I actually think it's a perfect analogy - why don't we, instead of a button or conversation to drop off minerals, just make them auto-offload when you get to base? No unnecessary clicks, so that would save you one, right?

If there's no other purpose rather than selling them for $ then why not?.. If there is, like trading minerals for items, then you have to have a button.

Here's a compromise for planet scanning, when you orbit a planet it gives you an indication of minerals, levels of life, energy presence, weather hazard etc., all without scanning, that way you can tell if it is worth it to visit the planet even before scanning. To get the dots on the planet and get an idea of where you should land you have to scan, but instead of three scans there is only one.

I've been thinking on my suggestion for the old Trandals' model and I've come up with some more ideas about a possible alien species based on it. The name for them is Tilulaians. As stated they are rather narcissistic and believe themselves to be the most beautiful beings in the galaxy. They do not hate other lifeforms for being ugly, they pity them for they had no choice in what species they are born into, also because hate is an ugly sentiment and a true Tilulaian must be beautiful on the inside as well as the outside.

So they help those poor unfortunate souls who did not have the good fortune of being born beautiful by offering them a wide selection of cosmetics, plastic surgery and retro-virus designed to modify their genetic code so their appearance is altered to be closer to perfection. In the hopes of one day all beings would be as pleasant to look at as they are.

I wanted them to be in a way foils to the VUX. While the VUX think humans, and by extension possibly Syreens and Alilou, are hideous, they mask this opinion and want to exterminate them. The Tilulaians would not hide their thoughts on less beautiful beings and would try to help them achieve true beauty.

Well, Hunam, correct me if I'm wrong - but lots of space games, including one I played earlier tonight (SPAZ 2) offer a "feature" where you don't have to shoot your weapons - they automatically fire when an enemy is in range. Are you in favor of saving that extra click as well?

But they already do autofire in SCO. Like Cruiser point defense or Tywom's defense drones... Do you wanna stop your extrapolation already?...

Point defense is automated, because there would be too much going on on-screen for the player to ALSO shoot at every missile, troop or projectile coming your way. On the scanning screen there's literally nothing to do besides click scan and land.

The point I'm making, that you're missing is - taking the "manual" part out of playing a game just means there's less things for the player to be involved in, in the game. It's like VR these days, if you played any VR games - In a game like DOOM or Destiny, the doors all automatically slide open when you approach. VR, though? You have to reach forward, grab the door knob with your whole hand, twist, and swing your hand out in an arc to actually, physically open the door.

This is a GOOD THING. Granted, it's opening a door, the simplest, most mundane of tasks... but it still *feels* good. It's wonderful to do. 

Another example in VR is the reloading of your gun. Many games don't even make you manually reload - you finish your clip, pull the trigger, it auto-reloads, and you're back firing again without leaving the same button on the mouse. Most games make you hit "R". 

But VR? You let go of the hand-grip, your clip pops out, the front of the gun snaps down, you physically grab another clip from your belt and pop that sucker in there, then flick your wrist up, to snap the muzzle back into place. And it feels SOOO good. Despite being utterly meaningless.

What about potions? In VR, you have to reach down and grab your hip flask, drag the potion up to your mouth and pour it down your throat if you want to heal - instead of pressing a button, or some games that automatically use your potion if you get too low.

It's a game. You're meant to DO things. And the less things you have to DO in the game, the less of a game it becomes, by definition. I liked clicking the scan. I liked refueling (another candidate for automation?). I liked offloading minerals to the captain and having him read them back to me in conversation, because I was a teensy bit proud if I had a big haul - and the cap'n would tell me so. I liked manually refilling the crew (automation?) because it made me ponder for a millisecond, the "lives" that were "lost". It's retarded, and seems so minuscule, but it worked.

I'll end with this - One of the reasons SC3 failed from a gameplay standpoint, was that it did away with manual resource-collection from planets entirely. Instead of manually collecting resources on a planet's surface, the devs said, "That's boring. It sounds boring, doesn't it? Let's automate it." So you dropped a colony that would gather the resources of the planet, in your absence. Then pop by and pick em up when you needed them. It automated travel, so instead of flying to your star system, you just clicked and went there. It automated in-system exploration, so you didn't have to fly to each planet. And the rest is history.

Is doing away with the scan button on the same level as that? Of course not. But it's a tiny fraction the same theory for making a game slightly (very slightly) less of a "game" by taking away even the most infinitesimal amount of player input.

Yeah, except planet scanning in SCO has nothing to do with VR.

It's a chore to click a button to initialize it. It'll be even bigger chore when one decides to explore every planet they come across. It'll be no fun having to press it every.single.time.

But it might be just me.

I don't even have a password on my home PC, 'cause even logging into Windows everyday at work is a chore for me.

What about your phone? Could I successfully steal it with no password?!?

I think the final takeaway is this:

We are both special, opposite cases. I doubt most people would even think of the button one way or another. 

But that doesn't mean we can't be brothers.

It is definitely possible to automate a game too the point that the player doesn't have enough involvement, or take too much decision making out of it.  As SVC would say, "You always have to leave the player the option of making a mistake".

For Star Control, I like Rhonin's suggestion.  It's as if the crew knows to run a basic scan of the planet to get the basic information, and then you as the captain can order a more comprehensive scan.  The three scans happen on their own when you get there, and then you only decide if you want the specific details if it looks like somewhere you might want to land.

You're right Rhonin and Kavik - because, guess what? If I arrive to a Urea World? I don't even want to bother with a scan... Forcing me to scan is the WRONG thing to do.

Like the idea of the static map with lots of little secrets tucked away. At some point someone will try to collate them into a list that gets constantly added to and years later you'll google for it to make sure you've ticked off all those weird little things when you do a nostalgic playthrough. 

^ I already do/did it in Fallout4.

Hey guys. I haven't been paying attention over christmas and just went back to look at Nov and Dec vault updates. I see something about loot crates at the bottom of the new menu screen, but haven't seen anyone asking about or discussing that. Are we gonna have loot boxes in SC:O?

Edit: I do realize from reading the December update that it's a joke... 

I'm 80% happy with Brad's direction; my one disappointment is that fleet battles are limited to 1-on-1 battles. Though I understand that the primary difficulty is a suitable AI, personally I'd have liked to see "we'll release with 1-on-1 as primary play mode, but are expanding on that post-release"

AI isn’t the issue. It’s how to handle the camera. 

Long ago before Chris Nelson worked for Toys For Bob (thus before he started porting Star Control II back to the PC) he created a game called Star Control Online which included a free for all mode in Melee: https://sourceforge.net/projects/lumingl/files/Star%20Control%20Online/Alpha%202.0%20%28Windows%29/

Most of the ships are accurate enough to judge whether or not you'd actually enjoy this sort of thing. It's pretty hectic and fast paced. Definitely not my cup of tea. I lost my entire fleet within minutes.

@Frogboy:

What is wrong with the way the camera is handled in Subspace? ("Normal" with radar)

@Serosis:

I enjoyed both Subspace and love games like Dota. That kind of environment and gameplay is fine for me

But did you test the environment I showed you that simulates a free-for-all Star Control Melee?

Subspace and DOTA are two very different beasts than Star Control's Melee.

Tried it out now; it feels pretty fun to me. There are several balance issues (at least the Chmmr ship seems to instantly destroy anything with one touch of its laser; and the Ur-Quan fighter shipplets fly, but don't appear to actually deal damage).

It helps to go to settings and set the frenzy (speed) lower.

I disagree though: Subspace, Dota, and multi-ship Star Control Melee all are conceptually the same with only relatively minor adjustments to shift from one to the other. Each has the same foundation of controlling a single unit with varying abilities, played in a team to defeat an opposing team. (And "single unit" can be misleading, since there are multi-unit heroes/ships, but as a high-level description it suffices.)

That aside, I'm not asking SC:O to be "SC2 Super Melee with multiple ships". I'm asking for "SCO Battles with multiple ships". In other words, modern sensibilities on how such a game would look and feel. For example, a 1-on-1 battle (old and new) system needs to be fairly fast paced otherwise it feels boring - but in a 5-on-5 the system needs to be a bit slower otherwise the experience is overwhelming.

