Here is a wild idea:
Let (pro) players create shipping routes that can be recurring (pro only?)
To get shipping routes the company HQ needs a certain upgrade, or route slots are added through out the upgrade path of the HQ.
What does a Shipping route do?
It allows for automated fleet management.
you predefine a route and what happens on said route.
example:
Go to Point A
Unload M, N, O
Load X, Y, Z
refuel
Go to Point B
Unload X, Y, Z
Load M, N, O
repeat
Kinda like that.
The player would need to carefully set these up as there would be no “load what ever is available” the ship crew would stick to the shipping insturctions and only continue if all conditions are met.
Maybe this is to much for PrUn? But i think in moderation it could elevate the gameplay and maybe even drive the demand for ships even more.
Thanks for reading my almost midnight ramble
10 Likes
I would use this to an extreme degree.
Cosign.
I think the permit bottleneck does enough to keep the biggest players from totally running away with the game without requiring babysitting of spaceships to keep things competitive. As it stands, the logistical micromanagement required to play this game, I think, is what drives off old, established players eventually. I like this game a lot and want to keep playing, but I do find myself getting lax with shipping sometimes because it feels like a chore.
The HQ upgrade idea sounds reasonable to me, if this isn’t just implemented for all ships out of the box. Alternatively, it might be interesting for the game to have company infrastructure tied to a class of administrative buildings which require labor to operate. The player would have to weigh the tradeoff of using precious base area and supporting office workers who do not produce any commodity for sale against the convenience of not having to manually order ships around.
3 Likes
I really like both your perspective here, and your balance suggestions, a lot. Both sound genuinely fun and like big improvements.
1 Like
In a chat discussion the other day it was suggested that automated flights be limited by having a ship upgraded with a certain module. This + your idea of it being tied to HQ in some way, I think could be balanced nicely.
Also, even established players wouldn’t be able to rely on this exclusively, which is a good thing. E.g. I can’t imagine setting auto routes for carrying repair materials. Not everything in a company is perfectly predictable and repetitive. But I very much like how this would automate the repetitive, and still require handling less usual cases.
The only two issues I see with it are:
- What to do if something fails? eg. “unload X, Y, Z” failed because there wasn’t enough room, or “load M, N, O” failed due to insufficient “O”.
- How to allow some flexibility? Say you’re always shipping M, N, O from B to A, but this once you need to haul some T. Do you have to send another ship just for that purpose, or could the routine flight plan be easily amended just this once to take care of that?
1 Like
My thoughts on the issues you raise are thus:
- I think it would be nice to have separate settings, including “wait until unloaded” for the materials to be dropped off on that base, “wait until loaded” for materials to be picked up on that base, and “do not wait” for either case. This works in games such as Transport Tycoon, so I don’t see why it couldn’t be implemented here. It would still require monitoring of ships’ cargo holds and base inventories to make sure they aren’t accumulating cargo and getting backed up.
- I think it would be nice to establish the routes separately from a ship and be able to add ships to the route, kind of like the routes in Transport Fever. This way, a ship could be taken off an automatic route for a special cargo and then be re-added. I’m not sure how the best way would be to restart the route if they had been in the middle of a more complicated route, but plenty of transport games allow the player to order a vehicle on a route to skip to a lower part of the schedule.
First I do like this idea - both the AI module and how you have expanded it. But I wanted to comment on the new/old player dynamic - I think one thing that has been missed by most who are worried that “old players will run away with the game” - is the chaos that is caused in markets when a senior player leaves.
All of a sudden, a big chunk of items they provided disappears, H2O, C, etc - and that damages alot of the newer players who now have to struggle to either find inputs or build new bases. I would argue that this danger would be good to guard against.
With the warp gates - we are providing things that senior players can do - but we need to provide them with some quality of life improvements to encourage them to stay around and help fund the building of the gates and other things.
-Craftsman
2 Likes
I would say that, like how basic/free users can only have up to 2 ships in flight at once, that after unlocking Shipment Routes you’d only be able to have 1 or 2 ships performing routes at a time. This can be improved with more HQ upgrades. Of course, routes would also likely require automatable navigational consoles installed in all ships performing routes. Better nav consoles might be able to perform more complex route components, and a nav console, likely a basic one - would be needed in all ships. Basic nav consoles can perform manual flight maneuvers, automatable ones would be able to perform basic automated maneuvers, (move here, drop off cargo, pick up cargo, etc.) Autonomous ones would be able to perform most automated maneuvers and operations, (move here through this route, sell cargo, buy cargo, etc.) AI operated ones would be able to perform all automated maneuvers. (pick up LM shipping ad, go to LM shipping destination, drop off and complete LM shipping ad, etc.)
Note: This message is here because there are so many spelling issues above. I will fix them later. When that happens, this message will be removed. I may rewrite the whole post when I do this.