Poll: Would you play a medieval trading game?

[CrystalShadow]

But... There's more to life than combat, and more to spaceships than blowing stuff up, which you can't really do much with if the universe itself is very minimalist.

Although I have to admit, the progression of these 'space trading' games is very tedious.
I played X3:Reunion for 300 hours or more, just to be able to get the cheapest grade of capital ship (a station transporter)
Given how my trading empire was doing, I'd probably need to play it for 1000+ hours to stand a chance of owning a single properly equipped capital class warship.

I can see how that would incredibly frustrating even if you're OK with trading.

We're not talking like, 5-10 hours of trade here after all. We're talking 100's to 1000's of hours to get this stuff...

That's a bit extreme...

In X3:R the best way to get money is complex building or capturing, since the Bulletin Board missions are a massive pain and pay out with bugger all. Having 20 Universe Traders and a large complex somewhere safe like Avarice or Antigone Memorial works out fairly well, but is still a colossal grind. I finished Reunion with just an M3+, never bothered with the higher level ships.
Terran Conflict makes it a lot easier to get large sums of money. Run through a few storylines to get some good ships (the main storyline gives you one of the best M3+ ships for free) and raise your combat rank, then do combat missions for a few hours. I managed to get a 100+ station complex as well as a TL, three M7's and a fully outfitted Boreas M2+ in under 100 hours. It's a lot more fun than Reunion was. Albion Prelude is totally broken in that regard; the Siezewell Stock Exchange can be accessed from the start of the game and allows you to get 100 Million credits in an hour of real time.

Yeah, getting where I was I think I had about 10 universal traders and 3 or 4 factories. Probably about 40 ships total... But still, my income was such getting a destroyer or something like that would take like 20 hours or more even where I was.
Not sure about Terran Conflict & Albion prelude. I have both, but having played reunion for so long it feels a bit much trying to do it all again from scratch...

But... There's more to life than combat, and more to spaceships than blowing stuff up, which you can't really do much with if the universe itself is very minimalist.

Yea, personally my favorite space game right now is Space Engineers, which is all about building ships and the various production lines that give you the materials to build them.

That game also falls flat as the "total space experience" because it doesn't have any trading, and combat is just a drain on your resources, you never really gain much by it.

What I personally think Space Engineers does better than most games is give you the feeling of space exploration, in the sense that you aren't just a trader who's doing laps between well established stations, you can go out into the yonder and armed with drills, refineries and assemblers build new ships from scratch. The problem with space engineers is that just like space trading games don't really let you have that sense of exploration and adventure, Space Engineers never lets you have the satisfaction of coming back into port, taking on missions, conducting trade etc.

To me trade is an essential part of a sandbox game in any setting, because it's one of those "infinite activities" that you can do to to make money, but it shouldn't be the only part of the game.

I can see from what I've been doing in Space engineers it does have a lot of potential for building and mining, but yes, it lacks much motivation to do anything else. (and trading isn't even an option.)

Now, I haven't played it enough to get a great sense of it, but while you can build all manner of things, and gather the raw materials to build it with, once you have a ship, there doesn't actually seem to be much purpose to having it...

Like, you build a ship, go mine some stuff, repeat. It's impressive what you can build, but it doesn't seem to serve much purpose beyond just gathering more materials, and building more stuff...

Combat has no obvious purpose, exploration is undermined by the fact that it's all just random asteroids, trade is meaningless because there isn't anyone to trade with in the first place...

It's good at what it does allow, but feels a little incomplete in a more general sense.
(OK, so it's still considered 'early access' or something anyway, but still...)

 

[Aetrion]

I can see from what I've been doing in Space engineers it does have a lot of potential for building and mining, but yes, it lacks much motivation to do anything else. (and trading isn't even an option.)

Now, I haven't played it enough to get a great sense of it, but while you can build all manner of things, and gather the raw materials to build it with, once you have a ship, there doesn't actually seem to be much purpose to having it...

Yea, this pretty much sums up the principal issue with Space Engineers. Since all you can do is built but the game presents you with very little reason to build there isn't a lot of real gameplay to it.

To me what makes space engineers great is that it really is about spaceships though. A ship in SE can be constructed and deconstructed down to every last component, every bulkhead, every walkway, every button panel. Having an intimate knowledge of your ship is essential to using it right, and that's something I find missing in so many games, where every ship essentially controls the same. In SE you can actually have quirks to the ship like "If something penetrates the armor right here it's going to sever the main conveyor line running between the cargo hold and the forward missile battery, but the ship can reroute the missiles through the refinery stack". In space engineers that's a real thing, and that makes me really wish there was a game with missions and stuff to do where ships are as complex and customizable as they are in SE.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I can see from what I've been doing in Space engineers it does have a lot of potential for building and mining, but yes, it lacks much motivation to do anything else. (and trading isn't even an option.)

Now, I haven't played it enough to get a great sense of it, but while you can build all manner of things, and gather the raw materials to build it with, once you have a ship, there doesn't actually seem to be much purpose to having it...

Yea, this pretty much sums up the principal issue with Space Engineers. Since all you can do is built but the game presents you with very little reason to build there isn't a lot of real gameplay to it.

To me what makes space engineers great is that it really is about spaceships though. A ship in SE can be constructed and deconstructed down to every last component, every bulkhead, every walkway, every button panel. Having an intimate knowledge of your ship is essential to using it right, and that's something I find missing in so many games, where every ship essentially controls the same. In SE you can actually have quirks to the ship like "If something penetrates the armor right here it's going to sever the main conveyor line running between the cargo hold and the forward missile battery, but the ship can reroute the missiles through the refinery stack". In space engineers that's a real thing, and that makes me really wish there was a game with missions and stuff to do where ships are as complex and customizable as they are in SE.

Yeah, that level of detail to a ship is almost unheard of. You'd think, given the level of detail being put into ship interiors that Star Citizen might get into that territory, but it seems somewhat unlikely somehow.

The fact that Space engineers actually simulates all of the inter-connected systems the way it does means you can have all kinds of weird quirks to a design that wouldn't show up in a simpler model with less going on.
(OK, so the way certain systems actually work is a bit simplistic in some cases, but the overall complexity of it is still fascinating.)

I recall with the default ship you get with one of the settings, the oxygen generators are embedded in the hull in a way that means if they're damaged you can't get to them without ripping out a whole heap of the ship's structure...

And the behaviour of gravity generators is... Well, you can do some really weird things with them if you feel like it. XD

So as a system with interesting behaviours, the ships you can build in Space engineers are a lot of fun.
Something with that level of detail would be indeed be great combined with some actual purpose for those ships...

 

[Aetrion]

Yea, Space Engineers doesn't simulate having to route reactor energy anywhere, the only thing that needs to be distributed through the ship is its inventory through a conveyor network. I'd love it if you had to build plasma conduits to the engines as well, because it would make the design process even more challenging. Embedded systems are nice if you want a really clean look to the ship or a very compact design, but maintenance does become a huge pain in the ass.

Star Citizen seems like it's going way too much the route of X or Eve to me. From everything I've heard about the game with permadeath and all that stuff I doubt it will ever be a satisfying game to people who care more about spaceship simulation than about a simulation of all the consequences of your ship blowing up because you got ganked by someone in a ship ten times bigger.