I've sat down and re-organized this to read and flow alot better than previous versions. It's quite long and I do apolozie for that. Iron Chef, you commented on this a while back when it was condensed, I would appreciate it if you would take a look at the full version i'm posting here. The following is a concept for a space based MMO. The game is a combination of Wing Commander type dog fighting for the common player and real time strategy for the higher-level guild members. Guilds are the movers and shakers in the game, which for them revolves around collecting resources and spreading influence. Oh, and of course lots of space battles. Guilds mine resources, and use them to build ships, defenses, bases, etc. These are here to add depth to the game, and give players a reason to fight. Table of Contents 1. Guilds and alignment 2. Resources and Building 3. Builds/technology trees 4. Travel 5. Maps 6. Communications 7. Prestige System --------------------------------------------------- 1. Guilds/Alignment Guilds are the primary driving force behind the game. Guilds, and more specifically the guild leader(s) will be in charge of resource management, build orders, resource and build availability, and of course promotion within the guilds. Guild leaders and their appointed proxy’s (i.e. whoever they grant powers to) have the following abilities: Choose number/name of ranks Choose Method of promotion --Votes --Appointment --Achievements (Kill count, Specific kills, supply runs etc) Guild crest/symbology (guild creation) Crafting Engine (Who can create blueprints) Build restrictions (Who can access what blueprints) Resource availability (Who has access to certain resources) Combat direction capabilities --Kick Members --Demote Members ---------------------------------------------------- 2. Resources and Building The game revolves around resources, however, instead of using multiple types of unrelated resources as typical RTS games (gold, food, wood, stone, magic, etc) This game only uses two categories of resources, as of right now they are named A and B. These two resources are then broken into multiple levels. The multiple levels are named A, A+1, A+2, A+3; and B, B+1, B+2, B+3. Resource A is used in areas that reflect physical characteristics. Armor, Cargo space, Hard points, Damage from missiles/bullets, etc. Resource B is used in areas that affect capabilities. Speed, laser weapons, power, acceleration, maneuverability etc. Resource B is also used as a fuel source for Bases and Defenses. Most, but not all builds will require some of both resources. Resource levels Each Resource has multiple levels. Rarely except in high end products are resources above level one required. However, getting your hands on higher-level resources is very advantageous of you. Every resource above base has 2 options you can use it as multiple units of a lower tier resource. I.e. A+1 is equal to 2A’s. A+3 is equal to 2 A+2, 4 A+1, or 8A’s. The other option is it can be used as a single unit with a large stat bonus. When building an item; whether it will be a ship, base, or anything else; it will list the different parts of it, and what type of resource it requires (A or B). By default each part is built with the basic resource. The player may choose to place higher-level resources onto the item, and where it will place them. After choosing his layout the player may save his build as a “Blueprint” that he or other players (with proper permissions) may then build. ---------------------------------------------------- 3. Build/Technology Trees The following is a list of items that can be built in the game. Attack Ships --Light Fighter – Light Armor, Weak Weapons, High Speed, High Maneuverability --Heavy Fighter – Heavy Armor, Strong Weapons, Low Speed, Low Maneuverability --Torpedo Boat – Very Heavy Armor, Slow Torpedoes only, Low Speed, Very Low Maneuverability Supply Ships --Intra-sector Supply Ship – Small cargo capacity, Able to dock/transfer material to any station, incapable of using jump gates, one for each resource category. **Unmanned Drones, under control of guild leader for pre-planned routes. --Inter-sector Supply Ship – Large cargo capacity, Able to dock only with supply depot, Capable of using jump gates, separate compartments for each resource category. Capitol Ships – Capitol ships are capable of self-initiated inter-zone warps, and are the only ships capable of having individual target spots on them. --Battleship – Large ships with three massive guns, numerous defensive guns for attacking incoming fighters, each defensive gun is manned by a player, the three main guns by a another player, and one player to pilot the ship. --Carrier – Large ship with few defensive guns, each gun manned by a player, Capable of carrying many (# as of yet undefined) light fighters, heavy fighters, and torpedo boats. Bases --Deployment Bases – New ships and other deployable are generated from here. Capable of generating small basic light fighters without resources. --Repair Bases – Capable of repairing damage