Astro Galaxy - a realistic space exploration game
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136  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Exploring star systems is boring on: January 09, 2015, 08:48:27 PM
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I would like to see some kind of long range scanning module added into the game. Basically you could navigate to a system and then go to your scanner module and have it scan the system. The higher mk the scanner the faster the scan is completed. It wouldn't give you the same detailed information you would get from manually moving to each planet/moon/asteroid field it would just give you some basic information. Things like number of slots on the planet, if there are any modules/ships/stations in the system and the total amount of minerals and gas that a planet has (not the specific types but rather a total amount for each planetary body). That would allow many of us to see if there is anything of interest in the system and if there is then we could manually poke around and get the details, if not we could move on. These types of scans would be one time things, not something that would go into your database to look at whenever you wanted, you would still have to manually explore each planet to get that. Of course any ships in the safe zone of a system would be exempt from these scans since you couldn't attack it or even hail it in the first place anyway.

There would be a sister module as well called the scanner jamming module, as you might suspect it would serve to jam a scanning module so that your planetary forces (if deployed on a planet), your ship or your station would remain invisible to a scan as long as your jamming device was the same level or higher than the scanning module being used.
Very nice idea.  The goal is to reduce the clickfest as a player gains power, and I think your idea does that. But keep in mind this too could become a problem someday. The difference is instead of individual planets being a clickfest, it'd be individual stars. It's imaginable if a player has enough ships and there're enough stars.

I'll add I think the scanner should show what types of minerals/gases the planets have, but only a rough guess of the amount.
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It actually gives me an idea as well, I would kind of like to have multiple options for what to use when making a module. For example if a module needs Iron-nickel, why couldn't I substitute Iron instead? Or perhaps just Nickel? Maybe even Aluminum since that is another metal used for construction. Obviously it wouldn't be the same amounts because those resources have different prices but it could adjust accordingly. Idk I have a lot of different ideas floating around in my head after reading some of the posts here. I might just make another thread for that though, it's a bit off the exploring star systems topic lol.

I like that idea, but you recall hte post I made in the suggestions forum about wanting to be able to mark minerals/gases or to preorder them on the manufacturing screen? The more ways there're to make modules or the more modules there're the worse the problem I brought up will be. With all of these ingredients for "recipes," we need a (better) interface for it.
137  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Exploring star systems is boring on: January 07, 2015, 11:11:11 PM
New idea:

An "Explore Nearby Stars" button in the nav room.
It will automatically plot a course for the nearest KNOWN star near the ship and once it gets there it will automatically survey the planets and moons and send a message to the captain that it's done its sweep.

It could be a toggle feature that could be left on to have a ship auto-exploring by jumping to a different star each time if the intel for the nearest star is older than a month old or something.

After playing Civilization V I have fallen in love with the idea of an auto-explore mechanic. It would help mining because you could actually find what you want without manually going to EVERY FREAKIN STAR and you could progressively fill your star map with info as you progress in other parts of the game.

The ship would run on this complex system of autopilots as long as it had fuel, but the idea is that if the nearest stars are stars A, B, & C (in that order) and the intel on Star A is pretty recent, the ship will recognize this and instead of just bouncing between two stars it will go to the next nearest star with old or non-existent info.

Pretty good right guys???
What of those players whom have dozens of ships, high MK engines and hundreds of millions of solar? They could produce a fleet of autoexplorers and know almost immediately when there's a good mining spot. This might be ok on the frontier, far away from SOL, assuming there's enough room for extremely wealthy players to compete for good spots, but close to SOL it could make it substantially harder for new players to find good spots. Presently, the "tedium" of exploring does balance somewhat the extreme wealth of some players versus the lack thereof amongst new players.

I do support a feature like this. I thikn hte real problem is once a player has tons of ships and fast engines, the pressure to use them to explore is too great. They bump up against the limitations in the system, like a fat man in a small car. I get the feeling this whole congestion in the exploring system is hte procuct of a game which is still confusing a single ship with a fleet of them. A game needs to decide whether it's going to be about a single ship experience or a fleet of them or both. If it wants to be both it needs to figure out how to make it work smoothly all the way from a single ship to a fleet of ships.

I want to add I'm becoming more like that fat man in a small car everyday. I have more and more ships, more and more modules, more and more mining units and so on. More and more I get the feeling I'm losing something by being away from the game. When I first started out it was very leisurely. Star travel was a dozen hours and I just walked away without even a glance. Now I look and it's only a couple hours or less. And I got more than one ship. More and more the game feels too real-time.

