On the Creation of Stations and their Mechanics.

[Sting_Auer]

What Defines a Station?

 

I propose that ships should not be defined as a station. Rather, all ships would become able to build; the speed at which a ship can make a change to a ship, or construct a new ship altogether, is tied to the amount of unemployed people in the ships population.

 

Building Materials and Cargo Space:

 

The materials available to a ship that is constructing or modifying a ship should be tied to the contents of the builder's cargo. Cargo would be stored in a new "cargo" block, and would have a capacity that is slightly lower than its total volume (For example, a 10m^3 cargo block would hold 8m^2 of cargo). The implication of this is that a minimum-size station will be incapable of constructing ships larger than itself without constant resource delivery.

 

Upkeep, Repair, and Electricity:

 

The simplest of this is a repair system tied to the amount of mechanics you have on board. I want to take it a step further, though; crew should require sustenance, and engines/weapons should require fuel.

 

Food is generated by Ecosystem blocks, which will convert Biologicals into food at a fixed rate based on the size of the ecosystem. Biologicals are gathered from dust clouds, asteroids, and planets, and are generated at a slow rate based on population size (recycling the deceased and waste materials).

 

Fuel has many ways to be gathered or generated. One of the easiest ways is Nebular Gathering: fly through a nebula or dust cloud and filter out the materials usable as fuel. Asteroid and Planetary mining can help you gather food as well. Biologicals can also be used to create fuel, but not at a very efficient rate.

 

Ships also require electricity. All types of block would have electricity overhead, which would be a constant drain based on the type of block (armor requires less than hull, hull requires less than housing, etc.), along with any cost from other factors, such as a fuel factory consuming extra power during fuel synthesis, or housing blocks requiring extra power as the population increases on the ship.

 

Population:

 

The amount of people required to operate a ship is dependent on the variety of facilities on the ship. I'll leave this up to the developer's discretion, as I have no clue how this would be balanced properly ;)

 

Under normal circumstances, the population on a ship will remain constant so long as there is sufficient food. If food becomes scarce, the population will begin to drop off. By right clicking on a housing block, you can change the population settings between "shrink", "maintain", and "grow". "Shrink" will cause the population to gradually decrease (limiting reproduction), "maintain" maintains the population, and "grow" will cause the population to grow at the cost of greater food consumption during the growth period than the population would normally consume.

 

 

 

-=+ OP will be updated as I flesh out my ideas a bit more and as discussion takes place. +=-

 

[Vackin]

How about tier of energy require to operate larger ships. Only most larger ships require refueling from say local star system...which opens up faction control area that protect those resources and act as the home sectors.(Expanding on this later).

[Sting_Auer]

How about tier of energy require to operate larger ships. Only most larger ships require refueling from say local star system...which opens up fraction control area that protect those resources and act as the home sectors.(Expanding on this later).

 

Huh, I forgot to mention power requirements :o. I'll fix that now, thanks for reminding me.

 

And yes, larger ships would require refueling at a fuel depot or factory, simply because it would become impractical to generate fuel on-site. Warships would likely have armored fuel tanks instead of large facilities dedicated to fuel manufacturing.

[akagetsu]

OP is knows his shit! Have some karma, sir!  8)

[koonschi]

Hey there. I see you had a lot of ideas concerning the game.

 

First of all, there are a lot of parallels between things that I have already been planning. I'll list them first.

 

• The players will be able to construct their own stations in upcoming versions.
  
• I will introduce an energy system. All blocks will drain energy, and you have special generator blocks that produce energy.
  
  • 
    
  • Different kinds of blocks drain energy differently.
    
  • Energy is necessary for special actions, like an engine boost or a sector jump.
    

   

  [*]I will introduce a trading system. You can then get goods like food and fuel. There will be factories and trading posts, you can buy and sell from those, or build them yourself or gather the goods yourself (for example, as you said, by harvesting nebulas).

  [*]Housing blocks will most likely be introduced when crews will be introduced.

 

For the upkeep system, that's a little complicated.

Imagine my situation as a game designer/game developer: When introducing such features that create a new challenge, you have to weigh the pros and cons. For me, as I'm the only one developing this game, a huge con is usually when it includes a lot of work, compared to the size of the feature.

For one group of players this upkeep feature is a challenge because they like micro managing their ship's economy, for the other group it's annoying, because they want to focus on combat or building a fleet.

 

When I decide to implement one such thing and not the other, I steer the game in a certain direction. So I have to be very careful when I do these things.

 

But this would not be the main problem. The main problem is:

If you have only one ship to manage, that would be quite boring quickly without such a micro management system.

If you have a lot of ships to manage, you have a lot of work to do.

 

Now, Avorion is meant to be a game where you can have a fleet at some point. If you have lots of ships to micromanage, that could easily escalate into much work, just to maintain your ships.

When you constantly need food or fuel, have to buy it or collect it, at some point your fleet is large enough so you might end up doing nothing else but maintain it.

 

You may say "then let's automize it, make so it can manage itself!".

If you automize it, you will get to a point where you once set up your perfectly balanced ship and then don't have to do anything any more, so the original effect of the feature is neglected completely.

 

I thought a lot about an upkeep system before (your ships get damaged over time simulating the need to be maintained, or you need fuel, or ammunition) but eventually came to the conclusion that these are awesome feature for a small amount of ships, but not for a large amount of ships.

 

If you think differently, and the majority of players would like these features, I'd be very happy to know. But think about it first, I don't want to spend time on implementing something that turns out to be a bad idea.

[MajorBravo]

I think the Automation piece and the leg work can both be achieved. You need to set the scale of the automation in terms of where / when it is implemented.

 

For instance lets say you are moving your fleet of 50 ships. This would be tough to fuel/feed/restock ammo for all of them constantly. But if you had constellation segments that control the automation of your ships in there area you will still have to feed/fuel/restock the distribution mechanism that delegates it out to those ships in it's space.

 

Currently the Nav Map has a set of 10x10 area's maybe make each area a "constellation" or have 4 constellations per 10x10 area on the map and deploy a system like what is mentioned above? That would make for some really interesting theaters of combat much less be a more "typical" war scenario now that you have to maintain a supply chain.

 

edit: Going with a system such as this would make a different tactic to use when going up against an "ultimate enemy" scenario. Definitely would allow you to weaken the enemy if the computer was to operate by the same rules and give "cargo ships" as the mechanism in refueling the NPC distribution hubs. Gorilla Warfare at it's finest, even in space!

[Sting_Auer]

-SNIPoRINO-

 

My intention was for it to actually not be much of a challenge when playing solo or with a small amount of ships. It would be little more than just stopping at a friendly station occasionally and buying some food and fuel. When playing with a smaller-ish ship, it actually wouldn't be that hard to have the facilities on board to generate food and fuel while you fly.

 

Larger ships, or large amounts of ships, would be more difficult to make self-sustaining. Filling a section of your cargo with food would be easier than trying to grow food for the population of an enormous ship. Restocking at a large food or fuel factory station would become more practical as the population of your ship grew.