quote: Original post by Wavinator
If the player has a bad reputation, is damaged, and finds himself in the middle of enemy territory as a result of exploring uncharted hyperspace, is this a fair gameplay state? (The player''s made his own bed, so to speak)

This wouldn''t happen if the player stuck to known routes or had a neutral or good rep with everyone. Is it fair to make this a risk of exploring the unknown, or too heavy handed?

This is good. It''s a simple extension for every action there is a consequence. And if you''ve been naughty, your karma''s going to get you. As long as it isn''t the standard, situations like this only add to the gameplay, not detract from it.




"NPCs will be inherited from the basic Entity class. They will be fully independent, and carry out their own lives oblivious to the world around them ... that is, until you set them on fire ..."
"When you are willing to do that which others are ashamed to do, therein lies an advantage."

quote: Original post by ahw

Maybe it''s just my memory being defective, but I remember talking about this a while ago, with you (Wavinator). Actually, it was in the Writing forum, while you were researching the story.

It''s my memory that''s defective. I don''t remember talking about this at all!

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Do you remember me talking about the Warp from the Warhammer universe ?
It''s a parallel dimension much like the Warp in Babylon 5, were daemons run free, and hunt on unsuspecting ships. Navigating the Warp is MUCH faster than using Hyperspace drives, but it''s also MUCH more dangerous, as death is probably the best of the bad things that could happen to you in there ...
As well, navigating the Warp on long distances is impossible without the aid of a special navigator called and Astropath.

Hmmmm... you know, the interesting thing here is that there''s actually multiple ways of traveling between stars, which I''ve been thinking about.

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I could dig up all the appropriate references online if you are intereted

Sure, if you have them handy it''d be great to compare! Thx!

quote:
The Warp has the nice property to be a "magic" concept rather than a scientific one like the Hyperspace. Which allows you to have wandering daemons, weird events, and most useful, the Warp storms, that can cut off an entire system from the rest of the universe ... why do I say that ?

Hey, you don''t need "magic" to have weirdness, trust me! Ancient aliens... probes whose communications cause psychoreactive responses, hallucinations, and madness... energy wraiths that possess crew... spatial distortions... equipment malfunctions... energy storms... No fantasy required!!!

(Sorry, #1 pet peeve of mine is fantasy that wears science fiction clothing. I appreciate the suggestions, tho! )

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Well ... how are you gonna prevent the player from deciding to go outside of your area of game (since you designed a limited portion of the universe).

Fiction that addresses the limits of the game board is something I''ve got to add, too. I haven''t thought this one out carefully yet, thx for the idea!

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Just waiting for the mothership...

The link I waas thinking about, and that I already gave you, is The GW Gateway. May I suggest "The Galaxy & Space Travel" ?

My reason behind me saying "magic" concept, is that if you come up with some cool pseudo-science explanations for hyperspace, you could hardly say "uh, yeah, maybe we were wrong". So you just say that there IS a parallel dimension, which cannot be explained scientifically, and it DOES affect our own dimension.
For instance, the Warp storms are so tremendous that they echo in our dimension by disturbing hyperspace travels ?
That''s a very good "excuse" to say that your player cant travel outside of some boundaries, because there is a Warp Storm preventing it. Wether they use the Warp or not, they couldnt pass beyond a certain point.

I like the idea that you could use "safe" travel through hyperspace, or risky but rewarding travel through the Warp.
You could even come up with some weird stuf like in Star Trek Voyager when they discover a spaceship that make them cover 60 light years in a few minutes, but it almost destroys their ship (cant remember the episode, but I could explain it if you want )

youpla :-P

One way to limit how far the player can go is to have nothing, a great big nothing.
This is space, it comprises of HUGE distances between relatively microscopic objects. Just let the player have a galaxcy to play in, or a sector. Just scale speed of the player & the distance.
An if the player does manage to spend several weeks of real-time at the hight speed the game will go at, dont you think the player would run out of energy/fule or something?
The Void (the enormious distance between galaxies) contains nothing, only a few atoms per square light year. Thus the player has no real need to cross the Void. If you dont want to let the player run around the galaxy, then have a cluster of solar system(a arm of the spiral(if its a spiral galaxy)) as densly packed, with large distances between any were. This opens the psoibility of exspansions, as simple improvements on drive system, allowing the player to get around faster.
And if the player does manage to cross the uncrossible Void, its kind of like surviving a warp storm (just dont let it happen)

quote: Original post by ahw


The link I waas thinking about, and that I already gave you, is The GW Gateway. May I suggest "The Galaxy & Space Travel" ?

Hah! Okay, now I remember this! Thanks!

It gave me some ideas: I like that the medium of hyeprspace is in some places "stormwracked" like the ocean. It could make for some interesting gameplay to actually try and ride out the storm (if you''ve got some really good commodities to sell, you could make a killing).

And rather than being sunk, at least you could always drop out of hyperspace... although you''d end up in some random place, in need of repairs (kind of like washing up on a beach... )

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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by ggs

One way to limit how far the player can go is to have nothing, a great big nothing.
This is space, it comprises of HUGE distances between relatively microscopic objects. Just let the player have a galaxcy to play in, or a sector. Just scale speed of the player & the distance.
An if the player does manage to spend several weeks of real-time at the hight speed the game will go at, dont you think the player would run out of energy/fule or something?

I like the fuel limits idea. I think I''ll use this, along with making a some places near the edge permanently filled with hyperspace "storms" like you guys are suggesting.

It would be a good way to help conceal the map borders, and would be in context.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

Of course you could make hyperspace "wrap arround" just to really confuse ppl.

Another area you may consider is one i remember watchin on star trek voyager. Im not a big fan, but what i remember was there was going to be a big fight between the borg and this new species more powerful then them in what they called SUBSPACE...or something similar to it(or maybe it was antimatter-space). The borg lucked out because of course the voyager crew figured a way to close the portal from which these bigger baddies where to enter in from their anitmatter-space to the normal space as we know. You could do many things with this that you could relate to hyperspace or a totally different space....just to add my 2 cents to your pot.

aka John M.
Never give up. Never surrender!

It was Liquid Space. Species 6339 or something, the shapechangers.


"NPCs will be inherited from the basic Entity class. They will be fully independent, and carry out their own lives oblivious to the world around them ... that is, until you set them on fire ..."
"When you are willing to do that which others are ashamed to do, therein lies an advantage."

quote: Original post by NightWraith

Of course you could make hyperspace "wrap arround" just to really confuse ppl.

Hmmmm.... I kind of like this... it could be like traveling on the interior of a sphere. Very weird!

quote: Original post by GalaxyQuest

The borg lucked out because of course the voyager crew figured a way to close the portal from which these bigger baddies where to enter in from their anitmatter-space to the normal space as we know. You could do many things with this that you could relate to hyperspace or a totally different space

Thanx! Part of the game fiction does cover the ability to collapse Hyperspace Entry / Exit nodes. Doing this can cut off a system for a long time, and is what mysteriously happened to ALL systems in the backstory.



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Just waiting for the mothership...