Yes, ships need long range scanners. In the warp prototype, you could spot a ship jumping between planetary systems from several systems away. That would be enough to go and chase down a ship from quite a ways out.
No lure or baiting system is needed. Pirates do not need to be empowered. If anything, they need to be handicapped. If you want to be a pirate, suck it up and be prepared to face the toughest gameplay in the game.
I read something recently about the design of Star Wars Galaxies where Raph Koster wanted Jedi to be rare and special, keeping the feeling from the movies. Well, how do you make something in a game rare and special? His suggestion was genius; implement permadeath for Jedi. You can have one Jedi character, but you have to play it very carefully because a very nasty future awaits you, very probably resulting in your character’s death. Then that’s it for your Jedi. Try again.
I’d go that route for pirates. You get one character slot for a pirate. When it dies, it dies. Time to try again.
Want to impress people? Show up as an established pirate.
Still only a few systems? Seems kind of unreasonably small if you ask me (to be fair, I did kind of give the impression myself looking at my poor choice of words). In a game where the scale is the universe I’d say something along the lines of .01% or .001% of the whole galaxy per scan perhaps? If you choose the size too small, the player might end up staying in their own little npc bubble, and not meet any other players at all. Some might like it, but if you’re aiming for a multiplayer title it is a rather meh thing …
I just liked the idea of messing with other peoples warp jumps by creating a gravitational distortion that bends their warp tunnel. Thought it would be a neat gaming mechanic…
Also just to clear things up: I hate pirates myself (which makes it quite odd, that I am suggesting mechanics fit for piracy myself… oh well shrug)
about the jedi thing … I think as long as the characters are the heroes of the game, not the space ships, it might as well be a good idea just to hand out jedis randomly. You don’t get to choose if you’re born a jedi, you’re either it or not.
Edit:
I just realized that .01% or .001% of the galaxy are around my previously mentioned 50ly … I seem to need to get my facts about scale straight first, so that I don’t mess up…
Have the ripcord system be new tech that pirates haven’t got their hands on yet.
Once you get a low security rating, stations that have ripcord spawn systems refuse to let you tie your ship’s ripcord system to it. - Once you go criminal, you can no longer respawn.
Star Wars Galaxies went with a hybrid, initially. Upon creation of a character, 4-6 Professions were randomly selected that you had to Master to be able to create a Jedi character. In-game items would tell you the name of 3 of these professions, the rest you had to either get lucky with or master every profession (combat and crafting) in the game.
What makes you an established pirate?
I distinctly remember IA saying there would be no “player kill messages” or leaderboards in the Infinity MMO back on the old forums. No character skills. Spaceships would be lost when destroyed regardless. The only things that would be bound to your character would be it’s name, possible avatar, and bank account.
As far as the bank account goes, apart from putting a fee on it, what’s stopping you from creating another character to hold your money, and recreating the pirate with the same name and look? I mean I suppose you could put in some sort of fee…
The scale of the game is a galaxy, not the universe. Having the entire universe would be unnecessarily large. The universe is a really really big place.
The galaxy is also a very big place, but I remember IA saying in the old forums that most players would start close to one of their faction homeworlds (that presumably have their production and trade lines semi-established), so people would be more likely to interact close to those cores. The players would have to return there to buy goods and sell resources, since I assume that it would take quite a lot of time, resources and cooperation for a corporation to claim a planet and set up all the production and factories a core world and the systems around it would have. Don’t know if things have changed since then.
If you combine that with the need to return to a core world (or a sufficiently developed system, presumably owned by a corporation) to buy large quantities of warp fuel, then people would be unable to go too far away from those core worlds without creating some “fuel depots” along the way. I think the fiction given for that was that creating warp fuel required very large facilities that took a lot of power to operate? It was somewhere in the small story thing that was in the old forums, I don’t remember it that well right now. I’m certain someone with more knowledge will come along and correct me if I’m wrong.
this whole drag mechanics would also be really nice for docking, as ships would be dragged along naturally and would have a much easier time lining up for the docking approach.
[quote=“Cornflakes_91, post:85, topic:709”]
this whole drag mechanics would also be really nice for docking, as ships would be dragged along naturally and would have a much easier time lining up for the docking approach[/quote]
I suggest watching the second video. It was created to demonstrate exactly what you’re talking about.
i know, i just wanted to explicitly note that fact because its a huuuge convenience point for docking.
