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[evanvolker]

I dont know how to quote stuff so..

<QUOTE>
When you select the trading screen it gives you a list of what you can buy and what's in your inventory, you must have missed that somehow.

You can only upgrade/heal on planets that are TLevel 5 or higher, you'll notice that they have a [S ]hip Services option in the main menu. That's where you go to repair and upgrade your ship. It costs less on higher TLevel planets. You can find out the planets TLevel by selecting the [I ]nformation option in the planet menu.

You'll generally want to run [C]argo [M]issions in the beginning, they pay well for little effort and they're a good way to map the local galaxy so that you can get back to civilzation fast when your ship is hurt. You should also try raising your captain's engineering skill, so that you can do field repairs.

<ENDQUOTE>

I got the list of things to buy, and my inventory. I just couldn't find how much everything was worth, and how much I could carry. I kept trying to buy 100 or this, no cargo space, 50? no cargo space. And so on.

I'm going to give er another go today with some of the info you gave me.


EDIT: I was confusing price with how many of that item was available in trade.


EDIT: Alright, played for another hour or so running cargo missions. There needs to be an easier way to find planets to repair your ship on, and perhaps less random encounters. Sometimes I run into 4 encounters on a mission and have to spend every penny I made just to repair my ship. And thats assuming I was lucky enough to land on a planet that ship repairs are possible.

[Fikes]

I want to back up what Forsaken said here about letting the player do anything the NPC can do. I would love a game that allows you to colonize and govern a planet the same way NPCs do.

Setting some very difficult/expensive end game options for the player is a good thing. It is what takes a sandbox game from "automate and wait for money to pile up" to "Keep improving your setup because if you don't you'll never reach the end game".

You could also set up something that mimics a level system. For the first part you are just transfering cargo to get enough money to buy a moon mining base. Once you get that setup, you are pulling in 3 or 4 times the profit, which lets you save up for a refinery which again doubles or tripples your profit.

I like to see measurements of success beyond "You died after X days getting X points!", I would say that is an early feature I'd want.

Edit: Also, Evan, you can quote by either clicking the quote button on the post you want to quote or by using the square brackets [ quote ] and [ / quote ] to end it. Obviously without any spaces.

[Denzi]

On the suggestion of some sort of level system I think you may want to check out the Patrician and Port Royale games. They both have a pseudo level system where the total value of your assets work as experience in a way. Might not be a good fit for your game, but would be worth a look if you do go to implement a leveling system of any kind (you could even take it a step farther and put more than one experience bar. Like how Earth and Beyond(long dead MMO) did it, where you have combat experience, exploration experience, and trade experience. I'm not really partial with any of the options for a level system (let alone having one versus not having one), but I just figured I'd add onto that

[malkomk]

This looks interesting. I'm thinking of making something like this myself, just 'cause I want to play it and it hasn't been made yet. Definitely keeping a eye on this.

I love the idea of starting your own empire, and multiple characters in the same persistent world. You could RP to yourself, like, Character 1 starts a empire (pirates), takes over several star systems, and passes his empire on to a NPC/gets killed in action. There would be a Simulate option, where you could tell the game to just simulate for a couple of months, so that you could found a empire, take over a couple of stars, then 'accidently' get yourself killed, Simulate a bit and watch the result of this empire -- would it be taken over by a NPC, would it pull itself together, or would it disintegrate? Suppose, after your character was dead, a NPC managed to take the reins and you watched as your old empire began to expand. Then take a character, and re enter the story, maybe on the other side of the conflict as your old empire begins to expand. You could fight against it, maybe even try to take it over, et cetera.......

TL;DR: In depth sandbox simulation of a futuristic sci fi space civilization = good stuff.

[evanvolker]

It may have just been me, but the more crewmembers I got, the more encounters I'd run into. So there may be somewhat of a leveling system already

[Fikes]

On the suggestion of some sort of level system I think you may want to check out the Patrician and Port Royale games. They both have a pseudo level system where the total value of your assets work as experience in a way. Might not be a good fit for your game, but would be worth a look if you do go to implement a leveling system of any kind (you could even take it a step farther and put more than one experience bar. Like how Earth and Beyond(long dead MMO) did it, where you have combat experience, exploration experience, and trade experience. I'm not really partial with any of the options for a level system (let alone having one versus not having one), but I just figured I'd add onto that

I would say don't do anything as obvious as Patrician. Make it more of an exponential cost increase/profit amount. For example, imaging make bread in your home. Not expensive to do, but not much profit in it, but if you do it long enough, eventually you have the money for a farm. That is much more expensive, but has much higher profit. Save the money from your farm for long enough and you can buy a factory. Now you have a huge expense and a huge profit. The idea would be that you are constantly working towards that super hard to obtain, super high profit item, rather than just building more medium profit items.

[forsaken1111]

On the suggestion of some sort of level system I think you may want to check out the Patrician and Port Royale games. They both have a pseudo level system where the total value of your assets work as experience in a way. Might not be a good fit for your game, but would be worth a look if you do go to implement a leveling system of any kind (you could even take it a step farther and put more than one experience bar. Like how Earth and Beyond(long dead MMO) did it, where you have combat experience, exploration experience, and trade experience. I'm not really partial with any of the options for a level system (let alone having one versus not having one), but I just figured I'd add onto that

Actually I think the patrician system is fantastic and Schilcote should certainly look into it.

They way it works essentially is that as Denzi said, your total assets are what advances your 'level' which allows you to do things. For example, once you acquire 50,000 money and 3 ships, you unlock the ability to build low level production facilities to change raw resources into 2nd tier resources such as wood to paper or wheat to flour. Just an example as its been a while since I have played so I don't remember the full system, though if you need it I'm sure I can find it.

This gives both a good, steady progression and a visible goal for your next expansion. You can see in the top right that you need 100,000 more money in assets and 2 more ships to progress, or that you need to establish a new trading office in one other city, or that you need to build facilities to house and employ 30 more workers. It also allows you to ignore the goal for a while and go mess around without unexpected progression which you'd want to be present for.

[Schilcote]

It may have just been me, but the more crewmembers I got, the more encounters I'd run into. So there may be somewhat of a leveling system already

Nope, that's just your imagination. Random encounters always fire at the same rate.

[evanvolker]

It may have just been me, but the more crewmembers I got, the more encounters I'd run into. So there may be somewhat of a leveling system already

Nope, that's just your imagination. Random encounters always fire at the same rate.

Ah, I see. I started upgrading my engines and that helped a lot in running into less random encounters. I also noticed some planets say they can upgrade your hull for negative amounts. -5459 for example. The mercenary missions may need a tweak as they usually offer much less than transport missions and you've got to go seven times the distance, and encounter seven times the baddies. One thing that really makes things difficult is there's no quick way to check out your wealth. Someone offers to upgrade my hull for 20bucks a piece, but I cant tell how many I can afford.