Well that happens all the time in singleplayer if you don't cheat your way out; but grinding mats isn't fun or exciting. The combat portion is fun, and the feeling in the pit of your stomach knowing that if you crash you have to get yourself back to your Station/base. One of the things I LOVE about Empyrion, and I don't think I am the only one, is the long list of items I need to prepare for my voyages and raids. It takes speed, tactics and planning to accomplish anything in Empyrion, and the rewards you reap aren't certain. You really have to risk life and limb for an uncertain outcome in the end. Raiding POIs is fun and I would definitely enjoy more story based gameplay and missions. My point is how do you spend your millions if you already have a base, cv , space station, hv, sv? Adding fleet mechanics wouldn't make it an rts: that's not a good explanation for it. It's not age of empires or stellaris. You would be able to command ships to go to other places, but that's just a part of it. It gives you some much needed money sinks. We need ways to lose mats and money at greater speeds when we get to late game. This would definitely help with that problem of having too much. With a higher difficulty, you could be risking a lot to send out vessels to other areas without escorting them yourself. I don't take the name of the game so literally when the actual game doesn't focus on survival for more than an hour or two. Survival in itself is a momentary inconvenience, that you tend to avoid. Simple preparations render the entire premise of survival entirely pointless unless you are out looking for it. That's why society has evolved the way it has; because most people don't find living off the land or in abject poverty fun. In the United States, you are 24 hrs from instant gratification via Amazon, miles from a grocery store, gas stations and in control of your own destiny with the opportunity to work anywhere you want. ( No Politics please!) The closest anybody is getting to survival is camping in a tent and hiking in the back country. Very few instances of true survival ever happen, unless you are a Canadian bush pilot.
Yeah, I can see getting "Frank Buck" missions from the Polaris corp to stock their zoos. Might actually be interesting as you search the galaxy for planets with the right biomes hosting your target species.
EDIT: I guess TLDR in orange. I'd like to throw in my 2 cents to the previous page or so of discussion about survival, conquest, what is expected of the game and so on. Hopefully this will add to the thinking discussion and not be perceived as inflammatory. The title is Empyrion Galactic Survival. This is the title that people read and develop an expectation about what the game delivers. If a word is in the title then it must be important enough for the devs to make it a clear focus of gameplay. These three words are what we should focus on. I would also like to mention that nowhere in the title does it mention massive PvP battles or faction wars, yet this seems to be a widely accept and focused-on feature of the game that is very prominent. I am not hating on PvP, just making a point of what the devs' original intended priorities appear to be and how other features still make a strong presence. With that said: Let's start with the word "Galactic". Yes, there is now a Galaxy of planets to visit. However most of them are going to be repetitive in nature and add no real value to gameplay after the first handful visited until Eleon adds more content in this regard. What about Survival? Survival in this game is pathetic, I'm sorry. Survival isn't just about eating canned vegetables every 10 minutes and remembering to suck in O2 after walking around outside. Survival can refer to many things, including combat situations. Survival of the Human Race. Humans are in a tight spot on Earth (according to the official lore) and are looking for their Empyrion world that can sustain human life. What obstacles are in the way of this right now? Obviously the Zirax and any other alien threat that literally interdicted humanity's attempt at finding this world. I think Survival may apply to building a great fleet to overcome the threat and ultimately achieve the original goal. I'm not necessarily siding with @michaelhartman89 but I'm just encouraging everyone to think a little deeper about the reason us humans ended up in our crash-landing situation in the first place. By the way, Survival of the individual needs to be expanded upon greatly in this game. It's sad that the word is in the title yet we have little to no dangers in the universe. Where are my natural events/disasters that could strike at any moment? Hailstorms that damage vehicles, sandstorms that roll through and cause radar disruptions, windstorms that carry debris across the ground that could kill you if you don't take shelter, fog that makes it too dangerous to wander around for fear of getting lost or running into something dangerous, lightning storms that strike metal objects and either blow a generator or cause a massive power outage. THESE are survival events, and regardless of whether you are 2 minutes into a new game or 100 hours into raiding installations with your decked out ships they can and will give you a bad day (and add a lot more gameplay/storytelling to the otherwise dull world). Even local flora and fauna could become a lot more dangerous and create the player to think more about how to equip oneself before venturing out into the environment. Oh and what's the deal with every single faction inhabiting every single planet or moon that I visit no matter how far away it is? Where is the survival in this? I feel more like I am late to the party rather than exploring a vast and wild universe when there is a trader around every celestial body. I want to see some actual uninhabited worlds that perhaps every once in a while an AI vessel flies by and leaves as if it is scouting barren planets. Maybe Empyrion exists in the universe of the game, I don't know - there's too many planets to look now. But this word refers to things I mentioned under survival. Our goal is to look for Empyrion correct? The first word of the title: that is our main objective. How else are we to do that other than building a new fleet, surviving from the elements and all the aliens trying to kill our race, and exploring the galaxy? That's the entire title in a nutshell. Point is, the game is about more than just survival from a story point-of-view, especially when survival at the current moment in time is extremely boring compared to many other games I have played considering it is supposed to be a major feature of this game. I realize that got a little wordy but I had to get that out there...no offense intended to anyone and I am open to further intelligent discussion.
