TheRedScourge

For that I'd say no pirate raids of the colonized controlled systems, but raids and pirate and smuggler bases anywhere else. Basically, if you want to do trading, it's safe in the systems where you'd trade, but moving anywhere else is still a bit of a risk. As for the minerals and difficulty scaling, you could probably just invert the distances and everything would probably scale similarly, so iron and titanium are in the core and you get better stuff the further you go out, instead of the further you go in.

As for a pie slice shaped galaxy hurting the core size, I suppose in theory you could make it be a portion just bigger than a half or quarter, such that all or most of the core is kept. I think the way they could implement it would still be easy as all they'd have to do is a quick pass across the map sectors when generating the sectors to ignore or set as a rift anything left of a certain map coordinate, or anything above a certain map coordinate , so the exact cutoff they use would not really matter.

Would definitely be nice to be able to trade ships to players, whether as a one-off trade, or as part of a revamp of the ships list interface where you can assign users or fully transfer ownership.

Reserving first reply in case this idea takes off, and needs to be fleshed out further for specific storyline elements

Hi all, In another thread of mine, "Custom Galaxy Size: Half or Quarter", ( https://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,5561.msg30120.html#msg30120 ) I proposed a simple method for implementing a scalable galaxy size, which is to use pie slice shapes and fill the remainder with rifts, so you get a half or quarter shape. The idea was that this would allow scalable galaxy sizes without much programming difficulty or story or game mechanics changes to implement. However, the general idea behind this idea was that the galaxy is kind of too big and feels too empty in multiplayer, but this thread led to me realizing that there's actually a way better, though much more technically difficult, way to solve the problem, but which also would vastly improve the early-game mechanics for newcomers, improve the overall storyline and make it seem more consistent. which is this: Start players inside the core and have them travel outwards as the game goes on instead, then back to the very center for the endgame General idea: - Entire core is no-PvP, no pirate raids or faction warfare on inhabited systems, no Xsotan, giving a shallow difficulty and learning curve early on - You have to be befriended by a portal guarding faction to first be allowed to leave the core, which better integrates the economy and bulletins as a storyline element - A separate but much smaller core barrier region where the endgame still will take place, which might better allow for instancing - Add new artifacts or reallocate existing ones to be dropped by new Xsotan minibosses in the four corners, which you lose and must reobtain every time you want to redo the endgame, perhaps feeding into instancing Why I think it makes more sense: - Introducing PvP, large pirate raids, faction warfare, Xsotan attacks, and a quickly scaling difficult only outside the core helps make it easier for beginners to safely master the very basics like economy and ship building before they venture into the more dangerous areas, and could make the mid game more of a challenge - Players are way more likely to encounter each other early on, more effectively creating either a cooperative or competitive atmosphere for the game - Later in game, the galaxy would be bigger, but as players get a larger jump radius, they can still meet if they want, but meeting by accident will be less likely, which makes PvP scarier and more exciting - The barrier will fit better as a gameplay mechanic and story element, as the storyline doesn't really make sense now from a practical aspect - The new storyline explaining the mechanics could be that the Xsotan are coming from the outside in, the core was intentionally sealed off except for some portals to serve as a defensive chokepoint, strong factions defend those portals, law and order is maintained inside the core, but is hit or miss outside the core - You first meet the Xsotan at these barrier portals, as they are forced to come through the portals and get blasted - The Xsotan getting stronger toward the edges actually makes more sense if they are extra-dimensional invaders, and then the plot hole as to why they never wiped out the outer rim factions on their way to the core goes away - Getting artifacts for the endgame from Xsotan minibosses in the four corners makes way more sense than now, where you get them unexpectedly, and mostly from random rather weak bandits I understand this would be a technically demanding thing to develop, but I also think it would be the sort of change you'd really need to implement if you wanted to move from beta to full release.

This is kind of ballooning into a larger idea which should probably be a separate post. I think I'll go make that

The difficulty is that early on, especially with random start systems, everyone is as far away as they can possibly get, it's as hard as it will ever be to get over to where your friends are or encounter other people who aren't necessarily your friends, and this reverses the closer you get to the core. It almost seems to me as though the starting position should be near the core, that perhaps there are no Xsotan in there, that perhaps the difficulty is low and rather uniform in the entire core, allowing it to act as a sort of a newbie orientation area, and where the difficulty really starts when you get out of the core. Perhaps you have to get to the corners to collect some of the artifacts, perhaps fighting some sort of Xsotan minibosses, and then you can unlock a smaller ring in the very center to encounter the guardian, who perhaps we learn stealthily snuck in there long ago, well before the other Xsotan started to arrive, to plan to open the floodgates even worse, whereupon it would become an attack from both sides and the whole galaxy would be quickly overrun. This might also be a smarter idea for how to explain the whole storyline. If the Xsotan are extradimensional invaders, it doesn't make sense that they'd be strongest in the core, but that there'd still be super strong factions surviving in the core despite being cut off after all those years. It also doesn't make that much sense that the outer parts of the galaxy would have been cut off from the core with only the Xsotan still able to easily cross apparently, etc. Not only that, but the play mechanic for multiplayer would be way more enjoyable as you tend to need to cooperate with others early on, and outside the core where it's bigger, you've got more room to explore and you're less likely to run into PvP if you don't want it. You could also make the trip out of the core a one-way trip until you find all the artifacts, to allow the core to more or less remain a protected area for newcomers, safe from PvP by stronger players. You could even have some sort of story element where PvP is disallowed within the core as there's a more stable law enforcement situation, and allowed in most places outside of the core where there's a lot more of a struggle to survive the Xsotan onslaught.

Hi, My idea is giving multi/single players a choice of galaxy size when starting the game. Half, Quarter, or full. This makes it more suitable for smaller multiplayer servers, or a less tedious single player experience. If this is hard to implement, since a lot of things are calculated based on distance to the core, an easy way to implement this would be to divvy the galaxy up like pie slices, so that half or three quarters of it is just automatically turned into rift. In theory, if you could also make it so that new stations are spawned in in response to players destroying stations, I think that would really improve the gameplay a lot, and perhaps improve performance at the same time.