Universe Guide/Cartographers Guild

[reaper2040]

I am sure that this has been the subject of great debate, so I'll try to stay on point. I love Mercenary as well the the two immediate predecessors, Renegade and Legends. Exploring is a huge part of the game and can be very rewarding but frankly, I have no desire to spend several hours doing a search pattern to find an unknown item in the middle of nowhere only to discover it has nothing new to offer me.

Someone made a utility for Renegades call "A Hitchhikers Guide to the (Evochron) Galaxy". It read the universedata file and presented the information in a clear and easy to use interface. Filters were available and I believe it was really up to the user to decide how much of a spoiler the tool would be. I ran the guide on a laptop on my desk for reference and it really improved my game-play experience immensely. It felt like I was a real space jockey with a map instead of Chevy Chase lost in the desert in my pimped-out station wagon running out of gas!

Mercenary has no universedata file to tap into but I'm sure it is still there somewhere or at least has a version holding the same information. Is there any way to access this to create a new "Hitchhikers Guide"?

Anyone interested in forming some sort of cartographers guild?

[tha_rami]

I think creating such a resource is part of the game this time around .

[Blackthorne]

Originally posted by reaper2040
Anyone interested in forming some sort of cartographers guild?

I've spent the better part of the evening trying to find the hidden planet in Deneb (with no success to show for several shiploads of fuel burnt). Aaaaand here's the catch:

Exploring things is fun. Following clues is also fun.

Grinding search patterns however is pretty unfun. Things get to downright frustrating when you're looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

There are, for example, (procedurally generated and seeded, I assume) hidden systems in Evochron, usually designated by names like I704. If you're lucky, you'll see the name pop up in the nav window when you take a long trip between systems without using the gates.

This would probably be fun If the program gave you a clue on their location, something like a tiny speck of light from the distant sun, as opposed to a searchable area roughly 500 sectors across.
As it is now, you can see suns only from a relatively short range, and due to the dense background starfield (and nebulae, but those can be turned off) they're easy to miss, even when they'd be visible.

So far, exploration was pretty much pure frustration. The universe is huge (and, mostly, empty), and unless you stumble across something by blind idiot luck, you won't even know it exists. For most players, it might as well not exist at all, since they're highly unlikely to see or interact with this game content.

I'd love to do some mapping. Unfortunately, with the tools available, it's an exercise in futility. Sourcediving is no longer an option, due to the absence of the universedata.txt file.

I don't mind the flying and going off the beaten path for very little gain in game terms; however, I dread the tedium of cluelessly stumbling through the dark until I might find something by accident.

A possible solution short of making the universe sourcefile available (and thus pretty much taking any effort out of mapping it) would be to massively increase the visibility of suns and other stellar objects (we would be talking about a visibility in excess of several hundred sectors here). Which I'm not sure that the engine is capable of.


That said, I can see where you're coming from, reaper2040, and share your feelings about the Hitchhiker's Guide. Right now, exploration feels like an elaborate insider joke. It's not quite up to "Milon's Secret Castle" standards of awfulness, but grating nonetheless.

I enjoy the combat and the flight model, I'm an absolute sucker for some fun semi-randomly generated missions that'll only take a short time to complete, I dig the modular shipbuilding and the new station options. The exploration part, however, is unenjoyable due to a lack of clues.

-Blackthorne

[Edited on 25-9-2010 by Blackthorne]

[gietek]

I'd love to see that up and running!

Frankly, exploring Evochron is not my idea of entertainment. I couldn't care less about the joy of discovering new systems.

It's like if somebody told you - Here you go, I put a briefcase with one milion pounds in a shop in London. All I can say is that the shop is in London. Good luck and have fun.

The guide was an immense help. It would go very well with the windowed mode...

[Whytephyre]

I will give any info i have gladly. Such a resource would be quite useful.

But i have to say, i am with blackthorne, i whish it were a little less tedious to search out hidden locations, stars & planets being visible from farther away seems to be the answer.

[Marvin]

During the days of square-riggers, the captain-navigator guarded his charts as if they were his most precious treasure. Because exploration was not only time-consuming and tedious ... it was also dangerous. But profitable.

Think of it that way.

[Blackthorne]

I play games for fun. Stumbling blindly through the dark without a clue isn't.
Think of it that way.

-Blackthorne

[Marvin]

I'd rather not. I think of EM as a simulation.

