| Author |
Game State and Suggestions |
Animyx
Chief Marshal
Army Of Darkness
Joined: December 08, 2008
Posts: 108
From: Ground Zero
|  Posted: 2015-08-25 10:01
So i haven't played in a while, but having tested the game out quite a bit again i have a few suggestions in mind that might help bring back some older players, and encourage newbro's to stay.
1. First i would like to address the situation of ship classes and roles, i do like the fact ships have their own roles within their classes and arent just all blitz boats, adds a lot of diversity to same class gameplay, but when you start throwing in other classes the balance just goes out the window.
Lets start with Dreads. I'd suggest making them stronger, yes... stronger. BUT. Make them cost A LOT of resources to build and field. They are capital class ships after all. Another thing to tie in with this would be maintenance and cargo space, Dreads should use up resources (Maybe bring back hyper matter off planets as a jump-fuel resource) instead of the standard jump fuel to use their jump drive, to make this fair increase their cargo cap to 10-12. In essence this would make dreads something to be feared and something that is not just a big tank you can pull out when the fight gets rough, you get a dread, you have to prep it for future fights, and once your done fighting you have to restock the fuel. It would also be good to have a repair cost on dreads/stations when they are destroyed, IE you cant pull them out untill you pay 5-10% of their build cost to repair it to 5% hull.
This suggestion is to again make dreads a force to be reckoned with but also have the downside of maintaining the fuel on them.
For a ship that's supposedly 1.5km long they sure do feel squishy.
2. Interdictors! Why these were removed i'm not sure, but it would be nice to see them return, if a little changed. Such as making 2 planet structures for dico's, one at 50 tech one at 100 tech. The low tech one blocks ALL drives in the radius of 1000gu from the planet, the high tech one blocks only enemy drives in a 750gu radius.
This would make it fair to enemies assaulting, and would make people spend more time perfecting planets to have the high tech dico.
Ship dictors should be brought back and also effect friendly ships (Yes i see how people could troll with this), this should encourage teamplay, coordination and communication in the factions. Dictor cruisers should sacrifice armor to fit the dictors, thus making them fairly squishy so if a friendly does trap you in a dico to get you killed in your dread you can pop him without too much pres loss.
3. Steam. I'm sure you've heard this one many many times, and i know steam gets huffy about GCQL being a competitor and all that, but i believe that introducing the game to steam after some new player experience changes may prove to be extremely beneficial to darkspace's future. As i said about GCQL, i have a question for the devs, would it be possible to drop GCQL as the server/update manager and switch it to steam instead?
4. This may sound pretty cheap but maybe offer a credit reward for returning players that havent logged on in a certain length of time, 6-12 months or longer, ive seen other games use this tactic to pretty good success, just send an email to players that havent logged in since 2014 and offer them a 5000 credit reward when they log into the game again.
5000 isnt a lot, but its an incentive and may get older players to come back.
Thats enough for now, remember these are all suggestions and technically my Opinion. So feel free to discuss these as you wish. but please try to leave constructive feedback with reasons for/against what i have suggested.
Thanks.
[ This Message was edited by: Animyx *CO3* on 2015-08-25 10:03 ]
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TroyMars
Chief Marshal
T-Roy! and Friends
Joined: July 05, 2005
Posts: 267
| Posted: 2015-08-26 21:37
Planet camping became a very bad thing for no reason. Oh look 5 ICC to my ONLY ship. I need to be punished..
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Crim
Fleet Admiral
Sundered Weimeriners
Joined: March 16, 2003
Posts: 1336
| Posted: 2015-08-27 16:28
Quote:
On 2015-08-26 21:37, TroyMars wrote:
Planet camping became a very bad thing for no reason.
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Planet camping has always been bad, and you should feel bad
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TroyMars
Chief Marshal
T-Roy! and Friends
Joined: July 05, 2005
Posts: 267
| Posted: 2015-08-27 23:19
Quote:
On 2015-08-27 16:28, Crim wrote:
Quote:
On 2015-08-26 21:37, TroyMars wrote:
Planet camping became a very bad thing for no reason.