There are serious issues with having multiple ships ships on the screen at the same time with the way the SC camera works.  In SFB we had the concept of the "floating map".  This most often mean that you could move everything the same number of hexes in the same direction to represent infinite space with one map.  This led to the idea of putting counter in the center of the map, and not being allowed to float that counter off of the map, which created a map 4x bigger than the standard map.

This worked fine for 1v1 fights, but three units moving in different directions quickly breaks it.  This is the same issue the SC camera has with more than 1v1.

It is only an issue if you're married to the notion that all ships need to be visible on the screen at the same time.

Again I refer to Subspace: a huge(!!) number of ships.

Of course that requires adjustments of abilities and other elements - what is right for a 1v1 zoomed'in SC2'esque firefight is not necessarily right for a 100v100 sprawled over vast space; and that is okay.

Subspace centered the map on each players ship, so this issue doesn't exist in Subspace.  We had discovered this issue decades ago in SFB with the "float marker" idea that only ever truly worked for 1v1 fights.  The SC camera will have trouble with just 3 ships, let alone 8 in a 4v4 fight.  You can see this with Jeff.  If you try to focus the view, and size the "visual range" on three objects you wind up having the "Jeff problem" of SCO.  With 8 or 12 players, trying to keep all of them on the screen, you would pretty much always be zoomed all the way out to see the whole map, with your own ship too small to really play the game.

You could ignore all ships outside of a certain range, but there is still a big screen centering problem that remains.  Your ship will often be near a map edge somewhere.  The more ships there are, the less the camera will be focused on your own ship... which is where the player wants the camera too be.

I am not saying it is a bad thing, this camera is a big part of what makes SC feel so unique to most other similar games.  Because most other similar games focus the camera on the player.  But it comes with this severe limitation of only supporting 1v1 fights in a good way.

Ya, and I don't think that should be held to the extremes for the sake of tradition. 1v1 battles are fun to a certain extent - but I feel that time has passed them by. Or rather, they've evolved differently. Modern 1v1 based action games are both good for a short fix as well as demand rather high system mastery - things like beat-em-up games. The action is pervasive, intense, and allows for many paths to victory.

In contrast, SC2 style combat is both relatively simple in modern terms (in a system mastery sense) and requires enjoyment of a relatively abstract concept (that being positioning and evading confrontation); there are far fewer winning strategies for any given match-up.

The way I interpret modern gameplay, the relatively simple action mechanics are now present in MOBA-style games (like Dota). Individual entities are relatively simple - but very deep complexity arises out of the interaction of teamplay. (This is my reasoning for advocating multi-ship combat in SCO).

It's not tradition, it's the laws of physics.  It just doesn't work.  I was probably the first person in these forums to warn that 1v1 dueling gets old fast and won't retain an online audience.  It is something people will mess with as they play the full adventure game, after that it will be forgotten by most.  Few people will get into 1v1 dueling in a top down space combat game and keep playing it just for itself.

The three most popular multiplayer "zones" (or scenarios) in this genre are base defense, capture the flag, and dueling.  But dueling more supports the "main event" scenarios of base defense and capture the flag.  There are about a dozen other really good "scenarios" in this genre, but base defense and capture the flag are the stars of the show. 

I've always thought that Space Hockey, originally an SFB scenario, could stand alongside of base defense and CTF if it were done right.  That's why I often include it among this group, but in reality Space Hockey has never been done well yet and has never been a "big thing" in games like SFB (Space Hockey) or Subspace (Powerball).

If they want to do multiplayer online zones/scenarios for SCO they could just make those maps with a player-centered camera... but that will feel like a very different game from Fleet Battles and the adventure game.

The planned expansion for SCO called Eternal and Infinite, being a strategy game, pretty much requires more than 1v1 battles (fleet battles).  I mean Star Control 1 did that you sent your fleet vs the enemy fleet and they fought automatically without input from you.

So I hope there is time to put fleet battles (more than 1v1) in SCO and I hope that I could control my flagship in my fleet instead of relying on the AI.  When fleet battles are implemented the camera needs to be different.