if VS does go multiplayer...

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test3244
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if VS does go multiplayer...

Post by test3244 »

and after it's done with the quake in space gameplay,

lets face the fact that hosting a server with hundreds of players that are connected to it can be prohibitedly and punitively expensive.

would you rather:
A. lots of servers, with 50-25 current online players like freelancer that is VS does not want a lot of mmo comcepts that a commercial one has.

B. making the requirement to host a VS mmo to have a real good server or computer... something like a shard.

i don't know how planeshift did it.

i have been dreaming about this for years:

in the VS universe, you should be limited to flying small twitchable ship..(main gameplay is space flight)not just starfighters but any small ships that can fit in a station docking bay. something that resembles Tachyon the Fringe from Novalogic. oh man that game was addicting.

i want to be able to form a squad as players, fly together as players, engage a battle as players(aka pure PvP), fly in a convoy of cargo ships as players, and kill npc ships as players. overall, do most activities as players. i need something where player to player interaction and socializing comes to mind. npc ships are ok to shoot at but don't expect to have a good rep with your faction..

somewhere, somehow theres gotta but something more in the game to do besides just fighting, trading, killing npcs. i know i could add finding wormholes, and artifacts to fir on your ship could be one thing but i don't know many others.
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Post by lee »

It´s troublesome ... From playing UT2004, I have learned that ppl will try to cheat a lot, try to spoil the game for others and do lots of other stuff that is annoying.

If multiplayer is to become real, it would surely be a very nice feature, but it shouldn´t be limited to small fighter and cargo ships only. I would also want to run stations and large battleships or even fleets of them. Players would be in control of whole systems or even sectors and eventually fight about them. But then, why should they fight? The universe is large enough for all of them.

I would prefer the server(s) running a real time simulation, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, simulating a growing and evolving universe. That would require a database backend to handle all the info.

Fighting in small space craft is only part of the fun. I find it much more thrilling to explore unknown territory and have some strategic part, like running and expanding your empire. You should be able to do all of that in multiplayer --- I might hire you as a pilot then :)
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Post by test3244 »

well with the controlling the system, have a large fleet and flying a capital ship at the same time, sounds like your thinking RTS here and this is the type of feature nearly everyone wants.. besides there are plenty of space games with running your own empire.

the main fun part of the game is flying and doing other activities with players only. and yes some stragetic parts of the game is possible too as long as it's player only. there will be no game mechanic style feature to command another player. you have to manually do it.

and yes it is possible to take over a system by using a fleet of players, and camping wormholes and blocking any possible entrance.

this is what you have the multiplayer world for.. so you can interact with players, not treat it as a single player aspect. also in a multiplayer world, people come and go as they log on or off.

especially when players flying a capital ship, that can be a problem when a player logs off... what is the capital ship gonna do? stay there for other ships to attack it or disappear?

multiplayer would be perfect for vegastrike if ships were to disappear when you docked at a station using a docking bay and ships would reappear and repositioned, and moving away from the launching bay when you launch your ship. and then when a player logs off, the ship already disappeard because it was inside a station.

think of it as WoW or Planeshift in space, minus the point and click, dice rolling and level grinding then you will start to see where I am coming from.
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Post by lee »

Well, there´s only Terminus that doesn´t run anymore since years, and, currently being shipped, X2. There are no others of this kind of games I know of that come as a Linux version.

Players logging on and off is something that needs to be taken care of. If it´s a players property that is abandoned, the AI should take over and move it to the nearest safe position, like a station or a planet. If the player logging off is a crew member, the AI will take over until a new player logs on to fill the gap.

An empire could be run according to defaults set by the player who owns it. He can´t do all by himselfe all the time anyway, so automatization is needed in any case. His property will just continue to operate as instructed by the settings he made. His police ships would continue going on patrol, stations would continue to trade and to produce ...