So I feel you. The game needs to be able to run on  its own better, no matter how powerful a player is.
138  Info Terminal / Knowledge base, Information board / Re: Cargo Bays on: January 04, 2015, 11:53:14 PM
Your solar cost for standard cargo bays is off slightly other wise manufacturing times look good, of course your manufacturing times are based on not having the manufacturing officier where as mine would be based on having it but the the ratios should remain unchanged for the most part.

Somewhere along the line I was looking at something on my sheets and saw some similarities and I must have made an assumption that it was the same between all basic and advanced modules but it clearly isn't. Shields are 5x longer and 2.5x more expensive, the cargo bays are 3x longer and roughly 2x as expensive. I haven't looked at weapons but I would guess they are also different, of course you have to remember to take into account the bonus damage lasers will do when comparing them to vipers as pretty much everyone uses shields.
My solar cost estimates are accurate. There's a spreadsheet somewhere around here which shows the same estimates too.

$1264 per MK. Advanced is $8462. Hence, as MK increases, the difference between the two approaches but never reaches (8462/(3*1264)=2.2315x. The initial expense to get standard up to 300 m3 throws it off at first.

I'll acknowledge I haven't looked at other modules. I really need to do that soon to be effective.
139  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Ability to research larger capacity for the miners. on: January 04, 2015, 07:59:39 PM
If I recall right you can unload miners manually if there's a station in orbit. If you have a lot of stations then you could do a lot of unloading now and then. I know this won't solve the problem of miners which don't have stations and the expense of stations themselves. And of course if you have to unload so many miners for so many stations it'll be time consuming.

I'm not even using stations yet. I just used one a long time ago when I was first starting out. Just doing it the old fashioned way right now. So it's kind of hard to understand what everybody is saying here. In my mind, stations would help me a lot. I think ya'll have so much wealth and so many things you don't remember what it's like to play at the bottom :0

I mean, to me 100,000 solars is a lot. A million or two million is a very large haul for me which takes many days. Yet I'm having fun. I imagine if I had much more wealth and research then I might understand hte complaints here.

I do think this game doesn't scale well as players get wealthy. Too many ships/miners/modules/stations to manage. For more wealthy players there needs to be more automatic functions. If the automatic functions are too extensive then players like myself won't have anything to do. The automatic functions need to kick in as more ships/modules/miners/etc are owned.
140  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Ability to mark or flag key minerals/gases on: January 04, 2015, 07:50:20 PM
I can make hundred(s) thousand(s) solars per day easy in mining. Right now I'm really inefficient. But if I could get organized I could probably make million(s) per day mining. The more miners/ships I have the quicker I'll do it.

You may be right, but being new as I am, I just have to test the limits myself.
141  Info Terminal / Knowledge base, Information board / Re: Cargo Bays on: January 03, 2015, 05:53:28 PM
.........
I made a spreadsheet a long time ago to help me look at modules, compare them as well as tell me how many of each material I need to upgrade/make certain levels of them for the sake of making my life a little easier. My sheet shows that once your advanced modules get past around mk 30-35 then creating a basic module with an equivalent effect will take you 5x longer than creating the advanced module, on the other hand the advanced module will cost 2.5x more than the basic module. That is just a rough estimate as I recal having this conversation just a bit ago with Jam about shields lol.
........

According to the math I did, it's only 5x longer very early and the advanced module can't cost 2.5x more. With increasing MK levels, the advanced multiplier (slowly) approaches ~2.231540084x (8462/(3*1264)). Research (slowly) decreases to <1.5x (I don't know the exact math for this one). Manufacturing time (slowly) decreases to ~3x (3 * 25 = 75).

Estimated solars cost:
S 093 2400 m3 = $117552
A 029 2400 m3 = $245398 = 2.087569756x
S 399 10050 m3 = $504336
A 131 10050 m3 = $1108522 = 2.197983091x
S 1398 35025 m3 = $1767072
A 464 35025 m3 = $3926368 = 2.221962659x

Estimated research cost:
S 2400 m3 - MK 93 (10,490,400)(10,382,400) = 1.591172414x
A 2400 m3 - MK 29 (6,525,000)
S 10050 m3 - MK 399 (191520000)(191412000) = 1.4759195x
A 10050 m3 - MK 131 (129690000)
S 35025 m3 - MK 1398 (2346962400)(2346854400) = 1.450286986x
A 35025 m3 - MK 464 (1618200000)