to all ships except capitol ships. Also provides repair packs for other deployable, which are carried in ship’s cargo holds. --Sensor Outpost – Outpost that detects and provides information on ships transiting through its area of influence. --Ship yard – Capable of producing Capitol Ships --Research Station – This must be built in order to utilize single units of higher-level resources. A large amount of the higher-level resource must be fed into the station in order for a guild to utilize higher-level resources in their designs. These resources can, however, still be used as large numbers of lower resources. Miscellaneous --Gun Platforms – Placed around routes and other vital areas to protect transit routes. --Mine Layers – Unmanned drone that will populate an area with explosive mines. --Wormhole Stabilizer – placed at an entrance to a wormhole to stabilize that end of the tunnel. When building an item; whether it will be a ship, base, or anything else; it will list the different parts of it, and what type of resource it requires for each part. By default each part is built with the basic resource. The player may choose to place higher-level resources onto the item part, and this will then affect the stats of the base model. After choosing his layout the player may save his build as a “Blueprint” that he or other players (with proper permissions) may then build. When dealing with ships the player also chooses the layout of guns, shields, etc. ---------------------------------------------------- 4. Travel There are 3 ways of travel in the game, short range, long range and inter-sector travel. Short Range is used for combat, and other situations where precise movement is required. Docking, Minefields, etc. Long Range is used for long distance intra-sector travel. This is the express lane for moving from point a to point b. There is no real room here to maneuver its practically a straight line shot or a very long curve. Inter-sector travel is most commonly done via jump gates. Entry into one of them causes the player to zone into the next sector. There are however other means of inter-sector travel. --Jump Engines – Only available on Capitol ships. Allows them to jump into a sector without using a jump gate. --Worm Holes – Sporadic gates that open up passage between various sectors. The computer generates entry and exit points for the wormhole at random. Very few signs of one exist unless a player gets close. The server generates new entry and exits every 96 hours. However, if a guild finds a wormhole stabilizer, they may place it on one end of the wormhole to stabilize that entry point. Two stabilizers are required to stop both ends of a wormhole. ---------------------------------------------------- 5. Maps Maps are shared by a guild..what one guild member can see (location/resource wise) all Members can see. When a guild is created, or when it enters a new zone, most of its map is blank. As players expand throughout the zone, the map updates with the information that is scanned by the players. Most things (i.e. planets, asteroid belts, stations etc) are scanned automatically as they come in range. More specific details such as ore deposits and such, must be surveyed and manually (i.e. time taken) to be revealed. All of this shows up on the map. The map needs to be updated. Information changes, ore gets depleted, or shifts, worm-holes appear and/or dissapear, stations are built or destroyed etc. Unfortunately, unless a guild re-charts the area, this information will not update on the map. This makes exploration very important. Its the only way to keep your guild up-to-date on a zone. This is where sensor-probes and stations come in. A probe can be set to go chart an area, but only lasts for a short time before de-activating (i.e. it can only chart so much area) And Sensor-stations continuously monitor the area around them to a far distance, keeping everything in its sensor range up to date.) --------------------------------------------- 5. Communications Consists of multiple channels. Ideally this would be a voice chat system handled by a sub-server, but most likely would be text based. Available channels /local – basic say in other games /squad – party/group chat /guild – guild chat /tell – targeted speech to one or more players. (/tell player 1, player 2, player 3 text) /sector – open chat across the entire zone. ---------------------------------------------------- 6. Prestige System As players kill members of other guilds they get prestige points. Prestige points are used to add flair to your ship. Special Paint jobs, Emblems, logos, Particle effects etc. Prestige points are given based on a number of different things. First is kills in a row. The second, third, fourth, fifth, etc kilss continuously give you more points than the one before it. Second is you're overall Ace Ratio. Ace ratio is your total kills to you're total deaths. Third is Prestige Ratio and kill rank of the person you killed. All of these add up. [Edited by - robert4818 on September 10, 2005 3:15:01 AM]

