I have a idea what if flying through space randomly you could get in a space war with other ships or merchant ships maybe colony ship and if you lose a battle with a ship your ship goes to the closest planet and you have to get a bunch of iron or copper to repair it and ships get harder depending on which sector you are in.
Not a bad idea, but you've gotta think about how annoying it would be to lose a battle, then spend half an hour trying to recover from it by gathering materials. If the final fantasy style random encounters don't irritate gamers, losing will. But it does seem like it's a natural, and likely occurrence. There are such things as raiders and pirates in space stories. And in the Starbound Universe, it seems likely that those types of folk would be wandering around.
Well, two things: 1 - it has to be a planet. If it is a moon or an asteroid field nearby and you don't have any means of surviving those biomes, you're screwed. 2 - is iron a guaranteed resource on any given planet? On higher tiered planets, the resources changed along with it's tier. Or threat level, or what have you. Unless higher ship levels requires better ores, that is another potential progression breaker. And that is assuming ship upgrades are not optional. An idea would be a ferry ship tows you back to the outpost or any nearby hub and charge you for the towing+repairs. If you can't pay for it, ideally the planet you're on can offer quests or other means to acquire said funds that won't require you to travel elsewhere. It's just another form of hassle but a more interesting one IMO.
With how they currently have the hubs in the Nightly builds, option 2 wouldn't necessarily be viable unless they took a percentage of your pixels or all of them, and I imagine also any ores you had on you. And having to constantly repair your ship any time you lost would get annoying, and I imagine they'd have to add a way to do upkeep on your ship. It'd be more trouble than it's worth.
You mean my second remark, or the suggestion I made? The latter could only be charged once you talk to the mechanic after he towed your ship to safety. If you have enough pixels, then it would get repaired. And no, no ores would be removed. Only pixels. And assuming he always tows you to the closest inhabited planet, there would be quest givers that wouldn't involve space travel, so you could work for the maintenance fee.
The problem is that it would have to be a percentage of your pixels, or all of them that you have, even if they give quests. If you play the Nightly builds, planets now have threat levels, rather than difficulty being assigned to the sector you're in. If they're giving quests to give a LOT of pixels, it wouldn't work out too well, as it would unbalance pixel drops from monsters on the same world. The argument on whether or not this would be worth implementing simply boils down to whether or not most players would find it frustrating. It just adds a level of difficulty and annoyance that's not necessary and would most likely turn people off of the game. And Musetrigger touched on this already.
Because there would have to be some sort of cost to penalize the player for losing. As I stated above, rather than having it where you progress to another sector where you'll find stronger monsters, it's now where planets have threat levels instead and you would have to balance pixel cost with average pixel drop rate of monsters for the planet you'd get towed to. Simply giving quests where you would be granted a lot of pixels wouldn't feel right if say, you're on a planet and monsters drop 10 pixels, where some planets drop 100 upon death. It would make more sense to have it where you get all your pixels taken to fix your ship, or a set amount after you have so many. And I just realized that they would have to bring you to a planet that's basically low tier to compensate for players that haven't reached high tiers. If you're say, wearing steel armor, and the nearest habitable planet is one where you would need impervium to survive, chances are you'd get a quest you would be unable to complete. It would deadend the save file. And sure, maybe they could have it set to look at a person's gear and base off that, but how would that work with multiplayer? Would it be possible to implement that? Overall it simply feels, as I said, that it would only end up being frustrating and tedious to do. I know it's something that would make me not want to play the game again. If there were to be SOME form of space battles, you'd be better off just having it where if you lose you lose pixels and you gain pixels/loot if you win, without needing to repair your ship.
See, my pont of contention on that particular quote back there is not whether there will be punishment or not, but why it has to be either a percentage or ALL the pixels. While a percentage of the total pixels a player have will guarantee that the player will always have funds for repairs, does it make sense for someone to take different payments for the same service? And all the pixels? Why does it need to be that extreme? Can't the fee be more reasonable, in a way that a quest or two might be enough? As for location, no. While there won't be any sectors, there is still a progression path in the form of enviromental hazards. So a player won't just jump towards a much more dangerous planet unless he/she have the necessary equipment to traverse said hazardous planets. And logic dictates that in order to obtain said equipments, he/she will inevitably have to get stronger in the process. And you're making the assumption that quests will inevitably involve monster slaying, which might not be the case at all. Plus, you and me both forgot that adventuring won't be the only way to make pixels. Edit: the fee could vary based on the planet threat level. That way the cost will always be affordable within the opportunities to make pixels that the planet provides. Edit2: I believe I mentioned how this is just another form of hassle, as is any form of punishment for failure in games. Some, however, are more engaging than others, and questing and other forms of money-making are better than mining IMO. Especially because the deeper you go, the more dangerous the creatures get. It is safest to remain topside if you are ill suited for combat.
