Spacefaring_Guy

I know I certainly don't know the answer to that for scripting, but if we look at it in terms of how it might work in the real world... you know what cargo you have, but you may have forgotten your route. So since you KNOW what cargo you have, and your job is to sell whatever you can... start from scratch. It's a long chain query, though, because there's probably a nasty, nasty web of possibilities to choose from. I'd do something like: List of all stations that will buy my cargo

Rather than adaptive armour, I'd side with an improved repair mechanic. Which leads to it being kind of 'wrong' that ore and unplaced turrets and upgrades go into a magical dimension that's always accessible to the player. Perhaps we ought to be looking at having those items take up cargo space (with your drone having just enough of a Bag of Holding to build a small iron ship to get you going). And then, to prevent the pain of going all the way back to square one after a bad encounter, every player should be affiliated with a station on the galactic rim (where they would first spawn) that has player-specific inventory and infinite capacity. Then players can decide how much cargo space they want to set aside for spare parts and materials to repair damage... and how much they're willing to lose if they get completely blown out of the sky.

Upon reflection (and reading the above replies) I (partially) retract my suggestion. In multiplayer, things should stay as they are, it adds an important dynamic to the game. However, in single player there's no real point to making me wait 30+ seconds in a void if I don't happen to have a good sector radar system or if I'm trying to make a longer trip to somewhere I've been before and have to cross a lot of empty space to get there in a straight line instead of the original winding path. Let's say it should be a really low priority suggestion.

More numbers to track. Instead of "I have 'x' crew", you'd need to know the likelihood of any crewmember starting a mutiny. Now you're tracking past affiliations for each crew member, what position they're assigned to (security being the ones most likely to successfully pull off a mutiny). Maybe you get a saboteur in engineering or maintenance, which the astute player could notice as a reduced efficiency level. And then you end up needing a new category of crew: Internal Security. MPs. Human Resources. Whatever, you need someone watching your crew to find potential problems. It COULD be a lot of fun, and lead to mission scripts etc. It could also be a micro-management hell.

1. Drops should be a percentage chance from the pool of items attached to the ship or station. Possibly also slightly degraded due to battle damage. 2. Research should build a pool of attributes from everything in the source slots, and assign a probability to them based on how many slots contain them. Material, DPS, independent targeting, overheat, vs. hull bonus, vs. shield bonus, range bonus, etc. The resulting upgrade should have a chance of being one level higher based on the number of source items (as now), and IF that level bump happens, DPS should get bumped with it. And it should be more restrictive about inputs - turrets or upgrades, they should all have to be the same type. And while we're at it... research should cost money (though not much, because you're donating five parts for one back), and the research facility should send the plans to all turret factories and equipment docks in their faction, so you start seeing the new parts appearing on their ships. Because why would they keep the data your little secret?

A little bit of backstory: I am very impatient. So, not wanting to wait for the 'keep sectors loaded' update, I decided to turn off Steam authentication on the server and run a secondary hacked client, and leave that 'player' in a sector so everything would keep on going when I was out of sector. It worked... except now everybody hates that 'player', because I left my ships set to 'patrol' and they invariably attack civilian transports causing all factions to like me less, and eventually they start getting attacked, too. So... the AI really needs two additional options: "Fire only if fired upon" and "Never fire upon unarmed vessels". Options, because you might decide to play like a Pirate King, right?

I think the option to allow one 'agent' per player to act as a player - move sectors, have sectors active while present, etc - would be awesome. Imagine writing a script to assign to a captain who takes a ship on a trade route you've worked out, or to jump from allied sector to allied sector to hunt pirates or assist in fighting invading factions, or just going around the map on an exploration mission to map available stations. Or maybe be a scavenger and collect scrap from cold battlefields. All with a chance you'll never see them again if they come across something they can't handle, of course.

You know what would be really, really awesome? If the server had folders for required and optional client-side mods, so on logon you could get a warning and choose if you wanted to download them for your client or abort your connection attempt. And on the client side, those mods could be directed into either a server-specific location or a general location that would apply to any server you connect to, your choice. That'd be sweet. I know there are probably some permissions issues where existing files have to be edited or something, but in my (current) ignorance I'm going to gloss over the potential difficulties in my enthusiasm for this suggestion.

Current system doesn't recover turrets or upgrades, nor source you crew, or provide ore. So IF you have ore, you can found a new ship, apply your latest plan... and spend a long time looking for crew so the ship doesn't fall apart, then hope you find a good turret merchant, an equipment supplier, etc. It'd be nice to pay a premium so you could bypass that.

You know what would be really nice? Replacement insurance. Lose your ship in battle against an AI and the insurance company pays a shipyard to build a replacement based on last filed plans, complete with turrets, upgrades, and crew. This would involve despawning your wreckage (you give up the salvage rights to the insurance company, who sent out a crew to recover what they could) to prevent farming your own ship and would need periodic payments equal to a percentage of the ship's value, and a minimum time after purchasing the policy before it comes into effect.