Here's a big response to a big post. I'll use your section numbers, and refrain from quoting large chunks of your post.

1. Gulids/Alignment

The guild system will be critical to a game like this. I'm reminded a little of X2: The Threat by your ideas for building and managing organizations, and I think you're on the right track with limiting this sort of high-level behavior to guilds. After all, having 5000 player-owned factories in each system would be impractical.

The actual mechanics of administrating such an organization will require considerable refinement from the bare-bones idea you've sketched out here. No doubt a wide array of problems and opportunities will present themselves during that process. Don't get too terribly attached to any specific aspect of guild operation before you find out what will work and what won't. I lack the expertise to advise you in this, so I'll leave you to it.

2. Resources/Building

I like the resource system. Two is plenty (it looks like minerals and vespene to me!), and it opens up room for a lot of different refineries and factories that can be used to convert the resources into usable components, which gives you more strategic targets to attack or defend. Raiding is also improved, because you can steal actual components, rather than risking your ships just to get resources that you could have gotten from an asteroid. That's good work.

Resource levels are another good idea. I'm guessing that resources will be either found in richer forms or enriched artificially by players/guilds in-game. This is good, both because it will rarify the more valuable goods and because it will put more value in the infrastructure of the guild, which is beginning to look like a huge portion of this game's focus. I'm not entirely sure about this, but it might be worthwhile to "refine" one or both of the resources into different resources. You harvest crude oil, and then refine it into kerosene, diesel fuel, gasoline, petroleum jelly, and plastics. Something like that.

As with all elements of the game's economy, you should make absolutely certain that the game adheres to economic principles and is a believable and intelligible system. If you have a robust economics model, players will be better able to use it, and less likely to exploit it. X2 has a terrible problem with this. Do better than they did.

3. Build/Technology Trees

Building is a little bit confusing to me. You offer what looks like a free-form blueprint system in section 2, but in 3 you divide ships into classes and offer specifications for them as though they're pre-fabricated. Look at this thread for some recent discussion on ship design systems. It might give you some good ideas.

For my part, I like standardized classes and modular equipment, so you can choose what sort of weapons, armor, shields, cargo holds, passenger accomodations, or whatever you want to have on your ship, but it'll fit into a clear class of craft and be subject to concrete rules. No tweaking your light fighter with a carrier's warp drive or taking off your cargo hold and putting a really, really big gun there instead. Divide the frames and accessories into classes and make up some kind of power supply restriction to prevent players from getting too creative. It's tough to balance customizable gear, and the more freedom you give people, the more likely they are to bend the rules and break the game.

A little addendum to your system: It might give the tech tree a little more open-ended feel if you let guilds research upgrades to weapons/shields etc. If you have the right resources and facilities, you can build a Laser Cannon, but if you build an R&D center and pour huge amounts of resources and time into it, you can get the Laser Cannon (+1 to power, -1 to heat output), which will make your ships deadlier (once they're retrofitted with the new gear). This manner of making custom gear wouldn't be too powerful if you balance it right, but could offer a level of guild specialization. Guild A might favor incredible shielding for its transports, while Guild B could focus on long-range weapon systems and Guild C would have the fastest fighters in the galaxy.

4. Travel

I like the three types of travel. I think it's just the right resolution. I'm reminded of Ares, the old Ambrosia game, where your ship could "boost" to high speeds, but would lose weapons and most steering during that type of travel, not to mention the huge fuel expense.

You should include a dampening weapon that would keep ships from just boosting to long-range mode when they get attacked, so they have to either outrun your weapon range in short-range mode or disable your dampeners before they can get away from the fight. This way, transport raids don't always end with the transport jumping away, and reinforcements can get there in time to make a difference.

5. Communications

This looks good, but I would add an administrator-only "/bulletin" command, so that guild leaders can sent priority messages to guild members about enemy raids or other important information. The "/sector" command should be split into "ally" and "all". And have some kind of cockpit control that handles channel switching, rather than requiring the extra word of type. For quick notes to a wingman or a warning to friendly transports in the area, that lost second can hurt.

You might also want some scripted communiques, like an SOS or announcing a good resource location, that will send a formal message to the right people. You could even have subscription-like lists, so you'll see all the fight alerts, or all the raid recruitment messages, or all the resource locations. Work it like a police scanner.

Miscellaneous notes:

You clearly have a good idea for what you want the structure of the player experience to be like. I have some questions that you should ask yourself during the course of your design phase. You don't have to answer them here right away.

What will the game's focus be? Trade? Tech? Combat? Guild rank Grinding?

Can a player have any fun without joining a guild?

How will guilds compete? Territory owned? Money accrued? Tech developed?

What keeps one guild from getting a good foothold and conquering the galaxy while the others squabble over one lousy moon?

How will damage to ships and stations be repaired?

If one guild has forty members online, and another guild has six, how will you protect the underdog from getting raped due to lack of pilots?

How will ships be owned? Will they be guild-owned, and lent out ot pilots? Who decides what pilot gets what ship?

What happens to players when their ship blows up?

All in all, this is a really neat idea, and has all kinds of potential. Huge single player games in this genre are very interesting, and I think it could really work in an MMO setting, but you'll have to balance the open-endedness with the multiplayer balance. One group of very dedicated pirate TKs could wreck your galaxy.

