I used to play EV Nova, and while it is a good game, I always wished for multiplayer. When I saw the game EVE Online, I was very intrigued. Fly my spaceship around a persistant universe? How cool is that?
Except it isn't, really. You don't fly a ship, you tell a ship where to go. And the game has a variety of Truly Awful features. A lot of the game is spent mining, training your stats, etc. Drudge work. Worse than many other MMORPGs, the training process isn't even fun - it's very much a ProgressQuest sort of grind, where your character's improvement is slow and based on how long you have owned the game.
So screw all that.
This is what I want:
I want to fly my spaceship around a persistant universe, interact with Player Characters and Non-Player Characters, carry out interesting quests from both types of players, and goddamn fly. Have I mentioned flying?
So let's start from the ground up. Flying. In Space.
Control scheme is flight simulation. Inside of a cockpit or with the cam following the ship. A variable degree of automation, so that newer players can play alright, and the real piloting experts can have as much control as they want, and as their ship can preform.
I am an advocate of a full six degrees of freedom for manuverable ships, though obviously crappy ships or huge ships would have a lessened number of degrees. 2.5 degrees seems to be the least needed - Yaw, pitch, and thrust (which is half of the forward backwards acceleration).
Fighter battles when every ship can accelerate right, left, up, down, forward, and backwards, as well as turning left, right, up, down, and rolling left or right... it will be fun. Obviously some thrusters will be more powerful than others, and some tools and weapons will be mounting on one part of the ship, not others, but... yeah.
Physics scheme. EN Nova gets points for how ships fly - rockets and gyros. Your controls consist of turning, and firing the engine. To slow down, you spin around and accelerate in the opposite direction. It's not like you are flying through a fluid atmosphere - you are in space, and an object in motion remains in motion. This may take some getting used to, but I'm sure that players can catch on. Think Bablyon 5.
Of course, there's dumb things in B5's flight as well. Maximum speed, for instance. Most space probes have thrusters that provide a fraction of an ounce of force. But there's nothing slowing them down, so they just go faster and faster.
Of course, there are restrictions for game-play to make sense. First, acceleration is of major importance for spacecraft flying like this. If all craft had fuel-efficient drives and provided a ounce of pressure for a year to build up decent speeds, what kind of space battles would that provide? But if they had insane acceleration, the kind that makes flying interesting, then they could accelerate and keep accelerating, and go at a pretty insane speed. With a few tweaks, it can be balanced:
Fuel: Acceleration costs fuel. This can be bought cheaply at a space station, an orbital dock or planetside(atmospheric capable only, costing some to go down). This means that while the fastest way to travel sub-light is to spend half the trip accelerating and half the trip deaccelerating, but the cheapest way to travel would be spending a fraction of a second accelerating, drifting for a long, long time, and then spending a fraction of a second de-accelerating. Or hell, just let the docking bay arms grab you, you are moving so slow. Most people will pick somewhere in the middle, but trade-offs are never bad for game balance. (In fact, if a choice has a right answer, it shouldn't be a choice.)
Shielding: It's mostly true that there is nothing slowing you down in space. Mostly. But the faster you go, the more dangerous objects in space can be. The faster you fly through, say, a gas cloud, the more damage your shields will take. Plow into an astroid belt, and you better hope you have some mighty ship with incredibly powerful shields... or you can slow down a bit and dodge all the astroids, should you be piloting something more fragile. ...or not slow down that much, and have a hell of a time saying in one piece. This opens all kinds of scenarios, what with most planets having some degree of gas surrounding it, the existence of nebulae, astroid belts, solar flares, etc. Much fun.
Friction: In direct proportion to the damage being done by impacting objects, there is a degree of friction. Traveling through a gas cloud will slow you down a lot if you are going really fast, but the effect is less noticeable at lower speeds, and while theoretically it will bring you to the same speed as the surrounding cloud, in practice it will take a long, long, boring while. (Good if you run out of fuel, have no generator, and need to be picked up.)
Relative motion: Actually not really so much a fix as an observation: If you are moving at 600 km/s, and I move at 600.001 km/s , I'm only going one kph faster than you. And since I don't have to be running my engines to keep moving, the two of us could have an entire dogfight while both of us continued hurdling towards our destination. To the two of us, the 600 km/s velocity in some direction doesn't matter much at all, only our speed relative to each other.
Relative motion2: Don't forget that not everything is moving at 600 km/s with you. If you are too busy dogfighting and don't notice your stop coming up, you'll probably wind up making a nasty fireball in the night sky, or having the spacestation tractor drones pull you off-course to avoid collision.