I couldn't have said that better, you hit the nail on the head with that comment. I absolutely agree. I posted something a long time ago that goes through the possible steps of gameplay for a future Empyrion. I think I'll post it here: "As far as the vanilla version is played, the game should still have the same progression process: basic survival>base>hv>sv>cv>first warp>building up inventory> multiple warps and other planets > mining and getting 2nd CV > NPC Missions and discovering trade stations, settlements and cities where you meet NPC for hire>hire>build initial settlement>10-20 npcs>explore the nearby systems/sectors>21-40 npcs corporate level>mass exploration and faction status> npc faction declares war on you> 40+ npc's end game ammount>set out to find Empyrion *This is just an example of one way to play, it could vary depending on play style" https://empyriononline.com/threads/a-real-purpose-for-ai-and-a-new-type-of-ai.15322/page-2
@Cleff Your post is well done. I can agree in general with much of it but disagree in nuance. I like this paragraph. I've said it in postings in the past that the game is attempting to be both SP and MP which causes some of the issues. While they can share some aspects, an SP game experience is a lot different than an MP and includes different expectations (PvP and large ship battles being a couple). Once you put that focus on providing the larger scale combats of an MP, you wind up unintentionally deluting the survival experience of the SP gamer. An example of this is the lack of a fatigue/sleep mechanism which is difficult to impliment in a MP game but a pretty basic device of SP games. I, too, don't want to sound as if I'm dissing MP, I just want to point out the differences that it brings vs.SP mode. Even if I am a SP gamer I can see the allure of it with intelligent foes in the form of other players unlike the computer enemies that often have exploitable weakness in their game AIs. Agree that a greater variety would make the later game much better. Truth is that I've started new games so often as development of the game advances that I rarely gotten far from the starter planet so I haven't see a lot of what Eleon has to offer. I haven't tried out Project Eden but I understand it makes a good attempt at giving the player some interesting planets. Along with visual variety, an increase in wildlife variety wouldn't be amiss. Again I say IMO that survival elements, in part, are weak because of the alternate focus on providing for the MP experience and its PvP desires. Its not that survival elements can't be worked out in an MP game (plenty of MMORPGs like Rust that do this) but with a Dev staff that can be counted on one hand practically, it a matter of priority and time allocation between the two game states of PvE and PvP As to your suggestions about improvements to the PvE survival. I like them, a lot. The changing Wx effects in the game are nice but mostly cosmetic at this point. Giving them some "weight" would be nice. A fleet isn't a given. In the lore we a looking for a new home which implies colonization. How about instead focus on building the colony and defending it instead of going the fleet sim route.
I do like a colony approach as well, but a colony would involve more than just the player. Either way now you have a fleet to protect you from invasion as well as orbital defense stations. I have built some pretty cool cities in the past, but never had a reason to put them to good use.
I like the fog picture. I would argue that the colony approach wouldn't necessarily involved more players anymore than doing a fleet. If you want micromanagement or design control over every little detail you'd welcome the help of others but if you only wanted a representative level of functionality then it could be done by one player. Personally, I play the game for the exploration feature and I don't really want to be tied down to managing a colony (or a fleet for that matter) even if I am suggesting it.