I recommend a sort of GM system, where you have admins in "mysterious alien ships" (possibly invisible) that can step in and smooth out rough spots. They could balance power by offering intel, giving a research station an epiphany, or having a wormhole open at just the right spot to help a down-and-out guild's economy. Some behind-the-scenes tweaking never hurt. AI factions that have bizarre needs and make biased deals with guilds could be another good vessel for the administrators' will.

if you do use GMs, make sure that they don't meddle too much. If I'm in a free-form universe, but I'm stymied at every turn by pushy galactic entities, then I may as well be playing Planetside.

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad it gets a positive review from you. I'll clarify some of my ideas for you, as well as post some examples of what I was thinking.

1. Guilds/alignment

Have you played Shadowbane? Its an MMO out there right now, and is where the idea for the overall guild ran game/warfare model came from. In a way I'm wanting to with this part of the game mirror some of the ideas that they had.

One idea I've wrestled with is whether or not to add in "Sides" to the game. This would be similar to DAOC, or Planetside but i'm worried that though this may help give purpose to the conflict it would detract from the game's guild focus. One advantage it would give me would be the introduction of "Nuetrals" and I don't mean fence-sitters, but smugglers, pirates, spy's and mercenaries who have no allegiance. This idea intruiges me, but I find it pretty implosible to do without an allegiance system.

2. Resources

With the resources i was thinking matter and energy :) but just left them un-named for the time being. The idea here is to have them found in raw form, then you take them back to the storage depot (I guess I need to add in a Refinery option as well) where the raw form is refined into its usable state. However, the raw form IS the resource at whatever level its labled. I.E. Raw A+1. I'm keeping the ideas rather simple, so I do not want to have the ability to make specific materials (kerosene, oil, gas etc). As for economy ideally resource A is the most common while resource A+3 would be a godsend and must be protected. I've toyed with the idea of resource shuffle on a semi-regular basis, but right now i want to get the flavor of the game right.

3. Build/technology trees.

I see where the confusion lies, and its from me basically not going into enough detail on the "crafting" system. I'll deal with the attack ships at the moment. You have three Categories, Light, Heavy, Torpedo. Under each category you have a set of basically Chassis that are available for you to pick. Each chassi has a set of stats as if it was built nothing but the basic resources. The player is allowed to tweak that chassi with the advanced resources to either build it cheaper (using A+3 as 8 units of A) or by choosing which stat(or component) they would boost by adding in the A+3. Also by choosing what specific weapons (which I have not given much thought to at the moment) they want to load up on the hardpoints of the chassi, (and applying resources to those) they then end up with a unique ship layout that is saved as a "Blueprint." This blue print is then able to be brought up by another player and loaded for when they are requesting a ship.

Everything in the game is modifible in this way, bases might spew out ships faster, be stronger, etc while the refinery and storage depot, may spit out useable resources faster, and hold more supplies....

4. Travel

In reguards to the weapons, you practically read my mind. The other part though is the "dampener" weapon will also drop a ship out of long range travel as well. This provides a good way to ambush. The idea with the wormholes is of course to keep some randomness into the world and provide a back-door available into even the most heavily protected area.

5. Communications

I like your ideas here. I haven't fleshed out this area as far as I'd like. If I go into an allignment system, then the system needs to be fleshed out even more, but at the moment the basics are there.

Miscelaneous (I'll use quotes here)

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What will the game's focus be? Trade? Tech? Combat? Guild rank Grinding?

The main focus will be combat. Space Based dog fights and raids. Believe it or not, planetside is a major inspiration to this game, but the flaws I see in it are things that I'm trying to correct here. The major one being that there is no reason to be fighting each other over constantly abandoned bases. So the RTS and reasources are there to give targets (similar to the cities in Shadowbane)

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Can a player have any fun without joining a guild?

Possibly, but the focus in the game is going to be fighting with a guild...even if its a guild of one. Some people may be turned off by this idea, but I've found from my play experiences, that its not as big an issue as most people think..someone usually forms a free-for all guild...and as players get into the game more they'll switch guilds to another guild that fits there purpose.

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How will guilds compete? Territory owned? Money accrued? Tech developed?

I've toyed with the ideas of poitns and such, but right now I see the major competitive points are going to be egos of leaders, resources available, and territory. Since territory means resources, resources mean tech, and tech means "uber" Again this is where I've wondered about playing with the taking sides idea, in order to give the game a kick start so that players have an initial reason to fight eachother in the game. Then as guilds develop and raise up to a point, have the different empires dissolve and leave anarchy...

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What keeps one guild from getting a good foothold and conquering the galaxy while the others squabble over one lousy moon?

