You don't think the backstory and its implications are interesting or worth reading about? Or you're bothered that two people read the same story and got different things from it? It's not like there's a flame war or anything going on. I'd genuinely like to know if there's info about the backstory I missed. It is somewhat off topic for this thread but it did get there through relevant discussion, which happens on every forum.
Feedback for Akua npcs - Eye of Mordor Slime - nice gimmick - Since there is just a basic fps element it will also limit what is possible for npc's; there is no leaning, use of cover, awareness system as far as i have seen - npcs are ok-ish, they work as a place holder/minimal challenge - modelling/animation is time and $ consuming so its ok to focus on other things when having a tight budget. Drones look well because they need less animation. Animals float and glitch a lot. Which makes em sometimes hard to hit. - alien ai/defence robots spawn often in the same place like 2-4 on one spot. They need to spread; different patrol scripts; a basic awareness - they dont shoot instantly when i'm half around a corner ao i kill the crash test dummies. But they use aimbot like chainfire when i'm completely out of cover. The in-between is missing when assaulting an alien base. But as i said before fleet ai for fleet battles would be more interesting for me then ground combat. I see the game future in multiplayer pvp/pve instead of solo game. But "Importance" could be: - Sophisticated ai drones/fleets -> foster teamplay to beat em; community events like dev alien fleets vs community - if u have to choose between shooter elements, animation/modelling and better ai for fleets/drones - i'd go for the latter - In solo game a must as minimum challenge - npcs als helper: drones and robots for defence, salvage, mining, repair... simple patrol options in bases; trader in multiplayer/late game - good old robinson crusoe: I may build my "Freitag" in solo game to have someone in my base - could be a drone or a cortana like hologramm.
I want the AIM bot the aliens use to never miss me . just kidding, but they do need to miss some of the time. Neutral aliens that are traders/merchants and or NPC allies. Different factions of Aliens and ways to earn or lose faction with them. Robots, Aliens, and other crash survivors that follow me around and help. would love to craft robots to mine, farm extra gun in a fight or guard my stuff. Alien HV, SV,CV to fight and or steal.
Some more ideas: - Since you have milk/ cheese production ingame - > build a kind of cattle ranch/large scale farming for animals. I really don't need hardcore survival in the sense that you have to feed the cattle every 5 min etc. But just as a kind of Western theme like Firefly - it would be smth different and ads a new way of designing a base. - You might combine this idea with "abstract" npcs. Like giving some Planets a virtual population with missions to deliver food. And of course the possibility to rob the space truckers! - Piracy: eg like in Distant Worlds Universe. If you dont bust em, they setup Bases and get real nasty. One might hire them via console and some empires near by will have a bad day But all in all these things might need a kind of economic system to work. - Fleet Battles: Since i love the old X-Series and the modders who gave us larger fleet battles. It would be nice to have some ai/npcs for my own fleet (even if its just a couple of ships/wingmen). Npcs could make it a bit more lively. But for the purpose of having fleet battles - a working flight ai with no crew would be just perfect. - The point above could give meaning to build carriers and have a small squadron. No detailed lunchtubes needed just an area where fighters spawn and despwan - simple, effective and perfect for all ships.
1: Safe bet the current NPC AI & shenanigans it's capable of is a placeholder so i'll deal with it for now. 2: I like the idea of Drone Allies... maybe a future 'Drone Deployer' Base Defense? Also, any chance we could someday make Base Guards for our Bases, like say, Allied Armored Golems? 3: I know the Dinos are placeholder, but Dinos are also auto-Rule of Cool... as is the Royal Dino Stew enabling ya to EAT the Dinos... please consider not removing them from the finished game... maybe make rareish Dino Planets where multitudes of Dino Species still rule that World cause a cheater Meteor didn't Hax them to death? Dinos rock, seriously. They lasted 65 million years & it took a HUGE METEOR to end them... us Humans irl might not even last 65,000 years before we get our own stupid butts killed. (As best as I know we're currently in the 10,000ish mark of our Lifespan in our Human Stage of Evolution...) 4: Speaking of Dinos, wouldn't say no to Tamable Dinos that I could have as pets, or combat forces. I once heard of a game that had German Sheperds wearing Vests with a Rocket Launcher mounted on top that could run around & blow up Tanks... could do something like that with those biped Dinos & the Triceratops... in addition to maybe 'for fun' Dino Mounts to recreational ride around on Akua or such? (Possible fun something to do while waiting for a LOT of Processing in a Large Constructor, like processing over 800 Promethium Ore?) 5: I LOVE Dragons, fav Fantasy Creature of all. I'd love them added to the game, including Lightning Breathing ones for my hopeful future Lightning Planets. ^_^ (This might be pure dreaming, but how can I not at least try?) 6: Can't help but to grin on your game's parody of the TVTrope, "Goddamned Bats", regardless of whether or not this is what ya intended. 7: In the future, could be cool to have Flying Animals. 8: Wouldn't say no to more peaceful Aliens too, but this is optional. I'm a carnage loving muscle head, but i'm also amicable to peace with non-douchebag Races. (Especially if they're Dragons!) That's all I can think of atm.
