Gameplay notes, suggestions and enhancements (VS 4.0.3)

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Gameplay notes, suggestions and enhancements (VS 4.0.3)

Post by AeonOfTime »

While playing VS, I have been keeping notes on mostly small things that could enhance the game. Here's my current list:

1) Improve the feeling of speed by adding random artefacts flying by (a little like in the Privateer remake) in normal flight and when the SPEC drive is on. The only thing that really shows how fast you are flying is by seeing planets/bases/jumppoints rush by, but there aren't that many of those, so little debris and stuff like that could really give speed impression a kick...

2) In the ship upgrades screen, display a short note describing why you cannot install upgrade x (already installed/higher version installed/ship not capable etc.)

3) Have a *nearest* hostile key in addition to the next hostile key - this would always switch to the nearest hostile target to avoid flipping through them with H until you find out that there's one just 1000 metres to your left.

4) Have a key to target elements in front of you, to be able for ex. to select the planet in front of you without flipping through the 20 targets in the current system.

EDIT: That key already exists: p toggles items in front of you.

5) In the ship upgrades screen, have one section specialized in repairs that lists all damaged components and makes it easy to select which ones to repair without having to click on all upgrade sections to check if there are damaged components hiding somewhere.

6) In the computer screens with expandable lists, have buttons 'expand all' and 'collapse all' to be able to see all available items without clicking through all sections.

7) In the HUD, have additional indicators near the current weapons summary that display whether installed turrets are active and what their current state is (damaged 50%, destroyed etc...)

8) Please, please, please put the autopilot back in as an option. There's a big reason why most space simulators have one: it can get absolutely tiring to have to spend up to 70% of your time flying fom one jumppoint to another. It keeps me from playing patrol missions (scan 8 nav points... very funny), and I can't just start the game, and just fly one fast mission. As an option, it would be awesome. You could fly with SPEC when you are in the mood, and use the autopilot if you are in a rush.

9) It would be cool if the player's actions had more impact on the VS world - simple things like having a news entry on your heroic saving of pilot x who was going to be shot to pieces by Pirates, or your freight of Food to planet x which avoided a massive famine :)

EDIT: this is already the case (I did not notice at first because of the funny name you have in the game... :) )

...just my 2 cents :)
Last edited by AeonOfTime on Fri Jul 29, 2005 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by smbarbour »

I'll comment on 4 and 9:

4) There is a key for that purpose: "p" - picks the target in front of you (actually it cycles through targets in front of you so you can choose whether to target the base/jump point in front of you or the planet behind it.)

9) If you read the news when you land at a base you will see news items such as "Privateer helps the cause in xxxx" or another message if you destroy the base owners ships or allies' ships talking about you as a "scourge"
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Post by CoffeeBot »

Since we've got this thead here, I'll add my thought here, rather than another thread ^_^

Crowded docking stations. We've got all of these ships flying around in a bustling, living galaxy. When you go to dock at a small base, you can see it has 3-4 docking points. Put these two together, and you see that there should be a parking problem, at times. So why not have the base send the player back a message like, 'sorry, we're full. please enter holding pattern zeta while we clear things up.'

In the event a player does get a "please hold" message, just make them wait 10-15 seconds -- it's an eternity in a game like this -- before spawning a ship inside the docking point, and then leaving, thus giving the illusion of limited space.

One step further, make them wait in line while a ship ahead of them docks. For safety reasons, only one or two ships may dock at a time.

There was soemthing similar to this in Freelancer, iirc. If it's done right, it's a mild annoyance, but not enough of one to make someone stop playing.

For an added twist, make ships reluctant to launch if there's a fight outside. The player is getting chased by some pirates, and is outnumbered...the base is his only hope. And it's full of ships. Ships who are piloted by men and women who value their safety. An interesting predicament. Of course, the random variables should be weighted enough so that stuff like this happens somewhat infrequently, but enough to make people think twice.

