I'm resurrecting an old idea with an entirely new focus. Feedback appreciated! Months ago I got some awesome feedback from you guys about different options for starship combat. But my design, while still sci-fi, has shifted away from focusing exclusively on ships to more general futuristic adventuring. Relationships, cultures and alliances are now more emphasized than gadgetry and machines. What I'd like to do is keep starship combat, but not make it your traditional space trader game (think Cowboy Beebop or Star Trek-- the space combat is NOT the main focus).

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Core Concept Crew control stations in VR using a morale-based means of slowing time. Because the game places heavy emphasis on improving relations and morale, ships with a higher morale can control their MMIs (mind-machine interfaces) better, allowing them to speed up their brains & make more decisions in a shorter time period.

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Details:Real Bodies, Virtual Ship For both single and co-op play, you would serve as either captain or a crewman networked to a high-G workstation that plugs you into VR. The VR would have two levels: Internal, and external. Internal would be a ghostly VR map of your department (bridge, engineering, security) with other crewmembers visible. External would orbit the ship and, with a mouse click, allow zooming to important points. Slowing Time The amount of morale would represent emotional "noise" in the MMI. Lower morale would mean shorter time periods where crew could accelerate their minds into high gear. Higher morale would mean longer periods, giving the player more time to react to events. Internal Bridge Gameplay You would communicate with NPCs to get things done. By swiveling in 360' you could point to the character and open up a pie chart with options. Dialog would either confirm or provide more detailed options. Behind the scenes, activity would have an opening phase, an action phase and a resolution phase. Combat, for instance, would have approach, engagement and status report phases. The autoslow options would be player controlled, or controlled by the server creator in the multiplayer case.

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External Gampelay I'll save details for later, but the gist is that the VR bridge then shows open space, & a point & click interface. A pie chart controls options such as attack and defense, and you can turn the ship anywhere you can point. All Hands GameplayCaptain: Order crew, make strategic command decisions. Bridge Officer: Play minigames related to system controlling (engineering, nav, comms / ewar, etc.) Engineering Teams (cap ships): Run around levels playing minigames to shore up structures & repair damage. Security (cap ships): First, use MMI to enhance guns; then "telecommand" bots on outter hull; then get in power armor to roam the halls fighting off anybody who made it inside. Fighter Pilots (any ship): Enhance an AI & make fast strategic decisions (high-G jousting, not Star Wars dog-fighting because dogfighting requires lots of details; I'll make up for this with lots of strategic options) AI Implementation Because I have ZERO intent on implementing skullcracking AI heuristics, this is a matter of scripting, standard AI & resolving combat through character & ship stats.

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If you assume that the entire game is always about relationships and survival in a fantastical future, does this detract or add to that core concept? If you played through a combat scenario, then landed and got into adventuring planetside using the EXACT same interface, would you consider the gameplay a hijack?

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Original post by Anonymous Poster Battlecruiser 3000 AD had a very bad combat system (the ship was like a very big F-16) that really put me off.

Yes, I've heard nightmare stories of having to read pages of manual just to turn the ship, and this highlights the audience problem you're talking about.

I'm ditching the problem altogether. Here's what I know people like: They like making high level decisions and seeing the consequences, and they like simple decisions (like shooting or puzzle solving) that produce an immediate result.

Regretfully, you're not going to know what people really like until you put product for testing / feedback in their hands. And by that time you've had to commit to some approach.

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Over a month ago I started to come up with fairly complicated game about engineering on a space ship (like in star trek) in which you would take on tasks given by the captain. But every time I think about that it seems it would be better to include more than just engineering (like being able to take the captain's position or a sensor officer).

Yeah, I got bogged down here, too. I now think it's better to make the stations only a small part of the gameplay, and make the character interaction on duty and off duty more important. It's a totally different switch meant to open the game to the RPGers and less technical crowd.

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about what physical labor to do on the ship from a sort of map or ship's display or computer interface, I've also thought about having it where you can have a first-person view and physically interact with the ship (physically repairing broken tubes, replacing devices, etc.), but this may require a game engine that hasn't really been attempted yet in a big way.

To cut back on risk and costs, I think the best approach is to rely on a holographic HUD paradigm. It's MUCH easier to trigger minigames that arise from supposed troublespots on a wall or map, and you don't lose anything because it's all in context (provided your crew all have neural nanonics with holographic retinal overlays [grin])

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Another thing about having it with just a ship's computer display interface would be that the game would have to be more of an intellectual challenge.

To control this, I think you need action-oriented and puzzle-oriented minigames, and you need an action mode. So the VR I'm describing here fixes you at a workstation but allows you to toggle to the outside view of the ship. Because I'm HEAVILY focusing the world on nanotech, it's MUCH more feasible to have little machines whose results you can see rather than game AI driving bots or crew through a huge variety of scripting and logic challenges.

