potential solution for your "captain-issue"

[Kostriktor]

hi Avorion !
i read that you want captains to be more mid-late-game. you tried to do so by increasing captains cost.
could you simply make it so that captains are not buyable in the "outer" sectors where one starts ?
maybe they start to be available from say naonite ?
i think that would achieve what you described best.
Cheers my amazing Avorion, love you

[Syzygy]

You could also try limiting the pool of available captains. It's not a job just anyone can do, these people are trained and experienced specialists. Maybe also have most refuse to work for anyone with less than stellar reputation with their home faction as well.

[Mordgier]

Could make future captains have to be trained up, be mission rewards for saving ships etc.

[KevVv]

So you want to remove the option to control multiple ships at the same time early game...
In that case you need to remove them completely from the outer ring, and only make them possible in the core.
Cuz you can get anywhere with your drone in the outer ring anyway.
When i start a new game i don't even stay in the starter area. I assume nobody does this.
The first thing to do is warp to Titanium/Naonite sections.
Meaning there will be no difference if they are buy-able there.

Also making them more expensive is not helping no... As making money is just waaay too easy.
Selling asteroids is a very easy way to get rich very quickly, no matter how far you are into the game.

[Syzygy]

Originally posted by KevVv:

So you want to remove the option to control multiple ships at the same time early game...
In that case you need to remove them completely from the outer ring, and only make them possible in the core.
Cuz you can get anywhere with your drone in the outer ring anyway.
When i start a new game i don't even stay in the starter area. I assume nobody does this.
The first thing to do is warp to Titanium/Naonite sections.
Meaning there will be no difference if they are buy-able there.

Also making them more expensive is not helping no... As making money is just waaay too easy.
Selling asteroids is a very easy way to get rich very quickly, no matter how far you are into the game.

Yeah, this is why I'm saying Captains should refuse to work with anyone not on good terms with their home faction.

[TheRolfgar]

They don't seem to want having captains as difficult, they just don't want people having 100's of ships since the game isn't made to do that.

I think the easiest solution would be a global limit on how many captains you can have, and then similar to the stolen goods cards you can buy have a captain cap increase item you can buy at military stations.

Have 10 or 20 ranks you can buy at increasing costs, making the first few cheap and the last ones very expensive.

This limits the number of captains by what you can afford and puts a hard cap on the number of captains each person can have so the game runs right.

[KevVv]

There could be something like a status/rank system in the galaxy..
That you have to progress into. Like how much fame or how well known you are with factions.
And that determines how many captains (and other crew) are willing to join you for that.

Could also have an experience bar that makes you capable to recruit x amount of captains under you.

Could make crew just really expensive. And by this i mean every type of crew.
Just add a digit behind hiring crew... add even 2 digits for sergeant and above if more people think it's a good idea.
And double the crews payments or something..

[eliure]

why not just put another rank into the game
admirals
and make them horribly expensive to maintain.
and uncommon to get

[Syzygy]

Originally posted by eliure:

why not just put another rank into the game
admirals
and make them horribly expensive to maintain.
and uncommon to get

That's... a pretty good idea.

Might even want to bump up the overhead costs for upper-management ranks in general so that you will be required to set up your own factories and economies just to support your fleet.

[MineVoid]

Why would you disable buying captains early on? Just avoid buying them. I use them early on myself, honestly. Good for mining while I explore.

[Ojisan]

I don't think captains should be a problem at all.
People choose how to play their game.
I know Avorion wants to design games to have players buy captains mid game,
but this is a sandbox game. We get freedom on how we play it.
I prefer to have captains when I know I can maintain them such as when I get to Trinium and Naonite sectors.

Well, I do have 2 or 3 mining ships to help me out the process but if you get rid of having Captains and allow you to have more than one ship until mid-game, then I don't think any new players would ever play this game since it will take them just too long.

I'd say the solution to this? Just let the players do what ever they want!

There are people like me who doesn't have fleet of miners and ships until I get my base running and have a good foundation to start up.

I've seen so many players starting from the bottom with maybe 2 or 3 miners and start up a base with their money.

I haven't had people having massive miners at the early game stage. Or at least, it took them few days to do that.

But seriously, If we lost ability to gain captains at the early game, people I play with will start to lose interest in this game as well as me.

Or maybe have a cap for Captains.

Say, have about 3~4 captains cap in the beginning

Once the player gains new resource, it increase by 3.

then so on until Avorion where it will unlock the cap of the captain and the player will be able to get how many captains they want.

in that case, I don't know how Alliance captain cap will work with that but well, just an idea.

[Syzygy]

You might also have a point there.

Why not add some sliders into the game that let us control the various factors and limit or delimit our own growth? One person might want more of a slowburn, so he might set his captain pay rate slider up to 200% average. Another person might just want to have massive fleet battles and set it to 5% of average value.

[MineVoid]

Originally posted by Syzygy:

You might also have a point there.

Why not add some sliders into the game that let us control the various factors and limit or delimit our own growth? One person might want more of a slowburn, so he might set his captain pay rate slider up to 200% average. Another person might just want to have massive fleet battles and set it to 5% of average value.

That is a good idea. But then again, I do see why they are so expensive.

[Kostriktor]

Originally posted by eliure:

why not just put another rank into the game
admirals
and make them horribly expensive to maintain.
and uncommon to get

best idea so far

[Ravalin]

How about we don't restrict the game for everyone else because you want a "challenge". Many of us prefer the freedom of the game and if we find things too easy or whatever we do this nifty little trick called inventing our own challenges. We been doing it since games were invented. Weird I know! You should try it. :)

[SivCorp]

Why not link the number of captains you can hire to the number of admired factions you have? That would give another modivation to get involved with the other factions, and make it more of a supported class instead of just spammed fleets.