A proposition to satisfying the Sandbox Elements AND Persistent World desires

[JacobFlowers]

SCROLL DOWN TO READ A SUMMARY IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ ALL THE DETAILS :)

Someone previously mentioned that Cryptic is using an updated version of the CoH/CoV game engine which is nearing being an 8 year old technology. (Cryptic, please correct me or chime in!).

With this in mind, it simply may not be possible to change the course of development so radically so as to incorporate both a vast and live persistent universe AND include Sandbox elements into our beloved STO.

I came up with an idea therefore to potentially lightly incorporate both elements in a system that works in concert with one another (i.e. killing two birds with 1 stone).

Idea Proposal for Incorporating Both Elements

This idea is based on the premise that it wouldn't necessarily require huge changes to the engine and may be able to be incorporated early on with the idea that this system could be greatly expanded upon and developed in future expansions etc

So here we go. Sandbox elements could include Fleet based product building or Fleet Based initiated Episodes which are large scale, tedious, and require a lot of ingenuity (and don't ALWAYS involve massive fleet raid battles). These are two approaches.

When people discover planets and such, we know that they will all be instanced and only accessible by the individual who discovered them, and those whom the information is shared with. I recognize the dilemma of having thousands upon thousands of players discovering new planets each day, adding to the map at an exponential rate.

It isn't practical, and I can understand why the genesis/heaving instancing is the way it is. What I propose is a compromise so to speak.

Lets Have Sandbox in that Fleets/Houses can exercise a certain amount of autonomy. Small scale Fleet building activies can implemented at Launch, say Communication Towers, or Long Range Deployed Sensor probes, or Small outposts. In future expansions we can have Large Outposts, Mining Stations, Drydocks, Ship Building Facitlies, Defensive Platforms, Science Stations, Terraforming Stations, and the behemoth Starbases we have seen, etc etc.

If we can't have Fleet built items, then perhaps "Fleet Episodes", these are special episodes that require large amounts of Fleet in order to a) occupy a planet b) secure alliances with new alien civilizations c) establish a territorial claim/presence. These can range from War Episodes, Planet Evacuations, Large Scale Science Ops, whatever, list goes on. This could be an easier task to implement than the former option.

Lets incorporate the above implementations into world persistence

Now it seems many people want to see Universe maps have some level of persistence beyond social hubs. To circumvent the problem of thousands of planets being added to our universe maps upon each log in... we could have 'intervals'. Say for example, the federation players discover a total of 5000 new planets in one month. Each starship captain can send in those base coordinates to starfleet if they so wish. Then monthly or every six months whatever, StarFleet could "update" everyone's Star Charts. To prevent massive updates additionally... certain criteria would have to be met in order for them to be included in Factional star maps.

For example, if I discover a system which is valuable either for resources, or technology, or a great alien civilization... the newly discovered system would have to have prerequisites met, i.e. either a Space Station built or a Special Fleet Episode to be completed. This would prevent Star Map updates from being overwhelming AND would incorporate Sandbox elements into the game.

Additional Food for thought
Each Faction could have special custom maps. For example, if a Klingon Fleet discovers and successfully conquers a dilithium rich planet... it could be uploaded into their factional maps. A planet thus that the federation knwos nothing about... until they stumble upon it... ooooh. I realize however this could cause problems if people were allowed to roll Klingon AND Federation characters... but there could be ways around this such as coordinate safe keeping by fleets and this and that who knows eh? Maybe fleets could share map information with each other.


What do you guys think. Do you have any additional problem solving suggestions to add, constructive criticism... would you even be excited to have these types of game play mechanics?

Summary
1) Sandbox Elements:

PlayerBuilt Equipment/Fleet Built Equipment, simple at launch which can lead to capturing or claiming territory for one's faction
Episodes that are Fleet Based which can lead to capturing or claiming territory for one's faction

2) Persistent Elements:

Have the Universe Map updated at Intervals (i.e. Starfleet Star Charts are updated every two, 6 months whatever.
Planets/Systems must meet certain prerequisites in order to be added to the Universe Map (or Faction Map) such as a completed Communications Array, Small Outpost, or a completed special Fleet Episode Content.

