Well, as I mentioned above, if they make it like the Deferi Featured Episodes, it will only consist of 5 or so missions that is considered an "exploration" mission. 10 different races, complete with at least 5 in-depth missions in their own nebula comes out to 50 exploration missions per nebula. That's a lot of work on Cryptic's part. This could possibly be alleviated through Foundry missions, but I'm not holding my breath.

Realistically, when the revamp, if it does come out this way, will only have 2-3 maximum alien races per nebula. It doesn't many how many players go through the nebula, but what I'm trying to get at is, that we need an element of randomness in the exploration revamp that 2-3 exploration arcs per nebula won't cover.

Agreed the random generated stuff that they have now is so generic that I don't even bother reading the text anymore. No something needs to be done I think. And yes you can explore 'known' space whole solar systems could take years to explore fully (planets, moons, astroids, ort clouds and so forth and so on).

I think you can have both if there's the opportunity for:

- More variables.
- Randomly generated SECTOR BLOCKS that you can save and revisit, with the possibility of unique souvinirs like combat and non-combat pets, weapons, etc.
- More activities to do per hub.

My model in my head of revamped exploration is that you arrive at a planet with a problem. Through branching dialogue, you choose a series of five activities out of 15-25 total. Whatever choice you make solves the problem. Every planet you visit has a chance to award diplomatic XP if you make the right 5 choices or a "gift" ala the Aid the Planet missions if you make the right 5 choices.

Doing a greater variety of things that may include ground in space on a planet and having multiple planets in an area would feel more like exploration to me, with the key thing being a scenario like this:

The planet is facing an energy crisis.

You get presented with 5 options to find a power source.

A rival group intervenes.

You get 5 options for places to go and ways to deal with them.

The leader's granddaughter is missing.

You get 5 choices for places to look for her, all reasonable.

The power source proves unstable.

You get 5 options for ways to deal with it.

The enemy group returns.

You get 5 options.

There are so many variables you can seed there. The different "acts" of the story can be random. The local population can be random. The environment can be random. And then because you get multiple choices for each "act" even if you got the same one twice, you could change the course of it. Some options would take you to space and back. Others would never leave the ground.

You still go to a random place and do 5 things but the combination of extra variables and that each phase gets determined by a choice you make makes it feel like exploration and puts you in command more.

It may not be in-depth "exploration", but I really enjoy the random star cluster missions and do at least one round of star cluster systems (usually directed to by Jiro Sugihara) daily. I hope that whatever the new exploration stuff ends up manifesting as, we still have a lot of little random stuff to do.

When the Vikings came to the Americas and first met Native Americans, the Native Americans disappeared and were never heard from again.

That's the current exploration model and that's not exploration. We can agree there.

Persistent exploration areas does help: going to an area and being able to cultivate relationships with factions and NPCs in those areas and then see them develop over time.

Games like EVE have better exploration that STO and virtually all the exploration there is around known entities. 0.0 sec space is filled with things that persistent even after you leave and turn of the game. You start to get a distinct feel for the various NPC cultures in EVE as you fly around, from the Sansha invasions that spring up dynamically to merely passing through a different culture's space (i.e. the Amarr or Calderi).

What dstahl suggested from this pre-design interview (this feature is coming after season 4 -or even 5-, so everything is circumspect) is thus:

1) Create known factions and contacts in areas of exploration clusters.
2) Create missions around persistent areas. i.e. If i discover a colony and rescue them, they'll remember next time I visit
3) Integrate the foundry into these systems. Channeling player creations to augment the dailies and any narrative episodes in each sector block.
4) (not discussed but Territory control could play a part in it)

Storyline can't really exist comfortably while procedurally generated. Procedural generation would need to be persistent once it creates it for a client (much like Minecraft) for it to work at all. However, as we've seen from the Genesis system (which is a text-based editor for creating those star cluster missions), the current implementation isn't that great, not at all persistent, and difficult to debug.

The new method suggested sounds like it addresses issues with story, debugging, and persistence that plague the current model. The only weaknesses are that you run out of content (aside from dailies) if either devs or players leave an exploration sector.

However, the direction and detail such persistent factions, relationships, and characters could add would be phenomenal. Imagine if the places felt different because the flavor and nature of conflict between factions in an area varied. Some exploration clusters might have dominant warring factions while others might weigh heavily toward pre-warp cultures or strange space (like black holes).

They could could augment their own dailies and storylines with the following:

1) Foundry Content - allow users to, if they want, flesh out factions by using known entities and wildcards more in content. Some users may not be good at telling a story but allowing contests for creating persistent zones (like capital cities) or space lines or stations would be phenomenally more rewarding. However, I realize some loathe the idea of users making anything (and that's their prerogative - I don't mind because I know some Foundry missions by other players are better than many of the official ones and I'm here to game not cut that content out to spite my gaming experience)

2) Procedural generation - although the Genesis system feels lackluster in practice, people have created clever procedural generation in other games (while marrying them to persistent elements). Daggerfall, Minecraft, etc.