Estimated manufacturing time:
Standard Mk 93 (2400 m3) 279 hours = 3.206896552x
Advanced Mk 29 (2400 m3) 87 hours
Standard MK 399 (10050 m3) 1197 hours = 3.045801527x
Advanced MK 131 (10050 m3) 393 hours
Standard Mk 1398 (35025 m3) 4194 hours = 3.012931034x
Advanced Mk 464 (35025 m3) 1392 hours
142  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Ability to mark or flag key minerals/gases on: January 03, 2015, 04:54:28 PM
Which is why most of us have spread sheets that tell us these things so we don't have to go back and forth between the manufacturing screen and the buying screen. You can download one of those sheets in the Knowledge bits and Information section of the forum. Personally I don't like the format of that sheet so I use my own.

Mining doesn't make a lot of profit, at least not quickly which is why a lot of us don't even bother. As I mentioned in another thread I really want mining to be good and I would love to make it my profession in a game like this but the way mining works is just a waste of my time compared to the alternatives. Another tip would be to not use armor, it's just a constant resource drain not to mention a time drain when you have to constantly look at the materials and amounts needed to repair them. Pretty much all of us use shields for that reason.

I like mining, but maybe that's because I've only done one or two missions. And yet now that my combat-oriented ship is well over 50000 power I can now do combat missions without problem. I plan to do those when  traveling to the places where I mine.

Another thing I did recently was make a hangar for my defense/transport-oriented ship. I'm putting a scout in it. This way when I'm mining I can use the scout to look at surrounding places for good deposits of minerals/gases. It's quicker and cheaper, possibly. Even if it's not, it's fun so far. I gues that's the way I feel about a lot of things.
143  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Ability to mark or flag key minerals/gases on: January 03, 2015, 04:06:29 PM
If the game ever changed to have a player driven economy and you couldn't just buy an infinite amount of resources from Sol then I would definitely agree that this would be a great feature to put in. As is however I feel like it's pretty... unnecessary. There are simply a great deal of other things that need to be worked on ahead of this. Still it isn't a bad idea, just the fact that you can buy whatever resources you need for building at any time you want back at Sol makes it kind of not mattter whether you sell something or not. Unless you were selling massive amounts of resources or very rare materials then the amount of money you lose out on is pretty insignificant.

Hmm. I'll try to detail what I'm going through...

I do a lot of mining because I like too. I get a lot of minerals/gases this way. I haul them to SOL and sell them. The past couple runs I just sold what I had without looking. However, everytime I arrive at SOL I upgrade for several days using the solars I gained by selling. After looking at my manufacturing screen several dozen times, I started to see I sometimes have sold minerals/gases which I could have used in manufacturing and/or kept a small supply of them for repairing armour. So here I am at SOL wanting to sell a big haul, yet I'm looking at my manufacturing screen and wishing I could mark them to make it easier to sell. The only option I have now is to memorize the minerals/gases which makes it harder.

Example... Cobalt sells for $275 and is purchased for $330 at SOL. Lets say I have 100 in my cargo on arrival and (stupidly) sell it for $27500. Several hours later I buy 100 Cobalt to upgrade something for $33000. I lost $5500 in this transaction.

Inevitably I have to plan ahead before I sell. This means looking at my manufacturing screen for some time to know what the minerals/gases are, since I don't have a photographic memory. It also depends on what I'm upgrading and how much, since $5500 isn't a great loss. I also sometimes have other ships in the vicinity which I can upgrade as well.

If the sell/buy price were equal then none of this would matter much, since taking the time to mark anything and keep track of how much I need of each mineral/gas would eat up more time than just selling and buying impulsively.

In the grand scheme of things this is a small thing. And you're right, there're lots of things which could be done. And yet a lot of the problems this game has are related to this problem. It's an interface and/or management-overload issue. One example is when I want to upgrade something I have to know what and how much. There's no way to setup a purchase via the manufacturing screen to ease the burden. I have to memorize or write down what I need and how much. (*)

I've taken it all in stride. Yet I've made a dozen documents at least to aid me. I literally have a document which lists all the modules, their costs and how much I need at particular MK levels. I do this to make it easier for me when I'm purchasing.