This is a tougher one, but the concept here is to limit the number of deployment bases and refineries that a guild can have. This is either going to be an artificial # (i.e. 1 for every 3 sectors) or just making them cost prohibitive to have too many operating at once. Reguardless the idea is to make an empire thats growing too big to have a lot of weaknesses that can be exploited...more supply routes, too much area to patrol etc. Instead of the old addage that most MMO's i've seen fall into where "The winners keep winning and the losers keep losing" because the deck keeps givnig the winners too much of a reward so they become even stronger. The idea is to create a system where when a guild begins to over-reach itself it leaves too many open spots.

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How will damage to ships and stations be repaired?

Ships can be repaired 2 ways, by docking with a repair station, or by being healed by a player who's ship is equipped with a repair pod which is aquired from a repair station.

Capitol ships are repaire by the Ship yards, though individual parts (engines, guns generators etc) may be repaired by ships with the repair pod.

Stations are repaired by ships with the repair pod.

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If one guild has forty members online, and another guild has six, how will you protect the underdog from getting raped due to lack of pilots?

Tougher question..the zerg is a very solid strategy and one i'm not exactly wanting to squash. However I belive the answer is actually involved in the question above dealing with large empires opening up weaknesses.

The question is more along the lines right now of what do I do with guilds that don't have the ability to build a deployment station...In the alignment idea they can get stuff from the empire homeworld until they build up enough resources to start building up an empire. However with the other system I don't know.

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How will ships be owned? Will they be guild-owned, and lent out ot pilots? Who decides what pilot gets what ship?

The player is the ship...no solo figures running around. A player chooses his ship from a menu and away he goes. Depending on the ship, the player uses up some of the guilds resources to build. What a player has access to, blueprint wise, and resource wise all depends on that players rank in the organization. And those are decided by guild leadership.

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What happens to players when their ship blows up?

They respawn at their guilds closest deployment station and choose a new ship.
I'm working on the idea of what to do if the guild lacks a deployment station...

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One group of very dedicated pirate TKs could wreck your galaxy.

I like the idea that SWG took with this. One character per server. There really is no need for a mule character, and this removes alot of the threat from side characters. Not all, but alot. But being unguilded is a very big threat to your safety.

I recommend a sort of GM system, where you have admins in "mysterious alien ships" (possibly invisible) that can step in and smooth out rough spots. They could balance power by offering intel, giving a research station an epiphany, or having a wormhole open at just the right spot to help a down-and-out guild's economy. Some behind-the-scenes tweaking never hurt. AI factions that have bizarre needs and make biased deals with guilds could be another good vessel for the administrators' will.

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if you do use GMs, make sure that they don't meddle too much. If I'm in a free-form universe, but I'm stymied at every turn by pushy galactic entities, then I may as well be playing Planetside.

I like planetside...

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Original post by robert4818 Guilds are the primary driving force behind the game. Guilds, and more specifically the guild leader(s) will be in charge of resource management, build orders, resource and build availability, and of course promotion within the guilds.

Are players compelled to join a guild? Can they belong to more than one?

Are they really guilds? Historically, a guild is a group of merchants who are given special rights over their chosen commodity by the government. If your guilds really are guilds, you'd have the "Wormhole Guild", or the "Northern Territories Resource Extraction Guild."

Having guilds actually be guilds makes for more complex intraguild gameplay. Suppose the "Jump Gate Guild" has exclusive rights over all jump gates. Now when any guild wishes to pass a gate, they have to pay a fee, or risk the consequences (sanctions by allies of the guild, military action from the government).

It's possible that your guilds are intended to be areas of territorial control. In this case, they aren't really guilds at all. "Faction" would probably be a better term.

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Choose Method of promotion --Votes --Appointment --Achievements (Kill count, Specific kills, supply runs etc)

You forgot "dead man's boots."

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This game only uses two categories of resources, as of right now they are named A and B. These two resources are then broken into multiple levels. The multiple levels are named A, A+1, A+2, A+3; and B, B+1, B+2, B+3. Resource A is used in areas that reflect physical characteristics. Armor, Cargo space, Hard points, Damage from missiles/bullets, etc. Resource B is used in areas that affect capabilities. Speed, laser weapons, power, acceleration, maneuverability etc. Resource B is also used as a fuel source for Bases and Defenses.

So resource A is a strong light workable material, whilst resource B is some material with a high energy density.

Although I kinda like the idea of the categories, I don't like the names. Clearly, material A will get stronger and lighter as its level increases, whilst material B will provide more bang for your buck.