(I hope I didn't post this before...It just struck me that I might have :? )
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Post by cshank4 »

In addition to Coffee's (mmm that sounds good right now) post, I think it'd be nice if you could see capital ships that are docked to the base... I was flying along and a freakin' CARRIER undocked (Read: Spawned) right in front of me... I was going a good 2000KPH too, sooooooo.... I kind of... well, smacked it and the mining base... Thus resulting in a major explosion the likes of which have been seen before by a lot fo people but not by me.


Also, Coffee, a good way to roleplay away the crowding issue is this, when you dock you're attached to a magnetic turntable or something and your ship is kept inside a facility made for that.


Another thing I noticed, on the Navigation map in the Cephid 17 system, it says you're in Oldiezy (at least for me... don't know if universes are generated at random)

Another nice thing would be if, say, there's a cap ship that you want to/need to dock with, when you send the docking request it halt's it's movement until you dock.
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Post by CoffeeBot »

cshank4 wrote:...I think it'd be nice if you could see capital ships that are docked to the base... I was flying along and a freakin' CARRIER undocked (Read: Spawned) right in front of me... I was going a good 2000KPH too, sooooooo.... I kind of... well, smacked it and the mining base... Thus resulting in a major explosion the likes of which have been seen before by a lot fo people but not by me.
Ugh. I so know the feeling. Getting close to the base, then *WHAM* a face full of capship. Seeing ships docked on the exterior of bases adds sooo much.
cshank4 wrote:...a good way to roleplay away the crowding issue is this, when you dock you're attached to a magnetic turntable or something and your ship is kept inside a facility made for that.
That, or a series of clamps shuttles you into a pressurized hangar. Same thing, really.
cshank4 wrote:Another nice thing would be if, say, there's a cap ship that you want to/need to dock with, when you send the docking request it halt's it's movement until you dock.
If you match speed with the ship, and then accelerate/decelerate accordingly, you should be able to dock semi-safely. I've had little success with this method if the ship is moving faster than 2000 speedunits (whatever the measurement is), but that could be because I'm a failure of a pilot. So, yes, it would be nice if they slowed down. But, from a roleplay perspective, why would a random ship stop to let you aboard? It's a rhetorical question, no need to answer, but I think the political-engine aspects of this are obvious, and should be considered.
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Post by cshank4 »

CoffeeBot wrote:
cshank4 wrote:Another nice thing would be if, say, there's a cap ship that you want to/need to dock with, when you send the docking request it halt's it's movement until you dock.
If you match speed with the ship, and then accelerate/decelerate accordingly, you should be able to dock semi-safely. I've had little success with this method if the ship is moving faster than 2000 speedunits (whatever the measurement is), but that could be because I'm a failure of a pilot. So, yes, it would be nice if they slowed down. But, from a roleplay perspective, why would a random ship stop to let you aboard? It's a rhetorical question, no need to answer, but I think the political-engine aspects of this are obvious, and should be considered.
Well, I'll answer anyways.

If I want to dock to them, they should damn well let me because I could reduce their ship to scrap metal by ejecting near it and letting my life-boat accelerate at near speed of light into them!

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Post by caotic »

CoffeeBot wrote:For an added twist, make ships reluctant to launch if there's a fight outside. The player is getting chased by some pirates, and is outnumbered...the base is his only hope. And it's full of ships. Ships who are piloted by men and women who value their safety. An interesting predicament. Of course, the random variables should be weighted enough so that stuff like this happens somewhat infrequently, but enough to make people think twice.
I think, bases would claim the monopoly of force inside their weapon range. So any unauthorized fight in this area would be stopped through the base quickly.
The base would first transmit a message like 'This territory is controlled by <basename>, please stop fighting and disable your weapons while staying.'
If the ships continue their fight, the base would give a warning like: 'STOP fighting NOW or we will shoot you down'
If the opponents still continue their fight, the base would shoot them down, launch it's fighters or place a bounty on the ships.
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Post by CoffeeBot »

