StarControl Harvesting

I've got a lot of thoughts on this subject - it being a core component of a successful Star Control game - and one of the main failings of Star Control III. Please no outposts. I want to be a space cowboy, galloping down planetside, riding my trust flyer, zapping native creatures and slurping up resources like there's no tomorrow. It's at LEAST 1/3rd the fun!

^ Yep. If I wanna play a strategy game, I'll play Gal Civ. No bases or outposts management please, for the love of Dogar & Kazon.

I can promise you there is no outpost management in the game. :) 

I actually don't entirely agree with this topic. People tend to forget that Star Control 1 was partly a strategy game, and a pretty unique one. The problem with SC3's colonies is that they don't integrate well with the rest of the game and don't feel like they have any real consequence. I actually think it was a good idea, just executed poorly. Genre mixing has always been part of Star Control, so I don't think strategy elements should be ruled out as "not real Star Control." Especially it was a major component of the first SC game, which was of course made by Fred and Paul.

But I don't have a problem with following the SC2 model. Especially since a reboot that's reintroducing SC to the public probably shouldn't get too adventurous. Would like to see it expanded with more depth though - the mining minigame is fun, but can sometimes get repetitive, especially for new players who don't know the tricks to maximize efficiency.

WRT to an outpost, guys i think you slightly misunderstood, this is not an rts game and, please i don't want it to be one either, otherwise it won't be star control, i totally agree with that, i don't want to click and point, i want to steer my landers/rovers on the planet myself, what i'm saying is just
let there be a place where the landers can go to for repairs, so that you can explore even further on the planet, i want to feel the conditions on the planet, and the creatures/critters attacking it, the geological impacts and what it's doing to my rover/lander, and see it starting to smoke/spark/catch fire when it's armor has been badly damaged, knowing there is a point to go to for repairs, the rush to get there knowing that at any moment a quake or a lightning bolt can destroy it, but knowing there is a repair point just around the hill where you could drive to or get the caryall to take you if it's not been damaged itself makes for exciting resource gathering.

Just like a repair bay where the lander docks, and a refinery to store minerals, (to pay for the lander's repairs) and to launch the cargo to the mothersip.That's all, no full blown outpost controlled like an rts game. Having a caryall to fly through bad weather as a challenge to drop a harvester on the far side of a planet, flying the caryall on another planet, how awesome is that ! letting the caryall sit on the ground and wait for the harverster to finish, which you control, return to the caryall which you also control realtime, everything realtime controlling, no click and point, then flying the caryall back to the base where you land to offload the harvester, minerals, and finally all is sent up to the mothership via perhaps the refinery itself that converts into a cargo ship to dock with your mainship up in space.


I feel it is safe to say that anyone in life at some stage dreamed of flying another vehicle/plane on another planet, with this concept, you park the harvester which you control into the caryall, then you fly the caryall to far off dangerous locations, where you harvest, then go back into the caryall and fly the caryall to base,

The caryall could even convert into a ground harvester if you guys feel the two should not be separate, but i personally like the caryall and harvester as separate vehicles, but doesn't absolutely have to be 2 vehicles.

Well.  Technically,  in Star Control 1, there was sort of an 'outpost' management.  It was just build and defend it. 

I hope you guys can bring back the  Star Control 1-  Full game Tactical Mode.

SC1's strategy mode was simple enough that I bet it could be added in via a mod.

I loved mining in Star Control II, although it did get a bit repetitive. For more of my opinions on the topic my thread of Mining in Star Control IV has some stuff to say about my opinions on what mining and resource gathering in the new game should be like (basically imagine resource gathering but on a 3D globe with different terrain features and "biomes" of sorts, procedurally generated planets could also be a cool thing to have with a system like this).

What would also be cool is having certain upgrades for your ship, requiring certain combination of minerals.

Like, let say you want to add photon torpedoes weapon system upgrade to your ship as a crazy example.

