I'm monitoring your wiki for updates, and will merge to the main wiki as we go.

I did some hacking around on defining political and population volumes a little while ago. It wasn't ultimately successful but not because the idea was bad - its just that the approach I took needs more thought - I had tied political allegiance to populated volumes, whereas they should probably be completely separate things.

My approach also used simple sphere's to define the populated volumes, anything outside of that dropped off to uninhabited very sharply. Whereas a better approach might be to define the post-2800 epoch of hyperspace travel commencing as expanding at a certain rate, so by 3200 when the game starts it is within a volume of size X and then it increases constantly after that. Tying that into settlement/planetary populations, number of space stations, degree of lawlessness and political stability will be interesting. There's some aspect of that already in the game regarding the volume of space that's actually inhabited and where it's centred (Earth), adding in other political factions such as the FE2 Empire (for example only) would add other centres for both political and population expansion. If one civilisation is determined to expand primarily into free space and thus away from Earth it's colonisation behaviour would be markedly different than settlers heading out in all directions from the Earth itself.

Those considerations would give one aspect of a dynamic evolution over time. It wouldn't be affected by the player in any way though. To do that we'd need to have a system where the player actively changed something, political volumes/allegiances were what I was thinking of, that we stored in their save game data and were considered in the system generation code.

Andy

I really liked your sphere idea, Espec with the procedural generation. It allows for explorers to find pockets of civilizations out there - much like what apparently the UK FE2 version did. I also think that then if there are spheres that overlap then there can be a politics generator are the different civilization spheres trading, at war, armistice? I think it has a lot of potential. Let the game generate the population clusters first, then the galaxy is 'locked off' , we develop the stories.

Speaking off topic for a tick though and on Frontier - which I play on my iphone using iDOS - I've got a Class 5 Hyperdrive and a fuel scoop and I am basically keen to jump to a far flung pocket of civilization. I've switched my version of FE2 so it's the UK wormhole version because I am told that this causes populated systems beyond the -14,-3 Quanve style edges of civilisation... There are a few notable systems out there listed online and I'm keen to visit them - but I don't want to wormhole it. I know there are veterans on this board so my question is: is such a mission possible with the UK edition or am I doomed to drive failure due to lack of maintenance before I reach anything?

While I'm a fan of an evolving galaxy, I'm not a fan of the player being a major force in it. There are billions in Sol alone; one trader with an inherited ship and 100Cr isn't going to become Luke Skywalker. That's too much like the X universe, where the player's impact is awesome. Also, when you hit the limit of progress, it's suddenly plain that there's nothing left to achieve, and nobody's talking to you any more.

Small linked mission quests, sure. Perhaps it'd be nice to be able to hunt down the pilot who took the assassination job that you saw once but turned down, or whatever.

Whilst I don't entirely disagree, we do live on a planet with 6 billion people, yet we still know about Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steven Hawking etc. Billions of people really just seems to mean that there's billions of people not doing very much whereas a few can and do stand out.

If those little missions make a player be one of the few that stands out then I wouldn't find it all that odd. Plus, you've got spaceship! I mean that's awesome and in itself a lot of scope of potentially pivotal change.

Think of it in terms of missions done for one side or another. Lets says there's an star system that's not been explored in a patch of barely habitable star systems (I've found LOADS of patches like this), you go explore it (in that paid exploration module that's been talked about before) and find habitable planets. Which side you tell about it could easily affect which faction chooses to colonise said planet.

That could be a major turning point in the evolution of the political influence in a sector of space but all you had to do was visit a star system and orbit a couple of planets. Small actions, big effects.

Andy

"Didn't you know? I'm the latest dream star."

😆

See, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking about. Colonisation of a planet would be a project taken over such a timescale that you might never see any evidence of it. Of the four names you mention, only one has actually changed the world to any significant degree, and that's only really to the extent that the term PC means Windows PC. Other than that, they're undoubtedly famous, and in some cases rich. None have had the sort of impact seen from individuals in the early twentieth century, and those individuals played politics and genocide, which are different games entirely.

Thing is you're looking only at my list which I came up with whilst waiting to compile 😆 What about Columbus or Magellan? And colonisation for us would take hundreds of years and yet by 3200 humanity appears to have spread like a rash!

Think of an Long Range Cruiser turning up with 10,000 people and an entire pre-packaged colony. Drop the colony from orbit, shuttle the humans down and then hang around to act as a space station for 50 years. Instant colony - just add water.