Less NPCs but 5-10x more powerful. Right now raiding an NPC base is a trivial exercise. On my first attempt I had to go back for more med kits, but after that it wasn't a challenge anymore. In general the game should not be about defeating NPCs. It would be really cool to see more emphasis on players working together in factions. Give people an incentive for joining a faction and get them working together. This will keep players coming back to the game. Give them an in-game community. NPCs should be secondary to this.
I would like to see more focus on the survival aspects of the game on upcoming updates. Please improve alien sprite textures, power, movement, etc. Would also like to see attacks on our bases. Take inspiration from 7DaystoDie zombie attacks for an example. Could we have alien invasions? Maybe they construct new bases.
Then you should be playing multiplayer. PvP...if your looking for a challenge. You didn't say what mode your playing.
The Graf you get from aliens isn't that great. You have to go out and work the mines and build it. Can't do that if aliens are attacking all the time.
Since this is a survival "sandbox" game, tying in RPG elements might be a bit more difficult than your casual game. So if the Devs do decide to implement an 'upgrade' to the NPC system might I suggest something similar to the Minecraft villages? Places where NPCs congregate and have their own farms setup, etc. In terms of 'realism' this would make a lot of sense I think. I'm pretty sure we can all agree there should be more than just drone bases on the planets we explore, especially once the procedural galaxy generation is brought into the picture. REALLY excited about that by the way
Agreed. It'd be a shame if there was no such thing as more civil & peaceful Aliens. Plus maybe we could trade with the peaceful ones for the Blueprints for how to make those Alien Stuffs the Hostile Aliens won't cough up the secrets on...
Only thing that bothers me is the drones attacking empty ships instead of coming where the racket(and players) is. More than 5 times now we've left our tiny dropship behind hills and attacked factories and stuff successfully, only to discover in the return trip that there's 3 to 5 drones still shooting the wreckage of the ship This doesn't really promote teamplay since one of us has to always stay behind to guard the ship, when not a single drone comes even near the ship. We've tested this extensively on multiple planets and it seems to hold true every time. Other good thing that would solve even this issue would be removing the restriction of leaving planet without all players aboard. Then you could actually use the dropships as they are meant to be and would get rid of the turret bug in capital vessels... The amount of NPC's in planets is good atm, makes places that have breathable atmosphere feel alive, as they should be and most of the places without proper gas layer feel dead and desolate as they should be.
I would pose that native animal life (fauna) is a resource, just as minerals and points of interest. If the resource is used (wastefully), it will not replenish. On Akua, I notice that creatures killed in one location take quite a while to regenerate - I would go further and remove a spawn point for any creatures in that location once they all or most all have been hunted. However, if the player only hunts 50% (+/-) or less of local animal life in a large area for a set time period (2+/- game hours) it will continue to slowly regenerate and be a inexhaustible resource to the player. By putting this mechanic into effect, hunting would become much more realistic. The hunter (player) would have to choose a certain number of creatures to kill. Once a threshold is passed then local extinction is the result. Going further, if animal life becomes extinct the local plant life would quickly disappear as well. Taking this mechanic to its ultimate outcome, an out-of-control extinction event in several locations (10-20?) caused by the player could create a planet-wide extinction event, leading to a "dying world". Not unlike the choices we make in our world currently, a dying world has permanent consequences and is a disaster for the player who perpetrated it. This event creates a world that is extremely threatening to any existing or new inhabitants. A dying world loses its breathable oxygen quickly and its water becomes corrosive and unusable due to carbon infusion. In addition, uncontrolled greenhouse effect creates a dense and acidic atmosphere (not unlike Venus). Dying World Gameplay Mechanics (Only for World Populated by Animals): 1. Animals should not be used until over 50% are hunted within 2+/- game hours. 2. If most of multiple species are hunted, player is punished as no more animals are spawned and the plants disappear in that specific area over time (local extinction). 3. Planet-Wide Extinction Event - Made when (10-20?) local extinction events happen. - A planet wide extinction event will make all animals disappear within (1-2?) game hours. - A planet wide extinction event will make all plants disappear within (1-4?) game hours. - No more green textures or added plant life/textures. All terrain becomes basic pallet color used (brown, tan, gray, etc.) 4. Dying World Mechanic Begins - Breathable air lost between (1-2?) game hours after planet-wide extinction event ends. - Usable water lost between (1-3?) game hours after planet-wide extinction event ends. - Bases and other objects set over water are destroyed from underneath within (2-4?) game hours. - Heavy cloud cover mechanic (spawn many normal clouds/cloud animations used for planet) 5. Uncontrolled Greenhouse Effect Mechanic - Greenhouse negative effects begin (1-2?) game hours after Dying World Mechanic ends. - The planet gains 10x (+/-) gravity pull due to increased atmospheric density - Atmospheric acidity decreases health fairly quickly when outside due to wear on envirosuit (as previously mentioned, 10x or so increased gravity will make jumping and jetpack more difficult as well). - Atmospheric acidity slowly breaks down any structures, ships, points-of-interest, certain oxidizable metal deposits (iron, etc.) (5-7?) game hours. Breakdown of structures can be shown using existing dent damage mechanics and item damage mechanics if you like. Metal deposits can break down at apre-determined constant rate and can be shown by spawning less ore for the same amount of mining. - Create constant cloud cover with no sky showing. Color clouds - tan, light orange, purple, green, etc.
