Messages

I think the one thing I don't like, from an aesthetic point of view, about the game is the sound the engines make.

To me they sound like a small electronic motor under strain and not a spacecraft in flight.

Is this moddable I wonder?

There are a lot of games on Steam. What helps bring them to peoples attention?

Is it all about the LetsPlay videos these days?

How about trying to get someone like SleepCycles into the game. I like most of the games he plays so there must be some intersection in taste. He has about 10k subscribers. Would that move the needle?

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I would also like to be able to turn off the aiming pointers and just have the turrets auto-lock and generate firing solutions for me :-)

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Good idea, a cheaper, stripped version of the Freighter might only have one weaponhardpoint.
To balance that out, it could have more cargospace, or better steering.

While I do think there should be more hull templates here I was more reflecting that you're not (at least as I understand it) buying a new, shrink wrapped, hull direct the manufacturer but getting something that's had some service. So maybe the armour isn't quite all there, or one of the mounts is a little cranky, or a type I instead of a type II, or the manoeuvring fins are a bit out of whack, etc...

The idea being that all the generated hulls are some random variation on the template and only a few of them will be "good as new" and, hence, something worth looking/trading for. Battered, dodgy, hulls could also be cheaper.

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I like the idea of bounties, maybe a bounty board with variable prices based on difficulty (how accurate a location, how far away, how difficult the systems you have to travel through, how badass the person you are hunting is).

I can imagine each faction having a separate bounty board for NPC's outside its space maybe.

It might be nice if there are other bounty hunter NPC's too :-)

Can I add that, even at maximum opacity, you can't see the line of your guns far enough which makes aiming fixed weapons incredibly tricky.

It's fair to say that there's a lack of uniqueness to the systems or a reason to explore them beyond a mission taking you there.

I think doing something cross-server is likely to be more work than the team has time or resources for. But perhaps adding something to spawn unique encounters in systems (perhaps based on their distance from a core world) might be doable and could add a lot of fun to exploring.

As I always answer - it all depends on the sales. If the game can pay for a lengthy further development we are more than happy to expand on everything. So far it doesn't look too good, however.

That's disappointing. Can you share anything about how far from your expectations you are? Steam seems to be a very big market and space sims have a decent history, any clues as to what is holding you back?

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As others have mentioned you seem to be able to kill traders and miners with impunity, even in the Order home system (where I wonder why there are pirates about? Where is the Order fleet?)

I think traders and minders should be affiliated to factions and, if they get a distress call off, someone should come looking. If you get caught attacking them, there should be consequences.

I think it would make the game a lot more interesting if hulls had characteristics within ranges, rather than fixed values (especially using a normalised random distribution as I have discussed previously).

That would mean you'd actually have a reason to trade in a hull you liked for the same hull in better condition. Or perhaps be a source of missions for parts to upgrade a hull.

It would also add a little excitement looking for that "perfect" version of a certain hull.

It seems like stations just randomly have a certain number of goods and a price. Is there any economic model at play? Or is it entirely random?

I would like to be able to see, at a glance, which missions I can do in nearby systems. Rather than having to browse then look at the map and figure out how far away they are.

Maybe this just means being able to sort the missions by number of jumps or something equivalent.

The function timer.GetGameTime() returns game time in seconds (it starts from zero for the new galaxy), which is increases only while the game server is running (or when you're playing in the singleplayer). It doesn't increase if the game is paused in the singleplayer mode.

Thanks ai_e.

Given the cataclysmic nature of being cut off it's natural that a new calendar would be instituted to measure time since the expanse was cut off from the rest of humanity. Which neatly dovetails with the clock starting from zero at galaxy creation.

I think it would be nice to have the game clock visible somewhere and to record, for example, when each quest was given and how long it has been outstanding. It would give, I think, more of a sense of being in a continuous world.

I could see some missions then being given a time, like you need to deliver X by date D. This would then lend some more interest in that you'd maybe have to decide whether to plot a longer route around trouble or risk going through heavily pirate infested space. Etc..

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[generic_quest_anyjob]

After going through scripts that seemed relevant, i think there is no real system of time,
changes seem to be controlled by events, however, regarding quests,
this line in generic_quest_anyjob in DATA/TOPICS/GENERIC_QUESTS
suggests to me that "come back later" actually means "leave me alone for at least 10 minutes"

GQL.AddOfferedQuest(PLAYER_SHIP, npc_id, quest_id, time + 60 * 10);

Hrmm... so either there is no notion of time and this is a stop-gap, or the game is intended to be real-time. So the question is whether the "time" is in-game or wall-clock time.

I recommend the team plan to release that DLC on on September 19th.

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