And to do that, you needed Iron, Gold, Platinum & Mercury.

You would need a certain quantity of each mineral to make that happen. Not to mention the RU's cost for the upgrade.

And each weapon or ship upgrade could require different types of minerals as well.

just an off the wall idea.

That would be interesting, and add importance to even basic minerals in the late game, and would be a very nice thing indeed. Although this should only apply to a select number of things, as otherwise it could become very tedious trying to look for that one piece of radioactive material in order to produce some basic blasters. (maybe only make this apply to top-tier equipment and other things considered very powerful?)

Resource gathering was great, even with the constraints of the tiny primitive view screen, I loved it.

I'd like planets with very high risk & reward so that exploration is relevant in the end end game.

While I like this idea, I feel like it could get very frustrating if you're trying to find one rare mineral in a sea of thousands of planets. 

And you know what that would lead to? 

The developers including some sort of hand-holding tool where you could scan to find the type of minerals you need without actually visiting the star system. Totally wrong for Star Control. 

And you know what that would lead to? 

The lack of a need to explore each of the planets you come across. You'd just cherry pick the ones you wanted and it would remove that exploration aspect of the Unknown from the game..... 

Hmm... We'd have to find a way around it. Maybe you could have a scanner but it would just give a general direction of where to find said mineral, right? You'd still need to explore absolutely everywhere but you wouldn't be wandering aimlessly around the galaxy. 

Does that make sense? 

Active gathering of resources is an important part of the SC2 experience.  It was satisfying to finally find one of those molten planets filled with awesome metals, but also full of lava, lightning, and earthquakes.  Then having to decide if it was worth the risk, etc., etc.

It was also a very repetitive and time consuming process that had no business taking up that much playtime.  Seriously, it might have been the way I played, but it seemed like you couldn't do much of anything until you mined out a system or two and got some toys put on the precursor ship.  It was fun to a point, but when I went back in another playthrough, I wanted to get to the rest of the exploration and story part a bit sooner.

So, for me, the question is not whether it should be included, but just how it should be implemented.  A few ideas:

-Risk/Reward - This shouldn't necessarily be a sliding scale, but there should be a general correlation.  You want big deposits, it's going to be risky, even with a decked out lander.  Having the occasion "pot of gold" planet with easy access to tons of resources should happen every once in a while too, but will be rare.

-Mining competition - The same gathering mechanic doesn't have to exist for every single planet.  Maybe there is a gathering operation already in progress and you can trade for materials or maybe...away party with phasers and take it by force?  Races with other aliens as you both try to grab limited resources might be fun, etc.

-Less hauling time - Lugging back a full ship is just not that fun.  The goal of continuous exploration should be more important than trips to and from one central sale location.  Perhaps have lots of ore processing outposts through the galaxy that will buy your stuff.  They could have different prices for different metals just to spice things up.  Maybe have a hauler upgrade for the main ship.  When the cargo is full, it heads off to sell the ore for you leaving you with little, if any, remaining cargo space, but doesn't require you travelling back all the way to...wherever.

-More "Stuff" to do - Collecting biomass and collecting minerals was pretty much the end of the list in SC2.  How about more things when you interact with planets.  No reason not to make planet encounters more like Star Trek.  More types of planetary interaction could add a new dimension to the exploration aspect.

I think this is a great idea with great potential but should be used in moderation. For example, you shouldn't have to mine some Tzo Crystals in order to build a cargo pod, otherwise it would make game progression EXTREMELY slow, I think this should only be used on top-tier equipment, like Fusion/Hellborne cannons, high-efficiency fuel tanks and other modules that are not necessary to have, but are almost certainly something you would be looking for. This would give more importance to minerals like Radioactives, which in Star Control II kind of lost their importance after you start hauling load after load of Tzo crystals. Also, this is a little off topic but what do you guys think about mineral regeneration? I think that if some (common) minerals regenerate at a very slow rate (like a complete planet regeneration would take six years in game time) it would still encourage exploration or returning to previously explored star systems even if you stripped them clean before. Just an idea.