Instead of "A, A+1, A+2, A+3", you might have "Steel, Titanium, Carbon-60, Ultrastrongium". Instead of "B, B+1, B+2, B+3", you might have "Hydroxide, Deuterium, Antimatter, Ultrenergium". Obviously these names would be changed to better fit your setting.

Now, your A-series might translate to wood, stone and magic out of your 'typical' list, whilst your B-series might translate to wood and magic. Presumeably you have currency of some form, so there you have gold. The one 'typical' resource you're missing is food, which might be something to consider.

I don't know how it could work for you, but 'wood' can be used as both a building resource and an energy resource. One option could be to arrange the resource types not as a simple sequence, but as a kind of hierarchy.



This little diagram shows 10 construction materials. Each material is judged on three attributes: strength (good for armor), lightness (good for hulls) and ductility (good for precision engineering). The central material is average at them all. The middle materials have good values for one attribute. The outer materials either have very high values for an attribute, or good values for two attributes. I'm not expert on materials, so my guesses as to what goes where are probably way off. Your game would probably use futuristic alloys and polymers we haven't heard of yet.

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Every resource above base has 2 options you can use it as multiple units of a lower tier resource. I.e. A+1 is equal to 2A’s. A+3 is equal to 2 A+2, 4 A+1, or 8A’s. The other option is it can be used as a single unit with a large stat bonus.

With my system, it would work similarly, although not exactly the same. Each material has a score in each attribute. The average material has 2 in each. The medium materials have 4 in their primary attribute and 1 in the others. The outer pure materials have 12 in their primary attribute and 0 in the others. The outer hybrid materials have 6 in their primary attributes and 0 in the other.

Any given component has strength/lightness/ductility requirements from 0 to 12. A material can't be used to build something with a higher requirement than it can satisfy. However, a material can be used to satisfy something with a lower or equal requirement, and you use less of it. e.g. If something requires 1 strength, then one could use 1 aluminium or nylon, 1/2 carbon fibre, 1/4 unit of steel, 1/6 titanium or C60, or 1/12 kevlar. But you couldn't ever use Acrylic, ABC or LBC Polyethylene.

Of course all these numbers are subject to playtesting. In reality, they'd need lots of testing.

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Attack Ships --Light Fighter – Light Armor, Weak Weapons, High Speed, High Maneuverability --Heavy Fighter – Heavy Armor, Strong Weapons, Low Speed, Low Maneuverability --Torpedo Boat – Very Heavy Armor, Slow Torpedoes only, Low Speed, Very Low Maneuverability

It looks like you're saying that there is such a thing as maximum speed in space. There isn't. Forget about speed and think about thrust. It doesn't matter if a torpedo boat could move at the same speed as a light fighter, if the torpedo boat takes ten minutes longer to get to that speed.

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Supply Ships --Intra-sector Supply Ship – Small cargo capacity, Able to dock/transfer material to any station, incapable of using jump gates, one for each resource category.

Seems unlikely that there wouldn't be a hybrid supply ship, able to hold both categories at the expense of, say, reduced total capacity.

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Capitol Ships – Capitol ships are capable of self-initiated inter-zone warps, and are the only ships capable of having individual target spots on them.

Why?

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Short Range is used for combat, and other situations where precise movement is required. Docking, Minefields, etc. Long Range is used for long distance intra-sector travel. This is the express lane for moving from point a to point b. There is no real room here to maneuver its practically a straight line shot or a very long curve.

What is the gameplay difference between these two?

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Inter-sector travel is most commonly done via jump gates. Entry into one of them causes the player to zone into the next sector. There are however other means of inter-sector travel. --Jump Engines – Only available on Capitol ships. Allows them to jump into a sector without using a jump gate.

Can Bases use jump engines? Or are they 'stationary', to the extent that that's meaningful in space.

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However, if a guild finds a wormhole stabilizer,

Finds, you say? Are wormhole stabilizers relics of an ancient advanced civilisation? If they are, what other relics might there be? Supplies of A-5 and B-5 and designs to use them in? Power-hungry one-shot superweapons? A particularly fine wine?

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Original post by Nathan Baum It looks like you're saying that there is such a thing as maximum speed in space. There isn't. Forget about speed and think about thrust. It doesn't matter if a torpedo boat could move at the same speed as a light fighter, if the torpedo boat takes ten minutes longer to get to that speed.

Actually, there are maximum speeds in space. Firstly, there's light speed - you can never be moving at light speed as measured by any inertial observer (as you get close to light speed, things start to get seriously weird).

