But you'd never have to leave a space of about 10 lightyears away from the solar system?!?!? This is a TERRIBLE idea!!!!

Besides, Gold and Diamonds are not just CREATED Constantly by earth:

Gold, like other elements such as iron, forms when stars explode (nova or supernova). We find it here because Earth and the Solar System coalesced from the debris of older stars. It's not exactly an ongoing process. Diamonds formed 3 billion years ago - and that's it! Done! The earth doesn't just constantly squeeze out more diamonds. This makes NO SENSE??!?!

I can't wait to dig into TTT's response when I get home (these forums are murder on mobile), but I did want to challenge this.

ME1 had planetary variation (albeit only mostly surface and sky), but that didn't save the exploration portion of that game. Sure, SCO has some other stuff going for it (smaller, flatter planets), but palette swapping isn't going to solve anything. If it did, changing the color of my text would be akin to you speaking to a whole different Nobody.

If you want to wait 2 years in game time, then sure, have all the "infinite" resources that you want, but keep in mind that what I am supporting here is regeneration over long periods of time, to allow revisiting planets in the end game, and helping avoid turning the late game from turning into an exhausting grind to find the last few unexplored planets. Personally, I think that having the mechanism to allow the player to in theory be able to mine the planet infinitely (again, over a long, long period of time) is an appealing idea, giving an actual incentive to re-visit planets many years into the game, however.

This can realistically be supported by the fact that a single planetary explorer mission is incredibly unlikely, no, implausible, to consider that with only a single mission that one vessel is capable of draining all resources on said planet. The appearance of new resources can be justified by two different mechanisms for two different kinds of resources. For the reusable resources such as wood, stone, hydrogen, and other basic resources it can be stated that these resources were replenished over time of remaining isolated from human contact. For the non-reusable resources like Uranium, the argument could be made that over the period of your absence that weather conditions and constant commotion of land features revealed new veins of materials, previously unreachable by "modern" technology.

And again, these resources would respawn far less commonly, think maybe once per average game, and because of this it would be practically impossible to camp within a small vicinity and let these resources respawn, because you would have to wait a very, very long time to do so, putting more incentive on exploring and only supporting revisiting in the late game when most planets will have been exhausted.

When the Tywom crashed on Titan, they were cushioned by a pile of soft diamonds that were spontaneously extruded from the moon's surface like magic significantly advanced technology.

Makes perfect sense to me.

But seriously... I am against the game tracking which resource nodes are harvested unless it is done in a way that doesn't bloat save games. I don't want to wait a minute for my game to load or save just because I went OCD on harvesting.

I did some rereading of the update...

The story, the characters, the exploration, Super Melee are all more important than planet exploration. But Planet exploration is the most expensive feature and the feature that we hope people will agree helps demonstrate that we didn’t just take Star Control 2 and reskin it either.

Why? UQM HD did a pretty good job of that already.

What do you think I'll be playing in a year after release when the pool of multiplayer candidates dries up?

(Also reskinning is Brad's word. I took what he meant as making / not making a SC2 clone, which has been said before.)

I don't think the multiplayer will be as unpopular as you're making it out to be. Kind of a sour grapes vibe.

Its strange, eons ago there were games that were punishing and you could lose hours of gameplay due to a wrong choice. (I am looking at you Wing Commander III) and yet it was the accepted norm.  Today, the games that do punish the player are the "avant garde" of gaming today.

While I would like to see SC:O appeal to a wide audience which encorages Stardock to make DLC's, I do hope that when you choose the hardest levels, safety nets like distress beacons are removed

Or you can buy lander upgrades that "allow you" to mine more of what's there and "expose" previously unseen deposits.

Games that punish players get bad reviews, bad press, bad customer response and are relegated to the trash bins of history. Games that are challenging but fair and encourage the players themselves to get better are the ones who succeed "despite popular wisdom".

Hmm, I should have been a bit more descriptive with what I meant by "punish". But you have put it a better way - Yes, the game needs to be challenging and encourages the player to get better.  However I also believe the player has to know there is a chance they can fail and loose.  Because what is the satisfaction of a reward if you had no risk of loosing ? 

Again, Stardock can cater for a wide audience (from casual player to extreme gamer) by adding / removing features based on the difficulty level.

