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Post by MintDragon on Apr 17, 2017 1:22:02 GMT -5
Perhaps the solution is to provide the player defog services on the top # of planets in a quadrant, instead of every planet that meets a minimum. Say every starchart has at least the best 5 planets for fuel in all the known Quadrants. Perhaps that number is even scaled by difficulty. That would mean that quadrants with 20 worlds would have a large number hidden, however, the player would have some immediate information. Depending on the number used, we would change the planets visible. If we set it high enough (8) we'd rarely see it hit. If we set it lower like 3, we'd have a lot of information trimmed. Very interesting. Yes, I'm not trying to create ideas out of the scope of the plan. The difficulty scaling is an awesome idea. Down the road, a talent could potentially unfog more of new/existing quadrants too (from a 3 to an 8 for example) Agree that xx top number of planets being unfogged would be better than min requirement (esp if it's fuel depot, since it's high % of planets at present). With current maps of quadrants (1.0.33), I've found little value in exploring the fogged areas to discover planets that are trade/military/shipbuilding/etc.. gems. All of them have been wilderness types (which makes sense now, understanding your filter). Would be great to have potential to discover things of interest to non-explorer gameplay.
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Post by grävling on Apr 17, 2017 3:36:15 GMT -5
If defogging only happened for the top planets in a quadrant, mission destinations would cluster more. I'd consider that a positive thing, too, but only if after you defogged some planets they too joined the list of possible mission destinations.
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Post by xdesperado on Apr 17, 2017 4:36:20 GMT -5
Rather than start a debate I'm just going to leave a request here for a toggle to disable fog completely. Think that would best be placed in the map selection part of character creation.
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Post by Cory Trese on Apr 17, 2017 8:55:24 GMT -5
Rather than start a debate I'm just going to leave a request here for a toggle to disable fog completely. Think that would best be placed in the map selection part of character creation. I don't think that's something we have plans to do. The fog system remains a crucial system. I wish I could say yes, and I understand that your request is sincere and well intended. We're just not able to add that one to the plan.
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Post by Cory Trese on Apr 17, 2017 8:56:56 GMT -5
If defogging only happened for the top planets in a quadrant, mission destinations would cluster more. I'd consider that a positive thing, too, but only if after you defogged some planets they too joined the list of possible mission destinations. The mission engine doesn't look at the fog state when assigning mission destinations. It is assumed that if Princess B sends you to Planet Z and you've got no idea where it is, that the Princess also gives you the X,Y coordinates of Planet Z.
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Post by Officer Genious on Apr 17, 2017 9:52:22 GMT -5
If defogging only happened for the top planets in a quadrant, mission destinations would cluster more. I'd consider that a positive thing, too, but only if after you defogged some planets they too joined the list of possible mission destinations. The mission engine doesn't look at the fog state when assigning mission destinations. It is assumed that if Princess B sends you to Planet Z and you've got no idea where it is, that the Princess also gives you the X,Y coordinates of Planet Z. Personally I prefer that system. I'm not sure if you plan on having penalties for the time limits on missions in the future, but I'd rather not have to find the planet on a time limit. I kinda hate time limits in games period though.
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Post by fallen on Apr 17, 2017 10:00:11 GMT -5
Officer Genious - agreed. It could to a lot of flying in circles looking for a location that you should have been told.
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Post by tenbsmith on Apr 17, 2017 12:14:18 GMT -5
I too like discovery. More hidden planets and more types of hidden planets (not just wilderness) would improve the sense of discovery in the game. It'd reward players for exploring--not the minigame, but flying around a quadrant or going slightly off course during missions to uncover that area of darkness.
To me, unfogging 'anywhere that sells fuel' is too generous.
I like the idea of only unfogging a limited number of planets.
Here are a couple of things that might make a given planet more likely to be unfogged. --Planets with large populations and/or economies --Planets of the same faction as the player --Planets connected to one of the player's starting contacts --Planets in quadrants close to the player's starting quadrant An algorithm using variables like this this could lead to some quadrants having little fog, while others are almost completely fogged. I think that sort of variability would be cool/fun.
As I understand the current system, when I select a mission all destinations for that mission are unfogged. If so, I like this as the default behavior. --There might be a mission to a set of coordinates and the player is told to find planet X near those coordinates. Compensation would be higher for this sort of mission. This could be fun as long as the planet wasn't too far from the coordinates.