Other parts about the physics scheme: Gravity. Yes, you are in space. Yes, gravity exists in space. Yes, that means that space is warped. Yes, that means that planets orbit suns, yes that means that moons and space stations orbit planets. And yes, that means you should get in an orbit unless you want to spend your time thrustering upwards according to the strength ofthe local gravity. Match your speed with your planet, match it with the orbital platform... at least the means of interstellar travel have matches you to the net velocity of any gravity well you reappear in. Of course, if you have a good sense for these, things, you can let gravity work to your advantage, just imputing a certain velocity and letting other things do the work. If you do, go sell that information.
Again, everything is relative - if you are in the same orbit as a orbital platform, then both of you would be relatively weightless. Move out of the orbit, and you're going to be messed with to a good degree. Makes flying interesting, especially if you turn off the automated features.
Of course, some bits of physics will have to be ignored. Time dilation, for instance, if anyone chooses to fly that fast through very, very empty space.
Movement is not just within a star system, however, as what's the fun if there are only a number of planets, space stations, and a single star? What about all the other cool phenomina out there? But the distance between stars that have interesting debris around them (any type of planet, planetoids, useable gas, or anything else that provides a reason for people to go there) is pretty extreme. So faster-than-light travel is something nifty, especially since relativistic travel makes for messy time questions.
My proposal is to use Second August's system of FTL travel (SA was a forum-based RPG game/setting I made with Celiana). Ships move from real space to a sort of lower-energy, more delicate version of our space - infraspace, let's call it. Ships power down (any velocity, no acceleration), and slip into infraspace. They turn back on again, and flight through infraspace to their destination. Infraspace is affected by the real world, and gravitational effects bend space much more than normally is the case, leaving slow-moving wakes, ripples and crunched spots. Infraspace is highly non-euclidian, and ships use that to their advantage by simply flying through the most compressed areas, reducing the distance traveled. Additionally, ships systems are much more powerful relative to the physical laws of the alternative realm - this is part of the reason ships power down - the different physical laws can cause energized parts of the ship to surge destructively, blowing out capacitors, etc.
Organized races can modify the delicate infra-space. While a smart and diligent pilot can navigate the moving gravity distortions to his or her advantage, this is not neccesary for travel on the major space lanes. What governments (or corporations, even) do is plant small space stations that project a false mass. Inside of infraspace, each station provides a point of crushed space (gravity hole), and compresses the corresponding infraspace. Strings of these stations provide roadways of compressed space, plus plenty of gravity holes to leave infraspace.
Which reminds me: Gravity holes. When a realspace object weighs enough, it's reflection in the corresponding infraspace doesn't just bend space, it punches a hole in it, similar to a realspace black hole (which makes for quite the distortion in infraspace, btw). Though gravity itself does not exist in infraspace, the degree of distortion allows infra-space ships to exit infraspace into real space (which is part of why infra-space is so empty - it takes work to get in, but you can just wander out). Note that space is highly compressed around the hole, and the actual hole - a point in space that is infinitely compressed - corresponds to a large portion of the entire gravity well. Entering the hole pops you out to the nearest corresponding bit of realspace - the edge of the gravity well where gravity is strong enough to entirely punch through infraspace. Game mechanic-wise, this means that people cannot drop to subspace within a gravity well, and people cannot emerge in non-safe objects, as whatever makes an area non-safe generally (always, in the game, because we can) provides enough of a gravity well to have people arrive on the periphery. Note that super-massive objects like black holes and blue giants would have you arrive a distance away where the gravity is no stronger or weaker than arriving at a rogue planetoid (though the distance would differ extremely).
Weapons are next, because they are fun. There are three types of weapons: instantaneous (IW), unguided(UGW), and guided(GW). Lasers are instantaneous - you fire a laser pointed at a target, and it hits there immediately, albeit warped by gravitic distortions (especially in subspace). Tractor beams and several other technologies fall under this catagory. Unguided weapons (U are fired where a ship will be, on an intercept course, and there is an appreciable delay between it being fired and when it arrives on the target. UGWs start motion relative to the weapons platform(ship, station, drone, etc), and have a fixed velocity relative to the gun. Railguns and gauss cannons fall are the faster end of this catagory, while flak cannons are slow to the point of being used as area denial weapons. Guided weapons are those such as missiles, magnetic grappling hooks, and anything with the ability to follow a craft. Launched similarly to UGWs, GWs possess homing capabilities. An important facet of this is that the launcher does not need to be facing its target or its target's projected location when it fires, and better missiles can avoid obstacles, thus not needing line-of-sight. They also can be intercepted or jammed.
Drones are a special case - they are guided, similar to missiles, but instead of ramming into the target, they follow it and fire other kinds of ordinance - IWs and (U)GWs. A tractor drone falls under this catagory, as does a ion device and most weaponry that would not function if it ran into something. Mass-impact weapons also benefit if the drone is attacking a fleeing enemy - see below.
