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Am I alone in thinking that Stargate Probes are a bad idea?


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@ Cpttwerk

Oh i get ya, but the kind of group that is going to take months of game play to fly manually, are not there to mine and make money, they are there to either explore or colonize, the miner would use the probe so he can keep mining and making money while waiting on the 15 different probes he sent out

As they say good sir, you got to spend money to make money. And a guy investing in 15 probes to find untapped mineral sites, is a man who invests hard.

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Imagine this... The rp group is spending months building their ship, we build a probe and launch it.....two months later they leave...we jump to our probe two months later and start claiming the planet to mine material and build our personal nukes etc, 7 weeks after ariving we build our stargate, a week later they arrive finally after traveling for months, and out of supplies....and . we already own most of the planet, the stargate, and have a bountiful operation going..... Now which side of that do you guys want to be on? 

 

From my understanding, planets are gonna be rather large; a bit too large to claim within seven weeks. Perhaps if you had tons of Territory Units on hand, it'd be feasible, but from what I've heard from the devs, Territory Units aren't going to be the easiest thing to manufacture in the first place. Granted, if no one else is there you can just build on neutral land, but if someone happened to claim it, problems arise. Also, claiming an entire planet means defending each territory unit, which I imagine could get a bit tedious and resource consuming.

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@GalloInfligo,

I was unable to find anything backing up my thought on this, I also was not able to find anything backing up your thought. Do you have links so that I can see as well?

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I think stargates should be in the game. But I also think normal FTL travel should be balanced so that if you are traveling in a small craft going between systems using normal ftl is the method of choice. As to if people who enter the game at a later stage should have an easier time reaching the stars, that's how the devs have explicitly told us it's going to be.

 

I find it interesting that whenever I hear the devs talking about the game I really like what I hear, I imagine an upgraded version of eve that fixes many of the problems that game had while adding solid crafting mechanics. But then people keep making threads about tacking on all manner of unfun survival and rp mechanics, that imo would be really bad for the game if they were implemented.

 

 

They never said anything about making it easier for later players to reach new stars (outside of stargates), what they said was:

 

"Flying from a planet to another should be a real achievement in our game vision. So it would not be available on the first day of the official release. If a player is here from day 1, it might be weeks, maybe a few months before the travel from planet to planet becomes possible. This is still a topic heavily discussed in the team. However, later on in the game, when the global tech level of civilizations built by the players will have reached a certain point, it will be possible for a new comer to simply buy or be given a ship to fly with as soon as he arrives in game (he will still need to learn a few skills to be able to fly it however, but the basic levels should be reachable between a few minutes and a few hours, according to the flying construct complexity). In short, the game experience for a player present from day 1 might be very different from the game experience of a player coming several months after the game has launched, also different from the game experience of a player entering the game one year after official launch (where many solar systems will be, without a doubt, already discovered and colonized)."

 

 

And on the topic of Stargates and travelling to distant stars they've stated it will take months for probes to reach their destinations before players can travel to them and construct the other end of their stargate, there was nothing stated about making it easier for new players to just immediately travel to distant stars without stargates.

 

 

 

Also, those "unfun" RP mechanics are the reason many of us are here, and have been so active on the forums, and why we've gone out of our way to make player organizations based on the little we know about the game.

 

How could you possibly say they'd be "really bad for the game if implemented" without knowing anything about the game as it is? You're applying that logic in the hopes that the game will be like Eve Online, which aside from some basic mechanics and the world being a sandbox, DU is going to be anything but Eve Online. 

 

Those of us who have been most vocal in our support of DU are the ones hoping for a feature rich game that is both difficult and rewarding, not a theme park playground where everything is given to us without much effort or patience. I can't see how having to work towards something and needing patience is "unfun", especially in a game where they expect it to take us weeks or months to even reach space in the first place. 

 

If I wanted a game where I could just jump into a ship and fly anywhere I wanted immediately without any effort or survival mechanics, I'd just play No Man's Sky. 

 

I want a game where people have to work together to create amazing structures in space, where trade and the economy are a core part of the game dictated by players, where establishing a new planetary colony is something to be proud of and not something anyone can do overnight, where going to war involves more than just throwing manpower and ships into battle, where every choice a player makes has an impact on the world around them.

 

I want a game that has a living breathing world, and you can't really do that without survival mechanics of some type, otherwise we'll just end up with Everquest Landmark in space.

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For anyone that wants to hear it from JC's mouth, here is the interview with TheXPGamers that he did (the bit about stargate mechanics and how fast the game universe will expand starts at 17:30):

 

 

"It's not a technical issue to have a gigantic world, we are more interested in having a world that is populated with people who made the effort to go where they want to go..."

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im with the OP on the "wait months to arrive" thing.

 

yes, getting to other star systems shouldnt be an easy thing, but it shouldnt simply be limited by the amount of time someone is willing to wait while watching a distance meter to tick down.

 

building a stargate, calibrating it that it works at all, determining the billion and one parameters for it to work, determining the billion and one other parameters it needs to connect to the system in question should be the things you have to do to get to a system where you have no arrival gate, not waiting for a timer to tick down...

