Starfield [XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

Yeah, it was weird that no matter where you land, it's cluttered with POIs. Even on barren moons with no resources at the edge of the Settles Systems.
i had a funny moment landing on Jamison and Sarah saying "ah this is a planet i could live on" and then Sam saying "this looks like a nice rock" and then going to a poi with some MAST scientists who say "sorry this is a secret base, we cant tell you what we do here on this planet but we are far away from home and we need your help to kill these spacers" and its like 900 meters from the big city
 
Some big improvements here. Although how the game managed to ship with textures like this in the first place I've no idea.

It's a game 8 years in development and likely was meant until very late in development (likely the ms purchase) and I doubt they would have had time to go through and remake all the textures. The difference between the textures in the video are very minute.
 
It's a game 8 years in development and likely was meant until very late in development (likely the ms purchase) and I doubt they would have had time to go through and remake all the textures. The difference between the textures in the video are very minute.

Minute? Are you watching on a 640x480 monitor?

As for the effort required, this modder managed to do this in 2 weeks in his spare time without any access to the games development environment.
 
Minute? Are you watching on a 640x480 monitor?

As for the effort required, this modder managed to do this in 2 weeks in his spare time without any access to the games development environment.
No, I was watching it on my surface pro 9. The faces for instance don't really do much to help them out. The ground textures are nicer sure but when you are in motion running across the planet they wont really do much for image quality unless you are zoomed in on the textures as this video shows. About the only welcome improvement is the fire sections which . Even when they show the fire monument you can see the rest of the air doesn't show much improvement.
 
There were necessary and compelling reasons to travel and explore those world, but there isn't an equivalent need travel/explore in Starfield. For a start, everything in space and on planets is sign-posted on the scanner. You won't climb over a mountain and see a cool building you didn't expect because the building will be visible on your compass long before you start climbing your space mountain. Likewise in space, it's small zones of space strung together by loading zones, or just skipped over entirely. Ergo, it feels massively different to Bethesda's earlier games. The distance between a planet and its moon is no different to two planets on opposing edges of space so there is no sense is being far away from your home planet.

True but not true. Things will pop up on your scanner but only if you are within a certain distance. I played most of my 20 hours so far thinking there are only 3 or 4 POI for each landing. But I was hunting for a lost ship on a Saturn moon so I literally climbed to the highest point of a mining outpost and used my sniper scope to find POIs. My thinking was a lost ship wouldn't automatically generated a POI on my scanner. I found 4 out of the way POIs on the map using this method.

Each planet is actually entirely mapped geographically in terms of biomes and resources. When you chose a landing site a map is procedurally generated and saved to your game. I watched a youtube video regarding Starfield mining and the guy pointed to a particular planet and an exact area on the planet where you could mine 5 resources with one outpost. His direction of the location was spot on. However, initially I was trying to use landmarks in his video to find the exact area and it proved impossible. I was just picking new landing spots in the general area he pointed out to find the exact location he was showing in the video when I realized I was just procedurally generating a new map with each new landing. On my fifth attempt, my map had 4 towering ancient ruins (not accessible) made from the same materials as the artifacts and were listed as gravitational anomalies.

Most of the procedural POIs are copy and paste but it seems some POIs are more readily generated then others. There a few POIs I see all the time, others that seem to be derivatives built procedurally and there are others I've only seen once and unique.

Its seems like Bethseda knew that a game that size can't be filled out with unique POIs but it didn't want to distribute the same procedurally generated POIs evenly across the universe. So you can be rewarded for your exploration but there are plenty of generic POIs to keep your trigger finger happy.
 
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True but not true. Things will pop up on your scanner but only if you are within a certain distance.
My experience of having explored a lot of random planets and moons, is the scanner will show place compass points for all POIs up to around 1.2km.

I played most of my 20 hours so far thinking there are only 3 or 4 POI for each landing. But I was hunting for a lost ship on a Saturn moon so I literally climbed to the highest point of a mining outpost and used my sniper scope to find POIs.
The planets generate as you land at a point (Todd said this in June's Direct), then then the POIs generate around you explore. From a high point you can see POIs beyond visible scanner range, what I'm saying is, if you are on one side of a mountain/hill, there is little point exploring it for caves or recessed bases because if there was something present, it would already be visible on your scanner.