3) Faction reputations - instead of a WoW model of stat progression, players might unlock access to more dailies depending who they side with, unlock more of the lore, be able to visit social areas, etc. that would otherwise be infeasible. Imagine going to an area and being the enemy but, over time, you eventually become trusted enough to befriend your enemy and visit them on that faction's capital. That's one possibility.

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Honestly, the devs have a lot of feedback they can choose from. Dozens of members in the community have commented on exploration and posted their ideas. I think I have 3-4 different threads myself on the topic, with slightly different flavors (procedural generation, Oregon Trail /Civilization in space, KDF/Territory Control oriented and more.) and I'm just one guy who drinks too much coffee.

Hopefully, the devs will keep the discussion open on what ideas the community would like to see. I know that our experiences vary and from those experiences perhaps we can arrive at a sum greater than its parts while discussing what strange new worlds and new life and new civilization we'll meet.

After listening to the actual interview it sounds rather interesting.

It sounds more like the DS9 style of continuing story lines then the typical Star Trek style of warp in, fix something, warp out. If his was consistently built upon it could be really compelling. I think that 3 setup missions and a group of daily repeatable per current nebula would be a lot of content and I could easily see latching onto STO established storylines and building upon them in the foundry.

This would also be a great way to kill the lull between featured series. Say a big update is coming up and it will be another 3 months till the next series, throw in another set of dalies of X cluster to push that along a bit during the wait.

I would have no issue with this concept if they utilized a Genesis system kind of concept with it as well as instituting a deep space exploration system for more random content (similar to the way they do exploration now, but improved upon).

Here's how I imagine it could work:

The exploration sectors we have now, in general, we encounter the same races over and over again (Strekklan, Widrab, etc.). Some of them hostile, some friendly. Instead of just wandering around until we find a random system, we would have set systems to travel to (remember, we only see a small part of a system whenever we warp in, so there can easily be multiple locations in a system you could travel to in different missions). However, the missions we go on could be generated somewhat randomly.

Here's what I mean by "somewhat" randomly. Based on the missions you've run before and the race you're encountering, you could receive a transmission while in the exploration sector (ex.: "we need help in x system" or "the y race is mounting an incursion in z system, they must be stopped"). Throughout these missions, you would be able to learn more about the races you've been encountering. What their culture is like, what kind of history they have. And this could be expanded on regularly in updates to the game (i.e. new mission types, information to be plugged into missions). This way, the missions you run would be randomly generated, but the information you get during the missions and the general kind of mission you'd be going on would be determined by the race you encounter instead of just a cookie cutter dialogue tree.

I imagine deep space exploration could work in a similar fashion to exploration now. However, in order to spice it up, I suggest that they expand the Genesis system to include the names, appearances, and attributes of races; it shouldn't be monumentally hard to give a random list of racial name, look, and cultural attribute "parts" that could be combined to form a new race. If this seems like a race that you'd like to see more of, maybe you could even have an option to "tag" or save their racial profile for the chance at future encounters in this area of deep space. These deep space sectors would be where first contact diplomacy missions would be found.

I think splitting up exploration like this could make for an interesting and fun experience.

If you mean adding more archetypes to the current model, I think time would be better spent making it more meaningful and deeper than providing a wider assortment of lackluster options.

There's an analogy I used to use regarding exploration.

Exploration should be like a koch snowflake which hails from fractal math (see page 3). It starts off with simple layers then builds from there.

• Maybe it starts as an exploration cluster with dailes
• Now add persistent zones and characters.
• Now add a layer that integrates developing relationships and unlocked dailies and missions.
• Now add a layer with Foundry content integration.
• Now add a territory control layer.
• etc.

Why not make the clusters at least one full order of magnitude larger than they currently are? That would allow you to have 20 or so base systems that can be static and allow you to procedurally generate new systems, actual systems not the little arrows we have now. Have the new zone interspersed with eye candy like a gas cloud and the occasional attack or distress call from an unknown system. In my opinion, that would be much more effective in improving immersion instead of turning the clusters into another pre-scripted zone to grind through.

Who says the devs haven't suggested that?

From all I've read, it seems like they're trying to tackle Exploration with every tool in the box: dailies, persistent contacts, stories, sector "flavors", persistent zones, foundry, and possibly some procedural areas.

It doesn't sound like it'll be strictly similar to the wholly scripted areas we have in-game, nor will it be as fire-and-forget as the not-quite-random exploration maps (there are really thousands of them, not necessarily new ones created on the fly).