What three things do you think are essential?

[Lurkily]

Ignore the dev roadmap for a minute. If your three are on the roadmap,  just reiterate how important it is. 

What three things do you think are fundamentally necessary for the final game to be a success story? Don't get caught up in the detail - don't tell me we need a rangefinder, tell me that drone sensors need to provide more awareness.  Elaborate on that if you like, but let's try and keep our 'big three' conceptual.

I'll start. 

1. Progression mechanics.

 I think a reward for progress is necessary.  I think it's necessary not to be able to build 500- part megadrones on day 1, but to earn and be rewarded by that kind of freedom. Not a grindfest, mind, but not just given for free - there's no reward there.  Those limits will also increase the engineering people do - with progression limits, people will have to custom - build to specific missions more, and build JOAT drones less.  And engineering is one place where this game shines, so requiring more engineering and more drone types will be good. 

2.  Every block in the workshop. 

This is a big ask, and a big project.  But I think it will pay off in a big way. We all like monkeying around in the weapon workshop.  Imagine fine - tuning your thrusters, and them your fuel tanks to support them, or tuning your tnt to a small -range firebomb, or upgrading decouplers to destroy themselves, and force parts away from each other as they decouple.   I think this has huge potential to add fun and depth to the game.

3. Environmental and self awareness. 

I think that sensors need to be more capable.  Logic is quite versatile, but right now it doesn't have the criteria to apply itself to.  Rangefinders, adding an arc to the detection sensor, multiple configurable ranges for sensors as the devs have floated, more sensor criteria, trackers, etc will all provide the operators that a logic system needs to act upon.  This isn't just for autonomy, either. Legs, formation flyers, missiles, interchangeable weapon pods, lots of controlled and active ships need logic, and by extension the criteria for that logic to act upon, to work well. 

[Lurkily]

Also, if it's appropriate, I'd like to hear from the devs on this subject, too. I do understand if the way ahead isn't clear enough to comment.

EDIT: To clarify, what three things do the devs think are important?  Not just as a group, but individually as well?  I recognize that not everybody agrees and that development often reveals needs that don't follow previous priorities, that nothing is promised.  I promise I'm not trying to start a fight or expose divisions, so I understand if it's not an answer you want to give, or if you only want to give the team answer.

[Markus]

I think almost all points are on our internal roadmap as well

1. We haven't announced or finally decided on what we're working next, but it's on our roadmap to improve, maybe even revamp the single-player experience completely (aka campaign). So while I can't say what it will be, this is definitely something we will work in in the future.

2. I think you mean that you can adjust many many different details for every drone-part? I'm not sure if that is technically feasible with the system we have now, and maybe it makes compatibility with old drones tricky (workshop). Maybe it's something which would be possible with modding, but there are no plans yet for that.

3. More sensors, better settings, more logic... that's something we would like to improve as well  Personally I think that we have to fix the 1st issue first and then improve the other aspects, but there's nothing decided or announced yet depending next updates.

I hope I got that correct ^^

[Lurkily]

Actually, I was hoping you would comment on what your priorities are.  I'd be really interested to know what you think is important, and what Micha thinks is most important, and etc etc.  EDIT:  I recognize that not everybody agrees and that development often reveals needs that don't follow previous priorities, that nothing is promised.  I promise I'm not trying to start a fight or expose divisions, so I understand if it's not an answer you want to give, or if you only want to give the team answer.

As for #2, I actually meant using the weapon workshop, or a similar system.  I know weapons are inherently different, but I think the workshop is tremendously fun and enables customized behavior for specific needs that plays into the fun of engineering.  I think expanding that sounds like a bear, but I think it would be worthwhile.  It would create interplay between the upgrades to various parts, making the weapon mods and other part mods a much deeper and more strategic thing.

I don't think most parts need to be THAT customizable; most weapons have many behavior characteristics, resulting in 10-20 things to edit.  Something like a battery or armor I can only see a few useful categories of mod. Most parts have so few actual behaviors that their characteristics don't need a lot of mods.

 

Edited November 21, 2018 by Lurkily

[Markus]

From my personal point of view, from the things you mentioned, Number 1: A better progression system / better motivation is the most important point after we have released our next update  

[Lurkily]

58 minutes ago, Markus said:

From my personal point of view, from the things you mentioned

I'm not trying to present a poll; feel free to present priorities I didn't list. I was just starting with an example. 