@ cuorebrave

I think you are falling down a slippery-slope (although a valid concern), and I think that the above feature could work very well if implemented with a help system similar to SC IIs system, where you could tell the kind of minerals on a planet simply by its color.

But @The_Think_Tank - why even land on a planet if it doesn't contain what you're looking for, then? Why land, if you can see from afar that they don't contain the resource you're searching for? That then nixes the need to actually EXPLORE. Because I'll tell you one thing - if we somehow develop the needed tech to actually make it to other systems, you had better bet that we'll be landing on every planet imaginable/feasible! Same should go as we're charting the stars in Star Control.

I'd get to a new system, especially when I needed credits, and even though the gray planets usually didn't contain too many resources, some of them would have yellows, some oranges, some would have bio and some would even have anomalies! You never KNEW what a planet would hold until you landed on it. You never KNEW it was a good one or a bad one until you did the scan. You never KNEW if you'd be rich or poor or dead or intrigued... until you landed. So that made you be more thorough, made you be more curious and made you be more excited to planet-hop in each system you came to!

Letting people scan from afar or even be turned-off to a planet just by its color... I don't know. I'm not on board, really. The mystery and intrigue of exploring the stars, up close and personal, was so fun for me. I felt like an *actual* explorer. I don't want to see that taken away.

THANK YOU! It's a space EXPLORATION game, not settlement. THANK YOU!

I like many of the ideas here.

1. Find artifacts occationally, in addition to minerals and biomass. They could translate into RP, same as minerals, but it would be fun to think of finding a Taalo Rusty Capacitor worth say, 25 RP, and getting a little excited! 

2. More places to offload/cash in the resources would be nice, but not a must.

3. Risk Vs. Reward! I wouldn't mind if they amped that up even more than in SC2 by a little bit.

4. For whatever reason, I never found resource gathering tedious or time consuming. I loved every bit of it, and could spend days going from system to system looking for more Gooooold, Radioactives, and OOH SHINY - Ruby Worlds!

I for one liked how Starscape handled harvesting.  It is a game that was heavily influenced by Star Control II and where you have your mother ship which your must protect and you pilot a ship built by your mother ship (which can be of 3 different sizes) and can have different modules on it.

You acquire different tech from friendly aliens to improve your ship as you progress in the game. 

You get resources by breaking apart meteorites and enemy ships.   Something like this would be a nice feature for players who prefer an arcade style of play versus strategy.   People who prefer a strategy type of game could harvest resources differently such as by founding colonies or sending a miner like in SC2.


I think it would be a nice feature to be able learn new technology from abandoned space hulks or ships not completely destroyed in the fight.  For example if you can get the crew before they can set off self destruct or if on rare occasions the self destruct fails to destroy the whole enemy ship.  One species obsolete space garbage dump can be another one's treasure trove.  As sometimes a species may need a key technological element to make a huge bound in technology.  Something the species that provided this key element may have missed.

When civilizations have vanished from a planet such as the Androsynth, the Taalo or the Burvixe it should be possible to leave a science team for a while to salvage what technology or space exploration knowledge (star maps) they can from the vanished civilization. 

Goals:

1) Encourage exploration.

2) Prevent resource gathering from becoming tedious.

Ideas:

You can encourage exploration by introducing both positive and negative motivations.

- The need for certain resources for maintenance, repair and upgrades of the mothership.

- The possibility of finding artifacts, rare materials, xenophobic or primitive alien races, trade, quest related objectives.

