Better ship fueling mechanics

Discussion in 'Mechanics' started by Seven Dollers, Dec 7, 2013.

  1. Seven Dollers

    Seven Dollers Poptop Tamer

    I think two important aspects of Starbound that we were all expecting would be in depth exploration, and detailed construction. The potential for these both to excel is there, but unfortunately are severely hamstrung by the ships fueling mechanic.

    Currently of the various types of fuel, the most often used is unrefined wood. Coal is less abundant and useful for making allows, and higher tier fuels are too uncommon to act as anything more than a supplement. The need for unrefined wood means that players are forced into the process of clear cutting planets for fuel, a process all together grindy and boring.

    But worst still, the costs to travel around, especially between galaxies, is somewhat high. This means once a player has reached a higher tier sector, there is a disincentive to ever return to the lower one. Effectively people are discouraged from returning to a home planet, and forced into endlessly drifting to new planets. This is very counter intuitive to ever actually establishing a home base. People either live entirely in their ship, or will sometimes build a small house, often out of dirt, on the surface of a planet with just a bed to sleep in, but rarely will they bother to actually make full use of the assortment of items at their disposal, because the fuel system discourages them from coming back to it.

    Finally, the costs to travel are both high, but also flat. It takes the same amount to travel just about any distance, assuming you are just traveling between stars. The result of this is that is actually hampers exploration. Players tend to share a catalog of easy to find, powerful item locations, and then travel between these locations checking them off like chores, rather than actually engaging in exploration. No need to look around with the hopes of finding a cool, new weapon, some guy told you coordinates where you can find a level 30 weapon merchant.


    We need a better system than this. As such I propose the following:
    Remove the idea of fueling all together. No more 'collect X items to jump planet', it just doesn't work as a mechanic. I understand that conceptually it seems nice, but as far as design goes it isn't a very good idea.
    Implement Planetary Gates (Or what ever name the devs think works best, after all what is a name?) that are placed on a planet, and will allow your ship to always travel to that planet for free. I don't think these should be especially cheap, perhaps make an early quest about building one and require killing some boss for an Energy Core, or something like that. These things should be set up on planets you want to use as a base of operation.
    Gates will have an amount of power that will let you fly to only nearby stars. There is already a coordinate system, so it would be easy to check where you currently are and if your desired location is within range. You can't just fly around to all the hot spots to collect the best gear quickly, you need to explore what is within range of your Planetary Gate. A Gates power does not deplete with use.
    Allow these Gates to be upgraded with Ship Batteries. Each Battery will increase the energy of your Gate to allow you to travel to more distant stars. Make Batteries found in chests and given as a reward for some quests, but not craftable.

    This would allow players to develop their core planet, allow for transport without grinding, and encourage exploration of new planets over quickly checking off locations for their gear.
     
  2. Cavenyanson

    Cavenyanson Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I feel like the ability to beam down to a specific location, be it from your ship or via a ground beacon/landing pad would give a better incentive. Because if you find the PERFECT place to build a house that's halfway around the planet, or if you want to live in an NPC town that's far away, you would have to walk all the way EVERY TIME you die, or beam up to your ship.

    I do agree that we do need a higher fuel/distance cost, and other fuels though, because it seems ridiculous that Spaceships that can travel faster-than-light run on Coal and Wood.
     
    WorkHorse, Kinjo and Zeffia like this.
  3. Seven Dollers

    Seven Dollers Poptop Tamer

    Setting a beam down location would be nice, but it still doesn't address the fact that to go from one sector to another and back just because you left something at home is too expensive, and therefor nobody will ever do it. It makes it a little easier to have a home, but fails to give an incentive to actually build it in the first place.
    Beam locations are still a good idea and one I would like to see though.

    Also, just implementing a scaled fuel to distance cost would make the tree grinding problem even worse. Instead of exploring with the hopes of finding an upgrade to be able to travel further out, people will just spend even more time hacking down trees to get around.
     
  4. Zeffia

    Zeffia Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    What they could do, would be to have the fuel system work kind of like reality.
    What do we have now? Nuclear power.

    Upgrade the ships fueling system and the ways to get energy? Like if there's a lightning storm going on the ship can hover a bit above the clouds and lower something down to conduct the electricity.
    That kind of nonsense and shenanigans.
     
  5. Cavenyanson

    Cavenyanson Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Then change the fuel Mechanics completely, so that they don't run on incredibly cheap resources. make them run on more advanced items, so your starting planet will be your home for quite a while. Make players explore their first planet before they start to explore the bigger picture. Make fuel have value!
     
    Oz270 likes this.
  6. Seven Dollers

    Seven Dollers Poptop Tamer

    But then you just made the problem where players don't want to bother to build a home because returning there is too expensive even worse.
     
  7. Cavenyanson

    Cavenyanson Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Maybe a build-able star-gate or something along those lines that makes it incredibly cheap to head back to a planet, but hard to build, and only one can exist for your ship at the same time ?
     