I like the Idea of using animals as a resource as everything else and as you noted killing all life from certain location makes them spawn veeeeeery slowly back. I agree to the point that you should be able to kill local wildlife to the point of extinction as well, but since we're supposed to be at planetary levels, I'd like to propose quite bit of fine toning of those drastic measures you suggest... First of all, at the planetary level hunting all animal life to extinction is possible if you have millions of players on one planet. Although if we take into account our tiny planets it would still take group of more than 20 players who would just travel around killing things, but it should be possible to hunt everything to extinction and dwindling numbers of wildlife should make remainder of the group spawn even slower. However this is where it gets tricky in a real world. There's been numerous amount of mass extinctions in the history of our planet, most of them have wiped off 50 to 80% of known species of their times. This however has very little effect on the atmosphere of the planet itself, since greatest survivors are historically both "animals" and plants which have very low cell count and short lives, hence they multiply fast. what it means is that more oxygen consuming lifeforms perish as do oxygen producing ones. BUT oxygen producing organisms are usually simpler than oxygen consuming ones, hence oxygen production is back up faster than oxygen consumption. For example algae in the seawater provides most of our oxygen and eat away the carbon and many of them have short lifespans and extremely fast reproduction rates. In the case of what you propose as an "artificial mass extinction" the results would most likely be: Erasing herbivore and carnivore species by hunting for meat and leather. Plant-life goes mad, since harvesting plants pretty much ends, also bones of the hunted animals would most likely create enough fertilizer together dead plants, which would now be able to breed and spread like never before. So in a century or so there would be even more vegetation than ever before. This would also raise planets oxygen concentration, not lessen it, since multiple species of advanced organisms no longer consume it. Not to mention that many of the herbivorous animals produce methane, which is very strong greenhouse gas, so erasing herbivores off the planet could actually lessen the greenhouse effect and make planet colder in the long run, where as increasing number of plant life could theoretically effect the albedo of the planet and either warm the planet or cool it depending on the leaf color of the new vegetation. (by reflecting more or less sunlight back to space, pale colored plants(like leafy trees on our planet ie oak) reflect more and dark coloured plants reflect less, like most of the evergreens) 1. & 2 I have no objections against, they're pretty good ideas although it should effect herd animals more than solitary animals, simply because density of animals per sq/km. Also currently as soon as you can get first proper 3x3 greenhouse up, hunting becomes more or less irrelevant as it is. Also amount and diversity of plantlife would multiply in the absence of herbivores, not diminish, in short term (big effects would take more than century so I'm not sure if they're really relevant on a game anyways). In a few centuries if every single rising new species were hunted to extinction as well the plants would start to suffer from lack of nitrogen in soil, which would take effect on most delicate plants first then in a few more centuries only hardest plants would remain, so in a millennium or two it would have big impact on what grows and where, but erasing all plant life is almost impossible. 3. To get this scale of event launched in planetary scale, it would take some extremely drastic measures. Like hitting planet with 100 -500km wide asteroid. This should release enough dust particles to the atmosphere that most of the plants which rely on sunlight would die. Second large impact would happen with the dust layer reflecting sunlight back into space, this is called "nuclear winter" effect and it would create large glaciers while reducing mean temperature of the planet itself on several degrees. This could technically make the effects you describe possible, although creating planetary wide dust cloud it would take several years to spread every corner of the planet and then few decades to centuries to make the effects as drastic as you describe. Propostion: -This could however be viable on a few of the extremely barren planets which are on border of being habitable and could be under "terraforming". In a planet that has very little area that is capable of supporting life, even hunting could launch enough differences to the local food chain to make catastrophic collapse possible. -Make tiny terraformed areas in some of the barren planets where you have to be extremely careful not to tip the balance too much in any direction. This could be "extra