I am with Vaelzad on the planet resources thing.  The way I would say the same thing is that this is a game that you want to keep the player moving through, and not staying in one area to ruin their own experience by collecting too many resources too soon.  There is an advantage to this in that this is, in reality, he same subject as "randomly generated maps" (that NMS thing, as I guess it is known today).  With static resources that don't come back, it becomes very easy to specifically design... everything.  So your experience as a player can be controlled through the game much better.  

This is all also related to what I call "The Glorious Vision", which is the difference between the games people imagine and they actual game that will result from what they are imagining.  Any time you are imagining "a vast, randomly generating universe that's like a real adventure through the galaxy"... that's way beyond the point of being a "Glorious Vision".  The difference between what you are imagining and what can actually be done is the difference between what you are imagining and... Galactic Civilizations.  Civilization.  Alpha Centauri, maybe?  It's not like it hasn't been done before, if you attempt to realize the "Glorious Vision" that's what you wind up with.  Those are the "game element tools" you have to work with to make it a reality, so that is what you actually wind up with in the end.

So I would go with hand drawing it like an artist, and creating an illusion for the player that you guide them through.  Because, as I am pretty sure the people at Stardock know already, you aren't going to create that "Glorious Vision" of sitting the player in Captain Kirk's chair... at least not with a WHOLE LOT of "illusion" and very little replayability when you are done as the cost;-)

Planets, what to see and experience.

6 seems too low. I agree with the others that have suggested that with creative re-skinning/coloring you could get more out of them (Emerald, Ruby, etc for crystal worlds).  I do think an "M" class planet is needed..

One of the most disappointing aspects of SC2 for me was the lack of "Anomalies" found in general.  The only ones you could find were specific quest related items.  I would have loved it had there been items that could have been researched to give your mother ship upgrades (rather than having to buy them all from the Melnorme), or perhaps artifacts that just gave you RU after you were able to research them back at base.  I would love to see something like that implemented.

Also, one of the aspects that I recall from Star Control 1, and was brought back in Star Control 3, were artifacts you could find that would upgrade the basic ships of the other races in your fleet.  While some of those options, particularly in Star Control 3, seemed to make some ships Very Over powered, it was another aspect that made the exploration feel more in depth.

Another aspect that was in both Star Control 1 and Star Control 3 to some degree was the ability to have a base on a planet.  This may make it more appealing to have to return to a planet to harvest minerals from a Mine you installed on a planet, or a research station, Fuel depot or some such.  It would not have to be as detailed as the colony creation of Star Control 3, but just something else that makes it feel like Humanity, and Starcontrol, is making a mark on the galaxy.

These strategy elements are very boring gameplay wise in my eyes. You built a mine on Alpha Centauri III and then what? You gonna be coming back to pick up that 12 units of copper?.. What fun is it?

Humanity makes its mark on the galaxy by the ways of exceptional diplomacy, blowing shiet up in a spectacular way and kicking bad guys ass into a black hole. And all that is in between stealing borrowing/finding tech from everyone and everywhere possible, banging blue chicks and sterilizing planets from their minerals and ecosystems.

wow, I missed a lot of discussion over the holiday! Hope everyone had a good one!

Some general points (mostly agreements at this point):

- I also think Anomalies was one of my favorite parts of the game, especially when they were involved in the plot or if they could start new plots. Or even be new species. But I also like the idea of some of them being relatively benign and maybe the ship upgrade parts or even just "turns out it's nothings" are those.

- Bases are kind of cool, but I do feel like they're almost a trail left to mark my exploration. I also like the focus on exploration first so I'm in favor of almost anything that pushes that (and the resource non-regeneration sounds good to me too.) The only reason I'd backtrack to explored places is if I got a key-type-item that opens up something new, or if I need to continue diplomatic efforts with an existing encountered civilization.

- Thanks for the clarification on planets, it sounds like there will be variation. I also expect to see some verdant worlds / earthlikes so hopefully that's included in the variation mentioned, if not outright jungle planets at launch.

- Very glad to hear you guys are putting in more time on custom worlds. I think there was a lot of concern about procedurally generated when it was first mentioned and it's good to hear things are moving on that front.

- The ships look awesome, honestly. The portraits don't all read amazingly at the size they were included (maybe too much detail in them, almost?) but the ships look awesome. I'm kind of hoping I don't need to have my face in the player ship portrait lol - is there going to be a selection I can make of avatars? please? lol

- I'm very excited to see the sectors. Stars are good, but sectors means star control.