[andrewprofit]

SCROLL DOWN TO READ A SUMMARY IF YOU DONT WANT TO READ ALL THE DETAILS :)

Someone previously mentioned that Cryptic is using an updated version of the CoH/CoV game engine which is nearing being an 8 year old technology. (Cryptic, please correct me or chime in!).

With this in mind, it simply may not be possible to change the course of development so radically so as to incorporate both a vast and live persistent universe AND include Sandbox elements into our beloved STO.

I came up with an idea therefore to potentially lightly incorporate both elements in a system that works in concert with one another (i.e. killing two birds with 1 stone).

Idea Proposal for Incorporating Both Elements

This idea is based on the premise that it wouldn't necessarily require huge changes to the engine and may be able to be incorporated early on with the idea that this system could be greatly expanded upon and developed in future expansions etc

So here we go. Sandbox elements could include Fleet based product building or Fleet Based initiated Episodes which are large scale, tedious, and require a lot of ingenuity (and don't ALWAYS involve massive fleet raid battles). These are two approaches.

When people discover planets and such, we know that they will all be instanced and only accessible by the individual who discovered them, and those whom the information is shared with. I recognize the dilemma of having thousands upon thousands of players discovering new planets each day, adding to the map at an exponential rate.

It isn't practical, and I can understand why the genesis/heaving instancing is the way it is. What I propose is a compromise so to speak.

Lets Have Sandbox in that Fleets/Houses can exercise a certain amount of autonomy. Small scale Fleet building activies can implemented at Launch, say Communication Towers, or Long Range Deployed Sensor probes, or Small outposts. In future expansions we can have Large Outposts, Mining Stations, Drydocks, Ship Building Facitlies, Defensive Platforms, Science Stations, Terraforming Stations, and the behemoth Starbases we have seen, etc etc.

If we can't have Fleet built items, then perhaps "Fleet Episodes", these are special episodes that require large amounts of Fleet in order to a) occupy a planet b) secure alliances with new alien civilizations c) establish a territorial claim/presence. These can range from War Episodes, Planet Evacuations, Large Scale Science Ops, whatever, list goes on. This could be an easier task to implement than the former option.

Lets incorporate the above implementations into world persistence

Now it seems many people want to see Universe maps have some level of persistence beyond social hubs. To circumvent the problem of thousands of planets being added to our universe maps upon each log in... we could have 'intervals'. Say for example, the federation players discover a total of 5000 new planets in one month. Each starship captain can send in those base coordinates to starfleet if they so wish. Then monthly or every six months whatever, StarFleet could "update" everyone's Star Charts. To prevent massive updates additionally... certain criteria would have to be met in order for them to be included in Factional star maps.

For example, if I discover a system which is valuable either for resources, or technology, or a great alien civilization... the newly discovered system would have to have prerequisites met, i.e. either a Space Station built or a Special Fleet Episode to be completed. This would prevent Star Map updates from being overwhelming AND would incorporate Sandbox elements into the game.

Additional Food for thought
Each Faction could have special custom maps. For example, if a Klingon Fleet discovers and successfully conquers a dilithium rich planet... it could be uploaded into their factional maps. A planet thus that the federation knwos nothing about... until they stumble upon it... ooooh. I realize however this could cause problems if people were allowed to roll Klingon AND Federation characters... but there could be ways around this such as coordinate safe keeping by fleets and this and that who knows eh? Maybe fleets could share map information with each other.


What do you guys think. Do you have any additional problem solving suggestions to add, constructive criticism... would you even be excited to have these types of game play mechanics?

Summary
1) Sandbox Elements:

PlayerBuilt Equipment/Fleet Built Equipment, simple at launch which can lead to capturing or claiming territory for one's faction
Episodes that are Fleet Based which can lead to capturing or claiming territory for one's faction

2) Persistent Elements:

Have the Universe Map updated at Intervals (i.e. Starfleet Star Charts are updated every two, 6 months whatever.
Planets/Systems must meet certain prerequisites in order to be added to the Universe Map (or Faction Map) such as a completed Communications Array, Small Outpost, or a completed special Fleet Episode Content.