[Spartan268]

Simulation ... BAH... Its a way of life...:P:P:P:P:P

[reaper2040]

Orbiter is a space simulation. Mercenary is a space game. I'm sure that the old Evochron "purists" never used the Hitchhikers Guide, dared to even peek at the universedata.txt or would ever be caught dead in possession of the strategy guide. That's fine, to each his own. For myself, the Hitchhikers Guide enhanced my experience and made the game much more pleasurable for the way I like to play and being separate from the game itself, did not impose upon anyone not wishing to use it.

BTW - I'm sure the "real" mercenary astronauts out there have some seriously kick-ass mapping systems and trade system information between all their allies:o

Hey, maybe this is an idea for that money-sink people have been talking about? Graded maps with the really good, complete ones costing a small fortune?

[TGS]

As much as I like this reference I have to pick it apart.

First off Evochron is set in the future not the past. But its exploration model is practically non-existant. We have better technology for searching out and mapping space NOW as in 2010 right now. Granted that doesn't do us much good seeing as how we don't have the technology to reach said stars. But we know where they are if we ever do get the tech.

In evochron it's backwards. You have the technology to reach the stars but not find them. That to me doesn't make sense.

If anything I think a lot of the issues people have with navigation stems from two major problematic points.

1. The navmap/navlog/navigation system is bad. Yes it works but it does not work well. It has many tedious and quite frankly silly limitations that are extremely counterproductive such as the "snap-to-ship" zooming. And the fact that you can only zoom out up to what 20x20x20 sectors? Why? What point could there possibly be to that limitation? And don't get me started on the quadrant map lol. That's nothing more than a image overlay just about. It has no zooming functionality what so ever. Hell the text on it can be difficult to read due to the scale/size. The addition of the multiplayer territory system is tedious given the lack of zoom functionality. But anyway the navmap interface needs a massive overhaul. Doesn't need to be flashy 3d and have tons of bells and whistles but it does need to be more usable. Needs zooming capability at every level. Even if the standard 20x20x20 limit stays in... the quadrant map should be zoomable down to nearly the former level.

2. Now the factor that others have brought up and I'll bash further is the distance/range in which you can "see" or find objects. Unless its changed from EL which I don't think it has you basically have to be within 200-600 km of various objects to see them visually. Now the max jump drive distance is 1000km. So as I've said in previous posts you can literally jump "over" things you might be looking for without ever realizing that it was there. Unless of course you jump a few sectors at a time which is tedious at best and mind-numbingly-shoot-self-in-head boring at worst. I don't know if it would drop performance considerably but if not... this needs to be addressed and you should be able to see stars at 15-20 sectors and planets at 10km that way every "jump" you could potentially "see" celestial objects. Now that doesn't account for smaller objects but those are usually around/near celestial objects anyway.

3. Now this one I know won't change but I'll throw it out there anyway. Scanning and "warping". I link these because they both amount to the same thing in reality. There is no real long range scanning which honestly there should be. There should be special equipment that can be activated to "scan" long range IE 10-20 sectors and if you pick up an object it places it on your radar for a set amount of time. You could have a device for each "type" of object. Celestial scanner for planets/stars object scanner for containers and wrecks and station scanners for stations. The alternative would be to completely change the jump system and/or add in a warp system. Where instead of being point to point completely negating large chunks of space you actually accelerate to an extremely high speed and travel through space. Which would give you the ability to spot things along the way and deactivate your drive to home in.

On closing I would like to say that I would love to be able to explore. I'd love for there to be things out there TO explore for. But really I don't think there is. And if there is it sure as hell doesn't warrant the effort it would take to find. I really hoped some of the old troublesome things in that respect would have been fixed in EM. It's a new game right?

Maybe this is just a framework and Vice intends to work on it who knows. I think he's being tight-lipped at this point.

Originally posted by Marvin
During the days of square-riggers, the captain-navigator guarded his charts as if they were his most precious treasure. Because exploration was not only time-consuming and tedious ... it was also dangerous. But profitable.

Think of it that way.

[punkibastardo]

Even if there's no universedata there should be some kind of missions where they tip you to a secret object/planet's location or something so at least an average Joe would eventually find a secret planet...
As it is now, most people probably don't have the time and dedication to spend 20+ hours flying in empty boring space in search for one of these.