- I like the human theme. jamming. Same with planet exploration. I like that it's not repeting on a tiny loop (I think?) but is consistent enough to not distract from the gameplay. No real feedback on logo rendering. Seems good. 

- Intro video sound gave me chills. Nostalgia? How did you do it!

- I want a copy of this soundtrack just to do my work to!

- That Mukay looks badass! I'm feeling really pumped up about it. I'm excited to see how this looks rendered on my 4k display.  enjoy the kind of painterly art style for the setting. I was kind of worried it wouldn't work together but they do seem to work pretty great together actually. Not sure if it's the final art style or if that's going to be further refined but I don't mind it as is! 

- side note, kind of wish there was a little less meta discussion in these threads (posts about how someone is posting, reserved posts, posts on tangents related to grammar politeness, defensiveness about critique, idk.) I'm guilty of it now too by including it in this post, but while I don't really have sides in any of it I unfortunately (like many of us) have limited time and would love to be able to focus on discussion of the game itself and not have to scroll through a lot of discussion about the discussion of the discussion (maybe their own clearly marked threads would be good for that.) Luckily things got focused in towards the end of this thread.  

Feedback:

1) Ships:

The ships need to be a semiotic representation of the psychology of the races that created them (not necessarily just a mechanical copy of the creature in shape and colour). A few examples:

A plant-race might have the ability to "grow" ships, but would be constrained by the light of their sun to choose a colour-scheme that would be properly absorptive. A question that the designers might ask themselves would be "would these ships be grown on the planet, rooted to the soil, or in space, where they might need to be rotated for even coverage?" How would this affect design?Design aspects would also have to relate to the evolutionary origins of this species too: How did they survive in their competitive ecosystem to the point that they became space-faring? Were they predators? Did they outbreed another predator species until they blanketed the surface of the planet like algae? Would their ships be small and numerous? Would they be big and menacing? Would they strike and retreat quickly, letting poison finish off their prey or would they choke them like a cancer, absorbing the energy from their power cores and growing inside them?

As well, a race expecting to be alone in the galaxy would also have a different set of priorities from a race with a long history of trade between different species: lack of defined weaponry and/or aesthetic flourishes designed to impress others might be key to this design if they're taking their first few steps into the stars. As a corollary, this isolated race might not necessarily be peaceful either: They might have spent aeons engaged in civil war with its own colonies, in which case their ships might be lashed together and scarred, but really effective in battle.

TL;DR: I'm not seeing a lot of this sort of thought in the ship designs. The humans are pretty much required to be a mish-mash of Star Wars/Star Trek/Babylon 5, and you do this really well, but the others look like just a mechanical representation of their species appearance. There should be more thought put into this.

2) Planet types:

I realize that time is constrained. You might want to create several palette-swap versions of each, so that a ruby-world and a urea world are effectively the same computationally, but vastly different in terms of economic value. Question: Why worry about rainbow worlds? I realize that they are significant in the Ur-Quan "canon" universe, but this one is different. Given how rare they ought to be, you might be wasting resources for the sake of fan service, and robbing yourselves of planetary variety, which will negatively affect perception of the exploration part of the game.

Hopefully, this is helpful.

I think your ship idea makes sense hard sci fi wise, but I'm not sure it's needed for Star Control. The ships being kind of a representation of the aliens directly reads easier for remembering what you're fighting and is kind of "cuter" too. I thought the ships in endless space for example kind of made sense but didn't really have as much personality. I'm more concerned with playful representation than science logic personally.

Thank you for the Transparency on the December Vault,

First and foremost, I have to agree with IBNobody in that I am very concerned about the amount of emphasis and resources being spent on the "Planetary Exploration" mini-game.

In terms of SC2 vs. SCO, I am increasingly worried that game aspects that made SC2 great to for the lack of a better word "fluff" features in SCO.

Here is the priority order that I have for what made SC2 great and some of the concerns I have with the latest vaults:

1.) Story and Plot: Hands down the most important aspect of a SC game.  If you miss this one, the entire game will fail.  What concerns me is the very cartoony and non-serious approach shown so far.  The intro movie gives me a looney tunes feel with the Tywom ship being Wile E. Coyote dropped on the planetary moon.  SC2's intro, especially the 3DO version, was very serious.  From the collection of Alliance of Free Stars ships in the beginning, to the giant plasma nuke hitting the bridge of the Earthling Cruiser; you know the UrQuan mean business and the universe really is at risk.