I believe there will be some dynamic pushing and pulling between the federation and klingons due to outcome of planned events at launch. Similar but much simpler than the eve war.

Personally, I am not a big fan of player permanent structure. I think those structures complicate the crafting system and eventually clutter up space or planets. Then there is the vacuum of space where content could have been but instead the dev resources that could have come up with content for everyone spent it for a few players that wanted to run a space station or factory minigame.

I think minigames should be released after game launch. Minigames such as crafting, Spacestation management, dynamic player run factions w territories etc. There is a place for those things but not at release imo.

Right now the devs should continue to focus on the basics things that every player will use and enjoy. That being said its good to have ideas like these flying around so devs can add attributes and make the way simpler to implement these ideas in future expansions.

[loyaltrekie]

I think minigames should be released after game launch. Minigames such as crafting,
Is it necessary to quote the entire post? Its a pain to scroll through multiquotes for no reason.

Secondly; crafting is hardly a "mini game" and not including it at launch, wtf? Even if you don't "like" crafting, in most games it played a very vital part...so just wow.

[WikiUltimate]

Is it necessary to quote the entire post? Its a pain to scroll through multiquotes for no reason.

Secondly; crafting is hardly a "mini game" and not including it at launch, wtf? Even if you don't "like" crafting, in most games it played a very vital part...so just wow.

QFE

man, just cuz you don't like crafting dose not mean it's not important, or should be sloted as a "mini-game"

maybe we should make PvP a "mini-game", and PvE, exploration, hel, why don't we just make everything mini-games... want to talk to someone, Mini-game.... want to buy something, Mini-game,; want an upgrade, mini-game...

many people play MMO just for the crafting element, same goes for the RPs and PvPers.

[eqfan592]

QFE

man, just cuz you don't like crafting dose not mean it's not important, or should be sloted as a "mini-game"

maybe we should make PvP a "mini-game", and PvE, exploration, hel, why don't we just make everything mini-games... want to talk to someone, Mini-game.... want to buy something, Mini-game,; want an upgrade, mini-game...

many people play MMO just for the crafting element, same goes for the RPs and PvPers.

Character creation? Mini-game! Adjusting your ships throttle? Mini game! lol, this is fun!

Seriously though, I have to agree with you and loyaltrekie 100% here. Even if you don't like crafting, it shouldn't be thought of as a "mini game" when it's a very important feature for so many people.

[benni1992]

Without getting myself too far into this 'mini-game' debate, I would like to say that I agree that crafting and related things should not be considered mini-games. They are an integral part to any game.

I would also like to say that I like the ingenuity and creativity of the OP's ideas. It offers a good compromise for persistence. I especially like the idea of updating star-charts every little while. It's offers a goal for each faction to reach. However, I believe that we do not know nearly as much as we need to about Cryptic's game engine to say what should be done in order to compromise. We don't even know for sure if it is impossible for the game engine to do what we ask of it (in terms of persistence). Just because past Cryptic games have not done this does not mean that the game engine in incapable of doing so.

One thing that should be considered is that as a company, I'd imagine Cryptic has high hopes for this game and its player base. They would almost certainly have projections of the beginning player base, as well as growth predictions based on their other games. When one considers that CoX was completely successful and that CO seems to be following in its footsteps, Cryptic would most likely be producing a game to accommodate a large player base. When we consider also that many people will simply wish to explore and discover planets, it becomes obvious that updating planets across an entire faction is a huge task, and would most likely lead to huge data downloads when these updates come. I would argue that a completely persistent universe (regardless of how much I desire such a thing) is very impractical. To have an exponentially expanding universe that only increases in growth-speed over time seems rather nightmarish from a developer's point of view. Even with the proposed periodical updates, I'd imagine it would be quite difficult to accomplish.

Perhaps a solution to this is that each faction contains its own database of information that is constantly being updated on the server which contains information about explored planets in the galaxy (maybe even a report system in the game where you can choose to send information about your discoveries to Starfleet?) The only time it would be neccesary to access this information is when a player chooses to do so, and when a player chooses to visit a particular sector or system is when they download the required information. Essentially, each player is not required to have downloaded the entire universe, but only those which they have visited or are currently occupied. This approach would give the illusion of persistence, because you know that the planet is out there and can be visited when you wish to do so, but it does not exist for that player until they are actually present in the system.