Well PvP at least shows that the game could very well support AI controlled fleets in SP, with no bandwitdh issue.
Interesting thread here. As mentioned before - with the new config files opened up we can add any new blocks (NPC or otherwise) to give structures bonuses. So that's a great new addition, but it would be really cool to add more life to NPCs. Personally, I'd like to make it so the turrets don't function at all without a seated NPC manning it. That opens up new options like having higher level NPCs affect reload speed, turn speed, bullet spread, etc. Avorion does this very well already, but I'd prefer to have the actual FPS interaction with the NPC's like in Atlas. I'm on the fence about having autonomous vessels manned entirely by NPC crews. I enjoy that aspect of Avorion, but that's not really why I play Empyrion. Maybe this could be solved with autopilot and/or Logic Control like Space Engineers has. It could augment a player's ability to have multiple semi-autonomous structures. Then the captain position can only be taken by a player. So a ship would be inert, other than NPC manned turrets, processors, farmers, etc. The trade off would be allowing a player to transport himself to any of his structures directly into the captain's seat. At that point he could engage autopilot to hit waypoint(s) in a playfield, then leave while the vessel travels that path. I dunno I'm just throwing stuff out now. Still, cool ideas in this thread. Thanks for the invite.
Some other areas we could have good non-vehicle PvP/PvE/Singleplayer is in cities or planets with worldwide npc Faction wars. Two opposing factions with background story, and it is your job to complete objectives for Npcs or work side missions to capture points, intel, or take Strongholds. The only part of this that I'm trying to wrap my head around is that this is an open world and that these battles would need to be randomized along with the mission. Scripted storylines with a linear path are great and cover this type of stuff very well, but this is a whole different concept being open world. For examples of good open world games that utilize what I am suggesting, think of Farcry 4, Skyrim or Red Dead Redemption. As a player you would be able to roam around the map and you would see small skirmishes or large battles between the groups. Just like the drones spawn for the drone base, these npcs would spawn from theirs and roam the map looking for each other and then fight once they see they other. Zirax patrols already do this, but it's not they currently engage with the talon.maybe someday instead of just the base attacks, we'll see uprisings on zirax homeworlds and be able to assist rebels gain their freedom. I'm sure @ravien_ff would be able to do this best with his scenario. Speaking of which I still owe you a city; I totally forgot about it. I'll see if I can get the blueprint from my cousin
Just a thought, that I shared in a private conversation concerning this thread: "I would love some automation via npcs accomplishing tasks. In the military, Officers and NCOs have to delegate duties to lower enlisted to accomplish anything worthwhile, and definitely in order to be victorious in conflict. You take the role of planner, ambassador, decision maker and gather intel while doing so. This is what I expect to happen in late game. I no longer have to worry about remedial tasks like you said because my concerns are with the big picture, the real threat. My companions are there to help me and will provide me with the necessary materials I have picked out personally to accomplish my mission. At this point I am going out to improve relations and make battle plans to fight my enemies to retain my property. I hope they are unrelenting, just so it's all worth it in the end. But the further I extend from my home, the farther I stretch my logistical lines and the weaker I become. That is where I am relying on my own organization to carry me through to victory. I have set up trade and still have companions harvesting materials while I am quickly expending those in ammunition, fuel and lost vessels. If I lose a ship, I don't have time to replace it when I am close to their homeworld. That's where my fleet comes in. They are there to help, but I can just as easily lose them and have to replace them as well. Costs in materials and credits sky rocket as soon as I take on the responsibility supporting a settlement, and fueling vessels in my fleet as well as my flagship. I am trying to balance all of these different things now, while still progressing with my campaign."
Now, to reconciliate this with the game we have now... Like I wrote earlier, most of this could be text/image based, series of reports in the PDA, for example. Making it otherwise would require some extensive UI and menus, not mentioning running the whole setup in parallel while we know the game forgets about playfields when they are unloaded. Think about the details of implementation, for example, like what animations for NPCs would be the most fitting, because I doubt we will get hundreds of these, and they would most probably be made for the actual game setup in priority.