hard" starting location or such? 4. This is very problematic, since to our current knowledge from Mars and Venus for example, the changes you describe would take millions of years and hence be very hard to notice in human lifespan. Losing breathable air from atmosphere is possible on two ways, either atmosphere becomes too oxygen poor for human lungs (roughly 16% is on the border where you're no longer able to get enough oxygen via lungs alone) or whole atmosphere escapes into void of space(as in Mars, where mass of the planet is too small to sustain an actual atmosphere). So either could be possible only if you'd be able to wipe out whole vegetation layer of the planet, or if it's rotational axis was unstable enough to periodically freeze either half (no big enough moon(s) to stabilize the axis) or once again if you were in a tiny human induced habitat, which is barely able to sustain itself. Losing usable water is even more problematic than losing usable air, since even frozen water is usable and vastly increased acidity is extremely uncommon, unless you make your base in top of an active volcano, which could spew enough sulfuric materials to increase acidity rapidly in the pool where you have your base in. For example, there' layers of usable ice in both Moon and Mars... Heavy cloud cover mechanics would more likely be part of the nuclear winter scenario than fast paced greenhouse effect, since that actually reduces the planets mean temperature. Venusian atmosphere is not very good example of this either, since the thickness of the atmosphere makes most of the effect in there by rising the surface pressure and it has tiny amount of corroding sulfur clouds in it, most of it is just our standard co2 which is not good news for humans trying to breath it, but since it contains less free oxygen it's actually less harmful for metals as hull of your base or spaceship Propostion: -Once again viable theories for tiny terraformed areas in some of the barren planets where you have to be extremely careful not to tip the balance too much in any direction. This could be "extra hard" starting location or such? 5. Planets cannot really gain or lose gravity pull from atmosphere alone, since thickness of the atmosphere and elements it consists are extremely often lighter than core or even bulk of the planet itself. (aside from Gas giants, which are unsuitable for habitation in first place). So increase or decrease gravitational pull of the planet you would have to significantly either increase it's mass or decrease it's mass. Both can be currently achieved only by collisions with other planetary bodies. Acidic atmosphere strong enough to melt steel via clouds or just by staying there, would require so significantly different composition of the said atmosphere that it wouldn't have been breathable in the first place (not for humans anyways, who knows what non-carbon based lifeforms use for breathing). This could nonetheless make interesting gameplay if there's some rarer materials on the acidic planets and you'd have to make quick dips in there to gather or even make permanent base underground safe from the atmosphere itself. Also Oxidization of ore deposits would require free oxygen, which quite often mainly affects color of the deposit and chemical stuff required to take out the metal from it. Very hot salt water or volcanic fluids can however eat parts of the metal inside them and carry it on another location. Not sure how to use this on a game scale though, since these progresses are again at least centuries long... Constant cloud cover is not necessarily bad, depending on what chemical composition of those clouds is, but... Eh, this is starting to go pretty far from npc's Also as a funny side note: Jupiter is on a border being large enough that you could artificially ignite it and make a new tiny sun. All you need is either proper mass increase (drop one or two of the rocky planets inside there) or use some power source to raise it's temperature until fusion reaction starts, although the ignition might cause some harm to existing planets....
& also, some of us like our Dino Salami. Give us a way to tame & raise Dinos for food to avoid over hunting stuff, THEN ya can implement this kinda Mechanic.
"Welcome to the Galactic Zoo and Restaurant! Take pictures and play with your favorite exotic alien species, then enjoy them with a nice, Zero-Gravity wine pairing, as recommended by an authentic, oppressed native alien!"
Ahem, we've got gravity generators *ahem* Also artificial gravity is piece of cake in space, all you need is rotation on proper velocities
Anyone can spin real big stuff to make Gravity. Confining Gravity Generation to a 2x2x2 Block Sized Machine & having that generate lots of Gravity, THAT'S a trick. ;P Now, an even better trick... making it easier to tell where a Gravity Generator's influence range is for planning their Placement in a CV. For the Topic: It'd rock to have Dino Guards for Bases, & by this I mean Dinos with Guns trained for security!