Does this make sense, or am i just rambling?

[SnuffleKitty]

Personally, I am not a big fan of player permanent structure. I think those structures complicate the crafting system and eventually clutter up space or planets. Then there is the vacuum of space where content could have been but instead the dev resources that could have come up with content for everyone spent it for a few players that wanted to run a space station or factory minigame.

Flame on! ;3

But seriously though, how do we justify your standard crafting affair in a game where everyone is a starship captain? Captains don't craft things. Captains captain ships that someone else crafted; presumably a non-captainy sort of someone.

I suppose one would have to assume that our Engineers are going to be our crafters.

But wait a second...oh darn. This thread isn't about crafting. it's about Sandboxes and the like. Wells, what can ya really say that hasn't already been said? EvE online blah blah blah, SwG blah blah, Cryptic had better not screw this up blah blah.

You know what? I followed the development of SwG CLOSELY. I posted on their forums DAILY. Know what I did; er, we did? We speculated like CRAZY.

Speculation is a harsh mistress.

Blah.

-Snuffles

[greyblueorange]

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away, I was a hardcore EVE player. (Other people playing EVE asked me if I slept.) I cancelled my EVE subscription in favour of Champions Online a few days ago, because there's one thing that is rather paradoxically true about EVE's massive sandbox:

It's not actually very much fun.

The reality of 100-person fleets is often a psychotic sleep-deprived fleet commander screaming at everybody on teamspeak.

The reality of realistic logistics is that it means you spend hours and hours and hours moving things from one place to another, an intense boredom that is punctuated by... more boredom.

The reality of realistic warfare is guard duty. Guard duty is well-known as something that is not fun.

The reality of meaningful ship losses is that the ship you spent a month griding for just blew up, and the ******* PVPers who did it to you are heckling you in local and in the forums.

That said, there's probably a way to do something that's similar to EVE without it being quite the painful experience that EVE can be. If I was to redesign the EVE PvP model, I'd probably use some concepts like these:

Empire-controlled space: This is space for people who don't want any part of all that PvP stuff. No PVP here, unless it's something equivalent to CO's Hero Games stuff.

Pirate regions: This is space that can't be controlled, ever. This is a place that has some awesome resources/drops/whatever in its tough NPCs, and is a place where players can hunt each other and get some kind of nifty reward for getting kills. If you lose your ship in the Pirate regions, it gets replaced, but you're not allowed back in there for [insert significant but not excessively annoying amount of time here - an hour?]

Empire-contested space: This is space for people who want to engage in warfare against another empire. You don't get the nifty drops that you get in pirate space, but you can get medals and special 'empire war' thingies. Ship loss is penalized by a lockout, as per the pirate regions. A highly-visible tracker is available that shows how the empires are doing against each other.

Things that EVE does that should not regarded as 'cautionary lessons' not to be repeated in a game that's tying to be fun (Zero Punctuation was right about EVE):
Locking PvPers out of empire space
Allowing PvP in empire space
Permanent loss of your ship when you get it blown up
The whole 'lowsec' concept in its entirety

Things that EVE gets right, although they might not be worth repeating:
It is the most realistic economic simulator out there, bar none (this really does rely on all of the painful stuff, unfortunately)
Highly-sophisticated market
Extremely customizable ships

LtCdr(Ret) BluOrange

[loyaltrekie]

Awesome, an Eve review; just what I expected when I opened this thread.

[SnuffleKitty]

Awesome, an Eve review; just what I expected when I opened this thread.

It's my fault. He must have seen my passing reference and gotten all excited. ;3

-Snuffles

[JacobFlowers]

Without getting myself too far into this 'mini-game' debate, I would like to say that I agree that crafting and related things should not be considered mini-games. They are an integral part to any game.

I would also like to say that I like the ingenuity and creativity of the OP's ideas. It offers a good compromise for persistence. I especially like the idea of updating star-charts every little while. It's offers a goal for each faction to reach. However, I believe that we do not know nearly as much as we need to about Cryptic's game engine to say what should be done in order to compromise. We don't even know for sure if it is impossible for the game engine to do what we ask of it (in terms of persistence). Just because past Cryptic games have not done this does not mean that the game engine in incapable of doing so.