If colonisation is an industry and overcrowding or other incentives (political, religious, corporate, land rights etc) are available then there's a very plausible reason that humanity would have spread so far so fast.

I'm just thinking out loud, as the player you don't have to get credit for each settled planet, and other planets could be inhabited throughout the galaxy without your involvement, it's just that thinking it through like that seems to pose almost no obstacles at all.

Possibly. I still absolutely loathe the idea.

I'm in favour of a player character who can 'walk in the snow and not leave a footprint', as Brianetta has sortof described.

It may seem like a weird reason, but I feel that the vastness of the universe is the central thing in Pioneer, and that the player should always feel like a stranger wherever he goes. A stranger with interesting stories to tell.

I agree with Tomm and like his description of it.

I'll say again though: I reallly like Fluffy's idea of the procedural side of the game generating spheres/pockets of civilisation... And suggest then it also spawning political status between the spheres - treaty, armistace, interdict, war, peace, alliance, trade dispute

I know each iteration of the alpha the universe changes a bit further out, but once you lock it (like FFE/FE2) then we can A.) Explore it and B.) the stories evolve out of what the game has generated. That's a great opportunity and will create the unexpected instead cloning popular sci-fi narrative.

one more like from me: that idea of 10000 people showing up with 'insta-colony' is great back story. Mankind would def do that. I'd suggest we over-populate Sol and near by systems (the ones that were reached with slower than hyperspace travel), that would support that back-story.

From everything i've seen and heard i'm def getting the wild west frontier vibe, high plains drifter, or man with no name, guy comes along, does some notorious things and then fades away into the bleak landscape.

I thinks its fair that if the character does something notorious then they should garner some notoriety, but only for than planet or that system. Why would earth care what you do at epsilon eridani? That is assuming that there is no linked/shared police interests 'and that news travels by ship, not by hyperspace. (Ie its slower and word of mouth)

prob getting too complicated but could therce be different classes or notoriety? ie good at delivery,s good at assasinations, etc? A man hiring you for murder won't care that you deliver foodstuffs on time every time.

In regards to pockets of civilisation, the standing timeline gives hyperspace discovery in the 27th century, the first out of sol colony in the 23rd. that doesn't leave a lot of time for a million different groups to head in a million different directions. I believe you'de have a typical spherical expansion from earth, with stage 1 colonies on the frontier, stage 2 colonies say a little closer in and the richer core planets at the centre (with earth). CIW would be similar but wouldn't be a sphere, more an egg shape away from earth (I would say).

Then you would have your fringe groups that wanted to get the hell out of the way and do their own thing: communists, jews maybe, some religious order, an independent kingdom, Corporate space (though star wars pretty much made that a cliche - it would have to be done a bit better and different). You would have also have failed colonies at the very extremes of civilisation. Ghost towns that could be mission based, or colonies that just dissolved into anarchy.

But as I said above we've only got around five centuries of hyperspace travel to play with. Expand, stop and grow, expand again, you're not going to get far in five hundred years, i reckon. Two big spheres of development and maybe half a dozen smaller pockets sprinkled around is my suggestion.

Just another thought, but maybe the a 'goal' of the game could be to minimise notoriety and when you get it, its like a negative score..e It doesn't meany anything, but maybe you should stay away from that particular system for a while.

Keep those ideas coming, thanks eveyone.

My, you're an optimist!

The Character class already has a notoriety variable and a lawfulness variable. Ideally, it should be hard to get an assassination mission without the former being high and the latter being low for the player character. Did you know that you already have a character sheet of your own?

Not necessarily spherical, unless all resources come from Sol. If a particularly agreeable system is found, it can become a productive distribution centre in its own right, pushing that expansion boundary.

There was me thinking Jews were a religious order... (-:

Corporate space is a likelihood. We already have corporate towns, where a single company employs almost everybody and owns almost all the property. That's all the more likely with an enclosed habitat on an airless world or in orbit somewhere. With an armed presence for defence, it becomes a de-facto corporate state - something that doesn't happen so much here on Earth, but would become essential on an expanded frontier.

Look how far bchimself has reached in his Let's Play series. 500 years is more than plenty of time to have reached far and wide, leaving centuries to get settled in. Hyperspace isn't just quick, it's society-altering.

That's the first genuinely new and interesting idea I've seen here for a while. Not sure I think it's a good idea, but it's definitely worth considering. (-:

No need to get snarky. I thought there was already some backstory that suggested that on that wiki, or somewhere I read in direct relation to this thread.

