I figured I just pitch this idea to see what everyone thinks, maybe this could be an optional setting for the game or something :/ . Maybe make it possible to colonize multiple planets make the NPCs less like personal friends and more like citizens of your empire or something. Basically make it more strategy-like, defense cannons and NPC resource gathering. From what has been released so far, NPCs just seem like "space" (see what I did there?) filler. Even in Terraria the NPCs had minimal use, especially once you got the Demolitionist, the Nurse, the Mercant, and the Gun Merchant; they were just a reason to keep building.
This is supposedly what they do, considering once you set up a colony, you have to go off and kill stuff. If you have multiple colonies on multiple planets, you can't supervise all of them at once. They are supposed to build houses and defenses.
I'm sorta confused, do you disagree with the suggestion because you feel that supervising so many NPCs would take away from the game, or are you saying that the NPCs are supposed to make their own homes and defenses and so the aforementioned supervising is unnecessary? And just to clarify, by NPC resource gathering I don't mean they go off and kill and mine things for you, I mean they have factories or something that either take the resources you take in and convert them into something too big to build yourself (like a tank, vehicle thing) or directly into cold, hard cash.
I disagree with your suggestion, because if you had 50 colonies, you would get an alert every five seconds. We need food! Were being attacked! I cut my arm! NPC's are supposed to build their own stuff. And a for the resource thing, I knew that they'd build factories, but since you started their colony, they should give you some revenue. This NPC supervision would be better suited for hardcore mode. Or an optional thing.
If you look in the first sentence of the original post, I mentioned having this as an optional setting. I just really enjoy strategy and management in games, but it doesn't have to have it. Either way, this is looking to a sandbox-like game, so if someone WANTS to have that level of management then they should be able to start that many colonies but if someone doesn't want that responsibility then they can start a few to supplement their income and then start exploring at their leisure; play the game how you want .
Not to be a dick, but you start out running away as your home planet explodes. You have to start fresh. No colonies. Just pointing out a problem in your logic.
i wouldn't mind the colony thing, as long as its maybe just a smallish kinda place with people you could talk to,buy/sell/trade etc. with or sometimes help them out with monsters or whatever maybe take some back to base to become a crew mate or something or help cultivate it a little but being the "overlord" of abuncha colonies sounds more like it belongs in an RTS game being a part of the colony like a wanderer that comes to town every so often to do whatever is fine, but i wouldn't want to supervise multiple colonies when i have my own base etc. to worry about
So far I'm just impressed with the mechanics of the game itself, I think that since it seems to be a sandbox game that I should be given the tools to enjoy the universe that they create and I discover however it pleases me. Obviously you wouldn't be able to start colonies at the beginning, but from your space station you can slowly gather up the resources you need. I know for sure that at least one of my saves would have a lot of colonies I was supervising, but in another I might want to explore more. Plus, could you imagine explore this galaxy and stumbling upon another persons colony? Or even two people starting a colony on the same planet and begin to work together when they discover it? That would be about the coolest video game moment ever (except maybe in Mass Effect 3 when you took down a Reaper with a Thresher Maw).
It would be good to have a sort of strategy element to the game, if you could set up a farm, a few lasers, a milita, some foragers with guards, it could be possible to have a self-sufficient colleny, which then you could travel to a different planet and colonise. Sure each colony would take a few hours to set up but done effectively it could work, in theory. Also, instead of getting alerts in this case you should get requests, (Should I do this? Should I do that) but not for mundane things like repairing a laser. So it could work, but would not be easy to do properly, programming wise and player wise.
I would have an Idea. The big 4x games have some sort of planet government. You could declare an NPC as planet chief who will supervise your colony and expand it towards your demands/setting like in any other game. You could also choose settings as to when you will get a message if being attacked. On attack or maybe if 50% of the population dies. You could also choose to not get a message unless your colony is no more. There could be tons of possibilites there. You could also have a list that holds your planets that have a population and are yours. From there you could contact a local planet chief to utilize his settings and ask for some status report to not get flooded by every "we build this" message.
This sounds like a pretty awesome idea, it would allow for colonies not getting completely static (like your NPC town in Terraria) but not take away from the freedom this game is supposed to give you, the only thing I would change about it is maybe not have to assign a leader but just have a computer that you have to build handle all of it; it is the FUTURE isn't it? If I were you, I would make a Suggestion thread out of this and see what some other fans think .