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Post by grävling on Apr 17, 2017 12:16:05 GMT -5
If defogging only happened for the top planets in a quadrant, mission destinations would cluster more. I'd consider that a positive thing, too, but only if after you defogged some planets they too joined the list of possible mission destinations. The mission engine doesn't look at the fog state when assigning mission destinations. It is assumed that if Princess B sends you to Planet Z and you've got no idea where it is, that the Princess also gives you the X,Y coordinates of Planet Z. I must be misunderstanding something then. From my point of view: Problem -- fog of war adds close to nothing to the game play. In all the games I have played, I have discovered perhaps 4 planets, total, that weren't wilderness/wilderness ones. All the rest were wilderness/wilderness ones, and I don't get all that many of them. A handful per quadrant, max. Some quads have none. Wilderness/wilderness ones are useful to explorers, the other classes don't care, unless they are looking for a place to cache their goods. Enough wildnerness/something else planets exist, already revealed, that the other classes don't feel squeezed by missing out on the wilderness/wilderness discoveries. There may be better places to store your loot in this quad when robbing other ships than the cache you picked, but that's a small optimisation. This would either mean a) that I am a rotten map defogger, and there are tons of useful planets hidden away in the fog, or b) that hardly any of them started out fogged, or c) that something is defogging them. I have elminated a). Many times I have decided to just defog everything, trying to see if I was missing out on neat planets. Didn't find any. That isn't my problem. Up until the thread started I thought that the problem was b) (and c) had never crossed my mind as a potential problem). I thought, right, alpha, planets aren't being fogged, this will come later. But apparantly that isn't my problem, either, as the planets are being generated fogged. So something must be defogging them. Right now my current theory is that they are getting defogged because I take lots of missions. I don't have the opportunity to uncover any planets, because whenever the Princes, Politicians, Prison Wardens, Bounty Hunters, and everybody else send me on missions to what was a foggy planet, it defogs, so all my defogging happens in somebody's office not in my ship in a quadrant I don't know very well. If the mission givers would only give missions to already defogged planets, then I would get to do some planetary discovery. I thought that this was the proposal Cory was making, and it sounded good to me, as long as the list of acceptable destinations for missions grew as I uncovered more destinations. This apparantly was not what was proposed. What am I misunderstanding then?
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Post by fallen on Apr 17, 2017 12:19:33 GMT -5
grävling - as Cory mentioned, its the defogging rule. He was asking, "do you think its too lenient?" The rule states, "Any planet that has enough of a Starport to provide Fuel is defogged." Mission will always defog planets. Mission will not go to unknown locations. Thanks!
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athios
Templar
[ Star Traders 2 Supporter ]
Posts: 1,611
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Post by athios on Apr 17, 2017 12:30:29 GMT -5
grävling, I think majority planets are automatically defogged because at least one settlement sells fuel. I would propose as an alternative to the set number of unfogged planets per quadrant, that the limit be set on fuel price. Only planets with expensive fuel shows up (a much simpler rule set). This way, you will never be without a fuel source in a new quadrant, but if you want better prices, you need to search for new planets. That is your reward for exploration.
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Post by fallen on Apr 17, 2017 12:37:56 GMT -5
athios - very interesting. We are definitely open to suggestions for other defogging rulesets, so that's a pretty good one. Due to the nature of the galaxy being interstellar commerce, war, and travel -- it is unreasonable to fog too much. This information is available in Starports and Spicehalls across the Quadrants.
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Post by Cory Trese on Apr 17, 2017 12:49:32 GMT -5
I think this is the core difference. I don't agree with the base assessment.
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Post by grävling on Apr 17, 2017 13:21:22 GMT -5
I think this is the core difference. I don't agree with the base assessment. The reason I think it adds close to nothing is that I find close to no planets when I go looking for them. I instead get confirmation that I already know nearly all the planets in the quadrant, except for some wilderness/wilderness ones. I used to try to look for planets a lot more, because I expected to find some cool indie planets where I could set up some nice trade-permit-unrestricted trades in expensive goods. But, no, the indie planets are all discovered too. If every place that sells gas is revealed, then it is unlikely that I can find some hidden great economies, because places which are prosperous but don't sell gas are rare. And what's the point in finding some horrible primitive places who are struggling to exist? Why should I ever care to visit them again? Not that I find many of these, but when I do, what good do they do me?
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Post by grävling on Apr 17, 2017 13:25:01 GMT -5
Of course, if you were more likely to find xenos in fogged places, that would make exploring the fog a lot more interesting to me.
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