A much needed moment of panspermia.

[Apis4]

Whilst I know everyone is waiting for the CK, and additional mod tools, like an SFEdit to come out, so mods are a lot more challenging at present, I tried my best to trawl back through 42 pages of this forum, and do not think I am repeating anything, so want to get it out there early:

 

This universe is EMPTY.

 

MT-AF!

 

That is this universe of Starfield.

 

I finally ground away enough to have enough credits, high enough level, and max points in Starship Design and Piloting, to build my 'dream ship'.... ok.. not my dream ship... a long way from my dream ship.... but a decent ship which could go ANYWHERE, I do not know how others play.. but I planned that from my first moment in game, when I began my debut playthrough... I sacrificed traits I thought I might like... like specializing in a few different weapons, maxing both stealth and security, like I would in previous BGS games, skilling in to some physical skills JUST enough to get by, and only skilling in to social skills to get Leadership and Starship Command.....and I completely ignored Outposts....JUST so I could get a truly interstellar ship, ASAP, and push well out in to those red dots, 30+ light years away from where I was initially able to fly......

 

 

.....and then I get out there.... and NOTHING.

 

Well... there's a ..... colony which on some level, as an Australian, earnt a special place in my heart :tongue:... and another with some.... famous faces..... and I thought that boded well.... but man... was I wrong... I spent two days now, cruising around all my red dots... making them glow white.... and aside from some pretty weak settler outposts... one literally not much more than a glorified hobo camp, with folk living out of OPEN, shipping containers.... there was NOTHING.

 

There's like what... three big cities.... and like five towns? A few space stations like the Den, and the Clinic, and few dodgy places like the Red Mile.... in all the known Galaxy?

 

Come on. Even if only like.... 1% of the worlds population escaped.... doing the math, if one accepts estimations at current birth rates globally, for where the population would be when Earth lost her atmosphere.... then that's STILL millions and millions of people.

 

 

I know it is just a game... and I know we cannot be expecting realism.... but even Skyrim had more towns. There should be WAY more in this game.

 

So my idea, for anyone wanting to, is as soon as the tools are there, and mayhaps when some savvy modders make additional custom content for the build menu, is for someone, or a group of some ones, to form a thread, pick a planet or moon, in a given system, and add a town. Does not have to be Neon or New Atlantis, or even Akila or Cydonia, but a Gegarin, or New Homestead, or even a Hopetown, every second system at least, really feels like it is sorely needed.

 

I had the randos, way out at like Harking or somewhere... tell me they wanted to turn their 'Settlement' (the hobo one, which was basically a ramshackle assortment of shipping containers, open to the invironment, an ICE PLANET environment mind you)..... in to a long haul trade route rest stop... proper shop, hotel, diner, that kind of thing.

 

Really lady? You are the first people I have seen, at least who were not Fleet or Eclipse, in like four Star Systems.... and you think you are going to get traffic? I mean, they were not even the last stop on the line... the line stopped five planets back.. and they were way TF out on the edge of existence. Yet, it seems to be a dream of no small number of settlements.... though they are always two or three systems away from the nearest properly settled systems (as in active research and mining stations, more than one settlement somewhere).

 

So I really hope someone makes that happen.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Apis4

[Akopian]

An amusing post! i agree with most of it. I am hoping that Bethesda intentionally left plenty of room for mod creators to fill in the world. Seems like Bethesda nowadays can confidently throw a program out there, and the mod creators do a lot of fine tuning and content creation for free. I wonder if the modding community's creativity factors into how much fie tuning they. It seems so easy to pick a possible solutions to a programming challenge, and then allow somebody else, if they want to, explore the other ways of meeting the challenge.

 

This means they do not have to always pick the very best solution. They just need to go ahead and pick one and then leave the rest to the community. That has to take a lot of pressure off of the developers. All the big Bethnesda games seem to be like a playground or just a platform with context for letting their imagination and creativity run riot, creating many different variations of the game from one actual game. Kind of brilliant. I mean, people still play and mod Oblivion. Even Morrowind is still out there.

 

Anyway, thanks for your post. AS you can see, it got me thinking. By the way, there are mods that can increase the frequency of enemy spawns supposedly. I have not used it yet, but I have been eyeing it.

[HeyYou]

Well, keep in mind, we are 20 years out from a major war, and at least one city was completely destroyed... That said, yes, development seems to be a touch slow.... Look what happened here in the US in 200 years. :D We went from an unexplored continent, to a rather populous nation. Granted, we had a pretty much unlimited supply of people coming in, which doesn't seem to be the case for Starfield. Earth is a barren rock. And from what some of the things I have seen, not everyone made it off earth. Still, you would think there would be more significant population centers..... Of course, space is HUGE, and most of it is indeed empty......