Thanks for the compliment. As for Cryptic's game engine capabilities, you are right. I don't know too much about. I was only going off of hearsay from other people. It'd be nice if Cryptic chimed in and told us a little about the engine and its capabilities, especially for being an 8 year old technology.


One thing that should be considered is that as a company, I'd imagine Cryptic has high hopes for this game and its player base. They would almost certainly have projections of the beginning player base, as well as growth predictions based on their other games. When one considers that CoX was completely successful and that CO seems to be following in its footsteps, Cryptic would most likely be producing a game to accommodate a large player base. When we consider also that many people will simply wish to explore and discover planets, it becomes obvious that updating planets across an entire faction is a huge task, and would most likely lead to huge data downloads when these updates come. I would argue that a completely persistent universe (regardless of how much I desire such a thing) is very impractical. To have an exponentially expanding universe that only increases in growth-speed over time seems rather nightmarish from a developer's point of view. Even with the proposed periodical updates, I'd imagine it would be quite difficult to accomplish.

You are right about the overwhelming demands required to implement such a system. One way to counter this is to create very high prerequisites so that planets added to Faction maps are added at a much slower pace... muuuuuch slower. It could take maybe months and and loads of manpower to meat the requirements. If said system gets added to a Faction Territory, then that faction will get a bonus... this could be a really great goal oriented game play. For example, lets say the Federation discover a new civilization that just recently developed warp travel. Their ships are weak, but possess massive leaps in Shield Technology or stealth abilities. They are interested in joining the federation but request their home system be safeguarded for a certian amount of time, or they need a planet mass evacuated, or they require federation influence and trading for a certain amount of time, or a starbase (which could take months to build) needs to be built, etc. The klingons on the other hand could forcibly take this system over, woot, but it would have to be a massive and epic battle campaign (neat to think of smaller warfare campaigns that are player initiated incorporated into gameplay, what do you think?). And even after the forces are defeated, a facility needs to be built or this or that or the other, etc etc.

Perhaps a solution to this is that each faction contains its own database of information that is constantly being updated on the server which contains information about explored planets in the galaxy (maybe even a report system in the game where you can choose to send information about your discoveries to Starfleet?) The only time it would be necessary to access this information is when a player chooses to do so, and when a player chooses to visit a particular sector or system is when they download the required information. Essentially, each player is not required to have downloaded the entire universe, but only those which they have visited or are currently occupied. This approach would give the illusion of persistence, because you know that the planet is out there and can be visited when you wish to do so, but it does not exist for that player until they are actually present in the system.

Does this make sense, or am i just rambling?

That really isn't such a bad idea. While it is persistence on a 'small scale' it would certainly be better than nothing. Overall however, I would like at least in the future of STO for there to be more persistence beyond this... such as territories changing sides in the conflict etc etc, and not just the PvP zones, this is war after all, border territories even though they are part of fed or klingon space should still be at risk of incursion.

[Tain]

There is really no place for crafting in a game where everyone is playing as the captain of a ship that has, in effect, the ability to turn water into wine. Anything you need which can't be provided by your replicators will be provided by starfleet or the klingon high command. What exactly is a crafters job in star trek other than redundancy? Pushing the button on the industrial replicator?

[JacobFlowers]

There is really no place for crafting in a game where everyone is playing as the captain of a ship that has, in effect, the ability to turn water into wine. Anything you need which can't be provided by your replicators will be provided by starfleet or the klingon high command. What exactly is a crafters job in star trek other than redundancy? Pushing the button on the industrial replicator?

It could be more 'on the go crafting'. For example, crafting wouldn't involve common product, but rather uncommmon. Discover some new substance on an alien world, find new technology on an abandaoned space station, receive blue prints for a new kind of attack shuttle as a reward for helping someone out... all of these could be more specialty items that are crafted and then returned to the Faction's command center.

I would see crafting as benefitting the entire faction, as well as making adjustments to your own ship. I do have to agree however, that a 'traditional' crafting system will not fit well into a Star Trek universe unless it is adapted.

