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Adding a Survival Aspect and Similar Ideas
Steeveeo
Registered, Administrator Posts: 849
I have been thinking about this for some time, and the more I do so, the more I like the idea.
The thing I would ultimately like to do with the mining system is to make a Dispenser class object that would take in resources and make things for player use. These things would be like small arms, naquahdah bottles, ZPMs, maybe Black Hole Caches if I can balance it, and finally: survival gear (food, water, etc). Hopefully this would lead to a type of player economy in the future.
Anyone who's played GM Stranded may begin to see where I am going with this. Basically, I want a type of dispenser that would take in carbon, various resources, and some energy, and create food. This food in normal circumstances would only refill health (like the Cup Noodles). However, a while after this, I came up with the idea of adding Hunger and Thirst to the server, a la Stranded.
When the Hunger and/or Thirst bar get full, you begin to lose health, eventually dying of thirst/starvation. To refill this, you would need to have a dispenser to create food (and the resources to do it) and a sufficient amount of Drinking Water (water passed through a carbon filtration entity).
Now, the question at hand is not how to DO this (I have the system specifics all plotted out), but rather how to BALANCE it and make it feel natural to gameplay. We don't really want people on spawn to die, so I was thinking of a Ration Distribution machine on each map's spawn planet that would only give you enough food and water to bring Hunger and Thirst down to 50%, this SHOULD allow for people on spawn not to die of famine every 5 minutes or whatever and should make food a necessity on extended space treks.
However, I am wondering on how to make it so players would not just figure to hop back to the Rationer every so often instead of preferring their own food and water. Perhaps maybe extra health if completely full and quenched?
I would like to know if this is going to be a welcome gameplay mode or not, and how to make it so almost everyone will like to play it. Obviously, I will build in a toggle to turn it on/off freely, but what I want to know is how to keep that toggle set to 1 for as long as possible before people get tired of it.
What are your ideas, guys? Fire away!
The thing I would ultimately like to do with the mining system is to make a Dispenser class object that would take in resources and make things for player use. These things would be like small arms, naquahdah bottles, ZPMs, maybe Black Hole Caches if I can balance it, and finally: survival gear (food, water, etc). Hopefully this would lead to a type of player economy in the future.
Anyone who's played GM Stranded may begin to see where I am going with this. Basically, I want a type of dispenser that would take in carbon, various resources, and some energy, and create food. This food in normal circumstances would only refill health (like the Cup Noodles). However, a while after this, I came up with the idea of adding Hunger and Thirst to the server, a la Stranded.
When the Hunger and/or Thirst bar get full, you begin to lose health, eventually dying of thirst/starvation. To refill this, you would need to have a dispenser to create food (and the resources to do it) and a sufficient amount of Drinking Water (water passed through a carbon filtration entity).
Now, the question at hand is not how to DO this (I have the system specifics all plotted out), but rather how to BALANCE it and make it feel natural to gameplay. We don't really want people on spawn to die, so I was thinking of a Ration Distribution machine on each map's spawn planet that would only give you enough food and water to bring Hunger and Thirst down to 50%, this SHOULD allow for people on spawn not to die of famine every 5 minutes or whatever and should make food a necessity on extended space treks.
However, I am wondering on how to make it so players would not just figure to hop back to the Rationer every so often instead of preferring their own food and water. Perhaps maybe extra health if completely full and quenched?
I would like to know if this is going to be a welcome gameplay mode or not, and how to make it so almost everyone will like to play it. Obviously, I will build in a toggle to turn it on/off freely, but what I want to know is how to keep that toggle set to 1 for as long as possible before people get tired of it.
What are your ideas, guys? Fire away!
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
How about a variable realism that can be voted on and defaults to the somewhere in the middle?
Here are my ideas on this (please revise):
[list]
[*]Off (Build Mode): No survival aspect, food only restores health, drinking water does nothing.[/*]
[*]Easy: Survival on, 15 minutes until thirst full, 30 minutes until hunger full.[/*]
[*]Medium: 10 minutes for thirst, 20 minutes for hunger.[/*]
[*]Hard: 5 minutes for thirst, 15 for hunger.[/*][/list]
Now, the question about these is this: when scaling, do we just scale the hunger and thirst limits? What about scaling food costs and water filtration time? Also, should there be a toggle checkbox for Spawn Protection, or should it just turn off in Hard Mode?
I dont see the purpose of this...
I mean..how much fun is getting a few resources and eating every now and then?
It would be cool if the maps were bigger where you would need to explore but not in a map with 5 planets..
The need to eat and drink makes this game like Majora's Mask (a game that I hated with a passion. The whole 3 days thing ruined it for me). You get X minutes to do something before you have to nom. This gets in the way of ship building, this gets in the way of writing E2s (and it's easy to pass over 30 minutes writing an E2 with no awareness as to what may be going on around you), and this gets in the way of simply exploring or chilling out anyplace outside of spawn.
Remember how there used to be factional warfare? Can you imagine how that would go? Every 5 to 10 minutes, holding a food break? Pausing any kind of server event, whether it be factional warfare or mining competitions or what have you is silly.