  8. Seven Dollers

    Seven Dollers Poptop Tamer

    Well that was how this idea started, but then you have to think about what would happen after a while. If players keep returning to their home base, and traveling further out becomes more expensive then over time all the fuel close to their home planet would be depleted, and they wouldn't have enough to travel out to get more. It would end in a desperate grind to find the last shards of fuel just to get some place new.
    The solution is that each piece of this extremely valuable fuel is renewable, and will slightly extend your ships range from your home base, but then we are back to the original suggestion, just replace fuel with batteries.
     
  9. Aquillion

    Aquillion Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    You realize that given their theme, the Novakid ship is almost certain to be a space train, right? Running on coal and wood makes perfect sense for that.

    You have it exactly backwards, though. He's proposing eliminating the cost, not increasing it. And I agree with him -- I don't think that fuel adds much to the game (beyond thematics, mind.)

    Basically, here's the thing from my perspective: People play Starbound because they want a sci-fi game. Attaching high costs to traveling between planets (which is one of the big sci-fi elements) is counter-intuitive -- you're burying the core of the game! I want to boldly go where no one has gone before; I don't want to end up stuck on one planet and spend huge amounts of time mining with a pickaxe to uncover fuels just to play the actually fun and appealing part of the game.

    I personally do not want to spend large amounts of time mining deep inside planets -- that's not the part of Starbound that appeals to me. I want to fly rapidly from planet to planet, exploring strange places, meeting the natives, occasionally diving deep into a cave or dungeon (and collecting minerals I see on the walls, sure, but I don't want to have to do huge-scale mining or clear-cutting operations. And I would really prefer it if it were possible to get all the ores and equipment you need via intersteller trading or similar things, with mining being entirely optional.)

    I think the game should support this -- I think it should be designed to let you play it in many different ways. If you want to set up shop on a single planet and mine deep into it, the game should support it, yes, but it shouldn't force you to do it. So I feel that the fuel costs should be essentially nominal, even lower than they are now -- there for thematic purposes, but low enough to let you easily fuel your ship on wood, without much dedicated effort.

    (Or there could be other ways to get fuel, instead -- making it easier to buy or trade for, say.)
     
  10. Seven Dollers

    Seven Dollers Poptop Tamer

    Essentially Aquillion has the idea, yes. Fuel exists as a method of operant conditioning conditioning to extend the hours committed to the game, without actually providing any intrinsic value. It is padding, and painful padding at that.
    The only problem with giving players total free reign to explore their sector, though, is that is makes a bad problem that already exists in game even worse. That is it removes the need to actually explore at all, when you can just look up a spread sheet of locations to find what you need. There is no mystery or awe to finding a chest with a cool new upgrade when the first thing you did on arrival to a new sector was raid all the popular locations to pick up all the tech, and now there is nothing new for you to actually find.

    As such, there needs to be a limiting factor that stops people from going just anywhere. Right now the devs have already taken a stab at this by splitting the game into sectors, but it doesn't stop you getting the good items as soon as you actually enter the sector. It essentially fails in adding any exploration based progression at all in that regard. By limiting players to only accessing stars within a range of their home base, the game becomes about actually exploring those locations.
     
  11. Cavenyanson

    Cavenyanson Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    That's a problem with the players though, not the game itself, and frankly, it ruins it for the rest of us, because they get all the best gear, I think there should be some way to have different coordinates per server, but instead of generating entirely new planets, you get the same. Now I don't know how the coordinates are stored, but if each has a set value, then maybe generate different "mask" values for the original "data" coordinate?
     
    Heartstrings likes this.
  12. Lallykins

    Lallykins Gross...

    The fuel also ties directly into the beginning lore of each race. The whole thing is "Uhh I ran out of fuel and need to go down to this planet because I'm stuck" I agree that throwing wood or coal into it might seem silly..maybe it can be a reactor that accepts dirt or sand or cobblestone as fuel as well? Helps you clean your inventory, may allow for varying fuel costs depending on distance and helps eliminate inventory bloat. Think of it as a more useful trash can. Maybe if you use too much coal or wood to power your ship you'll receive a ticket from the Intergalactic Carbon Emissions Council. Hohohoho!
     
    Sir Genwald Thustburn likes this.
  13. Seven Dollers

    Seven Dollers Poptop Tamer

    It is generally considered very bad and lazy design to blame the player for their actions within a game. Players will do what players will do, and you need to build your game in a way that reinforces desirable actions. While limiting a players actions might not sound like the best approach from an ideological point of view, you will find that pragmatically it ends in far better design.

    Now what is the difference between limiting a players range within the same universe, and giving each player their own universe? If you give players a great enough range that they still have choice in planets then functionally not much. Either way they are exploring all new surroundings. However, by giving players a growing range that they can explore they feel some degree of progression as they gain access to these new areas. Some sort of reward for their efforts, rather than just spilling it all out on the table for them to get bored of quickly. It is kind of like that feeling of unlocking a new sector. Why are these sectors even locked in the first place? So you can enjoy unlocking them! In a similar way, why limit a players range of travel initially rather than grant each player a totally unique universe? So they can enjoy expanding their range of travel. Assuming one day the game has more quests to do, this will act as a great reward mechanism. It is a form of conditioning that is focused on the reward rather than a repetitive action, therefor much more enjoyable.
     