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I also thought up mini-games for sensor detection that people might find boring.

Minigames are really only boring if that's all you get to do, and if nothing ever happens.

I think the trap is making the game about starships, honestly. Make the game about the people, and make the people as interesting as a starship would be.

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Original post by Ketcheval What if the value of a crew was not just in their current abilities, but in their attitude to picking up new skills (ie. levelling up), and staying up-to-date in their fields.

Well, this makes my job harder! [smile] It's such an interesting way to round out teambuilding that I can't ignore it.


It would give you a tradeoff between team attitudes and team compentence. Very cool!

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To cut back on risk and costs, I think the best approach is to rely on a holographic HUD paradigm. It's MUCH easier to trigger minigames that arise from supposed troublespots on a wall or map, and you don't lose anything because it's all in context (provided your crew all have neural nanonics with holographic retinal overlays )

I don't like being nitpicky, but this one thing is kinda bugging me: no matter how cool this might sound, most people would find it to be very alien. Explaining the neural interfaces with nano is cool, but holographic retinal overlays?? :P Wouldn't it be better if the engineer just got an hand-held analyzer that pops up an hologram? That would be easier to understand for non-hardcore players.


The morale thingy is cool. It's a nice way to make personal relationships important. Just don't make it so a crew with low morale sucks too much at everything :P you have to cap it at some point. Oh well I'm just repeating the "balance stuff" speech again, sorry :)

What do you mean by jousting instead of Star Wars dogfighting? I'm not familiar with the terms. Although I can relate medieval jousting with my main tactic in Freelancer.

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Original post by Jotaf I don't like being nitpicky, but this one thing is kinda bugging me: no matter how cool this might sound, most people would find it to be very alien. Explaining the neural interfaces with nano is cool, but holographic retinal overlays?? :P Wouldn't it be better if the engineer just got an hand-held analyzer that pops up an hologram? That would be easier to understand for non-hardcore players.

This is a good point, and actually I'll spend time explaining all the cool gadgets in the starting orientating. But I plan to build a lot of the game's content into the idea of multiple forms of vision. It's not just for engineering and the minigames that pop up. Rather, different people see different things based on what factions they belong to. So you could walk the same corridoor and see different secret messages (or holographic spam, even) by looking in the same place. (In fact, subversives and outlaw sects use temporary transmitters that assemble and disassemble in different places to lead their members to different hideouts).

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The morale thingy is cool. It's a nice way to make personal relationships important. Just don't make it so a crew with low morale sucks too much at everything :P you have to cap it at some point. Oh well I'm just repeating the "balance stuff" speech again, sorry :)

Yes, balance good. [grin]

If you are a crew member, rather than the captain, do you think you should get the morale of the department you're in, your own personal morale, or the morale of the whole ship as your amount of time-slow time? Or should it be different for different tasks?

You could have solo tasks that depend on your own mental clarity, and group tasks that depend on your department's clarity.

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What do you mean by jousting instead of Star Wars dogfighting? I'm not familiar with the terms. Although I can relate medieval jousting with my main tactic in Freelancer.

I'm not sure yet, but I think I'd better get away from any notions of detailed dogfighting and try to focus on strategy instead. Freelancer dogfighting I think would be okay, but I-War is probably out of the question. The reason is that most RPG gamers probably won't like the level of action required to be good.

If the ships have to make long passes at each other and aren't very manueverable because of high-G, then the focus will be on each pass. You could interface with the fighter's AI and plan a bunch of different attack and electronic warfare sequences. I don't really have this worked out yet, though. It just seems important to get away from joystick yanking.

I hate joystick yanking, and because of that, I almost never get to enjoy any of the games set in space. Back in the days there used to be a few space games that where geared more towards the RPG and strategy crowd, but they seem to be a dying breed (Anyone remember Albion? That was rad.)

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Original post by Madvillain I hate joystick yanking, and because of that, I almost never get to enjoy any of the games set in space. Back in the days there used to be a few space games that where geared more towards the RPG and strategy crowd, but they seem to be a dying breed (Anyone remember Albion? That was rad.)

So what would a game need to do to show you that it wasn't the typical control heavy experience that you've encountered before?

i) Ships would have to be controlled from a third-person view. First person view from the cockpit triggers Flight Simulator phobia.

ii) Controls would have to be more arcade style than realistic style. As an example Tony Hawk Pro Skater series is completely un-realistic and has nothing to do with real skateboarding, but in return it is very enjoyable for most people because of the fast arcade-style control-gameplay mechanics.

iii) If you want to attract strategy/RPG gamers, make a GUI that makes them feel at home. However, I am not going to tell you to look at popular RPG or strategy titles because I want to encourage innovation. Innovative gameplay demands innovative controls and interface.

Good luck,

Madvillain