I think the game that did failure the best, as of this moment, is Shadow of Mordor. You could be killed and it's a set back and an annoyance. But it wasn't a game ending affair and you, basically, had to do the mission again except some things changed and the story changed.

I don't know how to apply that sort of thinking here. But it was cool.

In this case it's fair to ask Stardock: "What are the planetary mini-games planned, besides picking up star/coins/resources and shooting critters?" If that's all that's planned to do on the planets and there's no let's say time racing mini-games or puzzles to solve or mini-bosses to fight then I'd have to agree with IBN - why the fook bother?

Or shall we ask "Is Stardock planning to expand on planetary mini-games beyond SC2?" to get any kinda answer?..

I'm just keying off what Brad and/or Andrew said. They only thought 5% of the players would be interested in multiplayer. And now that the MOBA idea is dead, what else is there to keep up interest long term in a game that has the largest portion of its budget going toward the single player experience. (And going toward the wrong areas, too.)

They added the act of landing as a mini game! It will never get boring! Not even after doing it 700+ times. /s

I wouldn't push them to add more puzzle elements yet. The game might implode under the weight of all the resources. There will be mini bosses, though. Those are so easy to add unless they scrap the creeps entirely.

I feel like you're assuming initial release or bust is their attitude for anything beyond the normal 1v1 experience, and I don't think that's fair. There's impetus from the community AND the devs for additional modes further down the line. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an entire expansion dedicated exclusively to SuperMelee content.

You know what this thread is? Assuming a LOT of things, when we've never had our hands on anything. 

To Stardock's credit, they make good games. They do. I've never played a bad one. I didn't love GCIII, but mostly because I love Stellaris' intricate systems and thousands of crazy, wiggly aliens - it captivates me for hundreds of hours, and GC3 did not. But, they don't make any bad games. Everyone who is taking part in kicking Stardock over the measly practically-nothingness we've seen, should just save their breath. Anyone defending them, myself included, is also uselessly arguing over not-knowing-anything and I should save my breath. There's nothing to defend or hate-on. 

This is because, to Stardock's detriment, we still haven't gotten much response on here. I don't know if that's purposeful, or just lack of interest or time... but this is not to harass them, this is simply to say, we are left to ASSUME too much. We get this nugget of info where Brad says there are 6 different planet types and we all flip out. But MAYBE there's 20 varieties and color schemes for each of those 6 planet types??! Right? Maybe they've already planned on that, and worked on it, and we're giving them shit for no reason. We just don't know much about it, and unfortunately, don't get the communication we'd hoped for that would squash any dissent or postulating. 

Because that's what this is - postulating. We're arguing endlessly over only the LACK of knowing what's in the game. And that's pointless. Could it be rectified by that new guy Pshaw coming on here and answering all our questions with a "Yes", "No", "Noted" or "Can't comment"? Sure. But that's not in the cards yet, so we just assume whatever we think, and, like I said - that's a pointless activity.

This nonsense talk about removing planetary landing altogether because, even though next-to-nothing is actually known about it, we all assume the worst.

Stardock doesn't make bad games. Brad's heart and soul is going to pour into this, and we should all at the VERY least withhold judgement until we actually *ACTUALLY* have anything to praise or complain about!!!

^ Nobody is bashing nobody. We're discussing the information we're provided and offer our suggestions. Stop whiteknighting and taking offense everywhere.

No, I am not assuming that. It is the opposite. SD will deliver expansion content, but they still have to attract enough people to make that content worthwhile. They saddled a multiplayer mode on a single player game. It isn't going to attract as many hardcore multiplayers because of that.

Now if SuperMelee became free-to-play or was available as a subset game for less.... it would be a different story.

Oh really?

(That game cost some people their jobs, too. When they bomb, they bomb spectacularly. )

So you are going to stop posting? Of course you are not.

How else is he supposed to earn fake internet points?

Keep it civil please. Lets not go in the direction of going after other users.

After a lifetime of chasing the goal, I'd say you should just do what everyone else does and pretend that the galaxy is a much smaller place than it actually is.  I can say from experience that trying to work things out in a realistic way takes... well, a LOT longer than a computer game company has to make a game, haha.  Just go with the traditional "fudge" and don't worry about how many light years away something is and how long it would actually take to get there.  Take it from someone who has actually done it, you don't want to go there, haha!

