I've been thinking about how the game progression goes, and there's a couple of things I feel can make it more interesting. From what we've seen, you start off already owning a spaceship, and other high-tech gadgetry and mechanics like the matter manipulator and cloning to respawn. This is all fine and good, but it kinda takes away from the survival aspect of the game. The Idea What i'm thinking of is there can be an optional, more difficult start that has a very strong focus on survival. Imagine, that your race's backstory sees you fleeing, and ultimately crashing your ship on the starting planet. Fortunately your 3D printer is undamaged, which can fabricate almost every tool you require, but the quality of the tools themselves depend on the quality of the materials you feed it. There's several options to tweak the difficulty: 1. The cloning machine is damaged, so dying will be permadeath until you can repair it. 2. Your ship requires repairs due to the crash, so you have to collect resources to fix it. 3. Your engines need fuel, and you need to seek appropriate reaction mass. 4. You need to build a shelter with a light source by nightfall, indigenous creatures will murder you if you don't. IMO adding these aspects to the game will increase the replay value, and making mechanics like respawning, travelling between planets and having a working spaceship feel more valuable, since you had to work to earn them, instead of just having access to all these things right off the bat. For higher tier planets, I think there should also be a risk of getting stranded due to certain events until you can fix it. 1. FTL-drive malfunction, which makes it necessary to find high-level resources to repair. 2. Alien devices that trap your ship, so you have to disable it to leave. 3. Being boarded/captured/getting shot down by pirates/hostile factions, whom you need to fight off to escape. 4. Entering a nebula or stellar phenomenon, which disables your navigation computer, so you need to find an NPC to guide you out. And perhaps, gain a crewmember at the same time. 5. Picking up a distress signal or strange transmission, which would warrant further investigation. Might be bait for ambush, or someone really in distress, or something else entirely (penguin UFOs!?). This will reduce the inclination to take for granted the ability to jump anywhere at a whim, and break the monotony of simply jumping from one planet to another without having a reason to stick around and take an interest. After all, its not as fun exploring when there is no danger, or interesting events to experience.
If options like these aren't possible with different difficulty levels, I wouldn't be surprised if someone made a mod implementing these ideas (or something similar). While I myself DO enjoy the survival aspect of games like these, I also kinda wanna hold back my judgement a bit until we see the whole game. I mean... have you seen the monster spawn rates in the more recent streams? They seem pretty crazy, but maybe that'll be tweaked a bit by beta/release.
This should really go in the suggestions, but none the less a a good idea. I like the idea of random chalenges that you have to face in order to progress, as long as it is not annoying Am I right in assuming you play FTL?
These are some pretty good FTL-esque recommendations. I also hope they will make jumping more random eventish and I have a feeling they will as you progress through the tiers.
Thanks, how do I find the link to the suggestions voting page? Yes, there should be a warning icon like FTL to tell you there's a point of interest. I think it's already been added though, from the navigation interface screenshots that were posted today:
