Making the station mode more exciting...

[starship]

I really like the station mode, don't get me wrong. But it gets kind of stale after a while.

Like right now, I'm just kinda wasting time while I wait for the status to get to 100% so I can move to a new system. Lots of time spent making cargo shuttles and preparing.. just scrapping derelicts because I've got nothing better to do.

It would be neat to have more ship to ship combat in this mode, and maybe put that behind an option.

So right now, we can bring the fight to a pirate base, robots and alien bases. And they will come after us, but *only with 3-4 crew*. The rogue bots can be a serious menace when they're taking over derelicts, sending waves of sentry bots or whatever they're called... but that's really only a serious threat late-game if they're sending shuttles. That's what forces me to ASAP take that derelict down while also protecting my base. That requires a fair amount of crew and some management so the base isn't left vulnerable. That's like the only time this run where I started to stress, and they did make it into my base once. But even then, those 3 bots with just 1 chimp are not all that dangerous.

At a certain point, 2-3 alien hive makers (sorry, forgot the name) flying in to try to attach to our hulls are not a threat. A dozen? A dozen would force a lot of clearing in the base and I'd probably end up with a ton of sick crew. Many of us at that stage would still be fine b/c of the med beds. And if that kind of thing could happen, I'd build far more turrets.

A pirate ship, like a 2x3 or bigger, showing up and just laying into us... both ship-to-ship combat and massive boarding operations... that would be interesting.

Maybe the game mode needs an additional faction that's hostile to fill this role? A sort of anti-haven faction. Let the pirates have their bases and do their thing.

Another possibility would be to allow the player to end this mode early and get a head start on the next phase. Like allow us to migrate once the status hits 50% instead of 100%. IDK If I was ready to go but I started planning for it before 30%. Now I'm just grinding, and it's a bit of a shame, getting all of the research done.

What about conditions that would force us to relocate a base? I'm not sure why we would relocate in the same system. I haven't done it yet. It seems like it's there to just satisfy an itch to build bases from scratch. What if a sector could become hopelessly overtaken by aliens or bots? Or maybe this hypothetical new hostile faction had crazy weapons in its arsenal that could somehow make it a huge pain in the butt to continue with a base. That could be frustrating, but I'm thinking like someone nukes the platform you've built on, and it's hopelessly irradiated.. You have to suddenly start migrating, though it would be nice if it didn't have to happen all in one go.

In this run, I really capitalized on the factions' poor decision-making when taking derelicts. Early on, I scrapped a lot of juicy ships, usually because their entire crew died because they'll only send one shuttle with fighters at a time, though sometimes they will send another empty shuttle! All I have to do is not have empathy and voila, there's plenty of scrap! :P

Sometimes their entire crew was just taken prisoner and I had to give a half-scrapped ship back. :) That somehow managed to fly with only 30% of its hull intact. There's a large element of just "cheesing it" in this station mode. Like I don't need to do away missions. I have enough income that I can buy a ton of stuff outright when ships come.. lots of water, batteries, energy rods, whatever food I'm missing. It's a big struggle at first but becomes a cakewalk later.. and then it's a sort of sit-around-and-wait cakewalk before the run ends and a new one can begin.

Heck, what about siren worlds in this mode? Like you're in a certain orbit that always passes through a siren area of effect.. that's motivation to leave for a different orbit. Or maybe you want to migrate to an inner orbit where it's really hot but it's also ideal for solar panel usage. Maybe these things progress over time? Not a big deal at first but it becomes progressively harder and harder to deal with, encouraging a move?

So maybe there could be a more "kinetic" option? I don't know that everyone would want ships attacking their station... and being "forced" to relocate...

Also, I have yet to do the migrate-to-ship mode, but I'm already kinda annoyed by the necessity of making a new station in that mode. It would be much nicer to do this in the same system. I get that this is maybe about the fleet size limitations. And it's been mentioned before here, someone wishing they could build a ship, even just a 1x1, to go do the away missions. I'm still torn whether to do another station or ship, but knowing that I have to build a station then a ship makes the ship option less appealing.

You could limit the ship to something small, no more than a 1x3 or 3x1 maybe. So if we chose the build-a-ship option, it would just increase the cap temporarily and let us build it right there. Then we could take our sweet time, really focusing on the layout and whatnot, instead of feeling rushed, with more limited resources.

