Overall Gameplay Progression Question

[Stupidolphin]

Hi guys!  I am loving this game, long time eve online and space X games lover here <3

 

I have been playing one player for a few hours now and I got most things well understood.

 

The one thing really bothering me is the "travelling to the core" progression.

 

Yes I understand that you can't just move inward without upgrading your miners / salvagers / weapons in order to still be able to effect the higher tier content.

 

My question is:  Why should I, as a player, stay anywhere longer than the minimum time it takes me to either buy the current tier of miners/salvagers/guns  ?

 

Surely the best and most lucrative rewards both in money and materials, is further in, so as soon as I have the current gear set, moving seems a no brainer???

 

Farming modules / ore / money / reputation  ..... all a waste of time compared to what I could get further in.

The natural end state of this is that ALL players end up racing for the centre, and totally over populating the few Avorian systems.

 

In games like EVE, yes 0.0 sectors have the best stuff, but the pirates will totally gut you if your ship and skills can't handle them, so you can't rush there, but instead steadily progress through the sectors while your train up your skills and buy bigger ships.

 

In Avorian, seeing as anything you collect in terms of modules, money and ore, is totally safe once you have it.  So you really can just build a fast ship, race to the centre, buy whatever modules you need to mine there and effectively suicide mine until you can make a ship.  This would still be way faster than trying to progress through the tiers as you go.  Currently, skipping to the end, or as close as you can get and still manage to do this, is just better??

 

Please someone tell me how I am getting this wrong, I want to be wrong about this.... :(

 

[Urschleim]

The answer of all ur questions is: its early access, things will chance, and balancing will be done

[Lannik]

At the moment that is how this game plays. Blitz to Trinium, ogonite build solid ship. Then breach core and build avorion to become a God. I imagine they will eventually add incintives or balances to make other tiers worth the time

[Tchey]

At the moment that is how this game plays. Blitz to Trinium

 

Yep, but this took me already 30 hours, still enjoying it.

[Xaoc]

I agree that there is a serious issue with progression. What I did when I started a new galaxy in singleplayer was:

1. Sell a big space rock

2. Build the tinkiest smallest iron ship that would give me some more speed and an upgrade slot for the radar upgrade you're guaranteed at the start

3. Race to the wall around the center

4. Sell a few big space rocks at the center with the help of the radar upgrade for 1 million credits or so

5. Buy some Xanion and make a small exploration ship to sell more space rocks faster

6. Get enough money to build a proper freighter and start trading

7. Trade until I get enough money to build a proper combat ship

 

0 rocks mined, 0 Titanium, Neonite, Trinium used, full Xanion warship and freighter, great relations with a lot of factions near the center, time spent: 1,5-2 hours?

 

TBH, there is a reason to return to the edge areas. With my Xanion warship I can destroy the stations of weaker factions with ease and make more credits selling the loot than I would ever realistically need. A single edge station can net me about 30-50 million credits if it has a good stock.

 

What I would do is:

1. Make all materials after Iron except Avorion(and maybe Ogonite) mostly lateral upgrades with each material having specific strengths instead of being linearly just better from the last in all ways except weight. E.g. Naonite would make the best hypercores, Trinium would make the best shields, Titanium would make the lightest and thus the most agile ship etc. When it comes to hull hp all the materials would offer an different weight to hp ration with the extremes giving the best ratios, but at a cost. Avorion would also not just be the god tier material, instead it would be used to buff the exising materials in their best field. E.g. Avorion hypercores would need neonite, but would be better than just neonite cores, shields would need Trinium, but would be better than just trinium. Etc. This way the player would desire to have all materials, rather than just the best one.

2. Remove Faction strength scaling as it is now. Instead, some factions are just stronger and other weaker. Some prefer a few large ships, other prefer lots of smaller ships, etc. Factions near the core get more sophisticated with ships that have access to more specialized materials, but their fleets also become smaller. This way factions near the center aren't always stronger than factions near the edge, but for a single player ship they would still offer greater challange. Also factions next to each other would be at different strengths, giving players opportunities and challanges.

3. Different economic environments near the center vs. the edge. Example: Center sould be more industrialized, but have less raw resources, while the edge has more raw resources, but more agrarian production. Less claimable asteroids near the center. Make long distance trading more lucrative and trading with next door sectors and within sectors next to pointless, unless the player invests in owned stations or searches for specific opportunities.

