Community Input: Starting Location

[Cardinal]

@"Sombra Hookier" Perfectly said, I agree.

@Toris Which is why I mentioned these new "starting systems" to have the same exact rules as Pennsylvania. Which last time I checked, isn't it a place that suspends roleplay for newcoming players? Which then means, it technically is not a roleplay system, which then means that GRN wouldn't be able to do anything.

[Toris (Old Account)]

@"Emperor Cao Cao" Pennsylvania do not have any custom rules as a starting system. It IS a system existing within RP and I'm not sure who told you that. You are likely to be pirated, fined or even destroyed like in any other system.

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This little bird went to sleep forever. So long.
Thank you for everything.

[Cardinal]

Huh. I could've sworn there was a grace period for characters under level 20. Maybe I've been away too long, apparently.

[Toris (Old Account)]

No, on that you are correct. You do not exist within RP under level 29. But if you are Miner ID, you are likely to get over that right away. The point is, peeps avoiding piracy of players under level 45. Or at least I avoid doing that...

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This little bird went to sleep forever. So long.
Thank you for everything.

[Cardinal]

Well, either way, the problem of low activity in the other houses is no easy problem to fix. As Sombra said, Coronado really is too boring and bland of a system to be a starting point. Pennsylvania is a long crafted timepiece of the server and a statue for new players. The painful truth is that Liberty may always be the largest beacon of activity because it is what a lot of the players saw as the best of the game.

[PRJKTLRD]

It's all nice and cool, you're speaking about "the feel of Freelancer" and Penny. But still, wouldn't it be better to just solve the issue with Liberty being filled with all the new players?

Since I've played here, it's been an issue.

You should look forward to solving that.

[Toris (Old Account)]

Aaaand we go back to the issue that I brought up some time ago like in case of Kusari. The vile cycle of "we want to create activity, but we cannot create activity due to lack of activity".

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This little bird went to sleep forever. So long.
Thank you for everything.

[Sombs]

The thing is, Liberty is and will always be the best place to start. The game developers had a reason for you to start there as well. Freeport 7 was in the effing Sigmas, where nobody cares about the system layouts. Liberty however is THE crossing of activity.

Like it or not, but this is a current representation of the activity in terms of used systems.

Green = Only New York. There is always something going on. Always.
Yellow = From central Liberty down to Bretonia and even Omega-49 is often something going on. You will often find people in those areas.
Red = Systems with either interesting layout or frequent battles, which ensure people to come over here from time to time.
Small Black = Those systems are mostly passage systems or are generally very rarely visited by players and mostly only by certain groups. The systems are less inviting due to their placement, layout and opportunities.
Big Black = You will never find anyone here.

As you can see, Liberty and Bretonia are very well visited areas. They have good system layouts, big playerbases, the systems aren't unnecessarily big and offer many things. New London for example is the place to be for PoBs, while in Liberty you always will find some PvP. Gallia is currently only interesting for PoB owners and people that are doing RP contracts, as many things can only be bought from Picardy or have a sellpoint there. The Sigmas and Taus are only interesting because of their mining commodities while they are partially very empty or boring to look at. Especially the Sigmas are a blurry mess of monotone colors. Something you don't have in Bretonia or Liberty, as Bretonia has red and blue and orange and purple, and Liberty has every big nebula of Sirius in the distance visible. Rheinland has very large systems with very unfortunate layouts, profits however from being a passageway to the Omicrons and Omegas as well to the Sigmas while having at least some variation in their starspheres, for example New Berlin and Frankfurt. The problem however is the size of Rheinland, as there are many unnecessary long and alternative trade lanes instead of crossings like you have them in Liberty (West Point, Fort Bush) and Bretonia (Kensington). That is also the big problem of Kusari. The starspheres are just blue. Hokkaido is a very nice example of how to bring variation into that. But it is literally only Hokkaido. Kyushu is just one lane that conveniently leads you out of the boring Kusari, Honshu is stupidly empty on the lower half of the map while Shikoku is actually nicely done because of the very attractive purple nebulae and the sun that fits nicely. However, even here the trade lanes are incredibly long, especially the one from Junyo to New Tokyo. New Tokyo is also just and nothing more than a passage system with just two asteroid fields and no nebula. There is nothing, literally nothing to explore here, and thus there is nothing that makes people stay here.

