suicide and spawn deep in space in your corp cloning chamber, as in some interview JC told you will always spawn on nearest cloning center available. So you need to take those new people to your place first, so in its turn they will be able to record the route. On the other hand this may be real if one way jump gates are implemented in the game. So you can let people get in, but then they won't be able to return without proper corp privileges.

 

The other thing that matter much in this case is how fast space will grow. Because currently I see several options:

- either once someone gets deep enough into space the server will generate new space in that direction, so space expands immediately and theoretically becomes endless. At this case the major issue may be that some players will just spent crazy amount of time traveling far far away increasing number of system drastically. This may cause problems to server at some point. 

- or limited space will be added once NQ decides that people need more freedom. So this may happen periodically but not instantly.

From my point of view NQ will probably control the size of universe somehow, as even being MMO with large amount of players it won't be a good idea to let people get lost too much, as in this case we will come to a large number of totally separated communities that hardly ever meet. 

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8 minutes ago, Miamato said:

I believe this won't be possible in a way that you enter a corp, then suicide and spawn deep in space in your corp cloning chamber, as in some interview JC told you will always spawn on nearest cloning center available. So you need to take those new people to your place first, so in its turn they will be able to record the route. On the other hand this may be real if one way jump gates are implemented in the game. So you can let people get in, but then they won't be able to return without proper corp privileges.

 

The other thing that matter much in this case is how fast space will grow. Because currently I see several options:

- either once someone gets deep enough into space the server will generate new space in that direction, so space expands immediately and theoretically becomes endless. At this case the major issue may be that some players will just spent crazy amount of time traveling far far away increasing number of system drastically. This may cause problems to server at some point. 

- or limited space will be added once NQ decides that people need more freedom. So this may happen periodically but not instantly.

From my point of view NQ will probably control the size of universe somehow, as even being MMO with large amount of players it won't be a good idea to let people get lost too much, as in this case we will come to a large number of totally separated communities that hardly ever meet. 

They can and will control size ofc because

- they want players to interact

- they want emergent gameplay

- you have a good gauge of how fast players will expand (skills need time)

- they can introduce new forms of travel (normal space engines may need 30 days to reach a planet, FTL drives may only need 4)

 

so with these actions and factors, they can design the vastness of space pretty easily and well enough

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I am all in favor of people interacting. And for the rest I will adjust to the game dynamics, that's all fine.

 

But my Eve Online experience tells me that their are lots of people that love spying and betrayal. I am curious how you can prevent Pirate corps from letting spies join corps, scout out juicy targets, and then send the whole pirate fleet over to loot it. Of course we have the claim/bubble thing, but that is 48 hour max. As a small corps you cannot protect yourself from a sustained pirate attack.

I hope that in DU small corps can still have a base without getting grieved every few days. In Eve Online small independent corps cannot really own a base in 0.0, they can only roam around with a base in low sec, or hide in wormhole space.

 

We will see how DU develops, I am excited either way.

 

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This topic was indeed discussed before. but it was quite a while back.  The topic is well worth a scan through, because it got a nice response from NQ.

 

 

In particular, Nyzaltar's post:

 

On 11/18/2015 at 1:48 PM, NQ-Nyzaltar said:
Hi Klatu and Vylqun!
The vision you have about exploration is, for the most part, the same we have at Novaquark.
 
@Klatu:
 
  • Explorer specialization won't be just for the sake of exploring. Of course, we plan to make it as insteresting as possible for people who just want to discover new horizons, but we plan to do more than that.
     
  • Indeed, we plan Explorer specialization as a viable way to make a living in the game, exactly how you described it: Explorers will often be the ones to gather resources, but they will have also another kind of income: trading information about resource locations through contracts (which will be a practical use of the RDMS, Rights & Duties Management System).
     
  • Yes, players (especially the first wave) will start the game starved of data. There will be minimal info even about the starting planet, Alioth, at the beginning. We want to generate naturally player demand about map data that way. Explorers will also be - most likely - Cartographers of the planet but also of the surrounding space (first Alioth's solar system, and then the galaxy surrounding it!). The known areas will grow accordingly with player exploration speed.
     
  • The size of the game universe is virtually unlimited. That's the point of having a procedurally generated Universe. We don't want players to be at some point blocked or slowed down due to lack of content to explore. This might be described in a more detailed way in the future, on the DevBlog.
     
  • Explorer specialization will be possible on two axis (like any other specialization): Training skills and crafting (or buying) gear more and more efficient.
 
All in all, we have the goal to make any specialization fun to play, but also - and we think that's what is lacking in many games - meaningful in a massively multiplayer game world, that each player find useful to group together, either for having complementary skills or to make a big corporation specialized in one activity and selling their services for large-scale ingame projects!
 
@Vylqun:
 
  • Crafting will imply intermediary states between raw resources and a finished products. That's why you will have "alloys" and "parts". The way of learning new "recipes" (we should avoid to use the word "skillbook" here, to avoid confusion with learning new skills) is still under discussion in the team. Crafting will most probably be the topic of a DevBlog post in the future ;)
     
  • If all goes well, yes, Explorers should be as much popular with Scientists/Researchers as with Industrialists/Crafters :)
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

 

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