HWS 12 Teaser | Big Bang and HWS Star Fragments

HWS Announcements
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Dear HWS Community,

we are very proud and even more excited to announce one of the biggest HWS 12 Teaser we have in store for you!

I am still working on everything mentioned in the video (and thus work in progress) and it is not super professional but I couldn’t resist to show it to you as early as possible!

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The HWS Big Bang

I assume you watched the video above but I try to highlight few things in this announcement again.

How comes?

So why a Big Bang and where did this crazy idea came from?

Not mentioning my preference to look at real life / Nature / Science for inspiration, after I saw the Teaser images of 10 000 Stars the first thing I had in my mind was “oh snap, what about performance and PvP?”. So I thought more about it. For example that it’s a paradise for PvE, but how to really make it work in terms of performance and PvP?

Performance vs Gameplay?

I mean for PvP it might be also cool to just find a place, build and “hope” :pray: that nobody finds you, right? The thrill that you might get found is always out there. One step further even: can we establish a galactic territory warfare game like EVE or Starbase? Where parts of the Galaxy can be claimed by factions and they try to fight for territory in a galactic battle?
Well, that might come in the future :nerd_face:

So what about performance? The Eleon EXP server showed, that a simple sentence “Who ever visits the most solar systems, get a cookie from me”, can blow up fast. 4 Days later 500+ Solar Systems were discovered. 20 000 folders and 60 000+ files were created.

Now keeping this in mind and observing the last 4 years, I realized a natural flow during a 3 month season.

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At the beginning of a season we have a lot of players and over time it gets less. Or let me say the hardware is currently chillin’ on HWS.
So with the Big Bang I kind of reverse this pattern in a way to normalize the pressure for the hardware.
While we have a lot of players at the beginning, we have only the core HWS Star universe from HWS 11. But overtime, more and more Stars get added, while less players, eventually, will still play. Keeping the playfields loaded at the same time at the same level.

Those are calculated assumptions and the HWS 11 season showed that we never had such a consistent high player count for 3 months straight.
Nevertheless I think it might work very good.

Speaking in general about the Big Bang idea there are so many more cool things we can do with it, that we just have to test it out!

How does it works?

Let’s talk a little bit more in detail about the Big Bang.
As I said, we start with our reworked HWS 11 universe as the core and then, increase the Galaxy size by +63 Light years in form of “rings” on top of it, every day.
63 because it will equal after 90 days roughly 5700 Light Years, which is the max. radius of our Galaxy in my setup. In this whole Galaxy there will be 7000 - 7777 Stars in total at the end.
Those daily added Stars will contain PvE playfields (Planets, Moons, Spaces).
Every Friday however the Stars that gets added will only contain PvP playfields.

PvP Radar Scan Mechanics

Over the time, you still have a lot of PvP playfields, right? You gonna search for days for pewpew?
That is where our planned reworked Radar Mechanic will come into play.
We rework our current Exploration reward feature to a dynamic one.

You get rewarded everywhere on those systems now, if you live there and have a special Radar put on your Base! However, once you do, the fa:scan feature gets upgraded to tell everyone the Playfield name, where player Bases are located in PvP. Similar to Player Bounty Hunt, you can call it now Structure Bounty Hunt. Fight not for your head but for your Base!
If the game will add Player Faction Territory in the Galaxy Map, this will be basically the replacement for that and the start of the above mentioned “Galactic Warfare”.

You can remove the Radar from your Base of course, to not get tracked but those won’t give you special daily rewards anymore.

The idea for that came obviously from the core questions I saw everywhere and from myself “How do players find each other in PvP with thousands of playfields?”.

What about the Hot Spot?

Last but not least you always have to make the decision to add up those daily rewards and spread around the Galaxy versus getting tracked. Or just stay in the Center of the Galaxy because there will be still the highest density of rare resources and Events. The true Hot Spot so to speak.
You might see my sub idea to give Veterans here still the perfect PvP hot spot but new players or learning players a chance to dive into PvP a bit more smooth, slow but still thrilling.