I agree. IIRC the lore specifically mentioned the Titan but I don't recall if there were additional ships travelling alongside it, I'm inclined to think not. Though that doesn't mean we can't for the sake of fun. With regards to the sim aspect, I would most likely be against a full sim/rts type experience and prefer something simpler. It would be fun to have an AI ship or two on my side for once and perhaps fly with me into battle, but I agree that too much can become a handful and change the focus of the game. Building and defending a colony is fun but the humans looking for Empyrion would probably want to hold off doing so until after they found their little Eden. Though I'd have no issue making stops along the way to rest, resupply, and perhaps even build a small colony as an outpost for many practical or potentially lore-related reasons. If a player isn't trying to strictly follow the lore then by all means build a colony, there should be nothing stopping them. More gameplay option styles is usually a good thing in my book, unless they really impact how the default game is experienced by moving into a different, unexpected genre. Balance would be key in a feature like this thread suggests. Thanks for the feedback btw.
OP: Maybe for a EGS V2 or a mod. Do not see the need for such a manager simulator system in SP. If to play MP, then tasks should be done by other players. It is a game in itself.
I voted no, because: The vessel classes should be defined by players/creators Drifting into RTS is a big mistake It's much harder than people here are implying to develop a UI that allows you to issue orders to a fleet in 3D, possibly trying to attack moving targets (how many truely 3D RTS games are there - there's a reason for that) I'd much prefer the devs spend time developing AI fleets that were not under the player ownership. Specifically, I'd like to participate in a larger AI fleet battle. That would be much better than sending a couple of player owned ships against a POI, which is all you'd realistically achieve unless you spend months and months on creating a totally new UI. Also, I was under the impression that 3D AI is close to the hardest possible things to code in game development, and this is a 7 or 8 person dev team, not a AA studio with 100s of devs. I feel like AI suggestions need to take that into account. I would support more functionality for NPC crew on player and AI ships.
I voted yes simply because I think the SP game in particular needs more involvement technically to add some meat from mid to end game. Personally I enjoy the initial survival aspect, first base, HV, SV, etc... but then I kinda lose direction closely followed by enthusiasm... BUT I really like what this game offers to that point. (probably just contradicted myself a tad lol) The automation of some basics via an AI interaction and directive would help with that I feel. Personally I'm not so interested in massing huge AI driven fleets to render mass extinction to galactic enemies but rather more basic tasks to make use of 'existing' owner built infrastructure in more of a commerce related roll. Example might be to send an available "task capable" vessel to gather resources from a distant planet that you have already visited and placed auto miners on... or pick up existing resources from an earlier base and delivering to a forward or staging base, etc. Or through a AI commerce system, sell your looted items and have the AI deliver those to the buyer, typically a trader station or such. Maybe those capabilities could be tied to a specific core upgrade with some pretty rare resource collecting required to achieve & any movements must be within player explored space as per the teleport system. Simple tasks moving stuff from A to B to C could really remove some of the grind once the early survival aspects are well & truly done with. I can't see that kind of implementation being too taxing on the system if it's just a simple task based equation. I'm in no way a tech/dev so kick my arse out of the park if i'm over simplifying (duck... profanities from Devs incoming lol) but visually all I'm seeing is a task given - collect ore from said auto miners on such & such planet, an animation of whatever vessel flying off into the distance, a timer that says it'll return in a game realistic time frame, returning ship if your there to see it, resources/cash transaction added, maybe even some damage to ship every so often as a bonus , job done! That's pretty basic from where I'm sitting. In a nutshell, KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid). As much as it would be amazing & awesome to have all of the complexity suggested by the contributors on this topic, all great ideas to be sure, I don't think it's doable under the current Eleon structure (what little I know of it) as it would require vastly more real life resources to develop... I think they do pretty bloody well already given the small team they have. Hope some of that made sense But if we don't dream we'll never get!