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Planet camping has always been bad, and you should feel bad
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I feel bad now, like I should. Thanx.
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BLADERUNNER2019
Chief Marshal
Ravenous Wolfpack Clan
Joined: December 18, 2010
Posts: 140
| Posted: 2015-08-28 16:24
a good start for more players to play is easy....put all 3 faction homegates in the middle system....would create alot more combat situations....there is to much traveltime currently just to get to the enemy.....as well, most of the time you dont even know an enemy player is online unless they bomb one of your planets.
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Nine Arts Dragon
Marshal
Joined: March 11, 2003
Posts: 51
| Posted: 2015-09-01 13:13
i think firstly the game needs to be friendlier towards new players. before we think about getting new players through the door.
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TroyMars
Chief Marshal
T-Roy! and Friends
Joined: July 05, 2005
Posts: 267
| Posted: 2015-09-02 00:57
Quote:
On 2015-09-01 13:13, Nine Arts Dragon wrote:
i think firstly the game needs to be friendlier towards new players. before we think about getting new players through the door.
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I thought the whole point of DS was to make new players lost, alone and confused as to how to even launch from the server.
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-xTc- ExisT
Chief Marshal
Army Of Darkness
Joined: March 20, 2010
Posts: 534
From: Red Lobster
| Posted: 2015-09-16 21:48
Some suggestions:
Logging into MV and seeing your faction having zero planets is lame. If you don't have a bomber in your garage your options are to wait until someone logs on with one, or log off.
To fix this, either each faction needs an uncappable planet/planet in their safe zone, or AI with the side that has 0 planets should swarm a planet and try to cap it until the faction has at least one planet again.
Or, instead of capturing flagged planets, the map should reset once one faction controls a certain % of all planets/once a faction entirely controls 2 of the 3 star systems. This way, once a faction gets knocked out, the map should reset or be close to being reset at this time.
Another alternative is to add more than three systems to each map rotation, in different arrangments, to create a little more variety.
The current MV map rotation could be more fun if 1. obviously, there are more players, and 2. if we had a better sense of what part of the MV we are fighting over. The previous(and all other) versions of the MV had a great sense of "home turf" or "home territory".
I.E. if the enemy capped a few systems overnight, you as a player felt a compelling need to log in and fight over and recapture the systems back, because damnit, those planets are our turf and rightfully belong to us! Begone heathens!! Players capping planets leads to faction conflict and conflict leads to action and big battles.
If you and some friends capped deep into enemy territory one night, you as a player felt compelled to log in the next day and defend your newly aquired planets, because damnit, we've gained a lot of ground against UGTO and we need to hold it! We are slowly conquering closer to Sol!! Players capping planets leads to faction conflict and conflict leads to action and big battles.
Same thing if you lead your faction on a capping spree into MI territory, you know you had to log back in the next day to defend it or the AI would cap it all back! It gave you reasons to come back to the game.
Back to my point, "if we had a better sense of what part of the MV are fighting over". Maybe in F2 you can show the greyed out areas of the other systems in the MV, so we can see where we would be fighting next, and bring back that sense of "home turf".
I've always loved the MV for these reasons, especially the last big map. It gave you a sense of team loyalty, that you had a duty to log in and help your teammates defend your systems or else you might not have many planets left in a few days time.
The current MV has none of that. There is no "home turf", there are no "invasions", there is no sense of a "grand scale war across the known galaxy", or anything actually dynamic and player created happening, like Kluth and ICC temporarily allying against UGTO, etc. Planets are truly useless, and now that dicos are removed they only things you literally need planets for, are shipyards, and tech to be able to swap out gadgets.
I know it's been suggested before but adding the resources back like cryometals, hypermatter, etc and making them important in the game, would make planets containing rare elements FAR MORE VALUABLE, especially if the rare elements gave access to certain mechanics or ships or advantages or gadgets. That also gives each map rotation a linear gameplay, as you have certain goals as a faction you have to reach in order to win, kind of like a 4X game.
