Not to make this game a sim of sorts but to bring the Universe to life certain activities will not be go on to make the Universe truly alive. Overview Space Exploration Factions (WIP) Space Police/Military Civilian Parties (Worshipers,Pro Fauna/Flora,Extremists,Anti-Government,hackers,civil rights,etc groups) Mercenaries/Assassins/Bounty Hunters Bandits Outlaws/Fugitives Merchants Space Combat(WIP) Updated May 7th 2012 Ship Disabling Ship Destruction Negotiations Hit & Run Misc Black Market/Underworld No Fly Zones Dead Space Trade/Travel Routes <----Space Exploration----> This would be the bread and butter to having your fun traveling through space and its hazards.This could be done via a star system means of traveling with each star system having nodes.Your ship would travel to or be in a star system and within would travel nodes that connect to the different heavenly bodies that populate it.Space Stations,Space colonies,colonies,fuel depots,trade depots,space resorts/casinos,space police stations,asteroid fields,planets,moons,ship graveyards,etc would all make up the different items that have a specific node to venture to.As your ship would travel from node to node the nodes and space in between could have random encounters that could occur based on stat info in that area around the nodes.These items and events could also be on nodes between star systems but be on a much grander scale given he larger open space between them. Space battles,Bandits,merc's,assassin's,rival groups,space police,military of that sector,hostile organisms(deadly foreign alien lifeforms),SOS's,ship breakdown/malfunction,ship wrecks,space storms,etc.These and many more would be some of the random encounters (based on certain criteria) that could/would occur when traveling between/to different nodes. <----Space Combat-----> This would occur during hostile encounters either via random event when exploring in space,or a planned attack against a entity on the map.When the encounter begins you would be loaded into a area of combat that has all the foreground and background of w/e is in that areas space. The combat would be top down (similar to SPAZ/Starfarer) where you engage in ship vs ship combat.Debris,mines,asteroids,storm clouds,etc could all be hazards in the combat area depending on the area your fighting in. You could lay your own mines and traps of course if you have your ship equipped with them. Firing your weapon systems,shields,etc would be all up to your decision, being able to chose manual control or automated firing. There would be 4 means to space combat disable,destroy, negotiate, and lastly hit & run. Disabling a ship to have your crew board and take over by infantry would happen via stats of your crew & how well they work together vs. stat of their crew so train them well or you could end up with a massacre.When successful you get the the reward of w/e you sent your crew in there to do.Be that steal intel ,rob them of tech,treasures,rescue a captive,take over the whole ship,etc. 2nd way of disabling a ship would be you destroy all its weapon systems and taking out the engine or disabling their weapon systems and engine via a weapon of some sort or luring them into a area the combat zone that will disable a ship not protected against it. When you decide to disable the ship you can tug the ship with you back to your hideout or a safe zone to do with it and its crew as you wish. The more deadly means of space combat would be total destruction.As you would guess you pretty much have to destroy the enemy vessels. Any good left over behind the vessels destruction you could obviously pick up though who knows how much would be left. Negotiation would be the more diplomatic means of getting yourself out of a combat situation.Opening a communications line with the enemy vessels would be the most important aspect,but not only aspect.Sometimes you might encounter a species that you do not have a language translation of.So something like lowering your shields or not having your weapons primed would show them that your not hostile to them.However if they are gonna attack you regardless of your non hostile action , you better be quick to raise your shields and get your weapons hot. If the negotiation becomes a success you might end up with a new ally, get a option to trade goods,get intel,or could even get some increase favor toward w/e faction that vessel is with.Possibly even quests could open up of the negotiation goes well. Hit and run tactic could also be deployed if you decide its too hot in that combat zone.If your out gunned and cannot get outta there fast enough hit their engines,launch a decoy/use a hologram, or blind them and take out their scanners and haul ass outta there. <----Trade/Travel Routes-----> These are pretty much as is. A planet,colony,space station,mining asteroid,etc sets up a trade facility which allows whatever resource they are selling up for grabs. As far as buying each place would buy whatever it is they want. All of this could be seen via the map as you travel using it, or when you go to the planet,colony,station,etc and you are on foot and are able to access the routes connected to that location. The items that are up for sale or that a place is buying could change drastically depending on what is going on in and around the place of business or who is dealing with out.This could add to how the Universe as a whole functions with things that can add to a system which controls items such as peace,war,treaties,hostility,etc. This would also allow a player to be able to to put up their wares for trade or sale which could directly impact the universe. Obvious in name would be stations/ports where you go to for long range travel between planets,star systems,or galaxies. These could have a cost for using and could have other items such as be a breeding ground for ambushes,gang traffic, or even center of strategic military grounds. Adding to the Universal system a example could be if 2 warring planets have routes they use to smuggle items or receive resources to fuel their side of the conflict. If you were to take that route you might encounter battle skirmishes between the 2 military factions or even a full out battle for control/destruction of that rout station/port. <------Space Police/Military-----> These guys can be a Universal police