4. More hostile factrions near the center and less civilized faction near the center as well. If you want to sell your loot or look for a safe haeven, might need to return to the edge.

5. More natural dangers near the edge. Dangerous nebula, destructive black holes when exploring hidden mass sectors, ambushes by rouge AI etc.

[Tajin]

moving seems a no brainer???

 

...

 

Please someone tell me how I am getting this wrong, I want to be wrong about this.... :(

 

You are right, for the most part.

Moving closer to the core in an underpowered ship is a bit risky (and also takes longer due to lack of jump-range). If you get killed on the way, you're back to where you started.

 

 

I'm also not too happy with the magical resource transferation. I'd normally consider transportation to be an important part of the whole mining process.

[Adonis]

I agree that there is a serious issue with progression. What I did when I started a new galaxy in singleplayer was:

1. Sell a big space rock

2. Build the tinkiest smallest iron ship that would give me some more speed and an upgrade slot for the radar upgrade you're guaranteed at the start

3. Race to the wall around the center

4. Sell a few big space rocks at the center with the help of the radar upgrade for 1 million credits or so

5. Buy some Xanion and make a small exploration ship to sell more space rocks faster

6. Get enough money to build a proper freighter and start trading

7. Trade until I get enough money to build a proper combat ship

 

0 rocks mined, 0 Titanium, Neonite, Trinium used, full Xanion warship and freighter, great relations with a lot of factions near the center, time spent: 1,5-2 hours?

 

TBH, there is a reason to return to the edge areas. With my Xanion warship I can destroy the stations of weaker factions with ease and make more credits selling the loot than I would ever realistically need. A single edge station can net me about 30-50 million credits if it has a good stock.

 

What I would do is:

1. Make all materials after Iron except Avorion(and maybe Ogonite) mostly lateral upgrades with each material having specific strengths instead of being linearly just better from the last in all ways except weight. E.g. Naonite would make the best hypercores, Trinium would make the best shields, Titanium would make the lightest and thus the most agile ship etc. When it comes to hull hp all the materials would offer an different weight to hp ration with the extremes giving the best ratios, but at a cost. Avorion would also not just be the god tier material, instead it would be used to buff the exising materials in their best field. E.g. Avorion hypercores would need neonite, but would be better than just neonite cores, shields would need Trinium, but would be better than just trinium. Etc. This way the player would desire to have all materials, rather than just the best one.

2. Remove Faction strength scaling as it is now. Instead, some factions are just stronger and other weaker. Some prefer a few large ships, other prefer lots of smaller ships, etc. Factions near the core get more sophisticated with ships that have access to more specialized materials, but their fleets also become smaller. This way factions near the center aren't always stronger than factions near the edge, but for a single player ship they would still offer greater challange. Also factions next to each other would be at different strengths, giving players opportunities and challanges.

3. Different economic environments near the center vs. the edge. Example: Center sould be more industrialized, but have less raw resources, while the edge has more raw resources, but more agrarian production. Less claimable asteroids near the center. Make long distance trading more lucrative and trading with next door sectors and within sectors next to pointless, unless the player invests in owned stations or searches for specific opportunities.

4. More hostile factrions near the center and less civilized faction near the center as well. If you want to sell your loot or look for a safe haeven, might need to return to the edge.

5. More natural dangers near the edge. Dangerous nebula, destructive black holes when exploring hidden mass sectors, ambushes by rouge AI etc.

 

Trinium makes the best non scaling components because of its' mass like hangers, crew quarters, cargo holds, engines, and thrusters already, and then for electronics you want avorion>xanion>naonite. Armor is just a decision based on volume for hp oganite gives high hp/volume at the expense of mass so a same sized block of oganite is about twice hp of trinium at double the weight so it's a decision on whether you want hp or maneuver ability. Personally I prefer better shield ship designs because you can scale the hp with subsystems and use trinium based hulls with oganite covering key parts internally to stop railgun fire, Making them faster. Considering that cap ships require thousands of crew you can get multiple ticks over a million credits so being able to move fast and stop near stations to drop loot is much preferred to brick status.

[GEOMORG]

Maybe we should have multiple "barriers". Not rifts like the in the center, but something that stops you from jumping until your ship is "strong enough" (you've equipped it with the next material). So after you built an iron ship you'd have to mine titanium to get over the first "barrier", and naonite could only be found on the other side, and so on.