Hello Players, its Devblog time about short term changes!
I've recently remembered about something called "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two". It is, in fact one of the most cited papers in psychology, and sometimes even in Game Development. Tetris uses the 7 Rule, EVE Online does, and a whole lot of other games do as well. It defines that the human Brain can only process 7 (+/-2) Things at once in short term memory.
Thing is, I thought it would be irrelevant. More is always better, right? Actually, it isn't. And therefore I have to cut a bit of excess content. Mining. No one's actual favourite gameplay went way too complicated. I will cut ELEVEN ores from the game, leaving seven really cool ones and kicking similiar ores out. The Current Ore lineup consists of:
- Ferrite
- Bauxite
- Thulium
- Deuterium
- Mercoxite
- Chaoite
- Aurum
- Iridium
- Niobium
- Strontium
- Titan
- Vanadium
- Lanthan
- Curium
- Elitium
- Nimoyium
- Severite
- Elariate
Don't mind the last three ones, in an attempt to have MORE ORE(!) I added those without spawning or proper market entry. After Pruning them, these Ores remain:
- Ferrite
- Deuterium
- Mercoxite
- Aurum
- Strontium
- Titan
- Elitium
They will also receive a Price Increase, rearranging and respective better spawning, drop chance and so on. The Market will be Revamped as well and get more Categories and Submenus, separating Minerals, Weapons, Ships, CAPITAL SHIPS, but thats saved for later. The Mineral Changes include a server restart, and I will use it to remove global quest spam and give it to a command. You will be able to request server status with /status in chat and /gquest for Info about the Global Quest Progress.
New Chat Colors!
I will make the game differ between your messages, other player messages, mentions of your Name and Dev messages soon. This will hopefully improve readability by a good amount.
The New weapon system is going along REALLY fine. With 10030 no ship has any virtual hardpoints at all anymore, and all guns are done by math instead of carrying around literally hundreds of helper objects. The new gun systems will incorporate the current available Blasters, new Lasers and rapid fire beams with different damage. Which brings me to...
Crafting. I might add this as a means of getting some new weapons unlocked for players. You will have to have ore for them in the cargo and will permanentely unlock for you. Stations still craft ships for you, as they are tied to mineral supply.
DLV11+ Hubs are coming soon, as people seem to have figured out a way to BBQ DLV10 Hubs (the hardest ones currently) within one hour after release. Come on people, give me a break! (They are fun though.)
Transport Ships are not much of use outside the occasional co-op mining and massive DLV LootScooping. This will change. I'm giving in and give them ONE weapon slot. In exchange for this they will get less agility. And they get another useful feature! On stations you will soon be able to buy mobile Repair fields, ONLY droppable by Transporters. They exist for a limited time for all players surrounding the cargo ship and will repair friendly ships in range. The Transporter is getting advanced support capabilites, so it might be a neat thing taking a friend with you to repair stuff while assaulting DLVs, and, as bonus, the collection range doubles! The NPC threat will also die if the hub dies, so Your friends kill the guards and the hub and you scoop the loot as the support platform. That sounds decent, right? (But HUBs get more health to avoid blitzing them!)
Jump holes. Dear Freelancer fans, yes. Only Exploration Ships will be able to discover them, and they might lead you to places you would never have found by normal means. I am still considering one-way or two-way jumps. The latter would be convenient, the former would be a risk vs reward thing.
Limiting the Content creation on the Y-Axis (up and down) to 1/10th of the original value seems to be a good decision as the game went much more accessible thanks to it, and i can spread the normal content by 3x on the other axises, making a normal trip last from the farthest belt south to the farthest belt north without HSD more than 11 hours.
Also, some older players might know about skins. Ship skins were a thing in earlier versions, but i removed them for space issues and being overworked. They will soon find their way back in, as a means of actually skinning the ship instead of buying a special issue.
So, with this all written, thank you all for your really valueable feedback, from chats ingame and in both forums. Now What do you think of the changes? Any concerns about the changes? Input on increasing fun? Know a good joke?