    Heartstrings likes this.
  14. Dimitriye98

    Dimitriye98 Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Honestly, I would love for fuel to require some more advanced resource processing. Maybe killing the alien ship from the distress beacon gives you the required processing system to make really basic fuel, but the fuel is too damn inefficient per amount of resources spent to jump out of your star system until you've ascended the tech tree. On the same subject, automation à la some Minecraft mods such as Industrialcraft and Buildcraft would give a decidedly future feel in the sense of a post-industrial revolution society rather then just hammering together an item using a special type of table. In addition, traveling between planetary orbits should cost more than traveling between the moons of a planet, and traveling from star system to star system should cost even more on top of that, one way it could be explained would be that you need to climb out of the stronger gravity or something, either way, the idea of being able to travel to other stars using wood and coal is a bit meh.
     
    Oz270 and Cavenyanson like this.
  15. -R7-

    -R7- Aquatic Astronaut

    Just give me a Mr.Fusion and let me fuel the ship with dirt and trash items.

    If I hate this snowy rock or moon I'm stuck on and I need 300 fuel worth of coal to get out of this wretched husk of a system I ain't too happy.

    Grinding out fuel is boring, I don't enjoy clear cutting forests or digging up coal just so I can go places. I want to EXPLORE not run around on a planet where the only other living things were some bandits with a wheelbarrow who I already killed and some angry monkeydogs who don't want to hang out either.
     
    Lallykins likes this.
  16. Cavenyanson

    Cavenyanson Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    An interesting idea, another way to circumvent the whole coordinates thing, is when someone discovers a planet, they have the ability to either name it, or give it the default name, and one would find planets by name, rather than coordinates. I'm not sure, this is just rambling but it is a potential idea, but most players would name a planet that they just want to loot or explore "a" or "1" or "butts hehehehehe", and I feel the current names are fitting. But expanding on your idea with the range of travel, a telescope or scanner would be needed in order to see larger swathes of the seemingly infinite universe.
     
  17. Dimitriye98

    Dimitriye98 Subatomic Cosmonaut

    I disagree. I think the PRIMARY issue with the fuel system that needs to be addressed is encouraging the building of a base and exploration, and discouraging leaping across the galaxy to a particular planet you already know the coordinates of. As I said on my post, leaping from star system to star system should cost FAR more than just moving from moon to planet to moon. There should be different kinds of fuels, with the more expensive fuels providing more bang for your buck EXPONENTIALLY related to the fuel's cost. That way, players can use the less efficient lower level fuels, but in the end, it's not worth it, simply because in terms of resources spent, in the long run, you spend less resources by using the more expensive fuels than the cheaper ones. Also, you should only be able to spawn on planets that fit certain criteria. They'd need to be fairly rich in the lower level resources, and the system itself should be rich in the lower mid-level resources. In addition, to encourage base building, higher level fuels (and higher level items in general) should require building automated assembly lines which take up space, that way, while you COULD be a nomad, a player who built a base would be at a great advantage compared to a player who simply flew around looting planets for basic gear.
     
    Oz270 likes this.
  18. -R7-

    -R7- Aquatic Astronaut

    that just pads the game out and restricts players from doing something THEY find fun. I don't want to colonize one planet, I want to fly around looting worlds and having adventures like a cool space pirate, not be -forced- into space homestead simulator.

    Mr.Fusion is the way, Mr.Fusion is the light.
    Turn the trash items and dirt into GO JUICE.
     
    Lallykins likes this.
  19. Dimitriye98

    Dimitriye98 Subatomic Cosmonaut

    No. I agree, play style should not be limited. But at a certain point, you need to have balance. You may want to be a space pirate. I want to be a space homesteader. I am being penalized for this currently, because the space pirate who decides to noob rush a high-level world, death-spamming and dodging all the creatures, collecting items that are way above his spot in the tech tree, is being rewarded ridiculously. There is no way that I can compete with that, since at the moment, player made items are nowhere near as good as the items I can get by getting lucky with a chest, or finding a mini-boss that drops an awesome 1-hitting hammer. Don't I have the right to play the way I want?
     
  20. Seven Dollers

    Seven Dollers Poptop Tamer

    But the idea is that if you didn't need fuel at all you would be free to explore, and fly about looting planets and having adventures like a cool space pirate, and never have to go mining for dirt to power your ship. The "Mr. Fusion" approach falls short of giving a player the freedom to do this without an hour or so in a dark hole with a pickaxe. It is still a method born of a repetitive action rather than built around a reward mechanism.
    If you could explore within a limited, but still reasonable range of your home star that would still give you easily hundreds of planets to scour, however they would be new planets. You wouldn't know what you are getting. It would actually be exploration. Removing the cost of fuel and limiting your ships range allows for the described play style, while eliminating grinding, and still allowing people to choose to focus on their home base should they choose.
     

Share This Page