[Murmur]

As much as I love the game I just can't look at it as a sim. Not when there are cargo containers with unlimited expensive items in them. And especially not when you can build two stations a jump away from eachother, and build the economy upgrading stations in one sector, and leave the other sector un upgraded, then buy fulcrums torpedoes from the un upgraded one, and sell them at the fully upgraded one and make 2 million in profit for EACH fulcrum.

if this were a sim, money wouldn't be unlimited. Nor would it be so easy to come by. Especially not at the rate of 26 million every 30 seconds or so.

[Edited on 9-26-2010 by Murmur]

[Sinbad]

For me some aspects of this game are pretty realistic... I imagine that some time in the future if you were a mercenary exploring an uncharted region of space, that's exactly what it would be... uncharted ie no maps to tell you where things were. You would most likely meet other travelers and pick up rumours and bits of information that would give clues to locations. This is how I normally find stuff in Evochron, by talking to other pilots who've spoken to other pilots. I agree that spending hours and hours doing search patterns across 100's of sectors without any idea is boring. But when you have a few more specific clues and you're sure something must be there then it's very rewarding when it finally pops up on your radar. Having said that I also agree that there could be more clues in the game and more unusual things to find (maybe there are in EM?) that would really make the effort of searching worthwhile. I like the idea of stars from hidden systems being more visible from a greater distance.

[haloterm]

I just can't look at it as a sim

Well, yeah, regarding economy, sizes of planets/cities, stations and some other things EM is not a sim, but I think many players refer to the rather good semi-Newtonian physics model. EM as a whole is a game, however, not a sim.

Esp. when you think of e.g. Orbiter, where you can see how much effort is needed to even get a "real" spacecraft into a stable orbit, or to approach one of its simulated stations -- no simply turning and flying in the correct direction, but lots of maths and computer assistance required ... not that I wanted this in EM.

[Ravenfeeder]

One way around the emptiness of space is the probes. At the moment, probes are redundant. Not, imho, that they were much use in the beginning.

I'd like to see the probes, have an unlimited range, and, an unlimited amount of fuel - they could be refuelling themselves in various ways, solar waves, gravitational hot spots, ach, lots of ways.

I'd like to be able to send a probe out into deepest space, and, have it report back to me, the individual who sent it, about anything it encounters along its route. I'd also like to be able to click any coords it reports into my map log.

Aside from some cash sink, what goodies do these hidden places have that can't be found in the known reaches of EM? It would be nice if there were a new super duper type of ship. Especially if there were some form of drive that would actually increase your ships speed. Or, something that would increase the amount of equipment slots, cargo slots, energy, navigation, or whatever.

[Blackthorne]

Another issue that needs to be covered are certain artifact systems from previous games.

Let's take Joe Gamer, who is new to Mercenary and hasn't played any of the older games. Joe has fought the Vonari in one of the warzones and thinks it'd be a hoot to visit their home system. He checks the navmap and sees Vonarion (?,?).

Hm. Okay. So maybe this is just window dressing? Going to the forums (if he's lucky) he might get told that Vonarion can be reached via a one-way wormhole from Riftspace (7000, 9500).

Ah, okay. From the navmap, to scale, that's located somewhere between the hull and the starbord wing struts. How does one get there?
Easy, you'd say. There's a hidden gate to that place.
Great, he says. Where can I find that?
Oh, you see, Joe, finding that requires you to follow a series of cryptic clues hidden throughout the universe in the last game. But hey, you're lucky. The old strategy guide has those clues collected.

Barring any interpretional (rare) or math error (far too common these days), he might arrive at the intended location.

If he's unlucky, he'll just assume that Vonarion isn't in the game and leave it at that. Which makes the existence of the system in the first place moot. From the information that the game (as opposed to the players) gives him, it's impossible to reach Vonarion. Despite being marked and visible on the Nav Map.

I won't attribute anything to malice that can easily be attributed to neglect. And Vice doesn't strike me as the sort of person who'd charge 20$ for a strategy guide that contains information which should be attainable within the game itself. (That's Square-Enix's business model.)
But these are issues that I'd like to see adressed. From what is actually visible of it, the universe appears rather small (around thirty systems, some of them consisting of little more than a sun, a station and a planet or two), despite this being not the case.

-Blackthorne

[gietek]

Eh... I remember docking to ISS station for the first time Orbiter is a great game even though it is not a game. And its hardcore players will not use time compression at all!
But I'm not that kind of person and I need some directions/clues when looking for hidden systems. If the game refuses to do that a complete map will do just fine for me