What about PvE?

Well, everyone is saying Alpha 12 is a PvE patch but hands down, it’s not 100% right.
Why? Because where is the content for all those PvE playfields? Or do you like to visit thousands of the same Temperate planets and POIs every time? I mean even PvE needs a bit more than just that, right.

And here is the biggest issue or well time consuming thing I will probably still working on for HWS 13 and 14.
My goal is to make almost every added daily or at least weekly Big Bang ring a variation. That you always can be excited of “what’s coming next day/week”? Almost like those seasons in some games? Yes, let’s say we have mini-seasons in our big season. Another intention of the Big Bang.
But generating PvE content is harder than PvP content (because in PvP the players = infinite, are creating the content itself).
Either way remember that the Center of the HWS Galaxy will always contain the full power of HWS specific POIs, Missions, Quests and Events.

Still, to go even further and to back my Big Bang idea, I came up with another thing; the HWS Star Fragments!

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HWS Star Fragments

Now this is a sub idea I had for a very long time if it comes to “motivate players to play a whole season long”.
In combination with the Big Bang, it should feel very natural, rewarding and interesting.
I can’t share the full details of this Feature yet, since it’s still a lot of work behind it. Making the Quests guiding you to them. Creating POIs for them. Handle the process once you claimed them, etc. but the proof of concept worked already very good.
As shown in the video, I think it might give not only PvE a big incentive to hunt for those Star Fragments but also the PvP guys to make it even a Pirate job, to protect or offer a Star Fragment.
It should just add another layer of gameplay and fun throughout 3 months, rewarding those who do, with a permanent OCD slot for next seasons for example.
In the end it’s optional though and don’t force players to do this Story Reward so to speak.

Based on how it will work out in the end, a lot more possibilities will arise from this. Giving such benefits for active players for upcoming seasons can really be motivating in my opinion.
I mean who does not want to be called the “HWS Star Player”, if he got all 7 Star Fragments together, right? :smiley_cat:

Wait there is even more

The video goes on and tells you also about purchasable, findable, winnable Supergates! I’m excited how your reaction about those turns out but I think with the Big Bang idea, these possible convenient short cuts for you, to return from your long journey in hundreds of Light Years out there, quickly to the center, might be perfect.

They work pretty straight foward:

  • If you want your Supergate to be placed in PvP, everyone will have access to them.
  • If you want your Supergate to be placed in PvE, you can choose what faction are allowed to use them.

Once HWS 12 starts or shortly before, we will reveal all information about their possible destinations, how much they will cost, how you can even customize them with different skins and how HWS Patrons get a benefit for those too!

The video ends with a untold feature coming as well. Maybe some of you will spot it :wink:
If not, there will be couple more teasers coming, also about that.

So that’s it for now I think. The biggest Teaser for HWS 12. The biggest addition for HWS and what I always poked about when I saw discussions how to balance PvE and PvP in Alpha 12.
Will my Big Bang idea work? I don’t know 100% yet but I think it has the biggest possibility to turn into an awesome Game Changer in the long run! By now you know me, that I like to think outside the box! With this hybrid of fixed and random universe layout, the creativity is totally endless now.
And my goal will always be to find the perfect balance for PvE and PvP, even if everyone is saying “that is not possible”.
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Thanks for reading and see you all in HWS 12!
Your HWS Team

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Rex.
You don’t have to make google talk for you :stuck_out_tongue:
Everyone thinks their own voice sounds weird on video, but it’s not as bad as you think :wink:

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It’s Amazon’ artificial intelligence Voice system.
For such big teasers, I just give up for now, it needs too much time and strength for me to use my own Voice in such a way, that Youtube can convert it properly into the automatic translation sub titles. And doing it manually with text, consumes even more time. Or making a second video in german, etc.
But thanks for your kind attitude.

