Thing is: exploring the galaxy and find something special is (must be?) like searching a needle in the hay, yet FDEV will have to make sure anyone (flying solo or in group) can ultimately find needle(s), yet make sure the hay isn't made exclusively of needles.
Is Exploration too easy? Galactic center reached already before launch
- Thread starter Toscaner
- Start date
- Status
Thing is: exploring the galaxy and find something special is (must be?) like searching a needle in the hay, yet FDEV will have to make sure anyone (flying solo or in group) can ultimately find needle(s), yet make sure the hay isn't made exclusively of needles.
Then again everything is the same to some level of approximation. When you procedurally generate items that is. The developers have to design in uniqueness, interesting things to be discovered and I'm sure they will do so.
Oh, it's certainly not a straight forward issue
But from day one, my concern has been, even with clever procedural generation and a nice rendering engine, systems would all start to become rather familiar after a couple dozen have been visited/explored. If the player realises this is the case, and worse still, the next dozen, and the next dozen, and the next 1000 will all follow suit, where is the interest & drive to explore?
Clearly FD needs to (IMHO):-
1) Put some really clever and rare elements into their procedural/rendering engine to give some unique/interesting/beautiful sites worth visiting/discovering.
2) Put some hand crafted elements into the game which can then be injected into some systems.
Fingers crossed we get such content else I fear in just a short period exploration will lose its interest to many people.
ps: And let's not even get started on the fact you can fly off into the middle of no where and there's still NPC's there interdicting you... What's the bet in a week or so, the first player reaches the opposite side of the galaxy, only to find he's interdicted!
Last edited:
True, but I think you get my gist. Planets, stars and asteroids can all be made to vary and look wonderful. But after a few throws of the procedural dice ultimately they will all start to look like variations of the previous 50 systems you've seen.
However, a moon venting ice crystals/water from geiser and leaving a trail behind? A wrecked space elevator on a planet? A base in/on an asteroid? Violent storms on a gas giant? Aurora borealis on some worlds? Battlefields with wrecks of dozens of ships floating around? Asteroids with odd tunnel systems in them that you can even fly into/around? Strange jump points (as if left by ships) that allow you to follow them and do oddly long jumps? Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion? C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate?
this is so true,
We need "space wonders" (unique uber cool hand made stuff, alien artifacts, space graveyards, milles long space stations, etc) and "super rare stuff" (procedural, but rare enuf so you are happy to meet them and/or ready to go and visit them 1/1000 system ?) like comets, massive volcanoes/geysers, cosmic life (space whales, jelly starfish colonies ), half destroyed planets, etc
Etienne
We need "space wonders" (unique uber cool hand made stuff, alien artifacts, space graveyards, milles long space stations, etc) and "super rare stuff" (procedural, but rare enuf so you are happy to meet them and/or ready to go and visit them 1/1000 system ?) like comets, massive volcanoes/geysers, cosmic life (space whales, jelly starfish colonies ), half destroyed planets, etc
Etienne
Lets hope FD will surprise us on the 16th!
Still a lot cheaper than a Star Citizen ship at $100,-- plus. Not the game, mind you; just the ship. Which you can't yet fly.
Last edited:
Cool stuff, and definitely worth implementing, but there will be people who get blasé about even those. What creates variety in the end is the emergent qualities of player interaction, and that will take a lot of work to get right.
Yeah, what happened to all this!
Do it, please anyone that is even thinking about solutions I challenge you to do it. Once you're there, then post if it's to easy. Don't bash someone for being dedicated enough to spend all of his time on something you haven't done. Build a ship, go to the center, and return. You'll find out how hard it actually is... So overall in response to this. No I don't think you should make it any harder to get to the center and if you do then awesome someone out there will still do it and someone out there will complain that it's to easy. Sorry if I offended anyone but if you haven't done it then don't say it's to easy. Please and thank you.
I have started to explore recently and have noticed a disappointing trend (apologies if already covered elsewhere), when you leave habited space you encounter more and more systems where the stars/planets have 'first discovered by <name>' but are in fact labelled as 'Unexplored' so it would appear that the genuine explorers are few and far between as if you do not explore the stars/planets you discover how can you possibly claim to be 'exploring' let alone be actually paid on your return for incomplete system information. Imagine what would have happened to earth history if Magellan, Cooke or Columbus had just said ' Oh look there's an undiscovered Island/Continent but lets not bother to actually explore it and see what, if anything, is useful there. A great chance missed by FD as only systems actually explored should be shown as 'discovered' and no payment should ever have been made for incomplete scans. To my thinking any system that shows discovered but not explored should have the pilots name removed from the system until they complete the job they set out to do, namely EXPLORE!
Common misconception. They are labelled as 'unexplored' for you since you don't have bought any stellar data on them or scanned them for yourself. They show up as claimed because you use the ADS and get basic data on the system bodies, showing that others have been here before you.
And if you are heading to somewhere else then you havent got time and if you are on a regular tourist trail someone is likely to have got there before you. Just coming back from Jaques and nearly home after 4 days and 600 honk and scoops. Plenty out there for all though as less than 1% has so far been discovered. There is a dedicated sub forum for explorers if you want to find out more!
- Status