EVE Online style persistent survival universe, thoughts?

[Muyu]

Just thought it'd be amazing and thrilling to have a single universe hosted by Keen in survival mode, what not with infinitely expanding space. The mere thought of hunting for others players bases and or ships out in unknown and unfamiliar territory.. much excite.

Of course we'd need Multiplayer 2.0 to come out before this is even remotely possible.

What're everyone's thoughts on this? Do you also seek to explore unfamiliar territory and seek out unsuspecting players whether offline or online, and wreak havoc with their bases and ships? Share your thoughts.

On another topic; introducing a currency and research/market system; yes/no? explain. (also relevant to EVE)

My thoughts on a persistent universe;

It'd be pretty adrenaline rushingly awesome, personally, because you'd then have to rely on actually building defenses that are geared to destroying players and not AI. You'd have to think carefully - more so than you probably are now - about how you do and where you do your things in regards to building your bases and how your ships are designed.

Do you build a ship with heavier armor or do you build it with more weapons. Do you hide your stations deep in an asteroid with your refineries and assemblers tightly knit, or do you build your base somewhere in a more open environment (or even in the orbit of a planet) with your production facilities splayed widely over a couple hundred meters?

There's many possibilities to make things as interesting as possible. Me, personally.. I'd build my base in as deep as possible of an asteroid with weapons at either entrance. You'd only get in at me by nuking the asteroid until it's wide open enough to take my base on.
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As far as a trade system ingame... It'd definitely make things very interesting. Have trade routes between planets or even between planet and orbital station, between players who need resources but cannot get it from the planet because, you might for instance control the resources in the system that they cannot get anything from your planet as you are monetizing its resources and will do anything to protect it.

[A Fat, Angry Serval]

Well, I have, or at least had, a game currency system in the works using OperOffice Base, but I don't really have a way of deploying it. If anything, though, Space Engineers with an economy would be more like Starmade than EVE Online.

[Profugo Barbatus]

The spacebucks mod on the workshop works pretty well if you want currency. There's at least one mod in the works for tech development (Gens blocks and gens resources I believe it is) which is neat, but makes building require some new components.

A giant persistent universe? *Technically* Feasible, sure, but you'd be paying a subscription fee for sure because that sort of server infastructure is, and always will be very expensive to maintain.

Trade's a neat idea, and will work well for AI interaction, but between players, its a bit lackluster. Once I've cleaned out an asteroid's Uranium deposit, I'm practically set forever. Same for everything except ice, and now we can produce oxygen anyways. So there's just no drive to trade, because self sufficiency is a very easily achieved goal.

Shame we won't see Multiplayer 2.0 until after planets, me thinks. Its speculation, but the patches following multiplayer will likely be a big bugfixing pass to make it all stable, so it makes sense to release all the big things that could break before having to fix it all.

[Muyu]

Well, depending on how, if they did, a persistent universe is set up, they could easily design solar system-esque areas of space with their own seeds for procedural asteroids within that solar system, allowing players to sort of "control" the areas, if they're smart about how they do it and have the means to do it, including but not necessarily needed, planets within the area.

None the less it is an interesting idea to think about.

While there is a mod for currency, I kind of hope Keen decides to design their own system for it so that having mods isn't necessary to make such a system happen - perhaps add it to the server customization options.

In regards to paying subscription, that would be doable as well. Just make the persistent universe a separate part of the game that has nothing different from making your own server, bar the persistent-ness of the world. There is definitely an audience to appeal to that would love such a feature to be apart of Space Engineers.

[Siezen]

wow so much typing

[Exia Lennelluc]

there would be a big difference, i can log out of eve online and all my stuff in a station or outpost is safe, where as i logout in space engineers everything can be stolen by a random player

The idea is good but i dont think it will be done

Test Alliance
Best Alliance

[AlexMBrennan]

Impossible. EVE cheats by having a small number of ships with fixed characteristics (speed, acceleration, turn rate, etc), whereas we have to simulate the physics of every block to determine these numbers for every last ship.

Unless you wanna hire all the world's supercomputers and donate them to Keen what you want is going to be physically impossible.

[MrKidRock]

Yeah, you want to find my base and see how wonderous it is. You want to examine all the inner working and be amazed by the intricate design. You want to marvel at the beauty of design over function. All this and more you wish to do, wait, no, you just want to destroy it. Thanks but no thanks.