system in charge of the law in space itself made up of different representatives of different planets,colonies,etc. With them in place different things could occur while you travel through the universe and you could hear via radio chatter, or had worked your way to be in good standing with. This would open up missions that you could assist them on or that they ask for you to do since your in the area. Or perhaps your playing the role of a badass or are being framed so they are after you which you would have to duck them to remain free. <---- Black Market/Underground----> These would exist just about anywhere. Military hardware,cutting edge tech,prototype technology,living specimens,information,etc would all be available here at a price. Players could contribute items they steal to hot to sell via regular trade routes in these markets. Like the trade system factions,planets,etc could all be effected by what kind of items are sold and traded here as well as any deals made. Depending on the size of the blackmarket you could receive a numerous number of opportunities to go on various seedy quests for unknown individuals. Some of these could vary well impact a societies future, or the future of the star system or even the galactic whole. <-----No Travel Zones----> Areas where you 100% cannot fly through otherwise whatever condition which set this no fly zone would come at you,be this a military DMZ,large space quarantine, space phenomenon,private space sector,site of a experiment being conducted,etc. If you do decide to enter these areas you could be rewarded with quite the haul of goods,intrigue of discovery and information, or walked yourself right into a nightmare. Going through these areas could spark conflict for neighboring planets, or even make you a enemy of a few people/groups that may operate in the area.
Also, I think that NPC civilizations should really be there. I mean not just mobs wandering on planets, but actual, organized civilizations that would build randomly generated buildings (following a certain pattern, just like with shotguns) in their planet and then expand to other planets, and procreate, and... well, LIVE. It doesn't matter if it's on multiplayer, it's also great to form an empire with your fellow players and suddenly feel threatened by a civilization that is growing way too much. KILL THEM WITH FIRE! Or, who knows, assimilate them. Coming back to your ideas, all of them look great, especially with living civilizations. I approve.
Perhaps you could sync it with your data-book thing and can set filters for things you want to find; like a certain world type or where certain aliens are native or such
I have an idea - do trading Port Royale 2 style! It's a simple supply-and-demand system, have a look at the trade window: Obviously, the Starbound trade goods won't be Carribean-Themed, but I dunno, I always liked the PR2 trade system. Put simply, the pictures at the top (Santa Clara and Warehouse) show the parties involved in the trade. The arrows pointing left are used to sell goods to the town (planet/colony in Starbound's case) and the arrows to the right are used to load goods (for the price indicated) into the warehouse/onto the ship. The top numbers (1,10,100) show how much of that good you're going to buy/sell per click (eg. Sell 10 spices, Buy 100 rum.) It's quite basic when you get down to it and for advanced users there's an autotrade function that sends your convoy around a list of towns and buys/sells goods for above/below set price thresholds, or set up autosell/autobuy functions for warehouses placed in towns so that goods are automatically sold to the town when the price is good (again set by the player.) I always liked this trade system and would love to see it in Starbound, to make profiteering a bit easier (once you have the money to spend of convoys of ships, that is!) EDIT: This is mainly in response to the "trade routes" idea.
Glad to hear ya like the ideas.I like your idea of the civilizations being able to grow and such.This could also be shown on the map where as trade route congestion,crime, and space activity would increase or decrease changing the value,availability and price of certain things. This could also have things such as new space construction and such would appear on the map, some which could have missions,etc on them.They could even come up as newly generated explorable places. Yes indeed it could also allow for a sort of fog where unexplored areas in the Universe give you no details at all since you never been there.More detail on each planet would show as you find information based on certain locations in the universe.Through your discoveries,information found/sold,space probes,maps,etc to you which would increase the info displayed on the planet in the map when you hover over it.
I actually mentioned this idea in another post about NPCs, I think that civilizations will definitely add to the game making it more realistic and more interactive. Especially if there are different quests/interactions you can have with them which may also include the idea of setting up trades and the other stuff mentioned in this topic.
The supply and demand system I imagine would be a standard template for trade,but should not be the only factor for trades. Things like warfare,political conflict,expansion,etc would change according to whats going on in that star system and has anything to do with that planet/colony/space station,etc. You should be able to trade items that are not exactly what they want but would in retrospect be able to take care of one of their demands though not directly. Ex: A colony is in need of fresh water by a "x" number. You might not have the capacity to trade them that amount of water, but might however have the technology, or even the device itself for them to be able to create their own water, or even harvest ice from a nearby ice belt or ice planet. Perhaps even your able to inquire through negotiations what they want the water for and instead offer that. Since we are talking about a game that takes place throughout a Universe I think a supply & demand system by itself would limit the games possibilities to doing trade.Remember deals/negotiations tend to be more important then the trade itself. Also this would allow for all kinda crazy possibilities to get a trade successful.