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I could imagine this would be abused a little.
A huge amounts of blocks, and the “radar” put underground, and then just spam that on different playfields?
Nobody wants to spend hours searching for a tiny block which contains no loot.

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You can’t.

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Ah okay.
But still. I could imagine it’d be an issue.

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Well, we have to see.
Right now it’s already in discussion how meaningful the 1000 Block bases in those PvP playfields are.
The difference in HWS 12 however is, that putting a Radar on your base is not really a benefit for a player. It’s a trade off. Reward vs Visibility.
And a hunter never knows if his prey is worth the hunt or not. It will just be a helpful guidance.

I’m sure this can be improved along the way though! :slight_smile:

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Looks good… Looks big :woozy_face:

Love the idea about the big bang, this way, as you said, will give clones a reason to come back more and more often during the season…
Maybe we will find a golden moon in there someday :grinning:

Is that rental Apartments at the end there?

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Yes, it is. ^,^

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Your out of the box creativity blows my mind! I love it. I can’t wait to explore the expansion, especially as someone with limited free time. It gives me a cool weekly adventure to explore the new pvp playfields each week.
*big bang expansion​:+1:
*fragments, :+1:
*will the radar on base reward require it to be on for a time period to get the reward?
*unique expansions :+1:

  • Placeable Supergates :+1:
  • i think i saw the untold feature, very intriguing! :+1:
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Liking what I am seeing so far. Thank you Rex for all the time and effort put into hws!

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just… daim…

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Great idea, I really like it a loot,

From my PVE point of view it’s a kind of PVE paradise, but
will these 60+ daily stars have new unique planets,
I would like more to have several star systems with nicely crafted planets than those generated randomly by the system.

From a PVP point of view, it will be to difficult to find a fight if it is almost impossible to find players in space, but here’s an idea (solution):

While first active ping sonar sound was added to the Emperion Alpha 12 Experimental,
first thing that came to my mind was how actual active sonar works in the navy, and how nice it would to have it in Emperions’s space,
were you can get the positions of other ships, while unrevealing yours. Let say using the detection will cost for example reputation points, and not to often (once in 30 min),
it will show your position for a longer time (even with update were your ships is moving),
but of those you detect it will blink on your radar for only few seconds,
it will give targeted players time to escape or atack you.

Thanks for keeping HWS such an amazing Rexxxus

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Ok i think now server can call PVE/(1/5PVP). PVP very low now and u make its less and lesssss

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Read it again dude.
And hotzones will still be there

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Now, there is a need to fly in the PVP, for rare resources, and therefore build PVP equipment, and therefore buy / extract resources for this equipment and therefore these very resources are sold on the market. If in the new universe, the new PVP game fields contain all the rare resources, then this will eventually lead to the collapse of the economy as a whole, and the collapse of the economy will lead to the collapse of the PVE. Rare resources must be RARE and must be FOUGHT for, otherwise they will no longer be rare.
I still have a question in my head why there are so many empty planets in HWS11, because more than half of them are almost uninhabited and visited only because of Racoms. All of the above, my personal opinion.

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Read it again dude.
How many hotzoes now and howmany hotzones was. And how many zones total.
How u think, how many players fly to PVP? 10-15 max. And its dig res in PVP and how many people was fky to PVP at 12? All res MANY in PVP. I think 1-5 come to PVP max.

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The developers themselves do not know why they do so much. They are chasing global trends in the gaming industry. But there is no content for this amount. They made the world huge to hide and radars to look for. And Rex kills both.

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Looks like the only pvp will be for big factions around RP bases. No more piracy, no more danger of getting jumped in pvp, only risk-free consent pvp. Not a fan of this idea, but I guess
that’s what PVE majority was asking for.

If that was not the intention, to make global pvp work just let sector owners see who and when enters the sector. Entered a pirate sector? Prepare to fight. Entered “good faction” sector? You are safe, for the most part.