We're not talking about what is there now, we're talking about potential. VS as a game is heavily broken but it has done some things well otherwise no one would be here right now trying to fix it. All I'm saying is don't slam the door shut on this, leave it cracked open. Allow late game players who have acquired large advanced ships or fleets of them to head into the wilderness seeking a different game experience and higher risks and rewards. If they choose. Or they can choose to continue to stay in the civilized jump network trade routes.safemode wrote: we need to stop kidding ourselves that what vs brings are these huge do what you want universes (systems).
Right now there is no campaign and the dynamic universe is too nebulous, random and static. Both things can be fixed, but not if we force ourselves arbitrarily to just make another scripted campaign game.
Yes but look around you, how many open source scripted campaign games do you see that are successful? Such games require a huge amount of content and can only really be played once. So you need a lot of contributions to make them happen but they don't attract the long term interest necessary to produce so much content from volunteers. I'm not saying scripting should be avoided completely, but you shouldn't look to it for salvation for it has not at all proven itself.safemode wrote: games that are fun == players == development interest == artists == better game. which is what our goal should be.
And that's a major balance and feature oversight that needs to be fixed. Factions should produce fewer ships and store them up to attack in waves against specific infrastructural targets. Infrastructure like space stations and control of planets should take considerable time and resources to build or rebuild and be the sole source of all resources, both those used by factions to build ships and infrastructure and those available for trade. Planets and stations should not be spawned at random but placed based on a number criteria, randomness being only one of them. And in addition to wars and spawning, the player should see everything that is happening reflected in a more aggressive and insightful news service and the price changes of a simple dynamic economy.Primordial wrote:From a player standpoint, the problem with the sandbox as it stands is that nothing you do seems to affect anything.
Let's say the cephid 17 system produces deuterium fuel and titanium ore for the andolian faction. The aera come in and wipe the place out. Then an andolian shipyard a jump away will be operating at 50% production if there isn't a surplus of these resources from other neighboring systems. So the local andolian fleet has fewer replacements and they either come in from other parts of the empire, thinning the lines there and making them more vulnerable, or they let the aera dig in to hold on to and rebuild cephid 17 for themselves and/or potentially launch an offensive on the shipyard system sooner or later. Bounty missions and system wide open bounties for all area ships in the cephid 17 system are posted like crazy in all the neighboring andolian controlled systems, the news service should provide semi-predictive reports on what the waring faction AIs might do next in the contest for cephid 17. The price of weapons, medicals and essentials should skyrocket in and around the system and the price of luxuries should plummet as panicked masses try to sell everything they own in exchange for the basics of survival.
And what the player does in these hotspots can decide the victor. By supplying resources to one side in trade or by attacking the other for bounty or just the hell of it, the balance can be tipped in favor of a faction that might have been losing this battle.
Next to this a scripted campaign is nothing. This is dynamic, encompasses every aspect of game play VS already has and it plays out differently every time.