Custom Galaxy Size: Half or Quarter

[TheRedScourge]

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.

[SneakyTacts]

In my single-player-based opinion, a quarter-sized galaxy would have too small of a center area. It would need a disproportionately large center. There'd also be too few factions by the center. Why wouldn't you want a full-sized galaxy?

[Sir Charles]

As far as I remember, a variable galaxy size is on the official road map for the game mate, so stay tuned! ;)

 

Edit: just took a look at it. Moddable galaxy size is planned according to the roadmap.

 

[SneakyTacts]

As far as I remember, a variable galaxy size is on the official road map for the game mate, so stay tuned! ;)

 

Edit: just took a look at it. Moddable galaxy size is planned according to the roadmap.

Thanks a lot for showing me that page!

 

You're  in luck, TheRedScourge! But please do answer my question. Do you want everyone to be so close to each other that it wouldn't be uncommon to accidentally run into people? That actually sounds interesting. Respawn-able stations sounds like a must if galaxies are to be quarter-sized.

[TheRedScourge]

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.

[TheRedScourge]

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

[TheRedScourge]

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.