Each planet is actually entirely mapped geographically in terms of biomes and resources.
Right, and I think Bethesda did a fantastic job here. Not only is the procedurally-generated topography diverse, believable and in many cases, absolutely stunning, it's clear that they invested in ensuring that the way resources are seeded naturally on planets and moons is semi-scientifically sensible, or at least consistent. Where I think Starfield misses a trick is you don't need outposts at all. I discovered that between opportunistic mining, scavenging and occasionally buying resources, was all I needed to craft weapon and suit mods.

There was a really interesting post on reddit yesterday, which I would recommend spending five minutes to read. It speculates that the mid-development change to fuel consumption (to fuel not being consumed on jumps) rendered the outpost mechanic as highly optional and I think his person hit the nail on the head, particularly when you consider the UI retains elements of fuel consumption being a key mechanic. If He3 (fuel) depleted you explored, you would need He3 refuelling point around the Settled Systems to explore further out. This would mean building Outposts to produce He3, and ship to other outposts that existed as refuelling points - and to defend those outposts as well.

There looks to be a ton of depth to the outpost building, but no need for it from a gameplay perspective. I think fuel consumption will very likely return in the upcoming survival mode and like the survival mode in Fallout 4, it will massively change the game. Just like you could ignore settlement building in Fallout 4 main mode, in survival mode settlements become necessary to support exploration around the commonwealth. When you cannot infinitely fast travel, you would need outposts as points to rest, restock, refuel and offload cargo to ship it back to Jemison or Akila to sell.

Most of the procedural POIs are copy and paste but it seems some POIs are more readily generated then others. There a few POIs I see all the time, others that seem to be derivatives built procedurally and there are others I've only seen once and unique.
There are different 'size' POIs, some come in small, medium and large variations with the medium size ones seemingly generated the least often. This may be what you think is a unique POI, that or your stumbled on a unique structure tied to a main quest but outside of the quest itself. Continue exploring and you'll see that total number of POIs designs are under 20. I think it's 18, the layouts have been found in the game files.

If the game can procedurally generate unique bases, it's not doing so at launch.
 
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I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but I think that the space you are flying your ship, is actually the star map.
Always been. The only thing missing is just being able to manually pilot into a planet.

But they need to fix planets first.
Space travel is real. Planets are procedurally generated locations on landing.

That would mean every planet would need a seed generated at the start. Or there has to be some sort of online thing where all this seed information is stored.

I dunno. It’s fairly large lift. Maybe Starfield 2 when always online is a thing
 
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Cutting features to make the game more focused or broadly appealing is fine, but I don't think the game actually does one thing particularly well.

The writing in terms of characters, story, and world-building is weak to the point of feeling bizarre at times. The themes and concepts are age appropriate for a YA novel, but the actual writing and execution reads as though they were trying to package them for an 8-12 demographic. It's straddling this weird divide between sexual repression and thirst for romance; every character seems written to be the object of romantic desire, but somehow no one has been taught the birds and the bees. Rather than writing games for their own intellectual level they're attempting to write for their kids.
 
My experience of having explored a lot of random planets and moons, is the scanner will show place compass points for all POIs up to around 1.2km.


The planets generate as you land at a point (Todd said this in June's Direct), then then the POIs generate around you explore. From a high point you can see POIs beyond visible scanner range, what I'm saying is, if you are on one side of a mountain/hill, there is little point exploring it for caves or recessed bases because if there was something present, it would already be visible on your scanner.


Right, and I think Bethesda did a fantastic job here. Not only is the procedurally-generated topography diverse, believable and in many cases, absolutely stunning, it's clear that they invested in ensuring that the way resources are seeded naturally on planets and moons is semi-scientifically sensible, or at least consistent. Where I think Starfield misses a trick is you don't need outposts at all. I discovered that between opportunistic mining, scavenging and occasionally buying resources, was all I needed to craft weapon and suit mods.

There was a really interesting post on reddit yesterday, which I would recommend spending five minutes to read. It speculates that the mid-development change to fuel consumption (to fuel not being consumed on jumps) rendered the outpost mechanic as highly optional and I think his person hit the nail on the head, particularly when you consider the UI retains elements of fuel consumption being a key mechanic. If He3 (fuel) depleted you explored, you would need He3 refuelling point around the Settled Systems to explore further out. This would mean building Outposts to produce He3, and ship to other outposts that existed as refuelling points - and to defend those outposts as well.