And IMO, being able to fly a little 1x1 or 1x2 ship around in the normal station mode would be pretty neat. Maybe that would only be available to those who build on smaller platforms? If so, give us an option at game start so we can skip the 3x3 platform. Or.. maybe this is motivation to build another station in the system? Maybe the only way to do that is to start on a smaller platform so we're still within the 3x3 limit?

One way to do this harder stuff would be to do it once Haven leaves. Kick the difficulty up a ton if the player chooses to just stay in the system. It's not hard to be prepared by the time 100% status rolls around. Or maybe give the player that option, along with just continuing the mission, it can be continued in a dangerous mode. It could even get progressively harder automatically, so we'd have the challenge of seeing how long we could last... and could brag about it in the forums. :)


Just some thoughts. Cheers.

[Death Approaches]

because there's few modal conditionals; it my guess is it's not coded currently to evaluate tactical capability, instead it's based on development, crew count/loadout, what weapons are installed on the ship/station, and so forth. yes/no absolutes and counts, straight value comparisons; "+12 - you are stronger"...

I figure so much of that stuff like escalating challenge based on ability / tactics must be considered "fine-tuning for later", and we're still at the "broad-strokes basics" stage; kind of like the rudimentary AI... it behaves in some baffling ways at times, til you start thinking like the code works, then you can see it, actually predict, or when they get up from their current task to do something else, you'll watch then adjust that task priority.

some of it already needs playbalancing; I mean who the hell is leaving the sector to fly help a ship in distress where the reward is 10 crap items and a risk of death? you can get that in your home sector, look here comes 3 more derelicts right now!

those missions need to be much closer, shorter travel time, or incentivize the long distance / travel time ones with "champion" crew with only good pre-apoc careers and positive post-apoc traits and a 10 in some skill. already has gear and weapons, or tons of credits, etc.

the Haven service ships are so glitched it is infuriating; always (always!) take all 3 of them when offered, even if you can't provide those services, because hopefully the RNG will get one of the ones you can't help anyway, and the ship you wanted will survive to arrive. (sometimes they're attacked and you get rescue mission pop-ups, but many times they just <poof!> disappear from the inbound ships list, no explanation.)

hell, right now I got *3* Haven assh... "visitors" on my station, they got here for medical services, then the idiots went and boarded a derelict in-system, got jacked at the airlock using nerf guns apparently, and now want rescuing, of course I have to, I want my Prestige Points! and after killing the aliens and freeing them? they go back to their ship and warp out?!? dude! your guys!! the ones in my med beds?! HEY! rate me and give me my Prestige you skinflint!

you know how far apart the Haven service message pop-ups are, and the SEVEN DAY travel time, assuming they even make it here?! I'm not feeding these idiots and letting them take up space and oxygen and not get any work out of them for 40+ days!!! eff that noise, a little save editing must be done; either they're now my crew or they're erased from existence. my last save was the autosave so a day or so back, so screw that, my crew and my 6... no, *18* Prestige. (surcharge for the hassle!) :-)

I hate the fact we have zero control over visitors; they'll take what they want and we can't do crap about it; if your services are on, you're available to anyone friendly without so much as "mind if I?"... you can cheese it a couple ways, start a disassembly to kick them out then abort it, draft someone and stick em in an occupied medical bed, and so forth, but without a way to tell a ship "if you send people down, we will murder them" or "closed for your faction, offer us a bribe / tribute maybe" or simply "go away!"

take migrating - why would you migrate, ever, cept for the challenge? you'd just start over. if all you're getting is the same thing in a different location? yes we need new enemies, new tactics, new threats, new space "weather" and anomalies... but we also need some core functionality made more functional, and lots of bugs squished.

like claiming and drafting shuttles on away missions staying yellow / owned by a faction, and they misbehave badly. (again, you can cheese them some, abandon one of your shuttles, claim that one and dock it, abandon it too so it goes gray, then re-claim it a 3rd time.) but like above, it's just easier to edit the save for them to be properly yours.

but a ~250 day 3x3 station built nearly edge-to-edge, producing hundreds of everything, offering every service and still stockpiling surplus? if nothing changes, what is the point in moving, especially the effort involved to take lots of crew and lots of supplies? 8+ shuttles and 20+ cargo containers, taking up half the station area to prepare to migrate?

it's gotten so I don't even take missions unless it's alien infestation and I expect to rescue crew; there's no need to! derelicts some to me. it's gotten so if I make it to 100 days, what's the point in keeping playing, I know what's ahead, it doesn't change, why bother doing it? start over where there's risk.

but that's another problem - the game can't be what everyone wants; it is not possible. some things will sound fun but in implementation will wreck everything else that's already done.

it's an unstable beta, we're aware of this... but of course we still want MORE everything. I still think I'd prefer the stuff we do have solidly working before any new implementation, though. I would love new features, but there's so much work to be done.

