Something I just read in another thread on here triggered this and I wondered what peoples thoughts were.
If you've played Skyrim (as the most notable example I can think of), you'll probably be aware that encounters in the wilderness are scaled/leveled to the player, so as to prevent them becoming 'out of whack' with the power you have.
What are your thoughts on encounters in space being handled in the same way? The bigger and better armed your ship, the bigger and better armed your foes. Or should it be that what you meet in space is what would logically be around that area of space? (ie. better armed ships in more lawless worlds, trader ships more likely on trade routes, bigger ships on more profitable routes, etc).
As far as I can see; the good point about this is that it keeps difficulty constant; so you can never just steamroll any NPC the game throws at you and there's always some challenge.
The bad side though is that it reduces diversity - if every encounter is perfectly managed to be roughly equal, then you can never become "more powerful" because its relative to the power around you, which matches your own. You would just always meet weak ships whilst you were weak, and strong ships when you were strong. (and you'd probably never meet a tiny ship when you were in a large one).
I think my personal preference would be for an approach where the encounters are levelled to the region of space, rather than to the player. So if I go under-equipped to an anarchic system, I should expect to be in for a tough time against ships that are themselves equipped to survive there (better pilots, too). Meanwhile in a corporate system, you'd expect to encounter more inexperienced NPC trade ships, less well equipped, and far more likely to run or give a wide berth to a warship bristling with missiles.
Not just the law level counts either - more military ships in and around military base systems, more big trade ships on the most profitable routes, more long range ships on the remote colonies, etc etc.
If you've played Skyrim (as the most notable example I can think of), you'll probably be aware that encounters in the wilderness are scaled/leveled to the player, so as to prevent them becoming 'out of whack' with the power you have.
What are your thoughts on encounters in space being handled in the same way? The bigger and better armed your ship, the bigger and better armed your foes. Or should it be that what you meet in space is what would logically be around that area of space? (ie. better armed ships in more lawless worlds, trader ships more likely on trade routes, bigger ships on more profitable routes, etc).
As far as I can see; the good point about this is that it keeps difficulty constant; so you can never just steamroll any NPC the game throws at you and there's always some challenge.
The bad side though is that it reduces diversity - if every encounter is perfectly managed to be roughly equal, then you can never become "more powerful" because its relative to the power around you, which matches your own. You would just always meet weak ships whilst you were weak, and strong ships when you were strong. (and you'd probably never meet a tiny ship when you were in a large one).
I think my personal preference would be for an approach where the encounters are levelled to the region of space, rather than to the player. So if I go under-equipped to an anarchic system, I should expect to be in for a tough time against ships that are themselves equipped to survive there (better pilots, too). Meanwhile in a corporate system, you'd expect to encounter more inexperienced NPC trade ships, less well equipped, and far more likely to run or give a wide berth to a warship bristling with missiles.
Not just the law level counts either - more military ships in and around military base systems, more big trade ships on the most profitable routes, more long range ships on the remote colonies, etc etc.
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