Simple idea to make Trailblazers more intuitive

[Disemboweled Ego]

Here's an idea I had after the local economy thing was confirmed.

• Only allow constructing buildings on planets you have built something in orbit first.
  • Only allow primary stations around landable planets with slots. (except asteroid stations)

The connection here is implied and more obvious because there's an obvious next step to try the thing you just unlocked. The player is more likely to flip their first station and see how things work. I think ending up at a message that says "you can't build here, build something in orbit first" results in players making more correct assumptions of how things work instead of aimlessly wandering into traps or never figuring it at all out from the documentation (or twitter/forum posts) which they won't read.

• Allow orbital relays, satellites or comms installations to transmit the economy effects of whatever they're orbiting to another planet
  • Otherwise building around stars/gas giants isn't feasible and shouldn't be allowed at all.
  • Allows for more customization and even retooling.
  • This could be limited to a station being able to receive 1 of these signals and the effects of relaying only becoming active at the weekly tick.
  • Could also be limited by forcing the player to build a receiver on the other end, using up another slot (this would still result in many unusable planets).
  • The primary station could be special and able to receive 2 signals (one for the station and one for the nav beacon)

Not much is changed mechanically here, but the experience is different and the traps, while still there, have workarounds. You can still brick systems but there's at least some safeguards around the first few steps.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Only allow constructing buildings on planets you have built something in orbit first.

Leaving aside the occasional moon without orbital slots where this certainly wouldn't work, please no.

Most of my constructions so far have been surface ones. If I want an Odyssey military settlement somewhere out of the way to boost security, I don't want to first have to build something else in orbit first just to unlock the surface of a 0/1 moon.

 

[Kira Goto]

Otherwise building around stars/gas giants isn't feasible and shouldn't be allowed at all.

... and how is this going to work with systems which only have stars and/or a gas giant then? And those slots are useful for things you may want to build but not necessarily impact the economy of a station (such as putting down a military/security installation for the stat benefits but not so much the economy effect/influence).

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Most of my constructions so far have been surface ones. If I want an Odyssey military settlement somewhere out of the way to boost security, I don't want to first have to build something else in orbit first just to unlock the surface of a 0/1 moon.

It should ultimately be only a mild annoyance if you have to plan very far ahead to break ground around one of those planets just to drop down stuff and the extra effort required maybe even adds more depth to the planning.

... and how is this going to work with systems which only have stars and/or a gas giant then?

Not well, but you can always fall back to the current system if there's no landables whatsoever.

There are definitely better solutions to this problem but this requires less work than things like making a more informative ui, a tutorial or just good and in-your-face documentation that's clear and concise.