[starship]

Yeah, for sure. This is in beta and it's obviously not perfectly balanced yet. :)

I disagree with your idea that away missions need to have "perfect" crew somehow.. It's all a crap shoot. I rarely reject new crew these days. Oh good, another mouth to feed that can do logistics if nothing else. Later, when I've got a larger crew, I start to get pickier and reject the really useless volunteers.

But I agree that it feels sorta impossible to do those away missions in the early game. It would help if I knew that some missions were easier.. but I'm not sure if there's a way to tell that now, aside from knowing that like the bases are hard. :)

OMG.. That's what happens to the haven ships?! I didn't realize they were getting attacked. I have noticed that they sometimes don't show up. :)

Yeah, the life of a medbay operator: you can't really complain when your customers go get themselves killed and injured. :) Ka-ching! Sorry for your loss.

Here's something I'd like to see implemented. When a friendly ship raids a derelict and I end up rescuing them, I would prefer to just send them to my base. I stick the unconcious bleeding out ones in med beds. But they all want to get off the base ASAP. If I return them to their ship, I'll immediately get a mission to heal *just one of them*.. and maybe get a slew of visitors to be healed. I'm trying to "save lives" here.. It would be nice if the game could figure out that they're already on the base and can just be toggled as a visitor and they can run to the medbays.

I haven't had the same experience as you, having so many haven crew abandoned at my station. But I think you can just treat them as refugees ASAP if that happens and get some useful work out of them. Maybe that did happen to me early on in this game... and it worked out well because I needed extra help with logistics (and eating food :)).

Yeah, the control over visitors... It is what it is. I usually sell fuel, but I have to turn it off periodically to generate the fuel.

It would be nice if we could somehow separate normal visitors from haven visitors in services offered. Like I may only have enough fuel for the haven ships that are coming in. But as soon as I turn it on, everyone in the system tries to buy fuel. This may end up bankrupting my fuel supply before the Haven ships get a chance.

Maybe this just means an extra "services offered" toggle for every single service? Haven only, default off.


On the shuttle front: Yeah, if you claim another faction's shuttle, it seems to stay yellow for a time, but that also seems to be fixed when loading a saved game. It doesn't require save game editing. It's just a temporary bug that I bet will be fixed in the next release because it's so obvious. :)

I have yet to fill up a 3x3 platform with my base that offers every conceivable service. How do you possibly have enough resources to do this? Right now, I am busy buying up all the water from every visitor. Feeding my own crew is actually pretty dicey because of that. There was so much ice early on in the game.. And I played this latest on an easier difficulty, but I'm still desperately needing ice late game. Reminds me of the ship mode. :)

I do often wish I had a way of getting specific resources. I'll use the Haven supply when I can sometimes.. and I'll do a lot of mining and resource extraction, but I'll end up running low on base metals, chemicals, and ice. So I end up buying those when I can. And obviously, the mining shares can help with this. I didn't do any on my latest run. I didn't have enough crew to do it for a long while, and then eventually I didn't feel the need for it and it didn't seem to be worth 25k. But I did do this on my first run and the continued run after. It's a lot easier to manage on the continued run with lots of crew and money.

I also think having a lot more on the research tree would help the late-game experience. I know it's not trivial to do that. :)

Anyway.. sure, bugs will be fixed, other stuff polished, but I'm sure the devs also want broader feedback on the station mode in order to make it more fun. :)

[Jellyfishjelly]

HARD agree with pretty much everything you said. Love station mode but there really needs to be more variety. I'm day 100+ and have never been boarded/attacked by pirates. A robot dropship landed once and that was exciting except for the fact the it was only one flying robot and one chimp so there was no challenge at all. Station-ship combat would be wonderful.

Also would love to to be able to build a 1x1 ship for station mode instead of relying on shuttles.

More/any faction missions would add tons of variety as well. Let me build ships/bases for npcs. Or smuggle goods/people for them until someone else comes to pick them up. Theres a lot of integration that could happen from missions already present in ship mode.

[starship]

Right on!!

re: smuggling missions: oooh! I like this. Been thinking about specializing in alien enzymes... it would be neat if there was a "black market" services option. :) Could also do implants as a service. And yeah, maybe adding more faction missions is the intention of the devs.

[Nordil(Hun)]

The Jem'Hadar makes their appearance:D