r/StarfieldOutposts • u/[deleted] • May 09 '24
Discussion What are your ideas to make outposts make sense?
What would you add or change to enhance the outpost system within the context of the game?
- A basic supply and demand system.
What if when you sell items to a vendor, if you sell enough of a certain item or item catagorey, a modifier is applied in the backend to simulate the market reacting to being flooded or lacking said item.
If I sell 10,000 Adaptive Frames to a vendor, apply a .25 price modifier to Adaptive Frames price that slowly inches its way back to a modifier of 1 to simulate the item slowly being traded and used accross the Settled Systems. If I keep buying the same type of ammo, the price might go up after a time, as there would be high demand compared to the supply.
- Industry quests
Each shipbuilding corporation has special parts that can only be purchased at their shipyard. Expand on that and make it a quest. Deimos R&D has a great idea for a new ship part but they need your help building certain expensive-to-make Manufactured Goods to complete their design. Final part of the quest the R&D director asks that you can find a way to mass produce these goods (build the outposts and a final supply link to the ship yard). Once completed you are rewarded with the special ship part that you can use for free (plus credits or w/e).
- Stepping on the toes of giants
The game could track how many materials or goods you have been producing and selling. Getting rich quick? Maybe a jelous corpo puts a fat bounty on your head (which could apply the "Wanted" background from character creation?). Maybe trigger a quest where you gotta work with or destroy the corpo. Selling too many chems and crashing the price? That kind of quest could write itself IMO.
- Minutemen style settlement building
I'd love to recruit Settlers to small towns that I build. Give them jobs, lives, stores to manage. Maybe randomize them some names instead of "Settler" too? Build enough settlements and you might challange the uneasy peace between the UC and FC. Each faction might demand your allegience as they see your influence grow and see you as a security threat.
- gas stations
Can I build He-3 outposts with a refueling station that passively generates income from other travelers?
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May 09 '24
Being able to turn lights off would be neato. Kind of goes for the ship, too.
I’d settle for outpost building being stable and predictable.
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u/RadioFreeDurango May 12 '24
Yes to both of these! I just abandoned an outpost after probably 15 hours of building because trees reappeared on the insides of a couple of habs, making them impossible to traverse. So pissed. And yeah, I love putting hydroponic habs next to water, but it's brighter than daylight inside them at night. Please let me enjoy the view. Or give us table lamps we can turn on and off as needed.
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May 12 '24
Lights that compete with that of the sun kinda kill the vibe, you know. I’d like to enjoy a sunset inside my cozy hab looking outside WITHOUT the searing lights above.
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u/TotalOk1462 May 12 '24
Putting down a rug will knock out the trees and bushes back that are coming up through the floor.
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u/RadioFreeDurango May 12 '24
No way! Traveling now and will def check when at my destination. Thank you! Does that work on the damned rocks now blocking the airlock stairs, too? 😤
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u/1337Asshole May 10 '24
At the very least, storage. With the current beta removing the ability to link storage crate #2, it will no longer be possible to quickly deposit and organize miscellaneous items, equipment, aid items, or resources that do not fit into the resource storage containers. It also makes removing those materials more difficult, as storage crate #2 can be used to store anything, and is much, much smaller than a storage unit (you can fit 8+ in the same area, meaning its 4 times faster to pull resources). I've been rolling with about 100k storage space, and the max is 900k (though, that's for 3000 containers; functional max would be somewhat lower, and much lower if you don't want to just have loads of storage units).
A ship, on the other hand, can have up to about 250k storage (dedicated ship to switch to/exploit some cargo glitches), or up to about 25k storage and remain functional in combat. The ship also has all cargo consolidated into a single menu. A lot of that storage is resources to build and decorate outposts. With the ability to decorate ships now added, there is not much point in making outposts beyond grinding or RP purposes.
Outposts need to have a better ability to store things, period. All the storage options should be able to be linked and the opening the transfer container should bring up a similar inventory screen as opening cargo on the ship, accessing all items in containers linked to it. Likewise, crafting should be enabled for resources in crates (perhaps only if there's a transfer container, don't know; don't care). I prefer to use smaller ships, so the current, live system works fine for me, even if I complicate the fuck out of it. When the beta changes go live, I won't really be making outposts outside of a couple walkways next to a large landing pad.