caotic wrote:I think, bases would claim the monopoly of force inside their weapon range. So any unauthorized fight in this area would be stopped through the base quickly.
The base would first transmit a message like 'This territory is controlled by <basename>, please stop fighting and disable your weapons while staying.'
If the ships continue their fight, the base would give a warning like: 'STOP fighting NOW or we will shoot you down'
If the opponents still continue their fight, the base would shoot them down, launch it's fighters or place a bounty on the ships.
Good stuff. I like it. But what about amnesty/sanctuary/etc? A pilot who's on neutral or better terms with the base, and is being chased by known pirates (or whatever other enemies of the base) should be allowed to land. But the warning to cease hostilities should still be transmitted, regardless. Perhaps penalize the pilot seeking sanctuary -- make him pay a fine for bringing trouble to the area. Though that seems silly, because pirates are pirates and will attack without being provoked. Why penalize a victim? I'm just tossing stuff out. I don't know where it's coming from.
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Post by cshank4 »

Another thing while on the subject of bases. Give mining bases turrets!

My god, I've seen Aera patrols whipe those things out because the things have no defense.
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Post by caotic »

CoffeeBot wrote:Good stuff. I like it.
After writeing it, I remembered that Elite had something like that. But in my opinion it was too strict.
CoffeeBot wrote:But what about amnesty/sanctuary/etc? A pilot who's on neutral or better terms with the base, and is being chased by known pirates (or whatever other enemies of the base) should be allowed to land. But the warning to cease hostilities should still be transmitted, regardless. Perhaps penalize the pilot seeking sanctuary -- make him pay a fine for bringing trouble to the area.
If a Pilot follows the order, and stops shooting, and switches to defensive manevers, the base would concentrate on the attacker. And the relation to the base's fraction could influence, how long a base waits, untill it sends the warning and how long it waits, untill it starts shooting at the pilot. Pilots with negativ relation would perhaps only get the final warning.
Of course, there would be pilots, that ignore these warnings. But that would either be very desperate pirates or highly professional headhunters. And strike fleets of enemy fractions would surely ignore any cease fire command, but they would directly attak the base and try to conquer or destroy it.
CoffeeBot wrote:Perhaps penalize the pilot seeking sanctuary -- make him pay a fine for bringing trouble to the area.
That would depend on the fraction owning the base, I think. Confed, Homland security and other military or police fractions would not make him pay a fine, but mercants surely would.
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Re: Gameplay notes, suggestions and enhancements (VS 4.0.3)

Post by rubikcube »

AeonOfTime wrote: 1) Improve the feeling of speed by adding random artefacts flying by (a little like in the Privateer remake) in normal flight and when the SPEC drive is on. The only thing that really shows how fast you are flying is by seeing planets/bases/jumppoints rush by, but there aren't that many of those, so little debris and stuff like that could really give speed impression a kick...
IMO this isn't necessary/ shouldn't be implemented:
  1. Either I'm moving near a planet/base and see that moving by. Which is quite impressing, knowing that you actually see something huge like a planet moving by
  2. On interplanetary travel, streaking stars do enough IMHO.
  3. Either the space debris would be fake or it would be impossible to be damaged by it or to activate the SPEC drive.
  4. Realistical POV:
    Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly
    big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the
    drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
    -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    In fact there's so little debris that the NASA keeps record of every single nut and bolt orbiting earth.
    One point I like about VS is that it keeps as realistic as possible without becoming boring :D And space traveling is boring, that's why SPEC was invented.
  5. If there was that much debris flying around, the velocities should somehow be distributed between +- infinity. How do they know in which inertial system my craft is? Some of the parts should have about my speed, but about as many should be really fast compared to me.
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Post by AeonOfTime »