Agreed. Completely free trade would go well with a universal game. Maybe you ABSOLUTELY need some kind of material not found in your surroundings, and to which you can't get by any means, so you will pay WHATEVER it takes to buy it.
Obviously political and faction disposition systems would be appropriate. Perhaps I could explain some more in depth mechanics of PR2, though I would say that a great deal more depth would be needed. In PR2, there were essentially 2 kinds of towns - Colonial and Governor. Colonial towns produced 2 kinds of "colonial goods" and 1 kind of "raw material." In Governor towns, raw materials were required to make finished products and colonial goods would be sent to the continent (removed from the game, in essence) and would use the money to pay for tools, spices and wine. These could then be sold to Colonial towns for massive profit, or the tools could be bought up and kept by the player for use in his own production industries. That adds a bit more depth in that different types of town were co-dependent on each other - if one nearby market went down the effect would spread over a larger area. Perhaps goods could be as follows: Basic Goods (eg. rations, building materials, water) can be produced by pretty well any colony or planet providing they have the climate, environment and/or technology. Raw Materials (eg. minerals, information, blueprints) can be produced by mining or research based colonies. Finished Products (eg. weaponry, mining equipment, electronics, general useful items) can be produced on production colonies of varying technology levels. These can aid other colony types by providing them with the means to produce basic goods and raw materials in greater quantity. Exotic Goods (eg. plant samples, live specimens, rare minerals) can only be found on certain planets and have a high value to research colonies. etc. etc. Essentially, different goods would have varying values to differently focused colonies and different types of planets. In your example, a desert climate planet or a colony short on supplies would find water/a "hydrogen-oxygen reactor" much more useful than a technologically advanced colony on an oceanic planet that happens to specialise in desalination machinery. I'm kind of liking this brainstorming here
I get what your saying,but I think that maybe it might add a lil too much into that one area.These planets are gona be vastly different so I think the things a particular planet would want will probably vary quite wildly.The game is gonna have tons of different stuff in it,most of it being randomly generated that's gonna bring about lots of variants. A simplified version would work better probably that way there is room for other things in the game without making it a micro management sim. Also in terms of stuff for trade I was thinking things more imaginative that fits the sci-fi universe. Also remember that even though a planet might lack a resource on the planet would not mean that it cannot obtain it w/o the users help. Each star system might have 1 or 2 planets that support sentient beings on them.This would make that whole star system could possibly have all the items that planet needs. This could be shown by the beings of that planet having mining facilities , space bridges,etc that grab that resource. With that there could be god knows what kind of random demands changing back and forth. Still like what you said but it would prolly need to be simplified otherwise would be to complicated a system for the game.Especially since the game more about exploring,adventuring,etc.
Made a update (Space Combat) read the 1st post. Going to be updating this thread a lot this month so stay tuned.
I'll be the real stick in the mud here, but I am opposed to having "sim" elements in the game. I find the random encounters between the pin-point waypoints you use for traveling to be a fantastic idea (as it is a traditional RPG element), though the top-down arcade style ship combat bugs me immensely as well. To me, top-down shooters act more like a mini-game more than a major turnpoint in gameplay... but unfortunately, for a 2D game, I guess I can't argue this point. Perhaps I am just not optimistic enough about a ship-to-ship combat system. When it comes to random events while traveling, I don't think there should be options to negotiate. I feel the random element should be in attaining the encounter, not getting the encounter then choosing a talk option hoping it works. If you encounter bandits, there may be dialogue and then it's a fight where you choose to run whenever you want through game mechanics (like running off screen or whatever they may be). When you talk about ship disabling and whatnot, does that include actually boarding the ship? I think that would be a ton of fun, because it includes 2D action elements again with your character. [reviewing the rest soon, busy :s]
Well the space combat was mainly for a means to give life to the universe starbound would set us in. I as far as your concern over top down shooting being part of a rpg element.There are plenty rpgs that have things of such nature.If you ever played a game called Xenogears you fought in mechs,traveled around in a sand ship, and had melee combat. The point of the space combat is to add to the game itself giving more playability and immersion to the whole space exploration area. Yes for the disabling of the ship I mentioned being able to board another ship.With various options you could do when they board it given what mission you sent your people on in the ship. As far as your opposition to having sim elements in the game I hate to burst your bubble, but the game already has them. Terraforming is a sim element,so happens to be all of the cataloging of various specimens and being able to create creatures, as well as being able to train pets. Without some degree of a sim element the universe would not feel alive since it would be mostly you going from planet to planet with no real consequence to what you do other then what occurs on the planet itself.