Gallia makes the opposite mistake. The systems are way too big and are horribly designed. Ile-de-France is candy vomit, there is no theme in the nebulae and planet placement. The systems of Gallia are stuffed with one of everything and the most atmospheric point is the Sarcelles Shipping Facility, as you find yourself in a cave of debris which actually contains some eye candy.

The entirety of the Omegas are just passage systems to reach either Gamma or Delta, same for the upper Omicrons. Iota and Major are nice to explore, so those systems are okay, but Psi is unnecessarily big and empty. The entire upper Omicrons are literally just for exploration, while things turn sort of normal again at Omicron Delta as it is literally a Delta. If I wasn't a fan of it, I'd say make a starting point there, but then again you would definitely lower the quality of RP given in this system. Pennsylvania sort of acts like a filter, just as New York does. The only lolwuts you see in Delta are Zoner Nephilims, Order and rarely no-RP-traders. And then there is Omicron Gamma, which is unnecessarily bottlenecking. The only good thing that was changed about Gamma are the capital ship tunnels in the Edge Nebula.

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Uncharted System Stories: 18 | 32 | 34 | 37 | 38 | 85

Templates: Character | Transmissions

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[nOmnomnOm]

I dunno where to begin to disagree with you, sombra, so ill just generally say that writing things like 'candy vomit' is a nice tool to make it look like you are right though in reality I have no idea what you are talking about. I for one like colors.

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[Sombs]

I don't really care if you disagree with me because you like the colors. I explained it already. Gallia is stuffed and it is obvious the designers of Gallia wanted it to have one of everything. The systems are all way too big, contain way too many planets, they are horribly intransparent. I can explain it to you in detail.


This is Ile-de-France, which already makes me ill of france. The hexagonal trade lane network is unique and cool, but that's all positive you can say about it, because it is too much. Like most of Gallia, it offers too much, it almost floods you with content. The stations are nicely designed. The nebulae aren't. You have both a green fart cloud and a purple fart cloud that totally don't fit with the theme of the system. The starsphere is okay-ish, although the Sirian Nebulae are too close to Gallia. The most disturbing thing is the purple nebula as it has poofs that don't match the nebula color well and then again, looking at the thing from the side, you see how 2D the poofs are. That's not well done.

Now look at the other gallic systems.




































Gallia has one of everything if you look at the colors. The only really interesting system, to me, is Burgundy for obvious reasons, because we don't have any other system that has a planet in the center, mostly only suns.

If you look at the other houses, however, you see variations of their respective theme. The devs really looked at the systems' placement on the sirian map. Even the modded systems. New London is red, Leeds is orange, Poole is purple, Manchester is the passage from Barrier blue/gray to Bretonia red. Omega-3 is a passage between Cambridge Barrier bluegray and Walker Nebula orange. Rheinland is completely orange with variations, Kusari is just blue and blurry, the Sigmas are a mix of blue and green blur, the Omicrons are pretty exotic, just like the Omegas. Like, the latter two regions show the wilderness of cosmos. The Taus are just rocks behind the barrier and partially inside it. Even the independent worlds look at their respective positions, although the Cortez starphere indicates a big star cluster between the Barrier and Liberty.

Gallia also has a big problem with planets, as almost none of those planets are really important. It's intransparent. You get the idea about each important planet in each house, colonised and barren ones. In Gallia, it's just spat out planets everywhere because they wanted to have "realistic" solar systems. Doesn't work too well. It works well in very few cases. Penny is a good example. Starsphere fits, planet placement fits, the most important planets have a focus with trade lanes and stations and the planets aren't just a senseless mix of colors and types. It's not "too much".