[Tain]

It could be more 'on the go crafting'. For example, crafting wouldn't involve common product, but rather uncommmon. Discover some new substance on an alien world, find new technology on an abandaoned space station, receive blue prints for a new kind of attack shuttle as a reward for helping someone out... all of these could be more specialty items that are crafted and then returned to the Faction's command center.


Ahh, I think I see where you are coming from now. More of a sort of field expediency/resourcefulness skill than a make-product-sell-product scheme. That could definitely work.

[.Spartan]

Without getting myself too far into this 'mini-game' debate, I would like to say that I agree that crafting and related things should not be considered mini-games. They are an integral part to any game.

I would also like to say that I like the ingenuity and creativity of the OP's ideas. It offers a good compromise for persistence. I especially like the idea of updating star-charts every little while. It's offers a goal for each faction to reach. However, I believe that we do not know nearly as much as we need to about Cryptic's game engine to say what should be done in order to compromise. We don't even know for sure if it is impossible for the game engine to do what we ask of it (in terms of persistence). Just because past Cryptic games have not done this does not mean that the game engine in incapable of doing so.


This - nuff said...

[Nyanya]

Now it seems many people want to see Universe maps have some level of persistence beyond social hubs. To circumvent the problem of thousands of planets being added to our universe maps upon each log in... we could have 'intervals'. Say for example, the federation players discover a total of 5000 new planets in one month. Each starship captain can send in those base coordinates to starfleet if they so wish. Then monthly or every six months whatever, StarFleet could "update" everyone's Star Charts. To prevent massive updates additionally... certain criteria would have to be met in order for them to be included in Factional star maps.
Sorry for skipping over your other arguments, but I wanted to respond to this one in particular.

You see, I think your estimate of how many planets the entire Federation playerbase would discover is exceedingly low. Even just a very low estimate of the total number of players this game might have would be 200,000 (and that is low as I expect that Cryptic/Atari are hoping for something closer to a million players). Each of those players is likely to discover several planets a week (if not a day). I think that ten planets per player per month is another low estimate. And if only half of those players are Federation (and it's likely to be much more) then that's still at least a million new planets a month. Now say that only 10% of those are actually sent in, then you still have 100,000 planets to sift through.

On the other side of it, adding even just a couple of new planets a month would lead to the star chart pretty soon getting incredibly crowded. So they would have to limit it to an extremely small number.* What this means is that the chance of your planet actually being added is exceedingly small, to the point of making one wonder why to have that system to begin with. All it would do is require a lot of extra work to either manually go through all those planets to select a few, or to write a system that somehow qualifies the planets and picks the best ones.

Instead it seems much better for the players and easier for the developers to just now and then add a few developer-made planets. For the players the result would be the same, except that now the developers can guarantee quality (and do so much easier as they control the creation of the planets). They could even manually craft some planets to ensure unique experiences.

I realize that this somewhat goes against your aims to make the world more sandbox (or rather, to give the players more influence on their environment). But if you've got a single universe with hundreds of thousands of people then you can't really have all those people constantly add to the universe or the universe would pretty soon be full (unless you make this adding completely insignificant to begin with).

The way to get your sandbox experience of an expanding universe with ever newer planets that other players discover is by having those other players directly share them with you. That would mean that your sandbox would really just include the sand castles your friends found, but isn't that better than some random stranger doing so? (And if you want that you can still perhaps trade planet locations with random strangers.)



* You could argue 'then only do it once every six months', but in six months you'd also have six times the number of planets sent in.

[dru_mcd]

.... Even just a very low estimate of the total number of players this game might have would be 200,000 (and that is low as I expect that Cryptic/Atari are hoping for something closer to a million players).
.

Arn't they having these planets being made by their automatic Genesis System?

In another thread, I did some speculation on that based on the real size of the Milky Way and the estimate of how many stars might have a planetary system. Assuming 200,000 players finding one M-class planet per day, I calculated that it would take 824 years to find them all!