For SC:O, I don't feel that way at all.  The starting alien we are slated to have first contact with is so cartoony and non-serious, I don't even know if I can take my mission seriously.  I mean humor is good, SC2 balanced it well.  But there needs to be some seriousness too.  Mass Effect also had some comical moments, but it also made you give a **** about the world you are in.  I am concerned that we are getting the Nickelodeon approach to story.  If that happens, the game will run into some serious problems with diehard SC fans, like me.  We all might go play ME:Andromeda a second time instead.

2.) Hyper-Melee.  Hyper melee just needs to be good.  It needs to be prioritized because its where all the action is and where all the stakes in the game are.  From the screenshot demos it looks like Hyper-Melee takes place in the world map, I'm not sure how this is all going to work but it is the second most important feature in the game next to story (to which I'm already concerned about).  I really hope that Hyper-melee wasn't de-prioritized and important aspects were sacced for planetary exploration and the "one game world" idea where planetary exploration is shared by the same engine and instance as ship navigation.  This would be very very very bad.

3.) Modding.  Good modding tools and community free reign to change anything they dislike can change a mediocre game (like Skyrim) into a masterpiece.  Give us the tools and I guarantee you will see some crazy stuff like people building the original SC:2 and Project 6014 right in SC:O.  That will make the game live forever.

4.) Progression and pacing.  Players needs to feel as if their options and personal capabilities are growing at a good rate but not too fast or too slow as they go through the game.  I think the module system for the Flagship can really help with this, along with alien diplomacy and getting access to new types of ships (possible upgrading them).

5.) At a distant five, we have the planetary exploration game.  Visiting new worlds is cool but there needs to be stuff to do on these worlds other than collect stuff and shoot stuff.  There needs to be story chunks, aliens we can visit and talk to, hidden installations, etc.  If there is such a huge emphasis on planetary exploration it needs to impact the game in huge ways (e.g. discovering that an island is actually a hidden starship that gives schematics on a new ship type and a giant chunk of lore on how it got there).

I am frustrated that so much resource and emphasis is placed on "putting planetary exploration in real time" when it really doesn't matter much if you had a short instanced load between players scanning and landing on planets.  No one would have cared.  Now you have massive amounts of resources being used just to put planetary exploration and ship navigate/melee in the same world when there really is no huge benefit to doing it this way.  All of the extra processing power that could have been saved by instancing worlds could have been used for graphical detail or other aesthetic options.  I do think that the "one world" approach was a mistake resource wise, but its too late to go back now.

This is by far my most critical post so far, but someone needs to say what alot of us are thinking.  I want the game to succeed, so I'm just being honest.  I think there are some prioritization issues in development between what makes an SC game and SC:O.  I hope that there is still time to turn the ship or that future vaults can indicate that maybe my assumptions are misguided.

V/R,

-Helmos

In my case I'm totally fine with planetary exploration being as it is right now (ref.: teaser trailer) IF there's MORE to do on the planets. Puzzle games, mini games, mini bosses, racing etc. I'm expecting 66% of the planets to be "duds". And by "duds" I mean nothing to do like Mars, Uranus, Venus in SC2 (picking up resources doesn't count).

(Mini-bosses will most likely be in, though they may not require any fancy mechanics other than dodge and shoot.)

What would the rewards be for solving puzzles, beating mini-games, or winning races? More materials that you could easily collect? Filler upgrades? Useless achievements?

Oh, I know. They should definitely award fake internet points. Those appear to be a popular thing in our circles.

I appreciate the support.

I do care about load times. If every planet I want to land on requires a load time, and there are a ton of planets, having to wait would be a waste of time.

If they want to funnel money into fixing load time issues across the board, I can understand and appreciate the effort... But...

I wish we weren't in this situation where money had to be spent to fix load times for a change-for-the-sake-of-changing feature.

The only thing I really dislike about the direction this discussion has gone is that there's a lot of assumptions being made about other peoples' opinions. Stop it. Give your own, and that's it.

Maybe I missed this being talked about before, but will Planetary exploration also result in plot stuff? Like will I find aliens to talk to on the surface? Secret facilities? Or maybe even aliens that aren't space fairing? 

Have you played Myst? Puzzles there were pretty cool. They were very atmospheric too. Isn't Space puzzling and mysterious?

