Questions about a possible research system

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

Regarding your questions and remarks in #5464, I wanted to address the following point:

I want to add a research system of some sort. I want to tied that to scrapping wrecks but still not 100% sure

What would the research system do? What roles would it play in the overall game design? Would it be just for scrapping wrecks or would it be re-used and tied to the overall player tech progression? How would a player unlock next steps/tiers of the research system? What would be the rewards of the research system? Do you want the player to be able to unlock everything or to have to specialize because of the limited research points? When would you want to introduce the research system when it comes to the development process?

[tsunamayo]

@Kaiser-Indrasil Well what is your opinion, what should I do? What other game are doing?

In my mind research achieve several things:

• de cluter the schematic, making less intimidating for newcomers
• Give a rewarding sense of progression,
• Make the tutorial / learning aspect easier to integrate once the a new tiers is unlock (instead of having the player to learn everything at the beginning, which is terrible, you can drop those piece of knowledge over time). Although my "progression" system should take care of that somewhat
• just simply give players things to do, places to explore, item to buy act. I feel I am extremely light on that aspect.

I dont want to have limited research point and a build tree, it is not a 4x game, there isnt just enough depth for that.

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

I think Kerbal Space Program is on point with its research system and its model could serve as an inspiration.

So, in KSP, there's science points you unlock by doing science experiments. In Starship EVO we could instead use an Exp-based system of progression where the player gains experience by crafting, mining, building, and other activities like that. Levels gained would provide science points. Each level would provide a fixed amount of 1 point per level, and the basic tech skills would require 1 point to unlock. Later tiers could require 2, 3, maybe even 4 points to unlock.

Each tech skill could feature 1 to a few blocks of a very similar theme or purpose. Each player could unlock them in a different order but they can be arranged from the most basic ones to the most complex and advanced ones in a tech tree fashion.

Ultimately, players could be able to unlock the entire skill tree. Any excess exp points could be invested into another game mechanic, like the NPC crew for example. Maybe we could train them up too?

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

One additional thing - if XP would go towards training the crew, the player could decide early on that they want to distribute the points into the crew rather than into the skill tree.

Just after fully researching the skill tree the XP could all go towards the crew.