Xenon_Slayer wrote:I'll try and cover a few of the questions Lino couldn't answer. But yes, vague is the word of the day
mr.WHO wrote:
9) Are there any plans to replace "spawn out of thin air" system for NPC and hostiles (like pirate/Xenons) with something more physical that player can impact?
For the majority of ships, yes. We do want the ships to come from a source such as a shipyard. Some missions may be a special case, but far less than before.
some people like to fight, so much that they dont care about the relation to other (KI) races, so they start to "conquer" other sectors / areas occupied by any KI race ...
PROBLEM:
in x3 the "jobs" engine spawned ships also "out of thin air", in some cases the spawn sector was fix, that meant you could never really conquer a sector because the frequent respawn of (enemy) KI in your conquered sector
SOLUTION:
"out of thin air" is not the problem, but make ships spawn only in their sectors, of create them at shipyards in their sectors, IF any race wants to "expand" their area of influence, then by starting from their own sectors
IF they dont posess any area / sector (anymore), THEN pause for a while and spawn them in "unknown area" (unknown means not occupied by any race, the universe is large !! so make use of it ..)
IF nothing helps, then start big invasion (spawning) but in random places against random races, NOT PLAYER-FIXATED !!
Xenon_Slayer wrote:mr.WHO wrote:
10) Will you improve generic mission variety and review their logic?
There should be more happening in the universe which can than trigger missions based on those events. There will still be generic missions which may 'fabricate' the scenario as it was in previous games, but we do of course want these to have as little fakery as possible.
on of the worst decisions, imho, is to fabricate the scenario, that means the player finally controlls what happens, instead of reacting to its "environment" (like in the real world)
why not just create a certain job ID, give them the task to plunder ships and randomly attack stations etc, and create fight missions, find a suitable ship to kill (jobID = ..., class = dependent on player fight rank etc), that's better and doesnt "feel" like the player somehow "controls" its environment
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build missions:
for each sector cluster / area:
--> count all the stations that produce wares, and utilize wares
--> check what wares are rare / needed
--> select stations to build dependent on the most needed wares, NOT randomly
the check can take place every hour or so, but it's much better than selecting station types randomly
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who offers a mission ?
selecting a random character, of even creating a random character ? why ?
once a ship gets attacked by a pirate / outlawed guy, start a script on that ship, if it successfully flees, and if the attack happened recently, and if the ship is in the players current sector, then use the NPC to create an "bounty hunter" offer.
in case the ship was destroyed, maybe a "recon" has spotted the incident, that recon could the offer the mission
AND:
who is the offer actor that she / he can (as if by magic) detect wheater the victim got killed ? jesus ? buddah ? who ?
add step 2: collect dropped shipID plate or anything else that identified the enemy somehow, collect that, bring it back to the offer giver, THEN reward the player. thats how it worked in the wild west back in the 1800s.
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who gets paid, who was the killer ?
the guy that fired the last bullet? why ?
why not check wheater the player (or player owned ship) attacked that guy, count the damage, give the player at least some credits if she / he took part in the bounty hunt ... that would be only "fair", and there isnt a problem in implementing that.
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there ary many things to improve ...
another question:
can the player build stuff on planets / moons ? building doesnt necessarily mean that the player actually is on the planet
and please do away with the kind of "toon-shaded" models, physically-based rendering would make things look better, discard npc characters completely since they just look awful, try to keep only the "good" things from XR .. somehow ..
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jumpdrive IDEA:
add 1 (static)
gimbal in the middle of the sector, every time a ship wants to leave the sector, fly into the gimbal, set the course / target, and wait ...
the gimbal starts to rotate randomly, blocks any other ships from entering, and >booom< make a warp effect and move the player to its target sector .. EXACTLY in the sector center .. no gates needed .. no jumpdrive needed ..
the only thing that needs energy is that gimbal, NOT the ship that wants to travel, with increasing time the energy level of that gimbal reduces, and reduces the possible "jump range" ...
imho better that "space-autobahn" ^^
if one wants to fly to a neighbour sector, then accelerate for a while (there is no air friction or so that prevents a space ship from increasing its velocity when using actio<-->reatio jet propulsion, and mini asteroids are rare in space, so ..), and maybe make use of gravity, do a swingby on a small moon to increase velocity / change direction
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but the bnext problem: how to find travel paths then ?
--> by using 3D coordinates instead of the old .. XY-grid in the universe map
current sector:
dvec3 universelocation (in astronomical units)
target sector
dvec3 anotheruniverselocation (in astronomical units)
in case the gimbal is too weak to jump from A to B:
find any location in between A and B, jump there first, then make another jump to reach your goal
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another possible solution for bounty hunt:
make a "list of most wanted", a global value, each time a bad guy violates the x-laws, append him / her to that list, depending on how much damage the guy does, the higher the reward for capturing him / her (dead or alive)
the "list of most wanted" can be a local list, meaning that its validity depends on if you stil are in the same sector cluster/ planetary system, only the worst of those guys will be appended to a x-universal (FBI / federal) "list of most wanted" which is valid for all sectors / areas controlled by a certain race (a bad boron is not necessarily bad for split ^^)