Either I'm moving near a planet/base and see that moving by. Which is quite impressing, knowing that you actually see something huge like a planet moving by
I agree, that's really quite impressive. What I meant is that there aren't enough moving by to keep up the impression of speed...
On interplanetary travel, streaking stars do enough IMHO.
The streaking stars are nice, but they don't really give that much of a sense of speed either, IMHO they are too static for that: they get longer and brighter, but they don't move or pulse or do something funky... in most scifi movies when you go faster you actually see dots flying by (stars I guess). I know that's not realistic, but would give a more realistic sense of traveling at a freakin' SPEC multiplier of 3000000 :)
Either the space debris would be fake or it would be impossible to be damaged by it or to activate the SPEC drive.
They would be fake, their sole purpose being better immersion in speed and also movement. If you have played the privateer remake, you will know what I mean.
And space traveling is boring, that's why SPEC was invented.
I'm not saying that SPEC is not a good thing - it is! I just feel that it should be a lot more spectacular, you know, crossing distances so quickly in that vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big thing called space :p
If there was that much debris flying around, the velocities should somehow be distributed between +- infinity. How do they know in which inertial system my craft is?
And that's where I have to give up... I have no idea how that can be implemented, I am a graphics designer, and my math teachers gave up on me quite early :) My comments are just intended as positive criticism - I have witnessed the effort put into this game, and it is really awesome. I just felt that SPEC travel needed something to make it more believable. In car racing games, you've got the road markings and buildings rushing by constantly - in space you need to make the same impression, even if it means cheating a little IMHO... :)
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Post by AeonOfTime »

I just thought of something... about the fact that it also seems strange that the background mapping of the sector always stays exactly the same - it just scrolls by when you turn your ship around (the backround stars map with the nebula and all).

Now if you compare this again with car racing games, the technique used to give an even better impression of speed (like when you use a special turbo or such (afterburner, anyone?) ), the perspective is forced to be narrower in front of you.

In VS, this could be achieved by 'warping' the background mapping and forcing the perspective to narrow in the same manner, depending on the SPEC multiplier. That would be quite a dramatic effect... :) Add a little jerking to that when you approach max speed, and you'll start to FEEL the speed!
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

AeonOfTime, I agree with most of your suggestions but I
STRONGLY
disagree with suggestion #1.

Those pieces of crap floating in space in Privateer surely do give you a sense of some speed, but it is the WRONG speed. If you're flying near asteroids, those asteroids are the size of planets, but they look like small rocks because of the distorted speed perception caused by the floating garbage. Your speedometer says you're going at 1000 km/second, yet the crap hits your windshield like you're going at 55 miles an hour. And there's no practical way to fix it because if they hit your windshield at 1000 km/sec, you would not see them at all.
The heart of the problem is the attempt to solve a problem that doesn't exist in the first place. Why SHOULD you have a reference about your speed in space. Space IS like that. The game has it right. If you fly in space you have no external reference about your speed, and a game in space should not add it just because some players don't like the fact. Those who don't like space the way it is, should either learn to like it or play some other kind of game.

I agree about paying attention to how SPEC speeds should affect one's view, though. I used to have an issue of Scientific American precisely about how traveling at near the speed of light would distort your view. The math went over my head; and I have no idea how FTL would affect one's perspective. I'll see if I can google something up on it.
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Post by smbarbour »

You shouldn't see stars zipping past. They would barely move relative to your position in the system (which to paraphrase the quote "The distance across the system is peanuts") The stars are generated against the background by the universe definition. Every star you see is a system defined in VS.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

I agree 100%, however I would not urge devs to remove the streaks as yet. Reason #1: They look super cool.
Reason #2: We need to find out what the sky should look like during SPEC, before we try to fix it.

