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Unread 07-25-2011, 01:15 AM   #1
Bells
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Fun Brainstorming a Game concept: Space Fighter MMO

Just something i had kicking in my head for a while.

I Enjoy the concept of EVE online (not so much the execution) and i Like games such as Homeworld and it's not often Applauded slice of specialized RTS gameplay. I often think that MMO's can evolve to much broader realms gameplay-wise, outside of the "Shooty-slashy" Moebius-strip-like creation concept we have. I also think sci-fi is more often than not poorly used on Multiplayer games.

So i got thinking about, for no apparent reason, what a fun MMO Space War Simulator would look like. What would make me pay, and what would make it turn a profit without breaking it's consumer base...

Some concepts came to mind, as did some rules, and i want to dump them here.

Since this is a "Brain Droppings" kind of dump, it might not be organized, but here we go:

First of all, in this game, Each "main city" works like a Hub. It's a Huge Asteroid or Planetoid, where all players start. Those are Bases.

Each base works as a Clan. Each clan can have Multiple Factions, each faction has a Leader. These leaders make the Council of said asteroid.

The council controls and vote for many things on the Asteroid, including taxes, benefits for it's users, treasure and of course, diplomacy. They pretty much set the "Quests" of the game world, posting them as public announcements or jobs.

Each Asteroid can have as many Factions as it wants, but, to get an actual vote in the council and a seat (access to the VIP Council area) that faction has to have a Minimum set of Members and a few other Pre-requisits met

Councils also deal with other councils with then can Form trade Alliances and routes, Wars, etc etc etc with other factions.

Each time someone completes a mission laid by the Council, it generates some revenue to the treasury, but the amount gets lower the more people do that one quest. Thus, making it necessary to renovate.

Of the many things a council can provide with the treasury is Paid Salaries, short repair times for ships, shorter times on research, XP bonus, better trading prices for ores and minerals collected, more cost effective production costs and so on and on you get the idea.

That's the "central spine" of the social system. But let's talk about the Actual Space combat.

First, although avoidable with a minimal of care and attention, it is possible to actually loose your character and ship. The game should encourage Team play. If your ship gets blown up, you can get rescued. It will only take time to repair it. If you can't get rescued, your ship will just float in space until somebody salvage it (making it theirs) or rescue it (returning it to you). Or they can just finish blowing it up, thus, actually destroying the ship.

If you do find yourself in that situation, ship wrecked, nobody around, you can use your eject pod and simple return to base. No ship, but alive. If you stay in your ship and it gets blown up or Captured, you are dead. Character dies and you restart level 1. zero inventory, just a clone.

Now, there are many types of ships you can have, but they are in 2 groups.

Warships and Starships.

Warships are HUGE, if a Starship is a Fighter jet, the warship is a Carrier.

A warship is manned and controlled by a crew. That is multiple players. The leader is the Captain, he is the one that actually moves the ship. The other players are in control of the warship's other systems like it's cannons, radars and the such. It's like one person controlling a Warcraft character, while other attacks and other one select it's skills and other one the items. It requires teamwork.

If a registered Crew member is not online, the captain can authorize any player to take it's seat. If the Captain is not online, any Registered crew member can take the lead.

If the captain IS online he can pass control of the ship or not. A Warship is kinda like a mini-clan. And it's price will always be shared among all crew members.

a Starship is a 1 pilot ship. it's kinda like the Warship, but it only does one thing. Like the WoW analogy from before, but your Starship will either attack, or pick skills or use items... etc.

But how so?

Well... let's talk about the different types of ships you can have in a real scenario.

Let us say that you have a Fleet. 10 Ships 1 Warship. The game has Voice Chat and Text Chat. BUT your Ship has a Limited communication range. Any ship outside of that range Cannot hear your communications. So, what to do?

Here comes the Comm Ship. Basically a Radio Transmitter of sorts. It has a much larger comm area, and all ships in it's zone can talk to one another. here is the kick.. there is a frequency to it. An enemy Comm Ship can try to hack into it (by buying the proper Parts and items) and try to drop in your communications! Of course you can Protect yourself with cryptography... this is a vital ship to your fleet, a valuable strategic asset (it can also be used to jam enemy communications and radars) so the enemy will want to destroy it, and you will want to protect it.

But in case you have failed to do so, now you have wreck in space. Who comes in? The Salvage Ship. Works like a Medic. it can repair ships on the spot, or rescue you on the field, it can also capture objectives, enemy wreckage, Disable satellites, barriers and other "Deployables". Very fast, but also very short on offense.

Of course, you have your fighters. with many flavors of guns. Solid rockets, Lasers, Long range slow charging, fast charging low damage. Fast ships, bulky ships, cloaked, Mine Layers... and BTW, all Ammo is limited.

But if the battle is long what to do? A Supply Ship! The Supply ship can feed Ammo and Repair minor damage (think of it as a regen), and deactivate mines and jammers in the field. It does so by Launching drones in a area around it, responding to requests by each ship. So, it can have more drones and reach a bigger area for maximum performance on later levels. But even a supply ship has limited resources. How does it solve that? Just returns to a Warship, refil, relaunch!

But do i need a Warship to play? No. But it's soooooooo much better.

Also, the Warship has a Area, called the Command area. Think of it as a Party System. When you're in it, you can join the Party. Do so and Friendly fire is turned off, get denied, and you are neutral. Attack anyone in that area, and everyone in that area will see you in the map as a Hostile red dot. Also, the warship can tag any non-party member as hostile or neutral.

Also also, you can form Squads with your team mates, give it a name and a color, and get identified by everyone (in your team) on the map. Making it easier to assign roles and strategies that only you can see (unless the enemy Comm ship get the drop on your Map system)

As for items, you can get all kinds of "Satellites" . These work like Drones that will act around your ship or in a area you specify. Reacting to anything that goes into rage. You have Turrets, you have shields, you have Communicators (when there isn't a comm ship around and you don't want to be detected, each communicator can link you to one other ship in your party.) and radar drones that detect visible (and another one that deals with invisible) targets in an area.

Of course, anything can be Cloaked, but that is EXPENSIVE.

But what about solo? Can't i solo in this game? Well, yes. 2 ways.

1- Mining. Ships aren't so expensive that you can't have more than 1. Go on, take a mining job, earn some ore, make some cash, help develop your base.

2- Dog fighting. The basic PvP with no stakes, can't loose your ship here.

This is the basic outline, i think it would be a fun game to play, to bad it's unlikely to ever see something like that though
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Unread 07-25-2011, 08:29 PM   #2
Niveras
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Infinity, the Quest for Earth

Disclaimers: Under independent development, no tech updates in the past year or so, and since I didn't even skim your post I'm sure there are some planned aspects that are at odds with your concept.
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Unread 07-25-2011, 08:36 PM   #3
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Space Cowboy Online is another space fighter MMO. Well not so much space I suppose. More like the planet levels in Starfox.
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