- Different types of terrain to keep exploration varied, influencing movement and tactics. Some examples:

a) Underwater planet: Darkness. Large underwater creatures. Strong currents.
b\) Ice planet: Slippery. Snowstorms.
c) Asteroid or comet (ice): Asteroid impacts. Pieces breaking off.
d) Desert planet: Drilling too much or combat may attract worms. Sandstorms.
e) Abandoned hi-tech city or Battle Moon: Traps, dormant security measures. Self destruct mechanism.
f) Volcanic planet: Magma. Earthquakes.

- Mining the surface could have multiple phases.

Phase 1: Scanning planet for optimal landing site
Phase 2: Landing phase. Get through the atmosphere safely
Phase 3: Avoiding environmental dangers and ground combat.
Phase 4: Placement and detachment of the driller / tech retrieval unit.
Phase 5: Defend the driller /tech unit with your lander while it mines/hacks technology using various methods: ManualTurret placement. Shield placement. Orbital laser etc.

- Sending out scout drones that only report the chance of finding a certain resource, danger level, possible tech, strange signals.

- New technologies that improve the lander or deep scan equipment that enables you to revisit high %reward planets for another chance of finding the resource you were looking for.

- Provide alternatives for when the game progresses and changes focus late game or when somebody just wants to focus on the space battles or story. Such as the ability to trade for resources and tech with inhabited worlds, leaving just quest and trade related planet exploration.

>> END OF BRAIN-STORM <<

I would rather the harvesting of resources be upgraded to a new game play idea. The whole lander thing got tedious in later parts of the game.

I would prefer a system where we send down a lander with X amount of crew to extract the mineral resources we needed. It is real time gathering, every X amount of seconds the crew will extract Y amount of mineral resources. Certain rarer resources may require more time or skill or both. As we upgrade our crew skills for extracting they get more resources per extraction or reduce the amount of time required.

While this is happening there is a chance that each crew member may die due to the planet's hostility from dangerous predators, environmental disasters or some planetary anomaly. We as the star ship captain must decide when to pull our people out with what ever resources they have collected so far. If we push it, we may lose everyone PLUS the lander and what ever resources they had collected.

We can also upgrade our ship to carry more landers, or we can upgrade our landers to carry more crew members and finally the landers can carry X amount of resources per trip. If it is ever filled too capacity it auto returns with the Crew anyway.

Each planet from the start of the game has X amount of each type of mineral resources (Common, Corrosive, Base Metal, etc.) which do not replenish. So players cannot simply keep returning to the same ZERO hostility planets and fill their landers to capacity. They can in the very beginning of the game but those "safe" worlds have already had most of their resources mined out many years ago so you will quickly deplete them if you do.

If anyones every played the original Starflight, (where Star Control II got some of its ideas)  I'd be very happy if it ended up similar to that.

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2010/09/starflight-mining-and-trade.html

(Not my link)

1.  Scan the planet from orbit, to get a "guess" of what may be found.

2.  Land

3. use a vehicle to scan for exact mineral locations.  The scan interface and the mining/travel interface is different.  So you may need to scan a few times and drive to find the location. (maybe upgrade the scanner to show more and deeper deposits, or make the scans persistent on the driving/navigation interface.

4. "mine them" and carry them back to the mothership.  

Minerals can either be found on the surface, or under the ground.  Minerals under the ground will take more "hits of the mouse to mine, and several clicks may be required to gather them all.  

Mining could be assisted by lander attachments.  Extra cargo, faster mining, better lander weapons for defense, lander armor and speed enhancements.  Scanner upgrades (finds deeper minerals, longer range, etc.)

One thing i really liked about SF was the minerals would re-occur naturally (well in the code).  Its pretty hard to mine the game world out, but you can "thin" the selection.  Repeated trips to the same planet will decrease the amount of minerals spawned/available.  And the percentage of valuable minerals will decrease at a exponential rate.  (you might still have Iron and liquid oxygen, but uranium will disappear quickly).  I never liked the fact that SC2, you could mine out a system and never need to go back again.  Granted, you were in a bit of a time crunch in SC2, poor Plunk, so its not really possible anyway.