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Viros Brainstorm
Topic Started: Jun 25 2011, 03:48 PM (399 Views)
Syyx
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Alright, obviously there are a few things we need to get finished here. Plot, Advertising campaign, and any other suggestions you might have.

First off, Warpig, we talked about the plot a bit but didn't go into much detail. Would you be fine with the one that I suggested as long as we flesh it out a bit? A few corporations fighting over resources on planets would give the feeling of both conventional warfare as well as political battles. I'm not sure how I feel about any sort of centralized government though. If we do add one in, I think it might be best to leave them as sort of a background faction, and be the buyer of all the resources to distribute among the systems in the galaxy.

Another thing we need to figure out is whether we want to have a single RP thread, or add in different areas for people to post their own threads in. I could go ahead and make a map if need be, but I could see a single thread getting cluttered and confusing if this place actually takes off with more than our usual amount of members.

This one isn't really as important as the others, but it came across me a little while ago and I'm not sure what to do about it. How do you feel about shielding on our ships? Most sci-fi games that involve spaceships (Or at least, the ones I've played like EVE, Freelancer, and a few others) all have some sort of energy shielding on at least some of the ships. If we were to scale the weapons' strength correctly, I wouldn't see much of a problem with it. It would save players the trouble of constantly repairing their ships. Or we could make it an upgrade for the richer players to buy, thus giving them an advantage in battle.
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King
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Well i think the new plot could work, it opens up a lot of options for us to use, to let players explore a range of ideas, let them do whatever fits them. Though to be honest, i'd expect most players to be more combat focused than anything else, but that works for us. I don't really see a need for planet's to have their own governments, we could let planets be corporate states and what not. We could split the galaxy into like X number of quadrants, and let each quadrant be run by a corporation (letting each one have a different style or influence). we could let players be mercenaries, privateers (who work only for one company), pirates, merchants, and even explores and what not.

On the thought of shields, i can go both ways, in that i would like to see them be hard to get, or maybe not at all. The last thing i want is a super ship, but i wouldn't mind shields, it would simplify a few things for the rp. Though we need to balance tech levels, that way we cab have shields, weapons to counter them, but avoid having some OP stuff.

I like the idea of sveral areas to post against just one, it'll make things easier to manage in the long run.
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Everything would be easier if planets were strictly run by whichever corporation had control of them at the time. Getting into multiple governments, but now that I think about it, there's no real need for any centralized government at all. Corporations can buy and sell to whomever they want, it doesn't have to be any government that deals it out. I figure three corporations could exist at the moment, strictly NPC run, while players are meant to do everything else. After I get names and stuff decided on, I'll probably make up an influence map of the system.

If shields were to be restricted to only the rich players, then I would rather have them not in the game at all. It seems like more trouble than it would be worth, having to deal with people "LOL NO MY SHIELDS STILL WORK FAGGOT" just powering through anything that comes across.

After I do the map, I'll make some areas to post in.
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One thing i've been thinking about, is how big are these ships going to be? Is this going to be like Eve where every ship is somehow managed by one person? Or are we going have an actual crew size that will accurately reflect ship size? This is something i've been wondering about, not that it has a big effect on the rp itself, its more for clarification among anything else.

We could always let players use shields of different levels of strength, with the larger ships having more shield strength but obviously are slower than the faster ships with weaker shields.

Also, should we have a staff member oversee battles?
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The thing about EVE is that you're inside this bio-pod thing which lets you mentally control most of the ships systems. However, i recently learned that there actually is other crew among your ship that isn't actually mentioned in the game. I'd like to have crew members, but I don't really think they need to be any important aspect. They'll just be there, y'know? Unless of course someone wants to have a single ship filled with their own fleshed out characters.

As far as size goes, there'll be everything from fighters to (Possibly) large battleships.

For now I think it would be best if we just left shields out of the equation. There's not much you can really do to keep track of how much damage the shields can take, unless we implement some complex battle system or something, but that takes away from the fun.

This kind of ties in with the complex battle as well. I've seen on other sites where battles are basically sanctioned and overlooked by a staff member who calls the shots, but I've never liked that. At all. Sure it may be more organized, but combat tends to become dull in my experience, so I don't see any reason to do it unless members begin to god mod.
Edited by Syyx, Jun 26 2011, 11:23 PM.
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King
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Alright, sounds good to me. So how about we get this site started? i'm jonesyin' for a good rp here. I'm thinking we could put a mission board, and let players take missions they could complete, whether or not there is a reward system for the missions is entirely up to you. but we could let the missions be special events so to speak. that means they wont be common, and we could allow for more than one player to take part in them. Just crazy idea on my part.