This is quite non-trivial:
If we were to imagine photons as rain-drops, we might arrive to the wrong conclusion that as your speed gets closer to the speed of light, those photons will be striking you from in front, even if they were coming from the side, just like you see raindrops coming at you from straight ahead if you're driving at 180 in the rain (don't try it); and that, therefore, the sky should seem to compress to a dot in front of you. But this would be a Newtonian way to look at it. According to Relativity, the speed, and therefore direction, you see photons coming from is the same for any moving frame of reference.
Again, as you approach the speed of light, from the point of view of a stationary observer, your ship gets shorter; but to someone in the ship everything in the ship appears normal. As to what the rest of the worl appears like, that's what I don't know.
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Post by peteyg »

chuck_starchaser wrote:Those who don't like space the way it is, should either learn to like it or play some other kind of game.
Or they could just play Vega Strike. In games fun > realism, after all.

Tieing the FOV to SPEC multiplier somehow is a fantastic idea, and may not be impossible to do! I will make sure that idea gets some dev attention.
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Post by rubikcube »

I'll come back again after thinking if we would really observe relativistic effects in a craft with SPEC drive (we are only moving with a small fraction of c, after all). But after a first thought, I'd say: yes.

From a physical POV, I'd suggest thinking about the following points
  1. Does this kind of star streaking appear,at least from inside the craft?
  2. How about other effects like aberration? See http://www.physics.nus.edu.sg/~phyteoe/ ... rratn.html for a visualization
  3. Red/Blue shift?
Of course, most of these effects mightprove to be rather difficult to implement because current 3D acceleration hardware is built for Newtonian mechanics and Euclidian Space...

Maybe I'll restart this posting as a new thread...
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Post by jackS »

peteyg wrote: Tieing the FOV to SPEC multiplier somehow is a fantastic idea, and may not be impossible to do! I will make sure that idea gets some dev attention.
I've experimented with that before, as a potential replacement for star streaks. It's not difficult to implement. Tweaking it to look "good" may take some time. It's an interesting experience. I'll hack it back in and have it depend on some config vars. I'll post here when I've done so, but it may well not be for a couple of days.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Thanks for the offer, PeteyG, but like I said I would rather not rush anything through, if my preference is of any concern. It's true that fun > realism, in a game; but more often than not more realism == more fun. In the case of PR and the floating trash in space, it is fun as long as you don't realize that its speed is completely wrong. I found it terribly disconcerting flying through asteroids and not be able to tell whether they were big and far away, or small and close. It drives me bonkers. Actually, they are supposed to be very big and far away, and they pass at the speed they pass because you're supposed to be flying at ridiculously high speed. Now the fact that they don't have craters doesn't help one's perception of their size. But I was trying hard to feel that they were big and I was flying fast; but then this stupid crap hitting my windshield at 55 mph completely prevents me from feeling I'm going at very high speed. It's frustrating to me.
Now, I'm sure some people who grew up playing arcade games, all they care about is that something is moving on the screen which you either have to shoot or avoid, and to them that's fair game, and "fun". Not for me, though. If I'm playing a 3D game, I expect *depth* --i.e.: distance-- to have meaning; I expect something believable and immersive.

Coming back to the subject of the view of space during SPEC: I don't know yet how it would be; I'd like to do some research on it before hitting the devs with a new idea, may I? Sure, tying FOV to the multiplier would look cool, perhaps even cooler than the streaking; but you don't know yet that once we figure out how it would actually look, that it wouldn't look even cooler, do you?
The article I mentioned in Scientific American had wire-frame pictures of lighting poles on both sides of a road you're traveling on, and how they deformed as you approached the speed of light. A simulation they ran --back in those days, probably on a PDP-11... :) Anyhow, the lighting poles appeard to bend over the road like a canopy, and at very near the speed of light thy bent down almost touching the road and stretching forward.