It’d maybe useful to expand the drag system to include rotational drag as well.
That a fighter in docking approach would not change its position relative to the carrier regardless of any of the carriers maneuvers.
So the carrier can roll and turn and twist and the fighter just flies straight into the hangar.
Nope. What you’d get is the entire arena rotating via some mass-weighted average of the two ships’ rotation. At the same time, they would still see each other rotating as normal, so it wouldn’t help the docking process at all. That’s the equivalent of what happens with translation. You don’t match translation velocities completely, only enough to bring everything down to a conventional newtonian level.
The universe is colossally-huge in terms of translation, but a circle still only has 360 degrees. So warp helps with translation, but ignored rotation.
I should add that because planets are so large, their rotation actually calls for matching of velocities there as well. The Earth’s equator moves at something like 450m/s, and if the warp prototype’s planets rotated, the velocity matching stuff would have to deal with that translation. So instead of just matching the entire planet’s velocity as it orbits the star, the ship would match the velocity of the closest point on the planet.
Tell the carrier pilot to stop screwing around so you can dock. If the carrier pilot is maneuvering, then he’s either under fire and your inability to dock is probably one of the goals of their attack or he just doesn’t want you on the ship. Perhaps it’s an enemy carrier.
The Infinity Combat Prototype had this as part of its bubble system. I’m not sure that there are any videos that demonstrate it and the client is now difficult to get working with some GPUs.
In the ICP the capital ships would have a virtual bubble around them and the further you were inside this bubble the more you would be dragged with that capital ship. This meant you could dock with and land inside the hangar of a capital ship that was making sharp maneuvers.
Without such a system the capital ship would have to avoid maneuvering during docking and your ship would need to be clamped down once docked. That might be interesting in a simulation game but in a multiplayer action game a bubble system is much more convenient for players.
The system worked so well that most players were not even aware of it.
X:Rebirth did a wonderful job of the ‘drag’ effect iirc, having larger ships drag the smaller ones around while in close proximity, with basically no visible transition.
Without such a system, the capital would have to limit maneuvers while picking up ships - which is good for gameplay, analogous to WWII aircraft carriers being obliged to turn into the wind to launch or retrieve aircraft.
Once in the hangar, ships can be transitioned to the hangar’s frame of reference. Call it an attuning of the warp drive to the artificial gravity of the hangar. The transition would take place around the hangar entrance on the hull. Not as an assist to docking, but as an acknowledgement of the transition between frames of reference.
In a game where all ships must start in a hangar in a maneuvering ship, sure, have the dragging as with the ICP. All pilots, from novices to experts have to use the same system. However, in a game where players start at surface bases, space stations, big capitals and small capitals, I would prefer to see something that produces a ramp of challenges. The best pilots would be the ones operating from the smallest, most maneuverable capitals regardless of whether they were maneuvering. Pilots of less skill have a spectrum of choices, including launching from a maneuverable capital and returning to a less challenging destination. Or asking that the maneuverable capital chill out for a minute.
I’m going to have to disagree. It’s not “good” for gameplay. It’s just more realistic. If a WWII carrier captain didn’t have to turn into the wind to launch his aircraft, you can bet he would prefer not to. It’s a fairly predictable activity that makes him vulnerable to attack from aircraft or torpedoes.
Likewise, carrier captains that have to stop moving during game would be more vulnerable. Add to this the fact that players have to cooperate every time they want to dock and it can quickly become a mess.
Remember, the devs have stated that they want this game to be accessible, so that players can jump in for 30 minutes, have a bit of fun and then bail. If they’re stuck chasing a carrier pilot that doesn’t either pay attention to what the fighters need or even care, then they’re going to be having a crappy experience.
If you want to, I would advocate for this being a server side option for later on, but at the beginning, the game needs to balance some degree of accessibility in order to grow the player base.
I think this is something that only gameplay could indicate as being good or bad. I think the technology would be simple to explain: carrier broadcasts its movements on a secure channel, local ships within a distance respond accordingly, if desired. I should think fighter sized craft are much more agile than the carrier.
I’m not even sure it can be said how much assist is needed, if at all, without gameplay feedback. It could range anywhere from 0% (no assist) to 100% (fully countering relative motion), based on gameplay needs.
Gameplay feature made possible by said explanation: signal decryption. If the signal gets hacked after resources are pumped into it, enemy ships can also receive benefits of relative motion.
