New 'Career' start options

[pandaman]

A few ideas for possibilities when starting a new career.

1. Initial planets start positions randomised?

This way optimum launch windows would be different for every new game. Helping make each career a bit different.

2. Program objectives.

When starting your career define a primary objective for your agency. These could serve as a way of adding variety to your games and also providing 'victory conditions' for those who want them. On reaching your objective you can quit and claim victory or continue with or without a new set of objectives. As a rough idea they could be along these lines...

a. Business - you're in it for the money. Make X amount of funds.

b. Research - Gain X science overall with a surplus of X.

c. Prestige - It's all about the image. Gain X reputation.

d. Exploration - Visit X number of planetary bodies etc.

Obviously there are others, and combinations of these would add extra variety.

3. Anomalies - Make the locations of the monoliths more random.

Within certain parameters randomise the locations of the monoliths. This would ensure that you need to search for and discover them and not rely on memory. They could also serve a purpose (such as science or rep bonuses) to make it beneficial to find them. Although an in - game detection system of some type would be required for this and care would be needed when generating them to ensure they don't end up completely buried etc.

The other anomalies could stay as they are as curiosities.

Overall I love this game - and it's still a work in progress so lots still to do and finish off before release and after. Really looking forward to seeing how it grows.

[Red Iron Crown]

#1 will break many tools used to plan interplanetary maneuvers for very little gain. If you're going to randomize the system, go full out and procedurally generate the planets/orbits (never happen in stock, though).

#2 is more interesting. As a long time player I'm fairly used to setting my own goals and objectives, but I've been enjoying the new contracts in 0.90 more than I expected. Perhaps some large, overarching goals might be desirable, especially for players who are used to a more directed gameplay experience.

[Amahula]

1. You can always make that option, but since I will never use it and the developers are working hard on all sorts of stuff I wouldn't want it to be a priority.

2. I guess you need funds to upgrade, science for better parts and reputation... not sure what that does. But it's not possible to go all for money without science, or the other way around. You need both for both.

3. monoliths are ridiculously hard to find. You can randomize them, but I personally will never ever find them.

I guess you are implying that the game gets repetitive if you restart it? I agree with that, but there isn't that much to be done about it. I guess every game gets repetitive if you start over. There are some randomized things in the contracts, like the survey missions. But apart from the cords it's all the same.

Ever tried some mods that add planets and moons?

[Damien_The_Unbeliever]

By (1) are you just basically looking for them to apply a hidden offset so that we say, advance the entire system from its current starting position by (say) 493 days and then call that "year 1, day 1" in that career game? That sounds relatively straightforward to implement. Alternatively, if you want that kind of challenge:

• Start a new career mode game
  
• Enter tracking station
  
• Go to maximum forward warp.
  
• Go and make yourself a beverage, mow the lawn, or whatever you want to do for an amount of time that won't be exactly the same each time you follow this process
  
• Take game out of maximum warp, actually start working on your career.
  

[pandaman]

Thanks for your comments. You do make some good points.

#1 I agree that this would probably be more trouble than it's worth as it would go unnoticed by the vast majority of players anyway.

#2 The idea behind this is that IRL all Space Agencies will have an agenda of some sort, either of their own or imposed by their governments etc. This woukd be a way if simulating that. And yes to achieve any of the objectives I mentioned a combination of all the available methods will need to be used. But how you use them may vary depending on what you ultimately want to achieve, thereby giving a different focus to your game and encouraging you to try different strategies if you want to.

#3 Yes monoliths are nearly impossible to find without any 'tools', even if you do have an idea where to look. But discovering them can be fun. Currently once you have found them you know where they are when you start a new game. With their locations randomised, and some detection tools in stock, then new play options are available. That said, I can foresee various problems with mechanics of actually locating them randomly initally.

Cheers.

Pandaman.