[Ban_Dan]

+1^^

[Aetrion]

The giant problem with trying to set up SE as a persistent world is threefold:

1. There is very little real reason in SE to bother to try and build huge ships and stations. They don't actually enable you to do anything that you couldn't do before, they just take forever to create and are huge liabilities afterward. Everything is a vanity project in SE. Sure, we all want to make our giant megaship that is super impressive, but then what? The game doesn't have any gameplay where a giant ship is useful. Same with stations. You can build a huge space-city, but there is nothing it does better than just a platform with machinery on it.

2. There is no real economy of any kind. Everyone can create everything by themselves very easily. There is nothing you could reasonably trade with other players in SE for example, because if they didn't have a source for all materials already they wouldn't even be able to make the most basic ships, and if they do have a source they really don't need anything else.

3. Combat in space engineers is so punishing that it doesn't make for interesting game content. Damn near every single open server in SE has the same problem: People are just hiding and not playing together because they want to avoid all confrontations. If they do go out to attack someone they do it while the other person isn't there. Nobody wants to get into an actual battle in a game where every second of fighting comes with a minute of repairing.

[Stony Rock]

Probably, KeenSWH should just add matchmaking service and own their own official servers.

People can search by game modes - team deathmatch, free for all, capture the flag, cooperative and etc. And regional servers, for players to play together.

[Greyson XMG]

Many of the problems with a persistant universe can be easily solved.

1. Weapons limitations means that no parked ship can defend itself. Fixed weapons have VERY long ranges, and automated turrets are fixed at just over 1k.. Thus a piloted ship can always easily overpower automated defences. Upped turret ranges could fix this.

2. Protecting assets while offline is something that can be addressed MANY ways. KEEN needs merely to select one. My favorate would be a cloaking system for a unmoveable station, making assets nearly impossible to find (except at extremely close range). Park next to such a station, and your ship also becomes unlocateable. Such an area cloaker would need to be large, expensive to feed and be stationary.

3. Trade. Currently nothing needs to be traded, because all assets are created quickly with easily found ore. FIX. have tiered system. Tech 1 items can be easily made with common mats. Tech 2 requires a multitude of rare mats that need to be agressively searched for. Tech 3 mats needs to be agressivly searched for AND don't show up with an ore detector. THUS each group might only find small ammounts of each rare ore, and trade becomes feasable.

4. Large ships. Making such large ships more resilliant to damage, AND making advanced and high tech gear VERY large, gives and excuse to build large ships.

To all these problems, there are solutions..

[Aetrion]

A tiered system doesn't really add any more of an incentive to build giant ships and trade and so on, because throwing a power progression in the game without adding a reason to have lots of power kind of falls flat.

What the game really needs is more threats. Have periodic invasions by powerful NPC enemies that will ♥♥♥♥ your ♥♥♥♥ up if you aren't adequately protected or agile enough to evade them. That right there could be a huge incentive to for example build a massive industrial nomad ship that can get the hell out of dodge when the oppressive earth government sends it's enforcer fleet to clear out rogue miners or whatever. Or it can be your reason to build a huge battleship and show them that free spacers are nothing to mess with.

That's what the game is lacking.

[drager55891]

Originally posted by Aetrion:

A tiered system doesn't really add any more of an incentive to build giant ships and trade and so on, because throwing a power progression in the game without adding a reason to have lots of power kind of falls flat.

What the game really needs is more threats. Have periodic invasions by powerful NPC enemies that will ♥♥♥♥ your ♥♥♥♥ up if you aren't adequately protected or agile enough to evade them. That right there could be a huge incentive to for example build a massive industrial nomad ship that can get the hell out of dodge when the oppressive earth government sends it's enforcer fleet to clear out rogue miners or whatever. Or it can be your reason to build a huge battleship and show them that free spacers are nothing to mess with.

That's what the game is lacking.

I agree this game need a mid to late game.

In minecraft you can start a new world with the goal of taking down the bosses but in SE once you get solar power and O2 farms there nothing else to it.

[Orexin]

It is very sad but I dont think that we will see here or in Starmade anything like EVE Online.

[drager55891]

Originally posted by Orexin:

It is very sad but I dont think that we will see here or in Starmade anything like EVE Online.

I don't think most want a X^* but they want something more in the later game after the ships are built.