Of course you could just turn it off for the event, but the fact that it may need to be turned off at all is a cause for concern.
So what would the need to nom bring about in normal situations... ?
1. Everyone and their uncle will have mining drones for their ships so they can produce their own food on the fly without having to interrupt what they were already doing.
At it's worst, that would mean 10 ships + at least 10 mining drones on the server (at least one mining drone per ship, and one ship per player). That's pretty laggy.
2. Player-made food joints around the map. Multiple of them. Each one with at least a dozen LS entities (the generators and the storage and refineries and so forth). Some might want resources and items in exchange for food, some will be free.
Free Food would negate the impact of food upon the player economy. Players may end up thinking that food is a mere nuisance rather than something that's worth mining for or worth trading for.
You do realize that maps are the size that they are because it's IMPOSSIBLE to make them larger, right? Source doesn't allow bigger maps than what they are.
About what D4RK said.. You wouldn't have to do it if you didn't want to. Did you notice the part where you could turn it off? And that while on spawn, the meters would either drain really, really slowly, or be exempt from filling at all?
Suppose that this mode is already on the server, and removal is not an option. Suppose also that it is not fun (it's just hunger for the sake of hunger or what have you). My question to YOU guys is: What would make it a fun and playable addition to Diaspora Spacebuild?
If the hunger/thirst rates were turned all the way down, like 1 hour to go from full to famished, I think they won't have any perceivable effect upon the player economy (but still remain annoying) regardless of whether or not the food is given away for free
If the hunger/thirst rates were turned all the way up, like 5 minutes between noms, only the most hardcore Diaspora fans would remain on the servers.
If players can turn hunger/thirst on and off for themselves...
How many players would keep it on?
How many players would turn it off?
Is the portion of the player population who keep it on significant enough to warrant the addition of more LS entities for the storage and generation of food/drink?
Could this possibly turn away newcomers?
[EDIT]: I just took a poll on the server and it was:
1 person would keep it on
5 people would turn it off (including myself, herrdurr)
3 people on the server did not answer, even after asking several times.
In addition, two guys (not including myself) on the server said they would leave diaspora for an alternative spacebuild community if hunger/thirst were forced upon them.
Hypothetically, we have one extra server some undefined time in the future. If that extra server was made separate from our build server and instead was a Space RP type server, would this system work? If dupes from the build server could be pasted in the RP server, how many people would play there?
Its basicly a gamemode where you have to sail to an oil rig get drums of oil and sail back to base without the enemy destroying you(red v blue).
When you join the server you get to pick which would you want to be (in naval it was french vs english).
When you join lets say blue you get a model change.
There you build your ship and sail off to the rig...you find a way of transporting the barrels back to base(mostly used weld)and there you sell them for money...money allows you to buy weapons...
With weapons you go destroy enemy ships trying to get to the oil rig.
...
One_and_Only, what does that have to do with this?
Personally, I'd get annoyed at being shot at while trying to fly places. Since I know people will abuse this ability to blow up every possible thing they can, cause they're sadistic idiots. So.. Wouldn't work too well.
why not have it so that the planets atmosphere affects the rate of hunger/thirst, where a higher gravity would mean you would become hungry more quickly to simulate the extra energy required to exist on a higher gravity planet, and same with thirst in higher temperatures then +5 of the median of the survivable temp range, while lower would keep the thirst rate the same, not sure what to do with low oxygen, and things like that though
Of course we all want a Eve like envirronement where you have place to go and you build your ship and try to get money and buy stuffs... but it won<t happen in spacebuild that for sure, at least not that way.
In a nutshell, I hate the food idea, absolutely hate it, in fact I find it kinda stupid, I do however understand the underlying reason for that whish, but frankly, no, it<s the best way to kill the server.
Economy simply cannot work unless everything has a price, where, you kind of have a starting ship, then u need to do some mission or mining or whatever to get some stuff u can hook up to your ship, then buy new parts. But even then, the server as it is would need to stay exacly like it is, but build another game place, extended place, a network of servers making a region where you can jump from one server to another more or less seemingly. But then again I stress it, you would have to have a server just like diaspora to test out your new ship configuration if it work before you can commit yourself to spend money on parts to build it in the game. Kind of like, you build your ship as we do right now, then you adv dupe it and it give you a price according of what parts your have installed. Everything would be accounted for, we could even make different strenght according to different hull skins(of course you could always choose a strenght and paint it the way you want).
But for the love of God, DON<T make us run around for food... it<s annoying enought that a suit only last 2min.. what<s up with that anyway? 2 min? really? Come on, make it a little longer, you shouldnt have to worry about your suit for hours. The main point of suit versus atmosphere was that people would have to run for a suit when they get on your ship or station, or that you wouldnt have to think about taking a suit and have to get back for one once u got out.
Also, I think I'm going to lock this one down; no point in discussing this further since it seems that the community almost as a whole would not play it. Also, there's the fact that it is months dead.