* - I imagine it'd work something like this... You go to Manufacturing screen and click on one of the modules to Manufacture or click on Mark Upgrade. Then when you enter how many MK levels you want, the computer would calculate for you how much you're missing and would then offer you the ability to automatically purchase it either via the Salvage Ship or a SOL station. Alternatively it sets up preorders and you have to go to the Salvage Ship or the SOL station to execute the order.
144  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Ability to mark or flag key minerals/gases on: January 02, 2015, 06:00:09 PM
The idea is I can mark or flag minerals/gases which're used in manufacturing or combat. I can mark (or flag) them in the manufacturing or cargo screens. When they're marked they have safeguards so you don't lose by mistake. If you attempt to sell it or eject it a yes/no warning message will come up "This is a flagged item. Do you really want to sell/eject this item?"

It will additionally color-code these minerals/gases in the cargo screen.

So as review this does a couple things:
1) Safeguards important minerals/gases used in manufacturing or combat (or otherwise)
2) Alerts me via color-coding which items in my cargo bay are valuable to me

I bring this up because there're a number of minerals/gases used in manufacturing and some are also used to repair armour. Keeping it all organized in my head is hard. By being able to mark them, I could more easily sell or eject my cargo using sound decision making, as opposed to the more troublesome option of memorizing and putting a check on it myself.

Please note this still requires me to mark them. It's not a feature which operates exclusively on its own. It's the aspect of this game wherein we manage and calculate our way to success which I like. I don't think this feature request detracts from that.
145  Info Terminal / Knowledge base, Information board / Re: Cargo Bays on: December 31, 2014, 02:16:31 PM
Good advice here. I'll be saying the same thing with numbers.

Estimated cost:
S 093 2400 m3 = $117552
A 029 2400 m3 = $245398
Estimated research:
S 2400 m3 - MK 93 (10,490,400 total) (10,382,400 actual)
A 2400 m3 - MK 29 (6,525,000 total)
Estimated manufacturing time:
Standard Mk 93 (2400 m3) 279 hours
Advanced Mk 29 (2400 m3) 87 hours

Something similar happens wiht a lot of the modules, I believe. I haven't dug deeply into the other module systems yet, though. I guess in this game (fast) time is money. If you want to get things done fast then you have to have the solars.

Keep in mind sometimes getting things done fast is strategically and/or economically better. Let me try to give an example by creating a scenario to explain it. Lets say I spend $223 in transportation costs to acquire and sell $1205 of materials in the span of 72 hours. If I instead spend $446, which is twice as much, to get the same job done in 48 hours then in 72 hours the net result is I spend $669 and sell $1807 of materials for a total profit over the former example of $156. In this particular case anyway, one has to (ideally) graph these linear equations and see where they intersect to know when the profit switches hands.

You have to look at the numbers.
146  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Fuel efficiency tree in science module? on: December 07, 2014, 10:10:05 PM
I think a non-linear answer would be funner. For example, some kind of spatial anomaly can randomly spawn in the interstellar space. If a player enters it they immediately get transported to another place in the universe, just like a wormhole. The difference in this case is they might spawn more frequently, but unlike wormholes, they're destroyed the moment anything enters them. Now, the trick is to identify them (and where they go) without having to go to them. There could be a section in hte science research for this. As your research compiles information about the anomalies and how to use them effectively, you're able to identify them and where they go more readily. Otherwise, it's rare when you'll be able to find them and determine where they go. The other factor is they may not go where you want to go, so they'd sometimes be ineffective for you.

I guess the game could be make it so they're only visible to YOU and if you pass one by it'll eventually remove itself from the game after an elapsed time. These psuedo-womrholes be stored in the player files which're stored on the server.

If it happened infrequently it might be kind of fun. Too frequently would not be fun because having to compare where the wormhole goes and where you're going and whether it's effective to use the wormhole would take a bit of time. The game could make it easier by automatically calculating the navigation cost/time if you continue your current destination from the other end of hte wormhole. Note that there might be other factors than what your nav computer is set to which might make you use the wormhole.
147  Caffe / Whatever / Re: This game needs fast new kind of combat system... on: December 07, 2014, 09:42:47 PM
Could handle this the way that RTS games handle a pausing option with multiple players. The timer defaults to whatever time is given, but if both players check a box agreeing to speed it up, then when the second player checks the box, the battle happens. This way, mutually agreed upon battles could be sped up, but nobody being beaten down by a superior foe gets screwed (except by the spending of QPs, as it is now).

Most people aren't going to agree to that on both sides though. Something really needs to be done.
Could you elaborate on why my last post wasn't good?