4X games have an early, mid, and late game, with different strategies and goals needed. Example of such 4X/emergent elements applied to DS: as a faction when the map rotates you first need to set up a shipyard, and res/inf planets, and def planets to support your ship yards, then you need to build special research buildings and certain structures on planets with hypermatter, and once that is completed your faction can now switch out organic armor for chitinous or AM torps for ELF torps, opening up more strategies and gameplay as the map progresses. But first you have to capture the only (random on each reset)planet in the system with hypermatter, and your enemies will have an eye on it too... and you have to make the decision on wether or not to build it as a def planet to defend it easily, but if you don't put enough mines on it your faction won't have enough resources for everyone to get chitinous armor.... And once you have hypermatter economy going, hypermatter is a requirement to build a certain structure on planets with cryometals that will grant your faction access to build stations..... Or you need a certain element to spawn a powerful T3 dread, but the element only spawns in enemy territory and is unique to say ICC-area planets, so you either have to trade some from them, or conquer it yourself!
See what I am going at? The planetary system in DS has an IMMENSE WEALTH of potential for these kinds of things leading to much more tactical, dynamic, and emergent gameplay.
And I understand implementing things like this require developers' time and money, of which there are little of.
Anyway, just ramblings of an inactive, die hard DS player. Wow this post got too long. Peace!
-X
[ This Message was edited by: -xTc- *XO* on 2015-09-16 21:50 ]
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Jhomes
Chief Marshal
Joined: June 22, 2013
Posts: 92
| Posted: 2015-09-17 09:38
Good post XTC, i agree with nearly all of it. Ive long said and tried to convince anyone who would listen that 1 uncapable planet like structure should exist for each faction in place of the irritating homegates/safezones.
While subject has been brought up by somone besides me it seems a good time to make a description of how this would be again 
1. Would be an uncapable small round space station for each faction in place of the current spawn/homegates
2. Would be build locked of course, but come with
depot
Low tech Shipyard (same ship making capabilities as the homegates)
NO SAFE ZONE, but instead a pure offense planet defense of 10% or more (in order to deal around 10k damage a second to enemy ships, this will allow you to still persue fleeing enemy for a kill but prevent them from hanging around long.)
multiple ECCM sensor bases (so enemies cannot sit at your base unseen and thus undamaged)
infinite resources (for transferring ships only, no star port)
4 barracks, BUT a max unit amount on base of only 10
Planet shield similar to the ICC one, but with so many hp it can never be taken out no matter how long you attack it
This should be all that is required and i believe will 100% fix the problem of no planets and problem of people escaping to safezones all the time.
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Jhomes
Chief Marshal
Joined: June 22, 2013
Posts: 92
| Posted: 2015-09-17 10:28
Also on a different subject, i want to talk once again about new players, the ships available to them are not acceptable.
The problem is that nearly all of the tier 1 combat ships that are cruiser and below are underpowered in offense to the point of being almost useless.
Lets start with kluth first as they are by far the easiest to play as low rank or for new players. The reason for this is that kluth ships have slightly less armor but more weapons per ship and higher weapon damage than human ship variants. For example the kluth t1 cannon destroyer has equiv of 6 heavy guns and can fire them all at once, ugto t1 destroyer has equiv of 5 heavy but only can fire 4 at any time. Because of this, most kluth t1 ships are very good and need no work done. Following is my list of luthy ships that need redone, its a short list for them.
1. Scale cruiser (T1 cannon)
NOW- heavy cannon x7, standard cannon x2 and can fire all at once
Needs- stellar incinerator x2, standard cannon x6 that can all fire at once on best arc, (equivilant of heavy cannons x9)
2. Shell destroyer (t1 cannon)
NOW- Equivilant of 6 heavy guns and that all fire at once
Needs- equivilant of 7 heavy guns that all fire at once on best arc
UGTO.
