Wishlist for Custom Gamestart Feature

[Falcrack]

Egosoft has been working on a custom gamestart feature. It has not yet been released, but a mod unlocks its script, and what I have seen of it is very nice. These are the starting things we can edit:

1. Name
2. Gender/character model
3. Credits
4. Completed research
5. Owned blueprints
6. Inventory items
7. Faction relations
8. Personal ship
9. Ship location
10. Property, including multiple owned fleets/ships and stations

This is a very good start! There are a few, hopefully not too difficult to add things I would want to see added to make it even better though:

1. Choose exact location (including altitude above or below ecliptic plane) of each custom station and fleet/ship (not just personal ship), right now we can only choose starting ship location, and the rest of the stuff is spawned nearby out of player control
2. Add in custom ships/stations for non-player controlled factions, along with their exact locations
3. Give initial sets of orders for custom player owned and NPC owned ships (ie protect position, patrol, etc.)
4. Save custom game setup, and be able to share this setup with others

With these changes, we could set up fully customized battle scenarios, so we could test out what sorts of ships would win in different situations. I would love that! There are a few more things I would like to see to more fully customize the game universe, such as a map editor, which would take a bit more work to implement but would be an enormous improvement:

1. Add or remove sectors from the game, choosing sector position on the map
2. Custom sector name or choose from existing sector names so Betty can still speak the sector names, and edit written descriptions for each sector (name, population, whether it can be terraformed, etc.)
3. Determine sector ownership by each faction
4. Mark whether unclaimed sectors are candidates for NPC expansion or are locked
5. Make custom factions, choosing faction name, character model, and blueprints owned by the faction).
6. Add or remove local highways, superhighways, accelerators, and jumpgates, and edit their positions within each sector
7. Edit resource field shapes, positions, and resource density (can choose to use existing resource fields in game, edit them, remove them completely, etc.)
8. Add anomalies, data vaults, and wrecks
9. Set faction relations with each other faction
10. Set number and type of starting stations and ships factions begin the game with which spawn in random locations (not explicitly placed by the player)
11. Set rules for NPC faction regarding maximum fleet size and number of stations per sector, and maximum number of allowable production modules per station, with the option to apply these rules to the player as well
12. Enable or disable campaign
13. Save custom gamestart, enable easy sharing with others

This would allow us to make completely different game universes. It would take a while to set up, but we could save these scenarios, and share them with others, greatly improving the game IMO. Personally, I would set up a wheel-shaped universe, with a central 7 sector cluster owned by the Xenon, and 6 spokes going out from that which lead to clusters of 7 sectors each owned by the player and each of the other factions (TER, ARG, SPL, PAR, and TEL). Everybody would start out with just a few stations and ships, and each faction would be completely hostile to everyone else. Each faction would start out with limited resources in their sectors, with the central Xenon sectors being the most rich in resources. The Kha’ak would have a sector disconnected from everyone, accessible only via anomaly, so if you want to go hunting them in their territory, you have to go alone. Probably best to take a fully loaded carrier!

[Karvat]

Perfect, that's exactly how it should be.
Plus the option to set the diplomacy between factions to change over time.

[Ezarkal]

This is looking nice!

[LameFox]

I'd like an option for a gamestart with persistent cheating ability (spawning things etc). This has often been my biggest hurdle to testing and reporting bugs as starting a vanilla game & getting the stuff I need can be such a huge time sink. Would be much easier to simply toggle cheat mode when starting and be able to create stuff as needed.

[surferx]

I could go for just 1,2 and 8. I can take care of the rest on my own. It would be awesome if we could have a customized gamestart.

[rubahax4]

I would also very much like the opportunity to choose the location of my headquarters. Or to give a way to move the headquarters once for free. I like starting the game from scratch, and the old sector is pretty boring.

[mr.WHO]

I'd also go with selectable plot and universe progression, e.g:
- Finished Paranid civil war with outcome 1,2,3.
- Finished Split civil war with outcome 1,2.