Secondly, unless you manage to find a patch of absolutely perfect vacuum (which certainly ain't happening within a galaxy) your speed is limited by the resistance of the medium - not only do you have drag to contend with, but, also, the radiation levels will be more than enough to fry any ship whose particle shielding isn't up to the task. By tuning the available technology, you can make either effect dominate...

Of course, it's also quite possible to tune your technology so that accelerating up to theoretical maximum speeds takes a prohibitively long time, in which case you are looking at relative acceleration rates being the key.

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Original post by rmsgrey Quote: Original post by Nathan Baum It looks like you're saying that there is such a thing as maximum speed in space. There isn't. Forget about speed and think about thrust. It doesn't matter if a torpedo boat could move at the same speed as a light fighter, if the torpedo boat takes ten minutes longer to get to that speed. Actually, there are maximum speeds in space. Firstly, there's light speed - you can never be moving at light speed as measured by any inertial observer (as you get close to light speed, things start to get seriously weird).

Firstly, the speed of light isn't a "speed limit". Ships can accelerate continuously, and from their point of view always go faster. Secondly, the speed of light is the same for observers, so even if we imagine the speed of light is a meaningful speed limit, every ship will have the same speed limit.

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Secondly, unless you manage to find a patch of absolutely perfect vacuum (which certainly ain't happening within a galaxy) your speed is limited by the resistance of the medium - not only do you have drag to contend with, but, also, the radiation levels will be more than enough to fry any ship whose particle shielding isn't up to the task. By tuning the available technology, you can make either effect dominate...

Well, assuming a 100 ton ship with a 20 meter diameter hemispherical front accelerating at 1 G in an area of average space density for this galaxy, the speed limit due to drag is about 12 thousands times the speed of light.

First, I'll put the board back on topic here. I'll discuss speed of ships here shortly. This is a reply to Nathan, who at the moment I can't tell if he's being serious or sarcastic.

1.GUILDS

Guilds in this game are not historical guilds, but the common name given to Player Organizations. So No, they cannot join more than one at a time. This game is not, and never will be a game about trading and enterprise. This game is along the lines of Planetside in Space, or Wing Commander the MMO, than it is Free lancer, Escape Velocity, or anything like that. So while a "jumpgate guild" may evolve, I doubt that anyone would put up with them for very long. The idea is for war, not trade.

2. RESOURCES

Resource A and Resource B are just place holders...I've not put lore into the game, so I've not decided what to name the resources...but they will not be A+1 in the final design...just right now I haven't named them...It could very well be Ceramic, Steel, Titanium, Cobalt. But there have been no names applied as of yet...so for now its A, A+1 etc.

I've Looked at your heirarchy and it seems as if you've put alot of work into the concept. However, as this game is primarily focused on Space Dogfights I'm trying to keep the RTS and Resource system pretty basic, if not original. The only reason the explanation of the game is focused on the RTS part of it is because the common person has an idea about what the general Space dogfight game is like. Though in general that will be the primary focus of the game.

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It looks like you're saying that there is such a thing as maximum speed in space. There isn't. Forget about speed and think about thrust. It doesn't matter if a torpedo boat could move at the same speed as a light fighter, if the torpedo boat takes ten minutes longer to get to that speed.

In reality no there is NOT a top speed, however, I'm not dealing in reality i'm dealing with a game. If you want reality, this would not be the game for you...besides real combat in space would be pretty boring.

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Seems unlikely that there wouldn't be a hybrid supply ship, able to hold both categories at the expense of, say, reduced total capacity.

I could come up with some very large "lore" answer as to why this is...but the reason boils down to "because I said so :)" Though I could at a later date decide to just remove the one of each kind and just say can only hold one type at a time.

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Capitol Ships – Capitol ships are capable of self-initiated inter-zone warps, and are the only ships capable of having individual target spots on them. Why?

Bandwidth limitations, captiol ships are going to be large enough that they can have individual targets on them. Small ships such as the fighters, would eat up too much bandwidth to have individual target points.

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Short Range is used for combat, and other situations where precise movement is required. Docking, Minefields, etc. Long Range is used for long distance intra-sector travel. This is the express lane for moving from point a to point b. There is no real room here to maneuver its practically a straight line shot or a very long curve. What is the gameplay difference between these two?

Long range has a higher top speed, and no access to weapons deployment. And a lot less manueverability.

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Inter-sector travel is most commonly done via jump gates. Entry into one of them causes the player to zone into the next sector. There are however other means of inter-sector travel. --Jump Engines – Only available on Capitol ships. Allows them to jump into a sector without using a jump gate. Can Bases use jump engines? Or are they 'stationary', to the extent that that's meaningful in space.