Damage types also differ.
Mass impact damage (MID) has to do with the relative velocity of the (U)GW and the victim ship - in essence it is no different than the normal problems of moving fast, save that the object may be more damaging for the amount of speed you run into it. Effects physical defenses more than energy defenses, though may penetrate energy defenses and hit physical defenses instead. MIDs generally have an effect on the velocity of the victim ship.
Payload damage (PD) is damage from an explosive or otherwise damaging payload - this is dealt regardless of velocity. Most missile weapons deal a combination of MID and PD, the proportions of which are dependant on relative speeds of missile and target. A missile filled with sensor sludge is really meant to cover and jam sensors, but if you fly directly into it at high velocity...
Energy damage (ED) is mostly from IWs, and operates independent of velocity. Affects energy defenses more than physical defenses, in general.
Outside of that basic framework (which could be expanded) many weapons have specific effects - one IW might try to drain the shield battery, while another may overload it temporatily, and another might be a way to hack the target's systems from a range to prepare for boarding. Some drones could act as mines, and the poor man may fly backwards at the launching speed of his UGW to lay them as an evironmental hazard.
Movement upgrades are relatively specific for each ship, but generally involve thrusters for acceleration for rotation, grappling hooks for hitchhiking, gyros for rotation, etc. Note that each upgrade may only affect certain aspects of a ship's preformance - they might improve main thrusters but not strafing thrusters. Movement upgrades fall under the general category of upgrades.
One of the main thrusts of the game is buying new and inventive upgrades for your ship. All manner of improvements are possible, limited only by your wallet and the amount of weight you are willing to carry (the heavier you are, the harder it is to accelerate along any of the six degrees of freedom), and the usage requirements of the upgrade (tractor beams take energy, for instance, while magnetic grapples are lighter and do not, but have their own problems). General philosophy is that there is not a right choice and a wrong choice, just different choices - everything is a trade-off.
Another main facet of the game is manning a ship. Larger ships involve far more than a single pilot can manage. By default, many tasks are taken care of by automation, but a free downloadable cilent should allow non-paying customers to pose as volunteer gunners, communication specialists, Remote-controlled strike-craft pilots, etc. Thus a player might invite his friends over for a online party where everyone mans parts of his crusier. This promotes the game, and makes it more fun for everyone.
If you don't have friends willing to volunteer, you can put out requests for whatever position is required, along with a salary, on the BBS of a station. Players sign up, and you can view their history, achievements, and reviews, and then pay some lucky soul some money to (hopefully) man a gun better than the computer... and review them later on how they did. Or save costs and not buy an automatic gun, and hire some cheap goon to man the gun every time. Actual players can also drive other ships that you own - if you buy a large enough ship with a docking bay, other ships you own that are small enough can be launched on a hiring basis (plus hired help you might buy can repair and refuel in your docking bay). More on player interactions later.
Players start with very little. Instead of buying a ship outright (they could buy a crappy one...) players can get into the action immediately by renting good ships and performing missions to pay the rent on the ship, or being hired to fly a ship by someone else - PC or NPC. Escort missions are frequent, as pirates(including other players) may attack trade ships if they are not protected - setting a gravity mine in realspace to create a gravity hole to pull trade ships out of subspace and into combat until they can escape the temporary gravity well. On the shady end of things, assault missions also exist. Before each mission, the player may choose whether the mission will appear on his or her history. Marked missions provide prestige and a good resume, but failure or unscrupleous jobs also show up. Unmarked missions aren't recorded, but you still can get paid or otherwise profit.
Eventually, the player can get enough money to buy his or her own ship, and between flying their ship and flying in other ships, continue to get money to improve their own ship, until that becomes the primary financial source. The point is to make improvement matter, but also to make improvement fun.
Ships dock, of course - you can land in space stations, orbital platforms (w/ or w/o space elevators to a main station and planet), and on planets (depending on habitation, facilities, ship, etc.) If your ship is too massive to actually dock in/at the facility in question, you can park it in orbit / in space and fly a smaller ship to the station (if you don't have a smaller ship by that time, you can probably hire one).
Once docked, the player can communicate with the shops, read the E-boards for jobs, etc. Alternatively, the player can go into the station.
Inside the station, or planetside, the player has a customizable avatar and can interact with other PCs in the facility. Stereotypical facilities exist, though player requests and usage can cause expansions. Voice channels exist, as well as text channels. Rentable quiet rooms for explaining missions in precise terms also exist. Depending on usage and profits, stations or planet-side facilities can expand, as explained on AI behavior.
Enough chatter for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment