I think every serious game developer knows elite its sequels or at least games, that are based on that concept (Freelancer, X series) There are generaly two types of elite like games: Games with a newtonian flight model, where all planets and galaxies are sized like in the real world, the flight physic feels "real" and where it takes days/weeks/months to travel around (of course you don't really experience the whole time, because you can "speed up" the time) I only know of two games around that premise, namely, Frontier and First Encounters (The sequels to the original elite) Games which use a much less strict space: X Series, Privateer, Freelancer, etc. The problem with the former concept, if using in a MMORPG, is the hyperspace. In the elite sequels, nearly every ship had a hyperdrive. A "jump" would take 7 days for the maximal range of the drive IE: If a hyperdrive had a range of 8 light years, it took the drive 7 days to perform such travel. 3.5 days for 4 light years, etc. Of course, the player didn't experience a full week, he arrived instantly in the targeted star system, just the time in the game world progressed for a full week. How to make that into a MMO? It works for a single player, but not for multiplayer. I think the only way to create a MMO in elite style (newtonian physics) style is around that premise: Ordinary hyperdrives are disallowed, because.. it's science fiction, pick any dumb reason: instability of hyperspace, alien virus erased the firmware of all hyperdrives, whatever, so, the only way to travel to another starsystem is using big giant ships, which include a different kind of hyperdrive, a much slower one. Maybe not even slower, but, without the effect of "time compression". One of those ships, can take around 1000-2000 ordinary sized ships ("ordinary" is broad termed here - from a from a small fighter sized ship to a thousand ton trader). So, basicaly, after the player loaded his ship into one of those giants, he waits until the the giant is filled completely. Then, the travel begins. And the travel is quite long - 3 weeks for, let's say 5 light years but in REAL TIME. Every giant transporter ship should be so big, so that it would be a world of its own, so that you can indeed explore it for weeks. there could be quests - find a planted bomb, defend the giant from alien attackers in hyperspace, etc. And don't forget - thousand or thousands of other players are on the ship too, so, you have companions. That way, a game can use the newtonian model, the game world can still as big as a galaxy and you still have a reasonable model for visiting other star systems. And, the space would still appear big. OK, the game once, you're in a giant wouldn't be that space-traderish, more World of Warcraft.. but.. If you make the giant ships REALLY big, you can still rudimentary trade there with your own ship, transport goods from one end to another etc. Basicaly, a giant ship can be something like a small starsystem (but still very very small compared to a real starsystem) of it's own, just movable.

I think the highliner concept (found in Dune. Some might notice I like Dune) might be more useful for such a game. They don't wait for a full load, but are like a train system. They have times they depart, and routes they run. You buy passage from the spacing guild, get on, stay in your ship or on other ships if you don't have your own. Space 'folds' and your there. your travel time is the time it takes for you to load/unload your ship, and the load/unloading time between where you get on, and where you get off.

You can have the very expensive 'express' lines, that go almost directly between places a lot of people are traveling, but you can also have cheap lines, which stop at all the little backwaters, and you can spend hours of real game time sitting there, making fold after fold. This means people can go to places, things seem huge (Wow, we just folded space, and now we're 10,000 lightyears away.) and you get options for different ways of traveling. If you just started, you're not paying for direct travel to where YOU want to go, you're going directly to where you can afford maybe. (I can't afford to take this load of special toys from system A09L8 directly to c84x9, so I'll catch this liner here to system A09L7, and then I'll take this liner to 20 different systems and finally get to c84x9)

This sort of system also means players that are good at it can find their way faster, maybe find times and places two different routes cross paths and quickly get you around for cheap. Where as new players are going to have little chance of finding these 'sweet' spots in the routes.

I expect that many players will not like having to wait three weeks in real time to travel to a planet that they want to go to. Even if there is enough to do on the ship, it may not be what they want to do. And after you've been on a lot of ships, it will probably get boring. This system also makes it very hard for players to meet up with their friends, since they may be far away. There is no reason that hyperspace travel can't be instantaneous, since it is fictional anyway. Also, how much does time matter in the game? You could have the player travel instantly and say that it took three weeks. Does it matter that three weeks haven't really passed for anyone?

It's a novel idea, but I think it may be frustrating to many players. Perhaps you are trying to simulate reality too much.

Would there be gameplay once you got the the destination? I'd hate to play a space-flight game where you can fly and shoot and explore and trade, but every time you want to go do those things someplace else, you have to play a completely different MMO for three weeks.

As a designer, it would blow to make enough content for two totally different games, and only get paid for one.

Why not release two games: One where you're on a giant interstellar ship all the time, and every three weeks there's an event where you can trade with a certain set of NPCs, but you never actually get off the ship. The market would fluctuate as the behemoth circled the galaxy, and you'd always have something to do. Then make the other game... oh wait, it already exists.

I'll stick with EVE.

This is actually a pretty important concept, and it's one that we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out for the eventual online incarnation of X.


What we're thinking of at the moment basically comes down to a two-fold solution. For "local" long-distance flights, i.e. through a solar system, you build a sort of "Fast Lane" network of routes. Steer your ship into the Fast Lane, and ride it along. You can steer in or out of it at will, and you have to continually follow the path near some optimal curve to get the maximum speed benefit from it.

This is then complemented by a "really long distance" system. In X, part of this is done by jumpgates (between solar systems, or "sectors") but mostly by gateless jumpdrive devices that let you basically teleport around at will. The trick is, these jumpdrives are expensive, rare, and difficult to maintain - so very few players will have them, and only rich players at that. This means that there will be a jumpdrive "train service" very similar to the Dune Heighliner concept that Talroth described.


There are a few important points to consider when designing such a system:

Local Travel
- Will the travel system constrict traffic too heavily, and discourage exploration outside the "Fast Lanes"? If so, consider balancing appropriately, or hiding some good stuff "off the beaten path" to encourage roaming. For instance, make the lanes patrolled by police ships and heavilly scanned, so that smugglers will tend to take the long route, and risk the Fast Lane only when they feel very confident.

- Will the travel system interfere with combat? The problem with "really fast engine" systems is that they let ships escape from combat very easily, and if the attackers have no way to pursue, combat becomes neutered. Unfortunately, if the attackers have the really fast engines too, they can just catch up - so there's no escape from combat at all. A Fast Lane system avoids this by being a public gathering point (more chance of Good Samaritans coming over and breaking up the fight, police intervention, etc.) and also requiring the player to focus on flying in the Fast Lane to continue gaining speed advantages from it.

Remote Travel
- Will the system be boring for people who need to travel a lot? If so, expect very frustrated players, who will probably quit the game fast. Anything that requires more than a few minutes of realtime is going to be risky.

- Don't let it be so accessible that it "makes the world smaller" by obliterating the fact that distance exists. At the same time, don't make it so hard to use that people stay locked to small geographical areas.

- Consider contriving some limitations to the system in the interests of game balance. For instance, the Spacing Guild in Dune charges extremely large sums of money to transport warships and military personnel, to discourage open warfare. You might do similar things to keep players from warping from one political faction's territory to another, and so on. Maybe even have some natural obstructions like chains of black holes that prevent passage, or whatever.


Just some fuel for the fire [smile]

Well, if you are going to have any space combat, you might consider "Slip Steams" systems. You open a slip portal, and then have to ride a web of tube like things (Crashing into the sides is a bit of a nono. Could either have you thrown into random space, or just destory you) which are of different sizes, depending on how common ships pass through them, and whatever other factors you want.

To open a portal to slipstream, you use sublight engines (with massive acceleration, so you can get yourself up to 95% lightspeed in under a minute with the best engines and systems) to get to a band of space away from the sun, a little farther than the orbit of an earth like planet. When entering into a system, you are thrown out (facing the sun, traveling about 80% light speed) at a random point inside the slip band. Go too far out, and you can't open the portal, and too close to a gravity well, you won't open one either.

This makes camping jump points almost impossible (you know where they're comming out, but unless I missed a digit or two, we're talking a 'spwan point' of 250BILLION cubic km,... Maybe you'll want to scale your system sizes down a tad,...)

Want to 'hide' something? put it as only accessible down some narrow and very twisted slip route, but not something impossible, just very hard to get to. This helps with some things that I hear people complain about in MMO games. While you can run from fights, it isn't super easy (opening a slip portal takes a few seconds, and also doesn't close right after you enter it. So someone following you to fight can still follow you, but if you're lucky/skilled, you could lose them in the maze of the slip.)

Also, in the slipstream, real distances don't mean a lot, the stream can change a little over time, or if as a dev you want to spice things up, you can totaly reset the streams and enjoy the screams from players as their great secret runs vanish on them. So, while you can get to any point in space from any other point through the streams, it requires a lot work to find the paths, and is often easier to take paths that run straigh between systems.


And once again, another post by talroth that has been done between doing loads of other things. :) Hopefully I've kept to the same topic for the whole post.

I liked the mechanic in elite 2 for tracking hyperspacing ships, and think it can be modified for a multiplayer environment, and altered to take account of load times for players.

Ships with a hyperdrive can make jumps, long jumps take longer and require more fuel - but a long jump won't take as much time as many short jumps. Varying grades of hyperdrive can affect travel time, entry point accuracy, fuel consumption, waste products, exit point distinctiveness etc. etc.

When a player makes a jump, they leave a temporary 'exit point' in real space.
The server determines travel time (should be a maximum of say 10 minutes for the longest jump possible, and a minimum of say 2 minutes). Their ship is placed in its own 'hyperspace environment' (instant load). The client loads the next zone (the one they're hyperspacing to) whilst the ship is in 'hyperspace'.
Remaining travel time can be used by the player to prepare their ship for exit (powering up weapons, shields, checking what cargo they have etc). This could be a really tense and exciting time for a player if they're jumping to a known hostile location - good 'psych up' time.

Once their travel time is up (and the client has hopefully finished loading the zone) the ship can exit hyperspace smoothly - everything for the zone has been preloaded. Another temporary 'entry point' is placed in real space, and the player's ship moves from it.

Other players can examine entry/exit points and see where the hyperspace move was from / to, and in the case of exit points (if they have a good nav computer) determine approximate travel time.

This allows fast-hyperdrive ships to beat a target to it's destination, but doesn't allow loadtime-griefing (since preloading is done while in hyperspace).