Starting Template Save

[xdesperado]

So I've been more or less recreating the same captain over and over again.
Have the basic template saved that I on occasion will make a slight adjustment to but that is fine.
What I'd like to see before end of Alpha is a way to save everything up to just prior to actually launching into gameplay.
Map selection, faction choice, face and uniform selection and your preferred captain name.
While it doesn't take long to fix all those things they can become repetitive and an annoyance quickly, especially the character name bit.

[fallen]

Templates contain what they contain because that is the guaranteed shareable unit. Once a Template can be shared, there is no guarantee that the map will go along with it, etc.

Thanks for the idea! I took some notes about the suggestions and we will discuss it for a future roadmap item.

[grävling]

Feb 2, 2017 11:40:11 GMT -5 fallen said:

Templates contain what they contain because that is the guaranteed shareable unit. Once a Template can be shared, there is no guarantee that the map will go along with it, etc.

Thanks for the idea! I took some notes about the suggestions and we will discuss it for a future roadmap item.

This is one of the great ways to improve your game. Go back to the same worlds with sort of the same stuff and try a different strategy. I think this would be splendid.

[Cory Trese]

We've got to focus on the main things we promised (and can afford) for Kickstarter in this area.

Feature #1, the one that rules all the other features and cannot be damaged is "sharable unit Templates"

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I think there is a certain amount of alpha conditioning here as well. We've got to think ahead to when the game is working correctly -- our players won't be making 10 Captains a day. They don't do this in our other games, and we're not going to build a game that encourages them to do it in this game.

Yes, making a new character has some steps. Naming a character ... I never thought that would be the big issue. If that becomes a thing lots of people complain about, we'll add a "Default Captain Name" to the Options system and that should solve that.

If for some reason we do get a lot of feedback that they way many people want to play this game in production is by making many many Captains over and over, we still cannot abandon feature #1 ... so what we'd have to do is allow another mechanism.

The only one that would really work here is the ability to "make alike" on an existing game. So you'd just copy from an existing game the map, faction, face, uniform, name, etc. It cannot be part of a Template, of course, but it might be a solution if enough people, for whatever crazy reason, show us via data that they need to create so many characters in a post-alpha game state.

[grävling]

Feb 2, 2017 13:19:01 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

We've got to focus on the main things we promised (and can afford) for Kickstarter in this area.

Feature #1, the one that rules all the other features and cannot be damaged is "sharable unit Templates"

---

I think there is a certain amount of alpha conditioning here as well. We've got to think ahead to when the game is working correctly -- our players won't be making 10 Captains a day. They don't do this in our other games, and we're not going to build a game that encourages them to do it in this game.

Yes, making a new character has some steps. Naming a character ... I never thought that would be the big issue. If that becomes a thing lots of people complain about, we'll add a "Default Captain Name" to the Options system and that should solve that.

If for some reason we do get a lot of feedback that they way many people want to play this game in production is by making many many Captains over and over, we still cannot abandon feature #1 ... so what we'd have to do is allow another mechanism.

The only one that would really work here is the ability to "make alike" on an existing game. So you'd just copy from an existing game the map, faction, face, uniform, name, etc. It cannot be part of a Template, of course, but it might be a solution if enough people, for whatever crazy reason, show us via data that they need to create so many characters in a post-alpha game state.

The reason that people like me (and @xdesparado, I think) make tons of captains is that, when learning the game, we have no way of calibrating what effects our decisions have on the game. So we want many, many, many of them which are hardly different from each other in the hopes that we can get a feel for what is meaningful. (Plus we are both obesessively-thorough. )

I think that you are the sort of person who finds meaning easiest in lists of data. Whenever I have a problem understanding, you tend to reach for the 'would you like a grid of some data' solution first. Indeed, I think that, for you, understanding a new game (written by somebody else) means constructing an ever more abstract model of the data that goes into the game, until eventually you get to float entirely in the realm of data.

There are lots of people like that, but I am the other sort. Understanding for me comes by replacing the abstract with the concrete, so that, when I really know a thing well, it's all working in my gut. As many of the numbers as possible have all stopped having any meaning for me. You will never get away from needing to know 'what is a good price for Good X' but from my point of view having prices ranked on an A-F scale is terrific because I can immediately stop knowing what are the exact good prices -- instead of data, I have just great/good/mediocre/really lousy which is something my gut understands very well.

Does this make sense?

[fallen]

grävling - thanks for the feedback, definitely interesting to read and we'll keep working to improve. Glad to know that the A-F scale is working well.

The game is very early in its alpha and has a long way to go to be ready, we are aware of that.

We'll keep taking all the data points we can into account. From the analytics we are collection, people are creating very few captains in comparison to the time they are opening existing captains and playing.

As Cory mentioned, we are dedicating to meeting all of our commitments from the KickStarter. To do that, we have to prioritize.

[Cory Trese]

But storing a default Map, Faction, face and skin along with default captain name shouldn't be too hard. This just isn't part of the sharable unit for Templates.

[xdesperado]

Feb 2, 2017 23:55:22 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

But storing a default Map, Faction, face and skin along with default captain name shouldn't be too hard. This just isn't part of the sharable unit for Templates.

Captain Template and Maps are already on list to get shared so we're good there.
The other stuff was about QoL improvement for individual players not so much about wanting to share them as they have no real impact on game play other than helping a players immersion and sense of ownership on the action.

[Cory Trese]

Feb 3, 2017 0:14:12 GMT -5 xdesperado said:

Feb 2, 2017 23:55:22 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

But storing a default Map, Faction, face and skin along with default captain name shouldn't be too hard. This just isn't part of the sharable unit for Templates.

Captain Template and Maps are already on list to get shared so we're good there.
The other stuff was about QoL improvement for individual players not so much about wanting to share them as they have no real impact on game play other than helping a players immersion and sense of ownership on the action.

Right on. I think the ability for you to set a default for each of the new game parameters, so that building a new Captain was all default if you didn't want to vary from your individual setup, would satisfy all but the most extreme requirements here.

I honestly doubt too many people would use this feature, but we do really want to cater to people who are going to get really into the game and I suppose this might be a feature that type of player uses.

The question has to be ... if we have $X to spend on player's immersion and sense of wonderful ownership ... should we spend those $X on a feature that lets them store a default for each new game? Or would that $X be better spent on better ship customization, or additional Crew jobs, or new ship types? Hard to say!

[MintDragon]

didn't want to create a new thread for a couple thoughts on Template Creation UI:

1. Map, Template, Captain (game) deletion - would be great to have a confirmation window
2. Button Location consistency.  Creating a new template (top button), Launch template (top button); BUT then Create new captain (top), Launch Captain (lower right).  A couple times I went into 'Load Captain' screen from the main screen, selected a captain, then pressed the top button thinking to launch, which started another new captain.
3. Starting a new captain brings you to the template screen; New Template button (top); I scroll thru the templates and decide that they aren't close to what I want, but once I've selected any template, the new template button goes away and becomes the launch button.

[Cory Trese]

Thanks for the feedback. We'll keep working to improve.

[Cory Trese]

Regarding confirmation dialogs, some things have them, somethings done.

Design calls for them to be everywhere they are required.

Added "some confirmation dialogs missing throughout game" to known issues list.

[Cory Trese]

Added Confirmation to "Delete Template" system