Now, that's just playing with numbers, but if Cryptic really wanted to make a game map that was semi-realistic I don't see any reason that they could. And that wasn't even counting the other things that you could run into in space (nebulas, black holes, pulsars, whatever). But remember, the Galaxy is a BIG place. I would hope that the terrain would be adequatly "spaced out" so it would take a little effort to get to these interesing places. I know that they're not going for "realistic" warp travel times, but if they don't want us all banging into each other all the time - I hope they have a feel for just how big a place we're talking about.

If the Genesis System is robust enough, there also ought to be enough randomness to keep it fresh for a while. After all, lots of types of planets and variations in the atmosphere/lithosphere/hydrosphere, etc. So, nothing says that they have to be all inhabited with an intellegent alien civilization. It could just be a plain old rock too. I could easily give you enough variables to have more than a billion permutations without breaking a sweat.

But, alas, speculation - I hope that they find a way to balance gameplay with the actual scale that we know is out there. There should be enough room for everything.

[JacobFlowers]

Sorry for skipping over your other arguments, but I wanted to respond to this one in particular.

* You could argue 'then only do it once every six months', but in six months you'd also have six times the number of planets sent in.

That isn't entirely correct. Cryptic could design things in such a way, that in order for planet to be added to the Universal map, the prerequisites would have to be pretty high, perhaps involving a lot of resources or players to achieve this goal. This is outlined in my OP ;)

[Musterion]

I'd still love to know how they're going to effect these things they talk of, competitive PVE for regions of space, meaningful PVP etc, with all this instancing. Instance #4 has the Klingons steamrolling through the quadrant and controlling sector 747, where just over in instance #9, it's the exact opposite and the Klingons are feeble.

[ransomwk]

First off, please forgive the cartoonyness of my picture.


Consider the following possibility;

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/6932/mapgd.jpg

Blue is Federation space, Red is Klingon space, Green is Romulan space, Yellow is neutral peoples, Grey Unexplored space. The gray circles are the "star clusters" the devs have spoken of.

Inside the gray circles, player discovered worlds could be deleted from the database to make room for others. This can be explained away by saying that the star cluster contains several tens of thousands of stars, so no two players should be finding the same thing independently.

All other areas would be persistent, and contain various "sand box" elements, such as regular civilian traffic, npc patrols, etc..

The gray areas outside the four colored areas are also unexplored, and could work in a similar manner to the star clusters, but would also be persistent, and would contain those discoverable worlds which can join one faction or another.

After the game has been live for some time, most of the outlying gray would have turned one color or another depending on the faction which gains control over the star systems there.

[Nyanya]

That isn't entirely correct. Cryptic could design things in such a way, that in order for planet to be added to the Universal map, the prerequisites would have to be pretty high, perhaps involving a lot of resources or players to achieve this goal. This is outlined in my OP ;)
Those prerequisites might limit how many planets get added, but in six months you’d still have six times the number of planets sent in by players (compared to one month).

Those prerequisites just do what I was saying to begin with: limit the number of planets to an extremely small number which, considering the number of planets sent in for evaluation means that there’s pretty much zero chance of one of your planets being added (not unlike the chance to win the lottery).

This extremely tiny chance that an individual’s planet will gets added, combined with the massive amount of work required to pick planets to add, means that it’s as good as worthless. A much more efficient approach is just the developers adding planets manually and for the rest let each player’s sandbox universe expand by sharing planets with each other directly.

This is outlined in my previous post. ;)

[peter13317]

Although I like many of the ideas, I struggle to find the point of making suggestions like this so far into development, I mean with closed beta right around the corner, to make many of the changes posted the dates would have to be pushed back massivley, You can't you expect them to be even considering stuff like this when they already have enough work to do.

[adamflux]

jacob; while i ilke the idea that you're getting at, I stopped reading the moment you proposed to put material tht was "tedious" into the game. I don't want to play a tedious game. I want to play a fun game. EVE is fun because the slower parts are progression towards profit. let's avoid tedious things.

[Griffin]

I believe Rekhan or somebody more or less flushed any idea of having a dynamic, persistant, player influenced universe in STO, because it clashes with their story driven gameplay mechanics.

Also, a statement made above needs to be addressed before anything else, how can you have a dynamic, persistant, player driven universe when there are 20 copies of the same universe on the same server? The answer is, you can't. So unless the server setup changes, we probably won't see any sandboxing.