Empyrion - Galactic Survival

[Ulfengaard]

In addition, we read your feedback on the forums and it seems that you prefer to have a lower fuel consumption (SV / HV) on planets. So we decided to cut the fuel consumption on planets by half. Tell us what you think about this change.

Oi. *facepalm*

[FlowerChild]

Oi. *facepalm*

Hehe...yup. You'll also notice that I previously described how finding aloe for my crops was one of the few reasons I left the starting planet, and they've just added it to the starting planet as well :P

Particularly sad is that aloe is in no way required to survive. It's just used to make large medkits, which are essentially an upgrade to the small one. I had previously thought "well, at least they still have some progression in mind with that". Guess not, and I now assume they had just forgotten to add it to worldgen at first.

My impression is they're going full-blown "design by committee" with the community, and I've got zero interest in that. For the previous big release they even had a community poll on what they should be working on next, which caused me to raise an eyebrow, but I figured it might just be for show. Looks like it isn't.

On the brightish side, they made the desert planet an option you can use for your start again. However, I think doing it through options will all but guarantee the game isn't actually balanced around it, so that doesn't reassure me either.

All told: my bad. Once again, I got excited about a game based on an initial release without seeing how it was going to evolve over successive versions.

[DaveYanakov]

It happens. I'm completely hyped over Stellaris for example and that's just based off nothing but the Gamescom preview and the fact it's being developed by the same team as Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron. I had hopes for Empyrion when I saw the initial alpha but it seems to have turned into yet another case of inexperienced developers assuming that people know what they really want.

[FlowerChild]

It happens. I'm completely hyped over Stellaris for example and that's just based off nothing but the Gamescom preview and the fact it's being developed by the same team as Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron.

Well, that's a fairly strong motivation to get hyped about something. Didn't know about it and just added it to my wishlist as a result of the above ;)

[Ulfengaard]

...and the fact it's being developed by the same team as Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron...

Gotta agree with FC: that's quite a reputation. I'm likewise hyped about Stellaris. Empyrion was really exciting for a bit there, but once the spawn planet had oxygen, I found myself just sort of puttering around and got bored. Seems like a drastic reaction to such a change, but that's what happened.

[FlowerChild]

Gotta agree with FC: that's quite a reputation. I'm likewise hyped about Stellaris. Empyrion was really exciting for a bit there, but once the spawn planet had oxygen, I found myself just sort of puttering around and got bored. Seems like a drastic reaction to such a change, but that's what happened.

Well, not so harsh when you consider that the game had half its survival mechanics effectively removed, and it was the half that was rather unique to this particular game.

Granted, I think space engineers has oxygen concerns as well, but in practice it hardly amounts to anything as you never need to stray far from your ship anyways.

[Gilberreke]

Ah yes, the forums. A wonderful place full of top-notch designers, creating threads like these:

http://empyriononline.com/threads/1892/

Warning: reading that thread may cause you to punch your nearest air-breathing house resident

[FlowerChild]

Warning: reading that thread may cause you to punch your nearest air-breathing house resident

That's far from the worst I've seen, but the guy saying it wasn't realistic for one person to be able to deplete three planets of resources was an lol moment for me, so thanks :)

The above also reminds me of another argument I saw during the debate over whether the starting planet should have oxygen that I think you guys will appreciate:

It basically argued that if the solar system contains planets with both oxygen and without it wouldn't be realistic to expect the computer in the escape pod to choose to crash on the one without.

That one had me in hysterics. Forget about whether it's more or less fun guys, cause the "realistic" design of sci-fi flight computers obviously takes precedence over any such trivial considerations ;)

[Gilberreke]

I think energy use is the Achilles' heel of the whole design and by listening to the community, they'll screw it up. Oxygen use is a fine limiter for early game and a nice way to force you to use vehicles (and thus fuel) to explore a planet. The point where you travel to the crashed ship is one of the better moments in gaming I've experienced in a while, with me going "okay, what do I need for this expedition?" naturally, without the game forcing me to, just to go visit a wreck I could see with my eyes. That was working really well.

The big issue is the status quo. I think there's an issue with forcing people to invest time just to maintain status quo in their games. In BTW, before renewable food, there's a tension going. That's fine, but only because it resolves later. The hardcore spawn is fun too, as it occasionally sends you on a nostalgic trip back to that feeling. Fuel is like food in BTW, it's a major bottleneck and it makes you decide which things to do based on availability. It has that same tension.

