I will respond with a Rheinland-focused pov, though I suppose my comments can apply to other relevant places.
Antonio Wrote:System design:
-What would you like to see future system design focus more on, and why? Some examples: visuals, gameplay, story progression, hazards, treasure hunts, environmental storytelling, etc.
-What do you think current systems, on average, suffer from the most? Use the above examples. An additional example: Overcrowdedness (lack of barren, dangerous space) can be a valid reason as well.
-Would you rather the Systems team focused more on reworking existing systems, adding new systems, removing obsolete ones, or a balance of everything?
-Where and how do you think existing systems could be enhanced with environmental storytelling and worldbuilding? Example: How would you make systems like Hamburg, Tau-23, or Hokkaido more interesting?
Story progression & environmental storytelling (under which I'd include hazards and treasure hunts). As long the base world is interesting and coherent, people will create characters to interact with it organically. After that first big hurdle, like the Rheinland infocard project, you can be very hands-off and focus on stuff that really needs dev input. The players will start working around existing limits, which can be adjusted with new minor patches.
Essentially the systems are too empty. Space is big, but it's filled with all sorts of random crap. A lot of it pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but could still make for interesting local rp. E.g. what if there was a wildcat miner wreck in Sigma-15 to represent the dangers of planning a deep space trip. Abandoned beacons in the Harzfeld in New Berlin from the old mining zones. More single ship or station wrecks. That sort of thing. Imo the best example of what a lot of systems should look like is unironically Dresden - I understand that all that trash is from a recent space battle, but I think it should stick around for months if not years.
Based on the point above, all existing systems need to be "enriched" at least a little bit with tens or hundreds worth of years of "civilization garbage". Adding new systems should be done slowly, since every new place would require a baseline of what was there before.
Everywhere really - the more the better, really the limit should be what the server can reasonably handle in terms of assets. As for how - I think the community can help with this one, if you open submissions for minor system elements. Something like: wreck model, wreck infocard, location, why it should be there. Then it'd be up to coding to reach into the "suggestions bag" and implement a few with every patch, or however often is feasible.
Antonio Wrote:Travel times:
-Would you like to see travel times between two regions' hubs increase, decrease, or be kept the same? Example: New York - Omicron Delta.
-Would you like to see travel times between two regions' most distant points increase, decrease, or be kept the same? Example: Vespucci - Omicron Mu.
-Would you like to see travel times without using trade lanes decrease? How would you do it? Example: A Liberty Rogue inside of Liberty not using trade lanes or jump gates for inRP reasons.
I think the safer "legal" routes need to be slower, and the unlawful smuggling routes faster. As chronicron said, most things should have an alternative, though I think the alternatives should not be equivalent. So House to House needs to be slower, House to Edge the same, or House to House the same, House to Edge faster (I would prefer the former).
I don't really get the example, but I think the same idea as above applies. The two most distant points can be reached slowly but legally, or quickly but using smuggler routes.
Yes, because this would be one way of satisfying my proposal above. One way of doing it could be to have faster engines on the black market, but those same engines would take a long time to charge. So doesn't make sense for a short hop between two trade lane junctions, but makes a lot of sense for 70k free flight trips. If that's not possible, you could potentially make the unlawful hubs and jumps closer together - e.g. in Stuttgart, put all the jump holes closer to the center while still keeping them inside the nebulae.
I don't have strong specific opinions about the rest, and my feedback is too long already anyway. I think the patch and the vibe of the community is moving in a good direction, so I'm sure things will work out regardless of what happens.
