July 31 Ship Design

I think you're on the right track here, Hunam. I think there's a place for better battery rechargers and high-capacity crew quarters. But no one will remember any of that. I feel like a broken record, but only because I don't think we ever get any confirmation, straight up:

We need game-altering and strategy-altering upgrades to the ship. Not just better-this and better-that and better-pewpewpews. Unique. Wholly different. Strategy-changing. Game-changing. Flip you on your head alterations to how you play the game.

I was thinking earlier, that Shadow of Mordor was great at this concept. Every power you get is some sort of game-changer. You don't just upgrade your sword to do 21 dmg when it was only 17 dmg before. Nothing like that. You get instant-kills or shadow-melds or death-from-above or the ability to make heads explode or chain-kills or vault-over-and-stun the enemies. Every single power was something that let you play differently.

Where that game fell short, and where I think Star Control COULD stumble is: the uniques you mentioned. I've been wanting to make a post about this for a long time. With thousands of worlds, I want there to be secret, unique weapons and modifiers that are NOT procedurally generated that NOT everyone will find. Only the adventurers, only the explorers, only the meticulous scavengers. Let me differentiate myself from the other players. Skyrim was awesome in this way, though they only really nailed it when they tied in with my other point - and made a TRULY UNIQUE AND GAME-CHANGING piece of armor or weapon. I remember there was one set of medium armor, where just by sneaking, it puffed black smoke all over your body and made you invisible. This is the type of game-altering, unique concept I'm hoping for. I only quit playing Skyrim on my third playthrough when I ran out of those items of legend to find.

It's also the number 1 thing I'm worried about in No Man's Sky! In a procedurally generated universe, what's going to make your ship any different than mine, and the creatures you find? You're going to find a bird-like alien with 3 legs, and I'm going to find a bird-like alien with 4 legs. Yippee. I guess we'll see in 10 days.

But can Stardock confirm that they understand the concept we're talking about here? Any word on whether this will make it into the game?

^ I feel exactly the same way.

I'd like procedural generation for planets, stars and all "organic" objects like trees, rocks etc.

But I feel like all ships and upgrades need to be designed and they need to be aplenty. Like so many of them that you literally have troubles deciding whether you wanna go with a Gatling Laser or Gravitonic Pulverizer (whatever it means XD) over a massive Cold Fusion Battery of Infinite Charge (which is slow'ish to recharge, but has a gi-hugic capacity) with only dozen of crew members or Tzo Crystal Charge Synthesizer that depends on physical fuel (but the charge is instant) with full 200 soldier army of fearless Xraki.

Surely, modders can add more items, but I'd like to explore the galaxy to outfit my Death Star before I go onto pulverizing all the baddies into oblivion upon game release.