Re: Ideas I've been tossing around - GalaxyRL


tongHoAnh wrote:
> The name said most of it so I'll jump into details:
>
> Overall
> The main char shall be a captain of a starship.
> 'Towns' are now starbase and/or inhabitated planets
> The world map is the galaxy and the dungeons are the nebulas or distant
> spaces chained by wormholes.

If sometimes you are a person in a starbase and sometimes you are a
starship in outer space you have a chimera of two quite different
games. Maybe you can restrict the character to being a starship at all
times; the interaction between a ship and a space station doesn't need
a lower abstraction level. An example:
-------------------------

@S

-------------------------
#You are next to Space Station "Genesis 3" of the Applewolf
corporation.
%d
#You dock with Space Station "Genesis 3".
%r

-------------------------(new screen)
Repair
a) left engine wear, 3200 $$
b) front hull laser damage, 2600 $$
c) left hull laser damage, 5750 $$
-------------------------
%a
#You don't have enough money.
%c
#You chat with travelers.
#You hear there is a radioactive anomaly in the unexplored system at
coordinates 15.50.30,27.02.00
%b
-------------------------(new screen)
Buy
--cargo--
a) (167) uranium ingot, 4 Kg, 320 $$
b) (34) depleted uranium ingot, 4 Kg, 120 $$
c) (3) 98% plutonium ingot, 4 Kg, 2300 $$
d) (unique) watercolor portrait of Prince Zooq made by Myy, 0.5 Kg,
45000 $$
--ship--
e) (6) 30 MJ fusion engine, 5200Kg, 210000 $$
f) (4) 60 MJ fusion engine, 8300Kg, 380000 $$
-------------------------
%t
#You leave Space Station "Genesis 3".

> Leveling and character stats:
> For character stat, I guess Stamina (for long fight), Charisma,
> Intelligence and maybe Perception should be it.
> For leveling: I prefer exp being pooled directly into skills, and the
> higher the skill the higher the exp needed to increase it (see skill
> section for details)
>
> Skills:
> The character should be allowed to have a high variety amount of
> skills, depending on which direction he want to be. A short list might
> be: Gunnery, Leadership, Mechanical Engineering, Recon, Research,
> Manufacturing, etc.

These mechanics are hard to judge without a clear idea of the rules,
but your approach of starting with a simple and ordinary system seems
prudent; adding each stat or skill only after the game features for
which they would matter would be even wiser.

[...]
> Ship fitting:
> I guess a combination of size-based and slot-based should be nice.
> First, everything on the ships should be confinable into the ships
> based on size, except for external equipments.
> Second, every items on the ship would eat up energy power and man power
> on its on (exception: power generators doesnt eat up power but fuel)
> External equiments (gun mostly) use energy power and man power only
> when activated. each ship has an limited amout of 'slot' you could
> mount guns on, though.

What kind of UI are you planning for this? The most roguelike solution
would be using menu only and avoid any geometrical representation of
the ship.

> Power storage:
> Extra power generated by power generator (if any) get stored to some
> extend, depending on you batteries size. Those power then could be used
> when more power then the power output need to be used (in battles and
> in warps mostly)

This works like hit points or magic points in fantasy games: from the
full batteries state you lose or spend power that recovers continuously
from the ship power plant.
Note that fuel for a power plant (e.g. lithium pellets for a fusion
reactor or coal with oxygen for a steam turbine) is different from fuel
for a rocket engine (e.g. liquid oxygen with liquid hydrogen) and
material used as reaction mass (e.g. water or rocks) is another
resource still.

> Ships upgrade
> 1. Buy a whole new whip
> 2. Find/buy parts then put them together.
>
> Parts accumulation
> 1. Buy/loot them
> 2. Find/buy Blueprints then manufacturing them self
>
> Manufacturing process
> 1. Mine ores/loot
> 2. Refine ore/scrap parts for construction material
> 3. Find/buy blueprint for parts
> 4. Construct the part based on the blue print.

All good ideas, blueprints are particularly interesting.
Constructing parts implies either really big Star Trek style ships or
readily available manufacturers or an home base with the player's own
factory.

> Control
> I'm not quite sure about the control, since space ships can do
> manything at once. In my opinion, allowing the player doing multiple
> action in one turn is fine, as long as those are different. Apparently,
> I guess those actions could be done in one turn:
> 1. Move
> 2. Fire/Activate,deactivate weapon
> 3. Fire/Activate,deactivate other weapon(s) (maybe fire to another
> locked target(s) with confirm)
> 4. Activate a special equipment (like cloaking, deploying interceptor,
> activate shield drain etc)
> 5. Lock onto an another target.

A large ship, with an adequate staff and adequate computers, must use
everything every turn to be credible; firepower can be limited by
available power and by cooldown and reloading pauses, not by control
capabilities.
I would go through available weapons every turn and ask what to do with
each (select a target and fire the weapon or pass), while continuous
use global systems like cloaking or shields can have a pair of specific
commands to turn them on and off.

Lorenzo Gatti

.

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