But so far, all that you've said sounds good to me, i can't say i disagree with anything mentioned or said here, so its all up to you.

Also maybe we could create classes for players to use, that way they can jump directly into the action. An idea would be we could let the pirate class start off with a destroyer (of their creation), and from their they can raid and steal their way to another ship. Another example would be to let a merchant start off with a transport ship with X number of weapons and is only '' so fast.
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Syyx
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I will get started on that plot as soon as possible. Coming from me though, that doesn't sound like much of a promise. I might contact /tg/ for some ideas if I need to.

I was planning on adding in a mission board both for staff to post up missions from the NPC corporations, as well as let players post contracts for others to complete. Kind of like what used to be on Outbreak.

I might type up some examples of "classes", but I don't really think we need to give players any set rules to follow. Mostly just explaining what each name refers to should be enough as long as I keep things check when it comes to characters and their ship (If someone wants to be a merchant, I'm not going to let them have a stealth bomber, for example).
Edited by Syyx, Jun 27 2011, 01:39 AM.
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Well i was thinking with a few limitations, we could prevent players from creating nothing but Battleships or Battlecruisers. I figured, why not allow players to buy ships, but put a limit on (weapons, size, and what not) on everyone's starting ships. This wouldn't be a negative effect on the players, just make things a little more interesting. But if you can manage players ships, that would work just as well.

I'm thinking that the plot would be simple to put up, just do a little background information on how humanity got to this point in time, talk about the Corporations a little (create another thread for a more in depth look at the Corporations, talk about the galaxy we will be fighting in, and then talk about why there is conflict between the corporations.

Well unless this site becomes an RPG, you could just let classes be a simple Job Title, and leave it there. Unless you want to do like special jobs for each class, which wouldn't be too big of a problem.

Also on the topic of a mission board, i noticed that players can get credits (money), does this mean we'll have a shop of some kind? Or is it just for show? A good shop, one that lets players buy new ships, weapons, and what not would be pretty cool if it could be properly managed.

Well that's about all the input I have right now.
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Another idea from little 'ol me. Along with the Corporations, why not make another NPC faction, but make it smaller. I was thinking, along these lines of a Pirate gang, small, but offering another side for players to join and let them raid and steal, and otherwise exploit the chaos between the corporations? Since there likely wont be many pirates, we could make the gang very small, like five to ten ships or so. To be honest, I'd like to see a pirate faction, it would help things break away from a dull typical battle. Also a pirate group is more entertaining than just a bunch of unorganized pirates.
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I figured that pirates were a given, so yeah, they'll be around.

I didn't plan on giving people huge ships to begin with either. Starfighters, Frigates, small Freighters and mining ships, those will be some of the first things we can use. You'll be able to buy ships as you get paid, but I just don't plan on writing up a bunch of pre-mades and putting them in a shop. And yes, I'm able to hand out credits for completions of missions and such, but putting in any actual shop with lists of items would be far too much work for little reward. It'll be much easier if we were to sell things on a case by case basis where someone comes to you with an idea of what they want, and we just work out a price and let them get it in the RP. The only thing I could really see myself doing is setting up a basic price list for classes of ships, and then adjust it depending on what the character wants to add.

I'll add a "Profession" category into the character app, just to make things clearer for everyone.

I already have a rough version of the plot written up, I just need names and places and such, and to add in a few more details.



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Well i wasn't sure how the shop would work here, with this being more of an open world (galaxy) kind of a thing. At best I was going to say do a shop or rather unit pricing thread, somewhat similar to Bittletime. But i like your idea better, it'll work, so long as there is a staff member around to check things out.

I really can't say that I have thing else to discuss, other than seeing what tech you wanted to use in this universe, which is kind of an important detail.
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Laz0rz and B00litz.

There'd me missiles/torpedos, ion/plasma/laser cannons and shit, as well as artillery like MACs and autocannons I guess. I really don't know all that much about future tech, so maybe someone could help us out with that.
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Well those could all work. Would all the weapons do the same damage? Or would they have their own strengths and weakness? Is that too rpg for the site?

'Cause I think a MAC would offer better damage against armor, and laser's against shields, but to be entirely honest i'm not overly sure about that.

