[POLL] What do YOU think the "big rock" is?

I want a ladder

Unit Cannon!

...please don't kill me I can dream

I kind of think it's going to be Matchmaking. Which would be kind of nice with how long it can occassionally take to get games going, even though im a lobby guy myself (not that they wouldn't have both)

Asteroid Belts would be cool, but the first part of the Galactic War is what I'm hoping for. I know some people think along the lines of play to enjoy the game itself, I see their point, but other games have kind of conditioned me to enjoy having a form or progression and goal to work towards. Otherwise, it kind of feels like playing in a void now where nothing "matters". Not that it really does otherwise, but it helps a lot to feel like in some way what you're doing "matters"

I think a few people are mistaking the term Big Rock for something literal, possibly biasing the poll. I believe the origin for it is zenhabits.net, suggested as a productivity method by Leo Babauta in his post Big Rocks First: Double Your Productivity This Week:

"If your week is seven buckets, and you go into each bucket without planning ahead, and you fill it up with little pebbles and grains of sand and whatever other debris comes your way … soon there will be no room for the Big Rocks. Your buckets fill up faster than you know it, and once your buckets are full, you’re done. You can’t get bigger buckets. What you can do is put the Big Rocks in first, and fill in the pebbles and sand around them."

KROGOTT !!!!

...but I guess a fly-fisherman bot sounds good too.

More seriously (and to the point!) a way to have galactic-battles and -battlefields added to the game would be interesting (imagine blocking the access to a planet by patrolling it with a massive star battlecruiser ^^).

It may be the variable commander frames that they mentioned earlier. still the idea that asteroid fields are the "Big Rock" is definitely something i am hoping for

I guess that even if we do not get asteroid belts, the guys at uber will see this post and maybe make them a little before planned since 73 people want it.

Meh, they are making them either way, you can't really rush this sort of thing, they have all available staff doing their thing but you can't get graphic guys to do code or code guys to do generation or whatnot.

That is just the misconception with game design.

However, it seemed like when the Vanguard covered it, that it was a bigger interest that they expressed. They of course shared their idea with us, that asteroid belts would be expanded upon if there were a debris belt with a few sync'd landable bodies in them. My interest right now, is if they can be applied to planets as well, creating planetary rings possibly with better sync'd moons.

They mentioned something about a more distant possibility of smaller useable bodies, constantly replentishing asteroids to use (such as 3 in a belt, and if 1 is KEWd then another one is generated to bring the total to 3 again), and such. I think it would add a lot to the gameplay.

However, I still think what they have to suprise us with, isn't asteroid belts, but something functional like some new thing to do with the game itself, like load games, or some server options, or an ingame mechanic. It could be AI Teammates. It could be Galactic War. It could be Ladders. It could be social feature additions like game-forming or matchmaking or global chat. Really, whatever it is sounds important so we should be grateful whatever it is.

I don't know, terrestrial planets with rigs are.. very rare... unless they're either still forming, as a proto-planet, or were hit by another planet.

Actually, asteroid thickets are very rare or nonexistant in general tbh. Most asteroids are barely visible from one another as far as distance anyway. They are NOT like star wars movies. The "Asteroid Belt" is wide open enough to easily fly through without ever seeing an asteroid. The rings of saturn is very tight but it is mostly particles of dust, I hear even with the Kessler Syndrome the dust doesn't quite pierce any ships sent through it, although flying through it causes numerous impact points.

This one's prettier:

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Too much sun.

Matchmaking would get me playing the game regularly again. And I know it would do that for a lot of people as well.

As long as it's a good ladder. Not one where you can win 16 matches, never play again, and still be at slot 1.