Yeah, it is kind of big, isn't it? haha. didn't realize it Last night when I posted it. Trouble is that's only a small portion of what I have in mind.
I think the biggest thing that I would push for is some serious realism. For instance, if you are traveling at sub-light speeds, then you are moving at a fraction of lightspeed and that should be shown in system.
For example, break the map legends down thus: -I'd have to look up most of these distances, but they're easy enough to find and or figure.
In System maps:
Light Second - smallest measurement
Light minute
Light Day -largest insystem measurement.
Out System Maps or Stellar Cartography
Lightyear
Parsec -3.26 lightyears, btw, but could be converted to just 3 lightyears for gameplay.
Sector: A sector could be handled in one of two ways. 1. It could be a predefined measurement in the game consisting of say 100 square parsecs. 2. It could be player defined on their tactical map (something that I'm actually in favor of.
Take this idea another step and say that anything that is not a physical constant in the game can be player defined.
Keep the game open ended. Provide a basic physical structure for the players to customize (beyond mods - allow in game changes to government, say, or to policies. Allow players to set up abstracts like puppet governments that have a certain amount of autonomy but are ultimately controled by the player, but eventually can break away - but that doesn't mean they do.
Other thoughts:
[edit] I keep forgetting this: CREWS FOR THE SHIPS with a nameable character* Captain.
Governors characters (I think I mentioned this in my Last post, don't recall): Allow for the governmental figures to be characters that are personality driven with their own agendas who can be appointed, fired, assinated, defect or rebel.
*Names for characters can be taken directly from a pregame generated language file for the player/race.
--- [end edit]---
Allow for racial development based on the planet's physical characteristics, which influence evolution. For example, things to take into account would be the type of star -- how much radiation is the planet getting based on how close it is to its primary. If the planet is outside the biozone - the area that is far enough from the star for water not to evaporate, but close enough for it not to freeze, variable by star type - closer for cooler type K and M, further out for G and F stars - it's simply not going to develop life.
Give planets classification types based on physical characteristic. I can provide an extensive typing chart if needed/wanted. For example:
Class A: Asteroid
Class M: Mulitple Climate Rocky world.
Class J: Jovian World
Class C: Cold Rocky World
Class I: Ice World -- which, btw, would technically be a frozen water world. And, why the hell can't I colonize a frozen world if I can colonize a rocky one? Where is the logic in that?.
And so on. There are more that can be further defined.
Has anyone here played Marc Miller's RPG Traveller? I did a lot back in the day. They had a very elegant and very simple method of keeping track of literally TONS of data. They used a method call the "UPP", which was the Universal Planetary Profile. It used the same basic structurre as their character profiles. So, for instance a world listing would look thus:
Vland 0307-A967A9A-F
After the name, the first four digits where the location in the subsector of planet. Each of the following digits corresponded to a chart outlining what that classification meant. So, fter the dash would be listed, in order:
A: Starport Classification - A being best
9: planetary size - 9 was larger - earth was 7
6: Atmosphere
7: Hydrographics - in this case, literally 70%
A: Population level - in this case, billions - you could go from tens of individuals to 10's of billions on a planet.
9: Government Type -- They had *so many* different types of governments it was unbelievable, including everything from corporate, clans, hive, democracies, republics, dictatorships, etc. But they wheren't just labels. They directly affected the given planet with +'s and -'s.
A: Law Level: potentially impractical for strategic game play, but interesting to note.
F: Tech level. -- Each world had a local technology level dictated by a crossreference of it's population level, starport classification, government and lawlevel. An intersting note I'd like to see carried over. Just because you know how to build something doesn't mean you *CAN*.
Also usually included after the tech level would be trade codes - what was available locally. For example, some of the basic trade classifications for planets were:
Agriculture
Asteroid Belt
Barren World (no one there, produces nothing)
Desert World (0%-10% Hydro rating)
Water World
High population
Ice Capped
Industrial
Low Population
Non-Ag
Non-Industrial
Poor - essentially a third world environment
Rich
Vacuum World - no atmosphere
There were further specific trade goods that were availble, but I think that goes beyond the scope here for the moment.
That said, I'm not suggesting that you rip Traveller for game mechanics, but I am suggesting that we use a model similar to theirs because it worked very, very well.
Digressing back to 10,000 systems for a moment from my previous post - before I found SEIV I played a game called XPACE. You could literally go up to 10,000's of star systems, with planets. It was huge. Epic, as a matter of fact. I loved it. Unfortunately, my computer was old and crashed and killed the program. I've not been able to find a replacement copy. My point is I know it can work because I've seen it done.
One way that the volume of stars could be handled is not to generate the stats until the player visits the system. So you've got the basic top level information such a location and spectral type, but nothing beyond that until someone goes there.
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Okay, enough for the moment. I've got to get to work. There will be more, I'm sure
Cheers,
~Shane
[ July 26, 2004, 16:17: Message edited by: Shane Watson ]
Re: SE5, Tell Aaron what\'s on your Wish List
Asteroids Champion!
Linear Mode