Have you played Rock'N'Poll Racing? It's a cool, fun racing mini-game with power-ups. Analogy would be Star Wars pod racing without seriousness in SCO.

The reward things could be anything: Money, Unique upgrades, Ships, Unique Landers skins, Rare Bio-data, Lore bits, Alien race relationship swing, Story progression/items, etc.

Are you not interested in mini-games? Super-melee is a mini-game...

My ideal:

• Experience
• A Super Mario Galaxy system
• Biome / environment / pallate diversity
• Curated / non-soulless-husk planets
• High ratio of "special" to "filler" planets

• Side Effects
• Zero in-game load times
• A way to circumvent exploration late in the game
• Enough budget left for other missing features (Local Multiplayer)

However, we can't have the ideal... So...

I would either cut the system entirely in favor of a ME1 "Survey" option or revert to the less-resource-intensive SC2 style of exploration.

Along the way, I would minimize load times, minimize the amount of soulless husk filler worlds, and provide a method to auto-survey worlds without having the landing/exploring mini game. 

I would assume and hope so. In fact, I would hope that they do this more than it was done in the old SC II, as it would constantly keep planet exploration new and refreshing.

I AM interested in mini games. (To an extent, until they wear out their welcome. No lockpicking / hacking, please!)

There has to be rewards available or mini games are useless. You've made some great suggestions, but we have to rely on Andrew's team to implement systems that make these types of rewards valuable.

+1 with regards to more gameplay dynamics during planetary exploration, and in general with regard to the rest of the game as well. The best way to not turn planet exploration into a repetitive grind is to mix up the gameplay with different tasks, side quests, unique aliens and locations, etc. That is part of the reason the recent news about scaling back the variety of planets is of concern to us. Even if we don't get a ton of variety overall, there should be many occasional planets that are standouts and unique in their own ways.

I totally support the idea of mini games being applied to other aspects of the game as well. It's really part of SC2's DNA: it was a combination of various different game genres. That idea should be embraced and expanded upon. I would absolutely love to see Hyperspace travel given some more interactivity as it would probably irritate some modern gamers to be on autopilot for minutes at a time in an action adventure game. Let's see some anomalies that block your path which have to be circumnavigated, or areas that are full of smaller obstacles that you have to maneuver through, maybe like an asteroid belt in hyperspace ... I realize that doesn't make much sense, but you get the idea.

I'm all for admiring visuals and pretty music as you hurtle through Hyperspace, but I think more needs to be done to keep players engaged and interacting with the Hyperspace environment or there will be complaints of long swaths of boredom just to go resource grinding.

Avoiding enemies could be considered a mini game... But I get what you mean.

I don't care about a hyperspace mini game being added with some limitations. It has to be fun. Also, I need to be able to disable it with an upgrade once I get sick of it.

Quasi-Space Drive?

^ Maybe. It depends on how the mini game is set up. If you always use Quasi-Space, you may miss encounters.

I want a "skip the mini game but continue to give me the benefits that playing the mini game would yield" type of upgrade. So maybe it clears any obstacles from your hyperspace travels, but you still have to deal with encounters.

There should probably be a cloaking device upgrade, too, that would let you skip encounters.

All of these would be mid-to-endgame upgrades, naturally. You aren't going to get a content skipping upgrade in the first hour of play.

Difficult puzzles will drive away... just about everyone who doesn't like puzzles.  You probably want to keep any "puzzles" either very easy or optional.

I don't mind puzzles when I want to do puzzles, but I never came close to finishing Half-Life because I wouldn't be playing a first person shooter if I wanted to solve puzzles.

Wow, Kavik. I totally had you pegged as a man who would be pro-puzzle.

Like I said, I don't mind puzzles, but they are downright dangerous to put in a game where people aren't playing it to do puzzles.  A majority of people will give up on it and do something else very quickly if they can't solve it right away... in which case why have it if it is that easy to solve.  It is just getting in your way when you are wanting to do something else.  Action games and puzzles are a particularly bad pair, because they are pretty much exactly opposite from each other.  Especially in an action game, a lot of players will probably just forget about Star Control if they run into a puzzle they can't solve in under 30 seconds.

Have you seen NMS puzzles? Something like this, but a notch above. Something with graphics maybe. The ones that take you couple of minutes to solve if you put your mind to it and not just start "scientifically" click shizz on screen.