Feedback on gameplay improvements

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
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relanat
Militia Captain
Militia Captain
Posts: 941
Joined: Tue Nov 05, 2013 9:56 am

In the Annual Report 2015, George mentioned gameplay improvements for future releases.

I quote "There are many ways, small and large, to improve gameplay (without necessarily making it too easy). For example, whenever the player is tempted to write something down ("what system was that Commonwealth metropolis at?") we should think of it as a failure of the UI. We should consider improvements to the Galactic Map to remind the player of what they've encountered. Similarly, we could improve the system map to remind the player of what they've explored and what they haven't."

So I thought I'd throw my thoughts on the matter into the ring.

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I love the ShipLog (or Captain's Log) mod. It's struggling with compatibility in Version 1.6 (I haven't tried it in 1.7 yet) but in it's heyday it was excellent.
The features I used most in it were the system list with the list of stations that occured in each system and whether they were friendly, angry, enemy or dead. If you wanted a Tinker or any other station, you could search for it and know which systems contained one. You had to visit the system and discover the stations (or use a system or military map ROM) before Shiplog would list them but after that it would remember them. You could also tell what type of system it was which was very handy if you were mining in a game.

You could get a list of the items that were in each station (as long as you had docked with it once) whether these were for sale or just the inventory of a non-trading station (this inventory could be considered a cheat). Very useful when you were trying to remember where the particular weapon was that you could now afford. Or you could search for which stations in which systems still had ion resistance coating for sale for example. And you could also tell if you had left any loot behind in dead stations when you ran out of cargo space. Best of all you could use 'Locate" and when you entered a system the stations were already highlighted for you with targeting indicators.

You could also keep track of the abandoned cargo crates where you had jettisoned items from your ship. This was very handy because they are easy to lose track of.

I also liked the ability to leave a map marker. Leaving a marker saying' Radiated Wreck' or 'Ore' (or if playing PSD where the wreck of a ship I wanted to rebuild was) made it easier to keep track of where things were if I wanted to go back to them at some stage.

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Things I want to keep track of when playing a game.

Have I used a system map ROM or military map ROM in a system, or has an explorer auton fully explored the system?

Have I bought everything I want from a station? I can then forget about that station unless I want to sell items to it.

Have I sold out a station. ie; sold so many items to that station that it has run out of credits/rin.

Which station has that particular item that I want later? This is usually because I can't afford the item when I first visit the station and will have to backtrack later.

Have I used the order from a Corporate Trading Post?

Have I done the mission at an Agricultural Station?

What prices for which items will the Manufacturing Stations pay?

What items have I sold to a station? So I can maximise the prices and buying limits.

Is a CSC a medical CSC or a fleet ops CSC?

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What else would players like?
Stupid code. Do what I want, not what I typed in!
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