All I can say re: it's infeasible for pockets of civ, the main problem with FFE and FE2, is that eventually you grow tired of the Sol and Achernar region.... you want to travel far far away and find what's out there.

Admittedly it's taken me 15 years to grow bored with it

And Brianerta is right, human's wouldn't expand from a central point, they'd be viral.

You see that I find a more valid reason 😉

I'm not intentionally being snarky. I genuinely and emphatically believe that, without either superluminal travel or idiotically powerful reactive engines (and the former is more likely in my opinion), we will never leave this star system. The journey times are such that only those leaving could possibly profit, and in some models, only the descendants of those leaving. There's little incentive to invest unless you're travelling, because there won't be a return on that investment in a human lifetime.

Brianetta is always a bit hostile towards the civ element of the game ( no malice intended in that just look back over 6 months of posting) reason ive dropped off and looked at other games is the graphics heavy content low element of pioneer.

Still briantetta and others are doing great work on the graphics side the eye candy just keeps improving as far as pushing the boundries of the settled universe any manner of political, religious, corparate, mining and pirate groups could expand even indepdant empires well beyond the established borders and well the player could influence those events in some way.

Comes down to programming expertise and the amount of contributors and allowing potential content programmers- people contributing on that side and maybe developing the colony, 4x, indirect impact, mission types etc to do their thing and the graphics guys just going with it rather than flaming it ever so slightly over time.

I think the cost of new colonies needs to be technology and materials delivery and perhaps colony passanger craft missions could be tied in some how.

Still theres some other games out there now combining elements starbound, aurora 4x and theres numerous others like star farer that do it in an abstract way. So it can be done it just needs the manpower and other elements to make it work and an always open mindset

Just to be clear, any code contributions of mine tend to be firmly in the scripting side of things, never graphics. I'm interested in enhancing gameplay - and there will be some big enhancements, after the UI overhaul.

the lua is making good progress and looking forward to the UI overhaul from the team. Keep an eye on infinity search for earth keith is about to make a new devblog there might give the pioneer project some ideas

Actually the entire development team are pretty much in agreement that Pioneer will never be about colonising the galaxy. As a player you are merely a tiny dot against the background of galaxy and the players within it. Brianetta's push back against you on the topic is simply a result of that consensus from the developers.

You have two options if you want a space game where you colonise things: write the code yourself and contribute it to Pioneer, or find another game. Going on about it in this forum just makes it look like you don't know how to listen, which is not a useful reputation to carry if you're hoping to be taken seriously.

Just chipping in some ideas of my own here. Possibly grabbed from Frontier itself...

I am 100% behind the facelessness of the game in that you are a mere spec of dust. I do feel that some faction alligiance is great, provided there are consequences. E.G. You have spent a considerable amount of time buddying up with Faction A who do not like faction B. Because you have buddied up with Faction A, Faction B want you dead. If you approach Faction B space you are asking for trouble, this could make assasination missions both difficult and challenging, but could also open up for faction only weapons and gear or perhaps protoype testing.

There's a hell of a lot to explore without making any noticable changes to the game environment via missions etcetera. Remember in Frontier when you needed a pass to be able to get to certain sectors, that could be mission gained or illegally purchased from the black market; and as this doesn't seem to be going any where near multiplayer, balancing issues wont be so strenuous. You could go so far as having class specific items. As an example there could be a mission that's assasination based, you need to infiltrate the opposing factions strong hold to kill your target, the faction hate you enough to kill on site. There could either be some form of cloacking device that lasts longer for smaller lesser shilded ships or would be pontless to use on a bigger ship as it would only last milliseconds. A way around that would be to purchase a ship identity fraud kit so you could fake your signature, but if you get spotted you're boned.

This is all assasination based stuff (mostly), but my brain goes that way (:

It is not difficult. Elite, Frontier and now Pioneer are a kind of adventure, commercial space simulators based primary on exploration, trade, combat, and not based on the X universe branch ( at least for now ) exploration, trade, combat , construction.

On this, Pioneer is more similar to Freelancer, or Independence war 2 and I agree this state of things.

Money to Explore vs money to make a factory Imperium or Urban Imperium, which is the state of gameplay were a X universe player leave the play considering he has achieved all the game can offer.

If some day Pioneer changes, Although I am not interested, It can be a good thing, who knows, but The concept is that for now The spirit of elite is interesting enough to keep the way.

Greetings

explore trade shoot are the main focal points.

Factional standings are something that are easily done and mostly done by the looks