I tend to agree with this. But I think there is also another factor: territorial control / faction "Imperialism" To be perfectly honest, having been away from the game for along time and now back to it pretty hard core (round about 200 hours, but still just getting a handle on all the early and early-mid-game dynamics so not into mid-game nor 'end-game' stuff yet), I'm not totally clear on where the vanilla game lies at present with respect to this stuff. I also play with primarily with Project Eden and now with Reforged Galaxy, so . . . that shapes my perceptions too. I have ALWAYS believed that this game had ENORMOUS potential for something along the lines of a Kenshi "grow your own faction/communities/gangs and take control of other NPC factions/territories/gangs" dynamic. Kenshi is a good game, and I think that model of how NPCs are recruited and "managed" might not be a bad model to consider, though I can imagine a lot of more "anti-NPC" players being TOTALLY opposed to how Kenshi functions. Basically, Kenshi is an isometric 3D moderately-low poly real-time squad tactics survival game set in a completely imaginary world with desolate, somewhat post-apocalyptic and dystopian dynamics (slavery, misogyny, ultra-violence, nasty wild beasts that eat you, etc., etc., btw, none of this is salient to how the game mechanics function but it sets the stage). You start Kenshi in control of at least one "character," which has the standard RPG configuration of skills, attributes, an limited capacity inventory, hot bar for equippables, etc. There are some ranged weapons but generally the tech level can best be characterized as late Medieval with a kind of Japanese feudal feel. Just surviving is a challenge, much less gaining any wealth, reputation or building up skills/abilities. But of course that is what the game is about. As you meet NPCs in the game, you will find some who can be recruited: some for free, some with particular strings attached, some simply for pay. Once you build up good relations with them to a high level, you can effectively "become them," and switch BETWEEN any character you have high relations with at any time. So effectively, you slowly gain control of more and more characters. There was a fantastic mod for Arma 2 that include this dynamic called "Lost" and it was brilliant. This mechanic combined with just a small set of "standing orders" and formations / movement / posture settings allowed for a high degree of control of an entire squad of modern-day infantry soldiers by one player. You'd (for example) select your left flank Heavy MG, set him to prone and point this way with "Opportunity Fire / Suppressive Fire;" then you'd "switch" to direct control of your center line rifleman, and set him to kneeling / taking cover "Only fire when fired on" and "Reconnoier." Then you'd switch to your sniper and his spotter and tell them to get up on that balcony with appropriate settings. Then you'd select your light machine gun and second rifleman and tell them to assume the wedge formation with you (the squad leader) as center and "follow /protect" and then you'd do your flanking sweep of the suspected enemy position and get them to engage so your HMG could take them out as they flushed out . . . Kenshi is not so intricate and sophisticated as everything tends to devolve into a pellmell, but the basic idea is similar. Something like this at the level of individual infantry solders makes more sense as the starting point to me, and then with the intent to expand to cover vehicles too. The one thing though is: if there is really nothing for the player to "control" there is not much point to all of it, other than setting up cool engagements. I voted "Other" btw. I'm very much in favor of elaborations of the NPC and other singleplayer/coop dimensions of the game, but I think that jumping straight for NPC ships before basic NPC characters are scripted doesn't make sense. Assuming the modding api allows it, and if anyone can write a third party app like the "Script Extender" app for Fallout and other Creation Engine games (Oblivion, Skyrim, etc.) then it is all "doable" though it may impose quite a bit of "overhead" in terms of end-user infrastructure. How it would work in MP contexts I cannot even fathom but for singleplayer mode it should be "doable." Lots of work to do it of course, but really, as long as enough is exposed in the API "we" wouldn't really need Eleon. It would of course be PREFERABLE if they are "onboard" with such a project, or maybe even "leading it" and seeknig to delegate /crowd-source programming/asset development similar to how they've got free POIs and other constructs (a wise move on their part). Having them work WITH such a modding team would be INFINITELY preferable, and if they perceived that the mod would help them move more units then one would assume they'd be all for it.
Did you ever play the game Project Eden ? It had a somewhat cool way of allowing the player to "transfer" into any of the 4 members of his squads. It can be played in COOP, and makes for hilarious situations. Also, each squad members having specialized abilites, some puzzles could only be resolved by a specific squad member. To "transfer" from one character to another, we just had to look at the desired character and press a key, and we were then in control and looking from that character. Cool game, but lacked lots of polish. It also had 2 small personal drones, a mini-tank and a flying sphere (!) with limited capacities... https://www.gog.com/game/project_eden .