1. gunboat destroyer (t1 cannon)
NOW- equiv of 5 heavy cannons but can only fire best arc of 4 at once
Needs- equivilant of 6 heavy guns that all fire at once on best arc
2. Interceptor cruiser (T1 cannon)
NOW- heavy cannons x6 that all fire at once
Needs- Heavy positron cannon x1, standard cannon x10 that all fire at once on best arc. (equivilant of 8 heavy cannons all together)
3. Torpedo cruiser (t1 torpedo)
NOW- standard torps x14 but only fires 11 at a time on best arc
Needs- QST (capital torpedo) x2, standard torp x5 with all firing at once on best arc.
4. Interceptor frigate (t1 cannon)
NOW- equiv of heavy cannon x4, can only fire 3 on best arc.
Needs- equiv of 5 heavy cannons with all firing at once on best arc
ICC.
1. Light cruiser (t1 cannon)
NOW- heavy cannon x6 that can fire all at once on best arc
Needs- Ion cannon (capital cannon) x1, standard cannon x10 that can all fire at once on best arc. (equivilant of 9 heavy cannons alltogether)
2. Patrol destroyer (T1 cannon)
NOW- equiv of heavy cannons x5 but only fires 4 at once on best arc
Needs- equivilant of heavy cannons x6 that all fire at once on best arc
3. patrol frigate (t1 cannon)
NOW- equiv of heavy cannons x4, fires only 3 at once on best arc
Needs- equiv of heavy cannons x5 with all firing at once on best arc
4. Tempest cruiser (t1 torpedo)
NOW- standard torpedo x12, but only can fire 10 at once on best arc
Needs- Variance torpedo (capital torpedo) x1, standard torpedo x9 that all fire at once on best arc
I know these changes are quite small and may seem pointless but i have put much time and thought into this and im 100% sure that it would fix all the underpowered ships that the new and low rank players have no choice but to use. Perhaps buffing up the single role t1 weapon systems will make game more even and interesting for everyone. There are other ships both t2 and t3 that need changed severly but IMO its not a big problem at the moment and the T1s need addressed and refit immediatley.
Also i am aware that the ships are made with gadget point systems and my suggestions may push them above their point limit, if that is the case, remove any EWAR from them and take away 1 (fore,left,right aft) armor unit
Thank you to anyone who read this far
JASON
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TroyMars
Chief Marshal
T-Roy! and Friends
Joined: July 05, 2005
Posts: 267
| Posted: 2015-09-17 10:49
An uncappable planet would only be giving this game a crutch rather than addressing the issue. I'd rather the home gate of the zero planets faction be able to be destroyed. It would make that faction unplayable till next game, and would remove the fleet lock to that faction to mimic the faction being shattered.
This would mean you could launch a luthy ship under the ICC or UGTO flags should the Luthy homegate be compromized and destroyed.
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Pand0rum (Dragoon)
Marshal
Joined: May 06, 2007
Posts: 51
From: Arizona
| Posted: 2015-09-20 13:12
I think xTc's ideas are pretty good ^_^
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Nine Arts Dragon
Marshal
Joined: March 11, 2003
Posts: 51
| Posted: 2015-09-22 19:47
New player retention is whats crippling darkspace, the number of active players never really seem to go up.
Low ranks need to be much more rewarding to play, for players who have been playing for 5+ years like the most of us, getting to the next rank is really all the driving force we need, after all we have already invested 5 - 14 years in this already.
I think it must be easy for new players to look at the accounts of active players, and see very old heads, and must be very easy to think, whats the point?
Somehow this game need to retain its new players better, Darkspace has been down to its last few hardcore players for a while now, there must be something that we can implement, that will make it worth while for new players, give accounts that are under a year old a prestige bonus multiplier, and give these new players a way to increase this multiplier, and this could work all the way up 2 Fleet Admiral.
New players must feel that they can compete with the old heads or this game will die. That is the truth.
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Necrotic
Chief Marshal
Pitch Black
Joined: March 19, 2002
Posts: 378
| Posted: 2015-09-27 21:31
Some of us have been around over 10+ maybe its 15 now ive lost count
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