There looks to be a ton of depth to the outpost building, but no need for it from a gameplay perspective. I think fuel consumption will very likely return in the upcoming survival mode and like the survival mode in Fallout 4, it will massively change the game. Just like you could ignore settlement building in Fallout 4 main mode, in survival mode settlements become necessary to support exploration around the commonwealth. When you cannot infinitely fast travel, you would need outposts as points to rest, restock, refuel and offload cargo to ship it back to Jemison or Akila to sell.


There are different 'size' POIs, some come in small, medium and large variations with the medium size ones seemingly generated the least often. This may be what you think is a unique POI, that or your stumbled on a unique structure tied to a main quest but outside of the quest itself. Continue exploring and you'll see that total number of POIs designs are under 20. I think it's 18, the layouts have been found in the game files.

If the game can procedurally generate unique bases, it's not doing so at launch.

There are 18 types of POI (science outpost, mining outpost, caves, abandon mine, anomalies, industrial outpost, construction site, fracking facility, listening outpost, etc.)

Here is the research tower POI which is a copy and paste generic. Two different towers.

IMG_0693.jpegIMG_0694.jpeg

Here are abandoned mines. These aren’t same.

IMG_0695.jpegIMG_0696.jpegIMG_0697.jpeg

Here are two abandoned bionics labs.

IMG_0699.jpegIMG_0698.jpeg

All these are from random landings so procedurally generated maps on two different moons.
 
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Yeah, the immersive-sim element definitely comes up short in too many places, maybe all places. Food crafting in a game without hunger, sleep without tiredness, transportation without flying your space ship, space ship fuel that doesn't fuel your space ship, trading without an economy. The NPCs that are interactive are generally unkillable and unsatisfyingly plastic -- nothing you say or do can't be unsaid or undone, and none of it really changes the gameplay. You can tell an NPC you love them, then immediately end it, then love them again, and they react with the same prompts over and over, and they offer no sign of having a preference one way or the other. I expected to get rebuffed, friend-zoned, or have them be dissatisfied with mere friendship. And those are the hero NPCs you'd expect to have a lot of articulation work put into them; the rest of the NPCs are nameless that are spawned and despawned to be fodder to shoot at or look at.

For a game with so much work going into it there's a surprising lack of 'giving a shit' polish. Like... if you're writing a quest line where you happen upon a ship of refugee colonists that have been marooned for generations, maybe you shouldn't have a rainbow of ethnicities and random regional accents to represent the crew? It's not like they had to meet some Hollywood diversity quota for the character models? Why go to the trouble of producing that quest line if your execution of it makes it a joke and undercuts the verisimilitude?

That was one of my biggest complaints with FO4 where there would be random NPCs assigned and you'd come across the leader of bloodthirsty raiders as some waif-looking character.

There are these small tweaks that Bethesda can do to make their games immersive. I remember using a mod for randomizing enemies like mole rats in FO3 with them having different stats, sizes and heights etc. I thought it would become a staple from thereon but didn't happen. The legendary enemy system was okish but lacked the realism that mod brought.
 
how to get digidicks?

im pulling my hairs scavanging the clutters. got so many potted plants lol. but very few of these fancy lockpicks.
 
how to get digidicks?

im pulling my hairs scavanging the clutters. got so many potted plants lol. but very few of these fancy lockpicks.
You loot them at any of the outposts and places you go, or buy them from vendors.
 
If you're looting a lot then you'll be running into having to do the vendor -> sleep -> vendor loop to reset the vendor's money in order to sell all your junk. Their inventory will also reset, so you can buy up whatever digipicks and anything else you're short on each sleep cycle.
 
im having problems getting adhesive (because the vacuum tape thats all over the place is obviously not adhesive?)
according to the internet a good place to get it is the planet Gagarin which has a plant which gives adhesive

so im fixin to level up botany and build an outpost there to get it
 
Yeah, IIRC it was the round cactus thingies that had the adhesive. Built an outpost with a couple greenhouses, output links to a few big storage crates, took a long sleep to instantly fill them, and that's probably all the adhesive you'll ever need. Incidentally, that was the first and last time I ever had to engage with the botany tree and greenhouses. After that I seemed to accumulate whatever bits and bobs I needed to complete the crafting tech trees without having to deliberately farm.
 
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new patch
 
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