You said the attack timer isn't bad but then said it was??? Thanks in advance.
148  Caffe / Whatever / Re: Other Games That You Play on: December 07, 2014, 09:38:30 PM
Playing:
Daggerfall
Wurm Online

I like to play things from GoG too.
149  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Mining UI on: November 15, 2014, 05:01:11 PM
Here again I can see the same problem I saw in X2: The Threat. On a vanilla copy of the game, automation scaled horribly as the player became more powerful. Early on, it wasn't too bad and felt natural. The early game was what the company banked on. In the later game, ships and "loops" of factories became useless because the player couldn't control all of them timely. BUT it eventually worked in X2: The Threat because there was an in-game scripting system which allowed players to create scripts for ships and stations. This allowed them to add automation to enable them to use their power effectively. Thus the company could ignore the later game and let the players fix it. Without the scripting system, the game would have been doomed to the same issues Astro Galaxy is having. BUT Astro Galaxy isn't actually doomed, since the maker(s) of this game have access to the "scripting system" because they make the code.

So what to do? Well, the maker(s) of this game need to focus on ensuring the later game plays just as smoothly as it does in the early game, despite the later game involving far more player owned ships and facilities. To do this they need to add automation capability as a player advances to enable them to use effectively those assets or powers they have.

Additionaly, some things need to have more automation in the ealry game AND late game. To prevent the early game from becoming too automated, the developers can add some more meat to previously repetitive processes. Generally, this applies to features which're repetitive because of insufficient development. The game maker should invest more time on them.

EDIT: Maybe another way to look at this is to think of it in terms of a business. Lets say there's one manager in a business and she uses paper for record keeping and other functions. With 100 employees she's able to do everything needed. However, what if 5,000 employees are added to this business overnight? Now she's unable to do her job because she's using paper. She could hire more managers to work alongside her or she could upgrade to a computer-based system. Either way, she needs help in order to use her new employees (AKA ships or mining facilities). In real life, without doing something, her business bankrupts. In Astro Galaxy, players simpy quit because they can't or won't keep clicking a million times an hour just to use their assets effectively. It's not fun and not practical.
150  Feedback Terminal / Suggestions / Re: Exploring star systems is boring on: November 13, 2014, 03:48:22 PM
In order to do a proper player driver economy resources could no longer be unlimited at Sol. Your right this would help out miners a lot. This is an idea some people have wanted to see in the game for a long time. But it does present another problem. Adding in such a thing at this point risk to throw things off balance. There is nothing that can prevent bigger players from coming in and taking control of the areas with good resources. Assuming the area isn't mined out in the first place of course. Also it would make it that much harder for newer players to actually grow. They would have to either mine to get everything or have someone else make the stuff for them. Meanwhile bigger players who make in solars by the buttloads will not only take over the best mining spots for resources but they likely would buy out everything that comes up on the Earth trading outpost and horde it back in case they need it for later.  This would of course make it even harder on newbies to grow. The only way such a system could be added in fairly would be if either a wipe was done of all accounts or a 2nd server be started.  I think the latter would be a better option. Of course if SirEmi were to do that he might as well add in my suggestions I posted a while back for pvp into that server.
Ya with any kind of player-run environment there's monopolies and ugly rivalries and griefers. This is the dark side of player-run activities. There're liars and cheaters in abundance. Freedom has a cost. If the game maker doesn't control some things then they can't guarantee a consistent and fair experience for the players. I guess each game has to determine the right balance of freedom to do as you want (including harming others) and restrictions placed on you to keep it fair for everyone. For example, if a resource is limited and players or corporations can "own" it via their superior forces, thus making it harder for others to gain access, then a game maker could do several things to restrict the ability of players to own said resources, via things like: respawning said resource in random places (giving others a chance to have it for a while), limiting when and how or if players can forcefully take resources from others, making it droppable in events or environments all players have access to, reducing its actual value (as opposed to the price players put on it).

This is why mmorpg pvp games generally don't allow free-for-all mechanics because it's so easy for a high-level player to kill you if you're just beginning to climb the ladder. Generally, there're limitations on the skill/level range, the reward, where and when.

How adverse do we want our  gaming environment to be? I imagine the safer it's the more stale it'd be for anybody who prefers player-run envrionments. I know in my case I prefer player-run environments and some risk involved in my decisions. But does that mean I want the risk of being imprisoned by Hitler into concentration camps, forced to eat the corpses of other prisoners like myself while making military parts for Hitler's army? I can't think I'd enjoy that. Or what if I was forced to live in a empty cold dark room (aka MK Ultra)? Adverse circumstnaces can bring out the best and the worst in our existence. Some of it's worth it and some isn't.
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