Bases are stationary.

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Original post by robert4818 It could very well be Ceramic, Steel, Titanium, Cobalt. But there have been no names applied as of yet...so for now its A, A+1 etc.

Will these be purely linear progressions? It might be neat to have some of them be specialized rather than tiered. You could have A1 be resistant to energy weapons when used in armor plating, while A2 repels concussive force, and A3 resists radiation. Of course, you could still have A1+1, like Refined Titanium, or Tungsten Steel, or Ionized Ceramic.

The save could work for resource B. The same tech, built with B1 or B2, could have different ballistic properties. It would complement the tiered levels of resources with a sort of rock/paper/scissors system, but the levels could easily be preserved. It would be one more way for guild operators to specialize their fleets. Damage types are always an intelligible and subtly important part of RTS or action games.

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Original post by robert4818 This is a reply to Nathan, who at the moment I can't tell if he's being serious or sarcastic.

Both. [wink]

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So while a "jumpgate guild" may evolve, I doubt that anyone would put up with them for very long. The idea is for war, not trade.

A guild would maintain its power with military force.

You have currency in the form of resources A and B. Any guild that wants lots of power could put a blockade on a handful of important gates and demand a toll. Because the guild can concentrate its forces in a relatively small area, it would have more firepower than an equally powerful enemy guild that spreads its force around.

This is likely to happen whether or not you want it to.

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I've Looked at your heirarchy and it seems as if you've put alot of work into the concept.

Tell me about it. On the plus side, I finally learnt how to use blender. [smile]

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Quote: Seems unlikely that there wouldn't be a hybrid supply ship, able to hold both categories at the expense of, say, reduced total capacity. I could come up with some very large "lore" answer as to why this is...but the reason boils down to "because I said so :)" Though I could at a later date decide to just remove the one of each kind and just say can only hold one type at a time.

I wouldn't remove the other ones. It seems sensible to offer specialised units which are better for one particular purpose, but are slightly worse at everything else and are more expensive to build.

Guilds that are primarily interested in warfare would concentrate on their military ships and pilot training, but use generalised supply ships.

Guilds that are more strategically inclined would use specialised supply ships, at the expense of having less resources to spend on their military vessels.

Having vulnerable specialised vessels also helps encourage cooperative play. An easy example is your torpedo boat: highly specialised for attacking capital ships but unable to retaliate against attack ships, it would usually need an escort wing of fighters to be able to carry out its mission.

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Bandwidth limitations, captiol ships are going to be large enough that they can have individual targets on them. Small ships such as the fighters, would eat up too much bandwidth to have individual target points.

I don't think that's likely to be an actual problem. When are subtargets going to be eating up bandwidth? When a ship arrives, the server will tell nearby clients about its subtargets. You'd need to give each ship an id so that you can talk about it: you'd just give each each subtarget on each ship a seperate id. If a subtarget is damaged, you'd broadcast a damage notification for its id, just as you'd the ship's id when talking about things that effect the whole ship.

On the other hand, there might be genuine gameplay issues with fighters having subtargets. I'd probably find it harder to keep track of all my components. And it is irritating if you get hit and lose weapons or engines.

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Long range has a higher top speed, and no access to weapons deployment. And a lot less manueverability.

Is long-range faster-than-light? If it is, it's also possible that sensors wouldn't work effectively.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage Quote: Original post by robert4818 It could very well be Ceramic, Steel, Titanium, Cobalt. But there have been no names applied as of yet...so for now its A, A+1 etc. Will these be purely linear progressions? It might be neat to have some of them be specialized rather than tiered. You could have A1 be resistant to energy weapons when used in armor plating, while A2 repels concussive force, and A3 resists radiation. Of course, you could still have A1+1, like Refined Titanium, or Tungsten Steel, or Ionized Ceramic. The same could work for resource B. The same tech, built with B1 or B2, could have different ballistic properties. It would complement the tiered levels of resources with a sort of rock/paper/scissors system, but the levels could easily be preserved. It would be one more way for guild operators to specialize their fleets. Damage types are always an intelligible and subtly important part of RTS or action games.

I hadn't thought about that before. While I don't like the idea of the tiers having seperate properties... The idea did strike me that you could toss in another part of the research station you could COMBINE different A's and B's to come up with resources C-Z which could each have different and very specific properties. So you could combine A+1 and 3B+2's and come up with C an element that has a very good stat boost for manueverability when used in wings... but functions poorly when used any where else.