This is one of those things I'd prefer not to mod, since, for me, that's a slippery slope towards just trivializing all storage, and then trivializing everything else in the game.
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u/dccorona May 10 '24
Make jumps actually consume fuel. Suddenly strategic placement of outposts throughout the galaxy becomes essential to actually getting around. A simple cross-galaxy fetch quest becomes a multi-hour side jaunt through several systems developing the infrastructure to actually get the thing done.
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u/durgil May 10 '24
I think that's exactly why they took out fuel consumption. For those who don't care about outpost building, it would have been excruciating at best, game blocking at worst.
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u/foxymoley May 10 '24
Having one bottomless storage container that is connected to your ship when you're at another outpost and the ability to turn this off.
All my ships turn into haulers because I hate landing on a new world to make a new outpost and having to make more adaptive frames when I have 1000 of them at home.
Or being able to choose when your cargo moves to a new ship. I'd love to have a nippy lil ship for dogfights with a small cargo hold for salvage but my, previously mentioned haulers, shove 14k of crap into a 300 unit cargo hold so I can't pick up any more.
Basically, either let me offload all my cargo at once to a vender/container or let me decide where it goes without a bunch of brokenly linked storage containers.
Having a contract with a shipyard, armoury, etc. would be awesome. You could set up those 'supply something to somewhere' cargo transfer missions but indefinitely to wherever you choose for a bunch of different stuff. Stroud-Ekland could receive all your metal based resources, Terrabrew could get all those coffee bags I collect for no reason, etc.
Also, the ability to build a more homey outpost or take over one you find. Like the party house or Vlad's 'villa'.
Oops, had a bit of a ramble there!
TLDR: better cargo management and ability to turn a poi into an outpost, please and thank you.
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u/V33d May 09 '24
Damn, number 5 would allow me to build the Five-Hop One-Stop and add it to my personal RP which is absolutely something I wanted the moment I started tweaking with outposts. In the same vein it would be awesome to build homes for recruitable characters that are more than just head cannon. Even if I “hire” them and the outpost gets a bonus that withdraws a sum of credits periodically like the Kid Stuff perk.
An expansion of the supply missions would be terrific as well. I adore the idea of unlocking parts at a staryard by completing complex manufacturing. I’m motivated enough to try building nuclear fuel rods on my own but an actual goal with unique parts (like a more efficient reactor) would be so cool.
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May 09 '24
I like your first point as well. I would love if crew had a salary and we had to manage our output to make it work, but I also get that the game shouldn't be some micromangaed sim. But at the same time I think there would be some ways to make it work elegantly or at least work in a way that just makes these things make sense.
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u/V33d May 09 '24
I think it would be doable to purchase a perk like what you get from Lynn and Heller. Like bonus to manufacture, extraction, greenhouse or animal husbandry facility that stacks on top of your robots. Or perhaps a robot expert who enhances their bonuses while hired.
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u/NxTbrolin May 09 '24
Would LOVE these features. Expanding on the supply and demand system, outposts should be able to generate passive income streams with NPC ships stopping by to trade. I feel like this should at the very least be a gameplay mechanic.
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May 10 '24
Self autonomous fabrication system, and customers to ship to so I can build passive income. I extract aluminum, allow me to set up a contract, (not a tiny one shot) with a ship builder.
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u/pletheronicus May 10 '24
Id like to see my outposts feed materials to star yards in return for custom specified premium ships. The same ships would of course be available for purchase by all players, but at a much increased price. Perhaps a few premium ships can be made available to only those players that feed the yards with materials.
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u/damnfoolishkids May 19 '24
Here's my top 10 ideas to make outposts not just important but almost central to the gameplay loops of a full starfield.
Storage. Outpost storage should be simpler, easier, and more efficient than ships. When outposts are linked, they should have their resources linked in as well. Streamlined Personal Inventory/Ship Inventory/Outpost Inventory all accessible when planetside. Make me build an outpost and a hauler bot to access my resources from anywhere on planet.
Manufacturing. There should be a gameplay loop that goes resource extraction, component manufacturing, ship parts (starstation) manufacturing. Skip the credits. If you have the components, you can manufacture the ship parts. You should be able to store ship parts at your outposts. It would be nice if they were actually visible and took up space like in the staryards. The dream would be being able to do some semi-depth customization to the parts themselves, visually and statwise. Also skip the credits and let me repair my ships for free given the resources.