Anyways, it's not like for me realism is the end all and be all. If it were, I'd be objecting to the fact that time is affected by speed is not taken into account. Of course I've thought about it, though I haven't mentioned it. The reason I haven't mentioned my thoughts is precisely that I didn't arrive to any conclusions that would increase the fun. As you approach the speed of light, time appears to go faster and you arrive to your destination very quickly. AT the speed of light, time of travel would be zero to you. If you were riding a photon, from the time it leaves a galaxy far away, to the time it gets here, time would be zero: Departure and arrival happen the very same instant, even though to stationary observers the photon travelled for 10 billion years. So, you'd never even get a chance to travel faster than the speed of light, not only because of all the other problems, like increased mass, but because if you do reach the speed of light, you arrive to your destination right that instant, even if the destination is many light years away. But there's no fun in that, so I didn't mention it. See?
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Post by peteyg »

jackS wrote:
peteyg wrote: Tieing the FOV to SPEC multiplier somehow is a fantastic idea, and may not be impossible to do! I will make sure that idea gets some dev attention.
I've experimented with that before, as a potential replacement for star streaks. It's not difficult to implement. Tweaking it to look "good" may take some time. It's an interesting experience. I'll hack it back in and have it depend on some config vars. I'll post here when I've done so, but it may well not be for a couple of days.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Rubikcube, I think you're right about blue-shift. This could probably be coded using gamma correction: Increasing the blue multiplier and decreasing red multiplier, and leaving green constant or lowering it a fraction as much as the red. And this site also seems to confirm my theory about space compressing forward:
If we ever make a breakthrough that allows travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light, the trip to Alpha Centauri will take less than a human lifetime, but the job of the navigator is trickier. The apparent positions and colors of the stars are distorted. Looking aft, the Sun would appear as a fading red dot. In our forward view screen, our destination star would appear blue-white. In reality, the Sun and Alpha Centauri A are nearly identical in color. The changes are caused by the Doppler effect. Familiar in everyday life for the changing pitch of a moving sound, e.g., the siren of a police car, it applies to all wave phenomena including light. It just takes very high velocities to make the effect on light perceptible to the eye. Since the ship is moving away from the Sun, its light is seen at a lower "pitch", i.e., it is shifted toward the lower frequency red portion of the spectrum. The light from Alpha Centauri is shifted higher in "pitch" to the blue end of the spectrum.

The apparent positions of the stars not along the direction of motion are distorted by an effect called aberration. At high speed, the telescope may travel more than its own width in the time that it takes light to travel down the tube. Thus the tube of the telescope must be tilted in the direction of travel so that the light from the star will not hit the side of the tube. The position of the star appears to shift in the direction of movement. This effect becomes more pronounced at higher velocities, complicating the life of the interstellar navigator.
http://www.filmscouts.com/scripts/matin ... ile=backus

But I doubt the site is authoritative, and I'm skeptical...
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Post by AeonOfTime »

@peteyg: Tieing the FOV to SPEC multiplier somehow is a fantastic idea, and may not be impossible to do!
I'm happy to hear that :)
@chuck_starchaser: but more often than not more realism == more fun
That's a very relative assumption. I think I am getting the knack of what you are trying to achive with VS, but as you said yourself realism as a means to an end is not aways the good way to go either. I think it can make the game a lot more complex and unsettling for people who are used to other playmodes.

I am currently active in a forum on the upcoming PC game Civilization4 which has a brand new 3D engine. Discussions on realism are growing out of proportion there, as units appear larger than your cities on the map. That's perfectly normal, as you wouldn't see them or be able to select them otherwise - but it is far from being realistic at all. I think it's important to keep a good balance between realism and tricks.
@chuck_starchaser: I found it terribly disconcerting flying through asteroids and not be able to tell whether they were big and far away, or small and close
I agree.
@chuck_starchaser: I'd be objecting to the fact that time is affected by speed is not taken into account. Of course I've thought about it, though I haven't mentioned it. The reason I haven't mentioned my thoughts is precisely that I didn't arrive to any conclusions that would increase the fun.
I agree - I think taking that into account would definitely be massive overkill :) I know VS is mostly about realism, but a few discrepancies shouldn't harm this mission if it stays *believable*. If you were to implement POV distortion as realistically as possible, it probably would not look good at all. It would be like trying to display a rainbow on your computer screen - it just would not look right.