Problem is, by listening to the community, they'll just eradicate that tension, while the solution is something that fits into the design. I agree that maintaining a base right now isn't fun, as you'll constantly be mucking about in the game's worst UI window, trying to figure out which things you want to shut down to preserve energy. Then you go down planet-side, to monotonously mine resources (mining is even more dull than in Minecraft). On top of that, once a planet is mined out, the game decides for you that it's time to move on, making planets very throwaway resources. It feels like the punishment is in there, but there's no resolve for it. Instead of eradicating the punishment, they need to work on the reward, the opposite of what they're doing by eliminating oxygen and energy requirements.

I think the tether idea is nice, as you mentioned, and it's pretty unique to this game right now. I would play that up I think. Maybe introduce planets that are almost entirely made up out of fuel, so they allow you to be extravagant with fuel, build bases, mill about, but only in that planet's range. Basically, in the later game, you force players to find fuel planets and then tether them to those planets. Any solar system not sporting a fuel planet will have that tension going, so with the chances of finding two rare resources in one system being low, the player will want to visit these high tension areas. This whole system would rely on some way to limit the amount of fuel a player can carry, so you can't turn your capital vessel into a fuel planet of sorts and skip all the tension altogether.

Another way to accomplish this would be rare suns that give off a different light. You introduce a new tier, solar energy, which is free, but only available near these suns. The bonus is that you can spot these from far away, so players could hop from rare sun to rare sun, make bases there. When they explore anything in between, however, there's that tension again. Maybe the rare suns could be black holes and the energy could be generated form gravity tidal waves? Dunno, sounds trendy and sci-fi.

So yeah, they are in the unique situation with that tether mechanic that they CAN provide excesses within the tether bubble, as long as players have a need to go out of the bubble. It's interesting design space and I'm very afraid they won't recognize it anyway.

[DaveYanakov]

Wouldn't really need to limit the amount of fuel that a player can hold, just need to slap a risk on the reward. Fuel containers of any useful volume are going to be very heavy and bulky by definition. That means either you build your ship specifically around them or leave a highly volatile target exposed. Most games I have played that involved a supply chain were stronger for the need to protect the logistics. Requiring a team to protect the tankers fueling your large base or fleet operations away from the fuel source would add strong incentive for teamwork, a gate for lone wolf/pirate types to keep their ships and bases smaller than those which a fleet could support, and provide a powerful objective to create the battles you would expect of a game where you can strap guns onto the ships you build.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I think a lot could be gained from decoupling the inventory and energy systems almost entirely, which could make base and vessel design more interesting.

For example, if you were to make generators a big bulky affair that would only be suitable to bases and capital ships, then have lighter weight batteries you could build into ships that you could charge up by docking with ships equipped with those generators, it could make things quite interesting. I believe ships already have mass which affects maneuverability and such, and if you were to build a slow burn time into the ores when converting to energy it would require a certain amount of planning ahead when you had ore on you and needed to convert it to energy.

Right now, the whole thing with having limited "fuel tanks" on ships but being able to carry a nigh infinite number of fuel cells in your inventory and in cargo boxes feels rather lame, as it trivializes energy management down to hopping out for a moment, topping off your tanks out of your pocket, then keeping on trucking.

Maybe the rare suns could be black holes and the energy could be generated form gravity tidal waves? Dunno, sounds trendy and sci-fi.

I dunno man...I think I'd like it except it somehow reminds me of Interstellar, which has joined Inception and Gravity on my short list of modern scifi movies everybody loves, but which I despised ;)

"The robot arm is carrying you away from the ship! You have to detach from it!" my left butt cheek...

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, we seem to be on the same page that energy is the subsystem where all the possibilities are. I was playing around with some similar ideas of separating small vessels from bases, etc (probably because you and Dave were playing around with that in early Space Engineers), but I couldn't quite get it to work as a gated system.

I dunno man...I think I'd like it except it somehow reminds me of Interstellar, which has joined Inception and Gravity on my short list of modern scifi movies everybody loves, but which I despised ;)

Neutron Stars then? References to Larry Niven are way cool (and I consider Neutron Star to be his best work by far).

Requiring a team to protect the tankers fueling your large base or fleet operations away from the fuel source would add strong incentive for teamwork, a gate for lone wolf/pirate types to keep their ships and bases smaller than those which a fleet could support, and provide a powerful objective to create the battles you would expect of a game where you can strap guns onto the ships you build.

Multiplayer only solution? I don't do multiplayer often, if at all. I do like the idea of fuel tankers becoming a thing in multiplayer, but the base game has to work without that. In single player, I can probably strap everything I need onto that fuel tanker, thus bringing us back to the whole storage of fuel problem.

[DaveYanakov]

In single player the challenge would be building a ship large enough to carry its own fuel supply around all by yourself. If you can manage to plan out and construct a multi-role exploration cruiser of that size and complexity on your own, I think you bloody well deserve to enjoy tooling around in it.