Just wondering if anyone else here has played and enjoyed that game? The thought struck me last night that there are several similar concepts in that game when compared to the core idea of EGS. Exploration, survival, building, fighting, raiding etc. You explore the galaxy, improving your ship so you can accomplish more safely, eventually starting your own faction and attempting to carve a home in the stars. The galaxy feels Very alive. There are hundreds of AI captains that roam around doing their own thing. They raid, attack each other, *help* each other, succeed and fail just as you can. They can even use the loot they acquire to make themselves stronger. They can get loot from trading, in battle and you can even directly give them parts or credits. Once you've played a while and have a fully equipped Max core ship that's not the end. Loot has quality which affects it's hp and damage potential. Starbases get better quality stuff for sale the more they get upgraded and by having upgraded friendly neighbourhood stations. And as if that wasn't enough you can request Custom parts be made and delivered to you for fairly large markups. I feel that several of these ideas could be put to good use in EGS, particularly making the galaxy feel alive and giving us a reason to keep going despite already having pimped out vessels. The random AI within the galaxy might be problematic due to performance concerns but once we get to the optimization phases there may turn out to be room for them. Another big factor would be loot. Currently the only 'better quality' loot we get is personal weaponry. I can tell you right away that if I knew I might get upgraded vessel weaponry/devices in POIs I'd do them a lot more willingly. And if there were say 5 tiers of upgrades available I'd go out into the galaxy and conquer all POIs in sight. We could also adopt the 'upgraded' station/vessel concept by introducing tiers of Cores that apply an overall stat boost %, only available in POIs. Back to exploring for a moment; Unless the galaxy is endlessly procedurally generated you WILL run out of places to explore eventually. The only way I can see around this, within a limited galaxy, is to have events happen within previously explored areas that change the dynamics of that area. Drone bases attacking, yeah sure. But how about Alien factories that pollute the atmosphere, limiting sunlight, or cause radioactive fogs on otherwise benign planets? Or Alien hunting expeditions that decimate all wild-life until you forcibly evict them. Or Power stations that gather ambient energy from that planet (Including your base!!). A lot of these ideas combine exploration and survival. You could ignore them, but if doing so will eventually cause your base to flounder it might be a plan to go kick their buttocks and stop their shennanigans.
I've played it, back during it's Beta period. If you didn't play or like the original SPAZ, then the second game might be entertaining. But if you *did* enjoy the original, then the second may turn you off. They are really nothing alike. I appreciate what they tried to do with territories, capturing and building bases, and so on in SPAZ 2. But what they did with zombies was.. odd, and not very fun. Take for example what happens to a zombie captain when you destroy their ship (kill them in combat). They don't really die, they "ghost" and slowly fly back to their base/territory, where after a few turns they get a totally new ship. There's absolutely no way to wipe out enemy captains to get a break in their attacks. I also didn't like the "broadsides only" combat that they ended up with, even though they went to a 3D game model for combat playfields. I don't mind that sort of combat, but it felt somehow cheesy and underdeveloped in SPAZ 2. ---------------------------- As far as Empyrion goes - I absolutely WOULD like to see player created factions, and have posted about that elsewhere. Not for MP, but in SP - you start one, hire/recruit people through your journeys to join you and fill roles, amass a fleet (either purchasing ships or building/adding them), and have battles/wars with pirates or other factions. Many of those ideas would work well in the Empyrion universe, that did -not- work well with SPAZ 2 imo. With the new procedurally generated planets/systems/universes, we may eventually get the ability to "dynamically grow the universe as we explore it". I'm sorta counting on that, or universe designers that take space to the extreme. I can't see a player campaign in the size of a universe we currently have, unless it's something like one of the Voodoo universes.