The reason I brought this up at all is that you spend a lot of time flying around around in VS, and that's fine - I agree that space is bigger that big and all, but considering the time you spend flying around, I felt it could be a lot more enjoyable? Why not make it so that even after endless hours of play you still look forward to engaging your SPEC drive :twisted:
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chuck_starchaser
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

But exactly. That's what I want: Fun, just like anybody else. But a lot of people don't make the effort to *imagine* alternatives. And among any number of alternatives, all other things being equal, believability is of the essence of immersion, and immersion IS the essence of fun in a game.
Now, people say "you spend a lot of time flying around"; and so immediately assume making the engines faster would make it more fun. But do they bother to think of other possibilities? No.
If engines were 100 times faster, and there were enemies at each nav point, would that "be more fun"? Hardly. First of all, only young people would have the stamina to deal with so much fighting without a chance to breathe. But besides, after you've had your 100 or 1000 fights you'd say "enough!" and stop playing. I played at the Explore the Universe level and got bored of fighting. Frankly, I find nothing interesting about fighting. For me, it's only the motivation I need to want to upgrade my ship. Upgrading my ship is a lot more fun, to me, than the fighting. Not that fighting couldn't be fun for me. It would just have to be something more based on strategy than on eye-hand coordination for me to like it.
But to get back; so we percieve that flying takes too long. Why?

Well, when I was playing this flight sim in the days of DOS, called TFX, in that game you'd spend sometimes 40 minutes flying to your target. Sometimes actually longer: like say 35 minutes to randevous with a tanker for on-air refueling, then on for another 20 minutes...
And it never seemed long. You were completely absorbed the whole trip.
How come?
Long story...
It begins before the trip. You are debriefed about your mission, and now you have some time (any amount of time actually), and can go to the simulator, place the kind of threats that are expected according to the debriefing, and try flying the mission on the simulator. Change a few things and try again. Make it harder, then much harder. Check your weapons loadout: Should I make any changes? Perhaps take out two radar missiles and put two infrared ones, just in case they have good ECM?
Fuel: What's the distance? How much fuel does the trip take, and how much do I have left for dogfights? Will I have plenty fuel for afterburner use? If not, should I carry less air-to-ground and more air-to-air weapons?

After so much planning and worrying and practising, once you fly the mission, every minute is a minute closer to the moment of truth. And besides the anticipation, you are now flying the real mission, and you have to monitor your systems, optimize your fuel use, and decide which among the 100 or so radar modes are the most suitable for the circumstances, and switch among them often enough that if a bogey appears you're not caught off guard. Forgot to mention, TFX took about 2 months to finish if you played one mission per day, but if at any time you died, you had to start the game again from the beginning.

Now, radar monitoring while flying with SPEC wouldn't be good.

The maxim of the story, really, is that if the flying itself is not involving or interesting enough, it should be made more interesting, not simply shorter.
How?
Having more things to do, I'd suggest.

How about having the ability to browse commodity prices, news and missions in nearby systems while flying? That way you could really plan ahead. Even place your orders in advance.
Having email to browse.
Having distress calls.
Ability to communicate with other ships to ask for help or to offer them pay for escorting you or being your wing for a mission. NPC's that approach you in space to ask for help or to offer you money for a quick job.
Making fuel more of an issue.
Things that break sometimes and you have to fix in flight.
Mysterious ships one encounters once in a blue moon.
Any number of ways to make flight more interesting and involving.
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Post by Guest »

rubikcube wrote:I'll come back again after thinking if we would really observe relativistic effects in a craft with SPEC drive (we are only moving with a small fraction of c, after all).
We are? Away from the gravitational effects of the suns, I've flown around with SPEC at speeds faster than light, or so the game claims -- specifically, the "light seconds" to reach objects was increasing far faster than one light second per real second.

I travelled a couple of light hours out, and although the attempt to get my speed back under control took "hours" in the subjective sense ;), getting out that far certainly didn't.

-- Wisq
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