 

have the player work during that months it takes to "arrive" at another star system.

 

especially in the beginning times where nobody has experience in building stargates, how to efficiently calibrate and run them, how to get the data needed to get a ship to where you want it to be.

 

waiting for a timer to tick down is boring and lazy game design.

implement the same time delay with actual gameplay, with the player able to influence it.

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@Cornflakes

 

 

Project : Loveboat is happening. A challenge to get from one star to another in normal space. Building a giant ass ship with its own ecosystem and hopefully a hydrogen gathering port on the front of the ship. :P

 

 

Oh you can't bring that up without the song!

 

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Just a few things i want to say :

- A probe is a basic stargate itself, otherwise you couldnt jump on it when it arrives. You'd need to build defenses and various other optional or additional stuff ofc.

- A probe isn't (or at least i hope so) a single element. But a drone we build, script, and equip with a specific element, the stargate element.

- A probe has to carry a stargate, it's should be quite heavy. Theoretically, a ship built to go fast, would never be slower than a probe.

- A probe speed depends on the amount of thruster you put on it, and this ofc will require more fuel and resources in general.

 

Ofc if a probe is just a single mesh, that we dont have to build, all I said isnt true. I hope not.

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I think if I was heading up an exploration company, I'd have a division that scours interstellar space for unmanned probes, shooting them down whenever I find them.  Only true explorers, read: manned expeditions allowed past the kuiper belt.

 

Here incoming the pilgrims, who open their wings to embrace the starry sky!

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For anyone that wants to hear it from JC's mouth, here is the interview with TheXPGamers that he did (the bit about stargate mechanics and how fast the game universe will expand starts at 17:30):

 

 

"It's not a technical issue to have a gigantic world, we are more interested in having a world that is populated with people who made the effort to go where they want to go..."

 

Thanks Yamamushi,  this is what I was refering to, you launch a drone, it drops a seed and you jump to the seed.  no self making star gate, you have to build it.

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Thanks Yamamushi,  this is what I was refering to, you launch a drone, it drops a seed and you jump to the seed.  no self making star gate, you have to build it.

 

To jump, you need a stargate. If you can jump to a seed, then stargates are useless, and there's no reason to build them. So they'll probably be build, and then carried by a probe. Or maybe it'll carry a factory unit scripted to automatically craft a stargate from a blueprint? who knows...

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To jump, you need a stargate. If you can jump to a seed, then stargates are useless, and there's no reason to build them. So they'll probably be build, and then carried by a probe. Or maybe it'll carry a factory unit scripted to automatically craft a stargate from a blueprint? who knows...

 

Or maybe the probe lights a beacon which is only good for a limited time window.  Say a week.  You've got to jump all the players and equipment you need to set up an outpost with the purpose of building a stargate... or colonising the isolated system.

 

I am unsure how I feel about probes doing the bulk of interstellar exploration, but we'll see what NQ can cook up.

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I kinda thought that I might hit a nerve. ...little did I know.  ;)

 

First off: @Yamamushi,

 

I have no problem with a subscription based pay model. I know that NQ has invested heavily in some new server tech, and that it will take resources to maintain the sort of server cluster (or whatever) that they're envisioning. I'm cool with that, and am more than willing to fork over the mula for a chance to explore this game. My criticism is in a miss-matched mechanic.

 

Months-long-travel-time is a perfectly fine mechanic...in a certain type of game. I simply contend that it is a horrible mechanic for a subscription based game.

 

Also @Yamamushi,

 

I understand the concern of the devs that they might end up with a ghost-town of a game, and therefore they feel that they must control the speed of player-creep throughout the DU-Verse, it's just that I feel there is a better way to accomplish this goal.

 

I think speed is the answer to the problem of player-creep, not the cause of it.

 

Let me explain.

 

There are two things that I feel will serve to concentrate the player-base in a natural and instinctive manner: the first is ease of travel, and the second is a dearth of safe spots.

 

If NQ makes force-fields like the one provided by the Novark Arkship really (and I mean really) rare, and then combined that with a travel mechanic that allows every player a realistic shot of making a not-tortuous journey of exploration with a few of their close gamer-friends throughout the 'Verse (not just the rich and powerful)...well then, they might just strike that happy medium.

 

I can't help but say that slow travel times would divide the player-base more surely than anything else. ...by definition, really. Whereas fast travel times would allow the players to concentrate in the safest place they know (ahem...Novark, on Alioth; AKA the first MegaTropolis), whilst simultaneously giving them an opportunity to venture out into the cosmos, at their peril, to do whatever they deem fit. All within a reasonable span of a play session. (e.g. pay some stargate tolls, engage ship FTL and head to star system of choice, engage in desired activities, fire up the FTL back to the stargate chain you traveled out on, pay some tolls, and back home in time for supper. :D)

 

Think of it...everyone would have the electrifying knowledge that exploring the universe is always at their fingertips, but that the only guaranteed safe place is Novark, on Alioth. Automatically, Novark becomes the first major player hub for habitation (the first mass-player homestead, if you will), and the first major trade hub at the same time. All while leaving the game wide open to everybody's play-style.

 

IDK...just my thoughts.

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