It makes sense as I was thinking in regards to what Starbound does with the player's inventory and pixels when they die, where they take a percentage based off your total pixel count. I never said anything about the quests involving monster slaying. I was saying how it would be weird for quests that grant a much larger amount of pixels to be available on planets where the monsters don't drop that many, given the suggestion of the tow truck bringing the player to the nearest habitable planet. My entire point was balancing quest payout with the pixel drop amount given from the planet. It'd be like if you were to go into a poor village and had someone going "I will give you $5000 to do x for me". And given that it's your spaceship, if we're doing a set cost for it, I imagine that would have to be a possibly high cost (probably in relation to spaceship tier). But having a percentage at least would make it feel like the game isn't shafting you for losing and forcing you to have to go out of your way to do stuff you don't want to do. Adding a material cost where you have to mine I don't believe would be viable given the number of people who already feel Starbound is grind heavy as it is. It would suck to force people to grind due to random battles and losing.
Ah, so you're basing your argument on how costly the ship repair is. Fair enough. Yes, I have little objection with the percentage cost, as that is already the death penalty. I was merely suggesting a way to make death more engaging than simply spawn back with little explanation. And while charging a percentage of your pixels would make little sense to a mechanic, it doesn't really need to (it's a game, SillyFingers). But then the cost would depend on the damage. Or to put it another way, how badly does the ship need to be damaged in order to need repairs. As it must've been obvious, the ship can't be scrapped entirely, as it is the spawn point for our characters. So I'd say either the fuel module or engines would be in need of repairs. And I dunno, would that be extremely costly? I'm making suggestions, but I'm sure if Starbound ever does space battle, losing it will be the same as dying in land. BOOM goes the ship, all of your ores and 10% of your wealth. Aaaaand you're back above wherever you were. Unless you're playing hardcore, then on top of all that, you're down to your starter gear. Or permadeath. Then it's just BOOM.
Yeah. The random element was why I was simply suggesting it not being more than pixel percentage, albeit a higher rate than death due to spaceships being costly. I'm not sure if you've played Nightly, but it's currently to where you have to gain core fragments (core fragments are deep near the planet core. A lot of people assumed by core they meant engine core) to repair your engines. And getting that deep can take a few hours of digging at least. So I was trying to keep in mind what would be considered viable for a player to do where it wouldn't cause too much frustration if this suggestion were to be implemented. Especially given something like this could dramatically change how people view the game. Another idea is you could put up something to wager for space battles. You win, you get double of what you bet + random item. You lose, they take what you bet.
That gamble idea sounds great. And yeah, I'm actually thinking that encounters should come with a difficulty level and an option to avoid combat altogether. The higher the level, the riskier the gamble and higher the payoff
Yeah. See, now it sounds like a feature that people would be into and not view as a huge hassle, which I wouldn't mind being in the game. Just the whole idea of losing in the original idea I wasn't overly fond of.
I see. Just one thing, how would you contextualize that idea? Is it some sort of space etiquette, where battles are fought over a predetermined prize? Is that etiquette followed even by pirates, who usually just want to take whatever they can and give nothing back? See deathwing the penguin pirate. He just descends upon you without warning and attacks. No deals, no parlays. Sure, he could be considered a specially kind of vicious pirate who don't follow the rules of engagement, but it just sounds tonally inconsistent. Or is it going to be like one of those weird unwrittem rules, like in pokémon trainer battles. For some unnatainable reason you can't run and whoever loses give their pocket money... Also, if your trainer loses, he goes into a fit and seizures and pass out. Then he is dragged to the nearest clinic after unspeakable things are done to his body.
Use video game logic. Have it where AI has the ability to repair your ship after you fix it up in the beginning. I mean as it stands in the Nightly build, the AI can fix the ship on its own with the ores you give it. So from that point forward could simply have it able to do it without materials.
Perhaps a way to sneak around dangerous areas of space if you aren't up for a fight. But there should be UTTERLY FANTASTIC benefits to winning a fight.