Like scientists are always trying to explain, people vastly underestimate the actual size of the galaxy.  Even if you think you don't... you almost certainly do.  That's why you see them emphasizing that point so often.  If you had a ship that could travel at 1,000 times the speed of light... it would still take over 100 years to go from one end of the galaxy to the other.  Assuming you went non-stop, at top speed the whole time.  If you plan to stop and actually look at things along the way, it will take a lot longer.  Trying to work this out "realistically" will almost certainly shatter any story you currently have into dust real fast.

The galaxy is too big for games.  To make it "realistic", and make any sense at all... is an endless nightmare, haha!

Sorry, Hunam. This statement of yours is not true and you know it. I'm not even going to qualify that remark, because everyone already knows the way you are. You're on here daily, saying the same thing over and over again, and we read it over and over again - "The forum has a terrible format and lip-syncing is unnecessary!!!!" WE GET IT.

At least IBN had the dignity to not pretend he doesn't bash the crap out of Stardock on the regular.

And I'm not whiteknighting anyone. I actually do support Stardock and am happy they're the ones handling this property and am happy to have given them my $$. Very few other companies do space games as well as them. That's not to say they're not blameless - In case you didn't read, I talked about Stardock NOT RESPONDING to our questions, and what a problem that is causing, making us all assume worst-case scenarios about everything.

Furthermore, my response this month had almost nothing kind to say. I liked the ship customization screen, I didn't like the # of planet types or the colors of the ships. I'm only saying, stop being a presumptive hater, who complains about all the things we have LITERALLY no clue about. It's just sad. And boring. So, stop.

Or don't, whatever. Because, it wasn't even directed at you in the first place, Hunam. You've had almost zero input on this month's release and have mostly stayed quiet even though you reserved post #3 and never did anything with it. It wasn't even about you.

This was for IBN, thank you, who has taken it upon himself to recommend we THROW OUT PLANETARY EXPLORATION ENTIRELY because you and he are all on your little "boondoggle" kick. The thought is preposterous, and needs to be spoken out against if there's even a .01% chance the developers will listen to him (though they already made it clear how they feel about his squeaky wheel).

The point I was making stands - we know LITERALLY nothing about planetary exploration. Not the scope or implementation, not the randomization or color palettes - NOTHING. So IBN's suggestion to throw it all out has no merit. We don't know yet. How that was interpreted as "whiteknighting" is beyond me, but if there's one thing I've grown to understand about you negative nancy's - it's that nothing will change your mind about any of it. Haters gon' hate. So again, I say, pointless.

No, IBN, I'm going to stop assuming they're doing a great job or a terrible job, until I actually get the info I need to make that determination in an educated, non-reactionary or presumptive way. I'm still going to post my thoughts, however, I won't offer an opinion on whether I think they're doing a good job or a bad job. Because honestly, we just don't know and have never played for even one second.

See you jerks next time.

I am always willing to give unpopular opinions. If we all were Stardock Sycophants, there would be no debate or discovery.

I offered the alternative of scaling back to the original game's style that was less resource intensive yet still kept the general mechanics. My main concerns are that I don't want the game to be bogged down with loading screens, and that I want enough diversity to not feel like I am landing on cloneworlds. (Remember that the game is targeting XBones with its shared 8GB DDR3 and other bottlenecks.) I weigh fast loading times over world diversity, which is why I gave my two alternatives. I am interested in hearing your solutions, as long as they aren't panicked / kneejerk.

Furthermore, like Brad, I weigh the story, the characters, the exploration, and Super Melee above planet exploration. Unlike Brad, I think it sucks to have some of these elements deemphasized just to bolster the idea of being different. We've had 20 years of being different. Can't we have one game that is the same?

If a ship breaches its hull on an iceberg, I don't have to be on the ship to know that it has a good chance of sinking. 

And if I were the captain of the ship and some bystanders were shouting at me to get out of the way, I'd swallow my arrogance and listen to what they have to say.

I'm actually kind of with IBN regarding Planetary Exploration.  I really dislike the direction it's going with the Super Mario Galaxy feeling.  The things that are being done have a feeling of change for the sake of change (and Brad's words back that up a little tbh).  I'll be skipping as much PE as possible based on what we have seen so far. 

Please note: I reserve the right to be wrong and be blown away by how much fun PE turns out to be.  And then pretend I never made this post...