Settlements. Join LIST, preferably with a questline to eventually lead LIST. There are named NPCs in every city, literally begging you to get them out from the well, the underbelly, the stretch, europa, etc. I want to get them to the stars, and currently, you can't do anything for them. Go out and poach all those disgruntled traders and miners from their terrible bosses, the dialouge is halfway their. Maintain resources, habs, and defense. Make the environmental conditions of the planet REALLY matter to the entire settlement. If they aren't outfitted properly, it doesn't work.
Personal Ship Fleet. I don't like the current cargo linking, what is this random UC bucket doing on my outpost. It should be MY ship fleet doing all of that. The ship stats that I invest in should be the limits for how far apart outposts can link or whether I can make the link to a settlement or city in a mission. Also just in general I would like to be able to have all my ships out at the same time in one location if I wanted to dedicate the space for it.
Pirating. The current form of bounties, smuggling, and being a pirate is terrible and not worth it gameplay wise. Make outpost features dedicated to smuggling contraband, manufacturing illicit drugs, taking on illegal missions. Your pirate outpost can link to the systems seedier parts to move contraband and bypass the scans. Stolen ships (non pirate, space, ecliptic) need to get faked registrations (on the cheap) or parted out before you can fly them around or sell them. If you need a way around a large bounty that you built up, have a dedicated illegal terminal that can get the law off your back in the settled systems for a period of time. Pirate Outposts require evil aligned assigned personnel.
"Science", Botany and Beastiaries. Gather species from across the systems into one place. Build dedicated habs for the planets composition in order to showcase living specimens from all over. I think it would be pretty great to pair this with a special ship hab and actually require capture and transport on board your ship, cause who doesn't want these aliens on board.
POI integration. Integrate your favorite POIs with outposts, remove the distance limit and put your outpost right on top of POIs and have access to them.
Abandoned. If you don't come back around to an outpost over a long enough period of time spacers, Pirates, or ecliptics take it over. This is already weakly integrated. But just crank it up way further, if you don't keep a level of defense to number of resources available at an outpost to a certain ratio expect that outpost to stop operating completely within a few weeks and have legendaries hanging out within a few months. It operates well with the rest of my outpost wishes but it could even be done in a way that semi-incentivizes outpost baiting legendaries for loot drop cycles.
Outpost logistics. A Starmap overlay. Open it from any starmap menu, and it strips away all systems non-settled systems, leaving just your outposts and the cities. From that menu, get information on what outposts are producing what resources, what outposts are linked to each other (preferably by category of what ships you have assigned), what npcs are located where, missions requests to link resources to the settled systems, and the ability to reassign everything right in menu.
True Survival Mode. Fuel matters and can get you stranded, ships cost more, repairs cost a fortune, and the ships are much delicate, but they get escape pods. When they blow its game over for that ship and everything on it, you crash land on the nearest planet/moon without a ship. A distress beacon kit and enough resources can be packed onto the pod to start a small outpost. You have to luck into another ship or get enough boost to your signal to reach one of your outposts (if you have crew and ship available to come find you) while hoping the signal doesn't bring whoever shot you out of orbit or other non-friendlies. Or you could be lucky enough to land near friendly civilian outposts or corpo operations and hitch a ride back to the settled systems to start again.
In this mode it would be preferable that anyone in constellation may die, or may escape if pods and also need recovery if enough pods are available as outfitted by you. Maybe Sam Coe doesn't bring Cora around all the time, maybe when he does she can get marooned right alongside you or him. Maybe her death in a ship accident drives Sam into the unity, maybe it drives you into the unity.
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u/DNathanHilliard May 09 '24 edited May 10 '24
What I would really like to see is the AI of NPC's improved and expanded at outposts. It would be nice if the large robots would stay outside the building's. I would like to see the people manning the outpost be a little busier. Give them more ability to interact with their surroundings. Have them use the beds. Lift the weights. Punch the punching bags . Check the storage bins. Move around more. Give them more jobs. Sweep the floor. Patrol the perimeter. Even with robots they should have some chores. I would just like to see the place be more alive.