Great job TyKeil!!! I couldn't have imagined we'd covered so much ground.
Now, without suggesting in the least that the exploratory stage is over, while it continues, rather, I'd say there's enough material there to start experimenting with integration: Seeing which features agree with what other features, and see what "sets" of features can be aggregated, and what shapes emerge. For instance, the hardcore mode (if you die, you're dead) obviously goes well with, rather necessitates, persistence of state in the shared universe. It goes well with features like users owning corporations, or having careers in politics, or in the military. It also agrees with RPG features, such as inventory, investment in ship upgrades, etc. It would go very badly with risky missions, however. Most teams would try to maximize profits as to be able to hire NPC's to fight for them...
... In fact, it almost precludes player versus player play, because average survival probabilities in such a situation would be 50%, so only the very young and dispossessed could afford it.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have deathmatch, which IMO is mindless gameplay; more the kind of game for gameboxes than PC's. And for those who like this kind of play, we could have a designated system for it, where you can respawn and suffer no persistent consequences.
I'm all for the hardcore style; but it has its probles, like I mentioned.
The problem of death is not new. Diablo dealt with it with a bit of elegance, by having magic scrolls for resurrection, which are rare, so you really don't want to die, but if you do, you have a chance.
I think the idea of cloning is actually BRILLIANT. I hadn't given it much though until you commented on it, though. Death is a problem for the old, not for the young. The people who are flying a tarsus with two tachs, would probably just say "Doh!" if they die and have to go back to a tarsus with two lasers. (Doh! Here I am again forgetting I'm not in the WCU forum...) Anyways, you get my meaning.
So, this could make for a bit of an interesting gameplay: In order to get to the kind of ship, career and capital needed to move onto the other types of play, such as strategy style, planet management or fleet command, you need to get through the young stage. But once you get past there, you need to protect your investment, if you're going to be able to take further risks. So you pay for Clone Life Assurance, 1 million credits for a basic plan. 10 million for the full plan (unlimited re-clonings). Should be expensive, otherwise everybody would be getting cloned all the time and it would be llike having re-spawning. It should also take time: Maybe not 9 months, but, say, 24 hrs real time? Of course, some corporations may offer to pay half the cloning insurance price for their employees, or for select employees; or offer to finance it: You pay 10% of your earnings; they front the cash.
But even with cloning, there would be a significant risk aversion; and some might question the fun of hardcore without trying it. My experience with hardcore mode comes from playing a fight sim that was called TFX (for Tactical Fighter eXperiment) which was a low res but otherwise accurate flight sim, both in avionics and weapons systems, and excellent AI. Needless to say, a game that is hardcore can't be as hard as one that isn't. So everything becomes more true to life. All this business of getting shot at, at every jump point would have to go away (as it could never be the case, or such a society would never function). Also, in a hard-core game, hardness has to go up through the story or campaign in very small increments, and very monotonically. I.e.: You can't have one episode or mission or plot suddenly be much harder than the previous. Also, a hardcore game should provide an in-game way of advising you when you seem to not be getting something right. When I played Strike Commander, I was finding the chaff and flares did not seem very effective. Then one character in the game says to me, paraphrasing, "All these rookie pilots saying 'the flares don't work'... I ask them 'What speed are you going when you drop them?, and how hard do you break?' and they ask 'I was supposed to break?'"
Not sure if he said that in response to my playing style, or because it was scripted; but it *could* have been the former; and it makes for a good example of how to help a player. In hard core, you can't just leave players to their own wits; not very nice or fair.
In short, there's a lot more risk aversion in hardcore, but the adrenaline is there every bit as much, in the sense that your perception of risk is heightened. At the same time, hardcore would be somewhat incompatible with player against player play, except for fresh, new pilots without too much to lose. Even with a mechanism for reviving, players with significant investments will prefer to confront real players in a more strategic, attrition style; or when the odds of winning a battle are high. (Or when the consequences of running away from a confrontation might be intolerable.)
However, player versus AI could still be there, and cooperative against AI would still be there. Not only cooperative in the sense of teams, but also in the sense of convoys. Those who've played Fallout 2 will remember you could, instead of transporting goods all alone, you could go to some places in some cities where you'd wait for and join a full convoy.
Another concept I've argued for at the WCU forum but not here, is that of geographically distributed AI difficulty. I was trying to address the old problem in games, namely that as the player improves the ship and acquires more skills, the game becomes less challenging; but if you increase difficulty as the player improves the ship, that's, first of all, a cheat; and secondly, once known it removes the incentive to upgrade one's ship. This was the case with Privateer, where the strenght of enemies followed the price of the guns you bought.
With geographically distributed AI difficulty (GDAD) you have safe systems or safe corridors, and progressively more dangerous systems as you move away from those routes. However, missions are progressively more rewarding, financially, as you move away from the safe zones. This allows the player to control his or her level of comfort. You could choose to run 200 low profit missions or 20 high risk ones, to pay for a new ship, say.
There could also be separate 'islands' of safety: A player could choose to take a once only extra risk trip to move from one safe region to another; or join a convoy to get there more slowly but with less risk.
Epilogue:
We were talking at some point about what *small* changes could be introduced in the game and/or game-engine NOW, that would help open doors in the future, when implementing multi-player. I think now that one of the most important features to add is a Hard-core Mode.
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