Escape pods, marked by faction, could offer you the opportunity on your personnel screen to recruit from the survivors of ships you didn't blow up.

Another thought, same subject. Crew should want to live, so under performing while under fire or to the point the ship is falling apart shouldn't be an option. Instead, they should bill you a premium for every such instance, and if you get too far in debt they can mutiny and the ship becomes an AI-run entity. (Which should probably have some server code to have it travel to the nearest friendly station-containing sector where it goes into Patrol mode or something).

It might be nice to have a basic server option for 'starting level', so perhaps a server for very experienced players could start them slightly closer to the core, with a very basic titanium-level ship. Iron's great for a tutorial level, but I find that it is far too limiting without a generator part. Alternatively... maybe an option to enable an iron generator part? That could be fun.

ONE: The cooldown/calculation time mechanic adds something to the game - risk if you land in the wrong spot and want to escape. However, it also adds tedium. So, I would suggest that the cooldown and calculation times should drop to zero if you land in an empty sector. It makes no sense from an in-game perspective, but it would improve quality of play immensely. TWO: Computer blocks should also provide a reduction bonus against calculation time.

I'd be fine with mail of items disappearing... but maybe not just yet. The game still has some problems that can leave you in an inescapable downward spiral until you're just a drone in the starting sector. It's nice when a friend can get you what you need quickly enough to survive. But when the bugs are worked out, absolutely. I was just thinking about how to make teleportation work if the player base insisted it had to stay.

How about it's assumed gates have near-instant relay... like galactic SMS? Then you could have a formula of: Message delivery time = 5 min x #sectors from sender to nearest gate + #sectors from recipient to nearest gate. And make delivery free for data, but charge for matter transmission (and matter transmission should require endpoints, so why not require docking at a gate?). It's not perfect - there isn't a path from every gate to every other gate, but perhaps it's good enough for the game.

"I've got this old treasure map. Supposedly it has a way into a sector surrounded by rifts, full of riches untouched. 50K credits."

Well, I'd think there'd be a significant delay (based on game difficulty) before the scavengers showed up. Takes time to load up your ship, wake the crew, and get to the target sector!

Merchants, cargo haulers, etc should all jump out of sector when a large battle starts. Or, if it's their home sector and has a military outpost, they could optionally opt to cluster near that for protection. And if any ships do leave the system, it should be presumed news of the war gets out, escalating the odds of scavenger ships jumping in after battle to loot the battlefield.

And while we're at it... Merchants ought to have trade routes... sticking to one or two factions or some region of the galactic map (essentially, select their name from a table of options divided by region or faction or whatever). And their map data should be one of the items they offer for sale.

If showing up in an active war zone, the merchant should broadcast their greeting (assume it's automatic). Then, about 10 seconds later there should be some kind of "Er... I'll be back in 10 minutes to sell to the survivors" and 10 seconds later he should warp out.

<s>Possession is 9/10ths of the law, right? Sector ownership should be with whoever has one or more functional stations present. Co-ownership should be possible. To take over a sector, you'd have to destroy those stations and start one of your own. Or, I suppose, build your own station and defend it for partial ownership.</s> <i>Err... well, given that's how my client is currently acting, I probably shouldn't have suggested this...</i> As for attack waves, they should have to come from somewhere, so ideally there'd be a background calculation about how many ships the nearest attacker-allied shipyard (within a max radius) could produce in a given period of time. That would let you defeat an armada and not have to do it again every 5 minutes. It would give you a chance to find the source and destroy it.

The option to drop a beacon and/or stash would be nice. I suppose right now you could found a ship that's just a cargo bay... but that would decay without crew, right? I do think being able to 'email' everything through the ether when the whole rest of the game is based on the need to physically travel to places to get things is a bit counter to the premise.

As a general rule, humans want to live. I propose that any player ship, with any crew, and not under player control should have some basic AI activate in the event of existential threats to the ship (damage over a threshold or the approach of known hostiles that aren't massively out matched), unless their standing orders are 'attack enemies' or 'patrol this area'. Mostly, I'd expect a ship that is otherwise idle or mining to attempt a hyperspace hop to the nearest sector without mass or energy signatures. While waiting to jump, it should attempt to flee. While fleeing, it should return fire if possible. With a captain on board, I would expect minor threats to be destroyed instead of retreated from.

Within the mechanics of the game, what if you could enter hyperspace but not come back until you wanted to do so? Perhaps it could be triggered by attempting to jump back to the same sector you're already in. Your own little pocket universe, in which your ship is essentially in stasis. Batteries and shields don't recover, crew is frozen and doesn't need to be paid, there's nothing to shoot, and (most importantly) you can't be found by other players or bots to be attacked while you're AFK. And it doesn't help you cheat in any way, because you have to return right to where you left from (though perhaps a battle might have ended while you were gone, this is no different from successfully jumping to another sector except that you can't repair your ship).