[Micha]

My Priorities: 

0.) Listen to what the players want most

1.) Better replayability, due to a progression system, item unlocks, different game modes with harder difficulty or user generated content.

2.) More challenges and worlds where you need to use your skills as drone engineer in many different ways. (Asteroid minefields, Bossfights, drone vs. drone battles, abandoned space stations, labyrinths for autonomous drone exploration, etc...)

3.) Better usability for the drone workshop, better tools and better customization options for the different drone parts, especially sensors.

[Lurkily]

@Micha, you make me rethink things with #3. So much of the ui work goes unappreciated, but it is essential.  

[hayden.mcclure]

On 11/21/2018 at 8:33 AM, Micha said:

My Priorities: 

2.) More challenges and worlds where you need to use your skills as drone engineer in many different ways. (Asteroid minefields, Bossfights, drone vs. drone battles, abandoned space stations, labyrinths for autonomous drone exploration, etc...)

After putting in 24 hours into this game, and enjoying the heck out of it. I decided to go write a steam review and check out your forums. This game is awesome. And seeing the dev's thoughts gets me pumped for the future. Keep being all-stars.

Number 2.) resonates with me. I quite enjoyed coming up with several drone designs for the "campaign" missions. Eventually I realized you can essentially solve any potentially challenging mission by creating someone one-dimensional drone design and trivialising difficulty.

I was hoping for exactly the type of things you've described! I would love to be raiding drone-shipwreck graveyard. Investigate an SOS-signal in an asteroid field only to have to fight my way out of an ambush.

I would especially like it if there was the potential to design the boss fights ourselves. I was imagining fighting our way to the core of a larger planet, only to find that within the hollow centre, is a drone that another player has designed to protect the core autonomously. After defeating it, players could simply rank drone designs by difficulty to beat, design quality/fun, etc. 

I was also hoping for mission types that analyze your performance by different metrics. Imagine trying to accomplish a mission with different goals in mind while doing it:  taking the least amount of damage possible, or completing it in the fastest time possible, or with the fewest parts possible, or without firing a shot. The "intercepted signals" are the perfect starting point, and I hope you guys take procedural-generation of mission parameters and diversity to infinity!

I think enemy design is also going to be huge for this game's success. First encountering a hammerhead, I was very confused as to how to actually kill them. I thought they were completely indestructible, but eventually I saw a tool-tip that mentioned I could try freezing them. Several iterative drone designs later, and I have many solutions to killing the hammerheads.

I imagine a huge sandbox of enemy types that will challenge drone design, hopefully to the point where no one design will be sufficient. I'd love to see fast enemies that run away, generating smaller enemies that chase you down, forcing you to really chase them down quickly. I'd like to see enemies that leave a planets core, attack you, when defeated, shut down, and teleport back to the planets core for repair. That way you must continually fight closer to the planets core, facing enemies at increasingly fast intervals, until you kill them during their repairs. I'd love to see the classic "splitting blob" enemy that splits hydra-style from full sized, to minimum size, and if you don't kill the smallest ones, they regenerate into full sized enemies. What about a dynamic duo enemy? you could have medic/fighter combo, where killing the fighter is incredibly difficult without killing the medic, who hides behind the fighter, and drags him off to safety if he is damaged.

The possibilities are endless! Thanks for creating this amazing game.

 

[Lurkily]

You should drop your enemy ideas into feature requests, each as a separate suggestion, of course. That'll get each concept into a place people can vote on it, and where devs can get an idea of their popularity. 

[Markus]

Thank you @hayden.mcclure for your feedback and liking the game. You have very cool ideas. Als Lurkily said: Please feel free to post your ideas in the suggestions-forum. From time to time we collect popular suggestions and try to implement them  

After the current update (Racing) we're working on improving the single-player experience. So keep an eye out for improvements in that area  (though that next update is still many months in the future  )

[Baka Red]

1) Logic parts should be inside "processors/subprocessors" - ie: not take so much space & count against sumo part limit. When I still played Nimbatus, I felt like putting logic parts in a sumo usually made the sumo weaker instead of stronger. Simple logic like "Spin at the center" with lots of muscle behind the spin worked best.

2) Factories should produce Energy/Fuel parts as empty.

3) Singleplayer campaign needs more to do. I stopped playing, since every galaxy felt "the same" and could be dealt with the same drones as the previous galaxies. Maybe your game will re-ignite my wish to build stuff at some point, but currently I see no reason to return to Nimbatus.