So i was talking to sitewarrior today, and we got to the topic of space battles. Anyways, we compared different universes, such as Mass Effect, which has space battles taking place in kilometers, with the only close combat being between frigates and fighters in knife fights. I mean as interesting as that sounds, it wouldn't work for a text based space sim RP/RPG. We could always have like MAC guns be low level weapons that are good to start out with, since lasers would probably be a better weapon and would likely be more expensive to buy, install, and manage. Just my thought.

Also speaking about Mass Effect, I have thought of a class design, which i think would be a good pirate ship, a carrier. To be a carrier all you would need is to be able to carry some fighters. So i figure the Corporatios Private Military could maintain them (along with the best ships) and payers might get the chance way down the road to obtain this expensive ship. But I saw an episode of Babylon 5 which had a carrier for a group of pirates, and i think it would be cool, since mechant ships aren't heavily armed. Anyways, i was thinkig, why not get a large cargo ship, gut the cargo bays and insall hangars for fighters, or they could install external racks on the ship, either one would work, and you'd have a good, proper sci fi pirate ship (since most pirates would use fighters and frigates, a junked carrier could be like the mothership for them). Just a little rant.
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The whole Bullet > Armor and Laser > Shield has been a trope in Sci-fi for a very long time, so who would we be to go against that. However, I really don't want to use shields. Ballistic weapons like Autocannons and MACs would be the standard for most fighters, frigates, freighters, etc.; while getting into larger cruisers and battleships would open up the option for laser weaponry. Then Missiles and Torpedos can pretty much be used my anything if needed.

Not sure what you mean by the whole fighters being the only close combat. Are you saying that it wouldn't work out well if the larger ships had to fight from a distance? Because I never really liked that either, and always RPed as if they were in decent range (Or at least, relative to a 6 mile long ship that is)


Carriers sound fine to me.
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In Mass Effect, most the ships have larger guns capable of firing from extreme distances. So the only units designed to fight in close combat are Frigates and Fighters. I'm hoping that this wont be the case for the rp here.

Also I want to write up a list of possible ship classes you could use, nothing fancy, but i would hope it would give everyone an idea of what role their ship would play and what ships they would like to get in the future.

So when can we expect to see the plot up? i'm dyin' to read it and get a character created.
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Yeah, I never liked having to RP like that. Hell, today's fighter jets already have missiles that can seek their target from further than the eye can actually see. This'll be up close and personal.

I'll get the plot up tomorrow. Maybe. Possible. I don't know. I'll try.
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Up close knife fights are more enjoyable by far, they allow things to get interesting for most ships, with fighters and bombers performing attack runs, ships closing the distance to fire up close, and the only ships far from battle would be the carriers. So this works for me.

Well no rush really, there's a lot of work to do on the site anyways.
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Ever played Star Wars: Battlefront 2? That's pretty much how I imagine these battles going. The ships may be a couple of kilometers away from each other, but they're still extremely close by today's standards.
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I fucking love that game, it was one of my favorites. I used to play it up until they took down the old xbox live servers, but i do play it from time for the space battles. So yeah, i know what you're talking about, and it sounds good to me.

Also what would you think if players could disable other ships, in PvE, or PvP and board those ships? I was thinking more for pirates, and all this Battlefront 2 talk got me thinking about the boarding actions, they were such wacky fun. But yeah, I was thinking maybe they could plunder a ship's cargo. Not sure how things would go for capturing a ship, other than eliminating the crew and taking key locations in the ship. The only problem I can see with this is PvP getting too heated between players, since most of the crew on the ship being boarded would be killed, and that would piss players off, and the battles might be too complex to run, at least for PvP. But PvE could be different, as most people would target merchant ships since the larger ships would have a larger crew and be harder to take. Because in order to capture a ship, you would have to send over enough crew to repair the damaged vessel, then pilot it back to port or something similar. So naturally i think the idea is cool, but a little too much in some cases.

I also take it we're going to remove ammo from the equation, mostly to make things easier for everyone, 'cause who wants to keep track of ammo, which would require a staff membe to moderate, in order to prevent anyone from cheating. Its similar to the old Outbreak bank accounts, where the staff would have to watch each one in order to prevent anyone from cheating.
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I still play it sometimes actually. Working on getting Legendary status for the assault class.

Anyway, that is a dilemma. I wouldn't want to make something a PvE only tactic when it would obviously work for PvP as well. Although, we could always go the way of EVE online and just tell everyone to fuckin' deal with it. I would hope that people would have common courtesy to not try to board player ships, but really, who has common courtesy on the internet? I guess we can try it to begin with and see how it goes.


Fuck ammo count. We'll give everyone magic generators that just poof it into their weapons.
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