I have no issues with tweaking the idea, but at least providing a way of spreading the blueprints to make the ascension gate across the player’s galaxy would also ensure players actually explore the galaxy instead of sit in their initial galaxy arm like I did in every game of Spore.
But why would you want that?
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Seeing alien planets and civilisations. If we could build the ascension gate in our home planet, there wouldn’t be a need to have a space stage or simulate a galaxy, would it?
Wouldnt seeing aliens qnd other civilizations be enough of an incentive then? Remember that thrive is a sandbox game and thus players should be able to do what they want.
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Some people may not want to play a stage if they can skip it. But if it is interesting enough they may still play it.
What are you even saying? You cant skip space stage, you think space stage is “explore the galaxy”? NO, space stage is “go to space”. Qlso, there already are oncentives to explore the galaxy, ehich are “gather materials” and “colonize othrt planets”.
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The only incentive is building the ascension gate. How much “gather materials” would be needed to build a single structure? Fully starlifting 100 stars? In contrast, the need to get information still ensures exploration and engaging with the galaxy, and we could play a space stage in classical sci-fi style with ftl.
Irrelevant, the only incentive to explore the galaxy evwn with your idea is building the ascension gate.
Metastructure, and irrelevant question since the devs can make it costs how much they want.
Also, if they were to add this useless “find the clues” (which also makes no sense, they were able to research it but we cant?) They would also have to make it cost less resources to make.
You know that all of this is possible without all of that useless and annoying duck chase?
I was talking about the non-player-likes-it-so incentive to explore space before ascending.
What about this: Building the ascension gate needs high technology. Researching that takes a lot of time. During that time, your population increases, they refuse to use birth control. You have to send them as colonists to other stars, otherwise they they get poor, they rebel, its societal collapse and game over. But when you send them as colonists, they don’t declare independence and you have to keep them safe. Now you have a spce empire you have to look after, when it expands enough, you meet other alien civs and you interact with those.
Why would you restrict player options without any good reason?
So you are saying a small civilization cant interact with other civilizations? Also, other civilizations are enough of an incentive since they could invade you and be succesfull if you dont have a strong enough defensive power.
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Yes. Two civilisations can communicate or invade each other, but if they can stay in their home planets, why should they? Other than, they may like doing those. Should Thrive have no purpose? The goal isn’t ascending, the reason behind everything you do is because you like it that way.
You realize right that other civilizations will expand anyways right?
So the goal is this: Survive until you can build an ascension gate in a hobbesian galaxy, where some civs expand, regardless of if they also want to ascend.
This is a really pointless debate.
I think we shouldn’t force the player to explore the galaxy, if they don’t want to.
But I plan on requiring something like multiple suns to power the ascension gate so that it is sufficiently difficult final achievement to finish off the game. So that means that the player has to gather resources (at least energy) from multiple solar systems to beat the game.
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Not all civs are the same, as such different civs will do things differently.
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The higher technology aspect is the reason I feel that the blueprints for the ascension gate should be found rather than randomly appearing within a research thing like in stellaris (think of how you research new tech in that game). It makes it so that time and effort is put into the process of building it, plus as one constructs the ascension gate different civilizations (based on their ideologies) will interact with you in different ways with some becoming highly aggressive.
@hhyyrylainen While I wouldn’t be the one coding the actual stuff in (I am terrible at coding, lol) the blueprints for the gate would likely be very repetitive so one could stay within a close, but not sitting relatively still in regards to their home system. At the same time, there would be information players could discover about the ancient civilizations that could be located across the entire galaxy and give players something interesting to find if they decide to explore as much as they want.
But why? Why were they capable of researching it be we arent?
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Assuming the player civilization is brand new upon reaching the space stage, it would likely take millions of years for the player species to develop technology on their own to create what is necessary for the ascension gate. Having ancient empires that fell before completing their ascension gates would allow players to speed that process up, while specific things would be left unknown, like the multi star thing mentioned by hhyyrylainen along with perhaps a specific piece that has to be found as a tech research option closer to the late game. (I also want to have the ascension gate blueprints double as a way to provide soft-scifi tech to players in order to keep the early space stage of Thrive closer to hard-scifi) (Soft-scifi is science fiction like star wars or star trek while hard scifi would be more akin to the Martian or Ender’s Game)
Exactly. I found this part really annoying in Stellaris that no matter what you didn’t get to research the fallen empire techs before you destroyed at least one of their fleets. Like how does it make sense that suddenly once you smash something to pieces you can then suddenly research something in finite time that before that wouldn’t have been possible before.
The cutoff to moving to scifi is way earlier, as early as expanding to other solar systems it will start to get scifi due to needing FTL, though I’m not against adding a mode where the player can just not go that way and could use some alternatives like really slow ships, but the game would be uncompletable that way (due to ascension being necessarily a scifi concept).
Also in general I don’t much like the idea that the player is forced to play in a galaxy that is already fully explored by earlier civilizations. The game starts with the player being the first life on their planet, so to continue that theme I think the player should be one of the early wave of space civilizations in their galaxy (by default, this would obviously be a good place to add some new game options to customize this). Based on that as well, requiring the player to find blueprints for the most advanced technologies (including ascension) is completely against the direction I want the space stage to go.
The galaxy doesn’t have to be fully explored by the previous civilizations. They could have ruins that exist within 1/40 of the systems present or even less. Also yeah, the FTL travel is where things get really blurry but since an FTL allows the game to be more enjoyable I have no issue saying that the FTL used early on is simply a type of travel method we have yet to consider that would be feasible given our current technological level. (after all my idea isn’t concrete as it currently stands, plus I want to know what some of the playerbase thinks to see what can be tweaked or changed).