I´m yet not happy with having losses when saving a game to continue it later. The actual state of the universe should be saved and everything completely restored as it was before.
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Post by test3244 »

though in a multiplayer universe, every single thing you do like earn credits, kill things, it should automattically save your data, and there should not be a feature except for single to actually save your game. if you make a mistake, theres no turning back in the multiplayer universe. if you make a mistake in singleplayer, sure you can load the previous game.

the save game feature in multiplayer is so out of style.

i think you have some good points... but I think it needs to be somewhat balanced one way or another.

if theres a gameplay in the multiplayer world where you can fly small twitchable ships, fly big ships, and build an empire, in the same run, things are not gonna mix real well.


in my idea of the main vegastrike universe:

some GMS and Mini GMs can play the role as the empire builder in order to keep the universe alive. and most of the time as the rest of the players, you flying a ship and doing either trading runs, missions or anything to earn credits in order to get some upgrades for equipment or even get another ship AND have the ability to own many ships as possible but only fly one at a time. also lots of fighting, exploration, and hauling. something that resembles terminus, tachyon the frindge, freelancer... something like that.

just because terminus was the game I mostly described which is no longer shipped, dead, and X series on the other hand availible and has empire building features doesn't mean theres no hope for space flight only.

players can also obtain capital ships but capital ships are controlled by AI. However, a player can tell the AI where to go and what system if the player is the actual owner. but it gets more complicated.
if the player who owns the ship logs off, hes gotta have other people to take control of it. if no one who is logged on to take in charge of the capital ship, then the AI will part the capital ship and hide it somewhere in open space and be turned off(and make it indestructable).
small turrets can be manned by AI, bigger capship turrets and guns are suppoed to be manned and manually aimed by players.

so in that case you won't hear all this "WOW! LOVE THIS SPACE GAME!! CAN'T WAIT TO GET A CAPITAL SHIP cuz it will be like the free version of eve online!!!".

it won't be impossible for one player to use a capship as a efficent combat ship but somewhat difficult.

capital ships should cost a lot of money and the bigger the capital ship it, the more time it will take to build.

obtaining a capital ship is not easy as purchasing a small ship. however in some cases, used capital ships can be parked in some bays availible for sale at a lower price thats if the player does not want to fly a capital ship anymore. but I doubt that will happen.

and where ever the capital ship yard is, there may be limited amount of numbers on how many building yards there can be.

so if you want a capital ship, first you gotta pay up front, then your capital ship will start to be built.

you will be notified if your capital ship is done. capital ships should not be overpriced because you won't getting any money if they get destroyed anyways.

there should be player owned stations as well so you can park your capital ship next to them and have AI guards patrol them. If your station is very private, you can tell your AI guard to first warn outsider to altar course if they fail to comply then they will shoot them. Or by default, AI guards will engage if the station is underattack.

Players owning their space home is ok.

--------------

but if you would like to come up with an experiment where players can play as the empire builder, there would be a completely different multiplayer mod for that as long as it doesn't take over over VS's main gameplay because that would leave a bad taste for me.

people want different gameplay style.. just like what freelancer had.
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Post by Shark »

Multiplayer is such a seperate segment of code. It's not a matter of 'killing two birds with one stone'.
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Post by lee »

test3244 wrote: if theres a gameplay in the multiplayer world where you can fly small twitchable ships, fly big ships, and build an empire, in the same run, things are not gonna mix real well.
Why not? It would take some time and effort to become rich enough to own stations and capships, and once you got that, you would still be able to fly a small fighter, remotely controlled, while enjoying the comfort and safety of your capship --- or by actually sitting in the fighter, facing the risk of death if you want to.

It takes capships to attack stations or to gain control over a sector and defend it. It takes tremendous amounts of money to replace the stations that were destroyed during the attempt to gain the sector. You need to buy station parts somewhere, and you have to use large transporters to put the parts in place to build the stations.

It would be very frustrating and, after some time, even boring having to hurry around in a small fighter all the time, barely making enough money to keep the fighter going, while there are so many other options out there, while there are new systems waiting to be explored and colonized and made profitable.

What would you use for an exploration mission into unknown territory? Surely not a lone small fighter, but a mid-size ship (small capship) or two with the ability to carry and support small fighters, freighters and scout ships, specially equipped for such a long range exploration mission. You will want to have a couple scientists among your crew, eventually some mining equipment and facilities to produce needed things like fuel and food, a stock of some sattelites and probes that can be deployed to gather information and navigational data, a couple robots and small outposts to claim your new territory before you can start to build stations ...

Why should there only be a very few GMs who could enjoy that?

As said, since you prefer the small fighters, I might hire you as a pilot. I might need a lot for my exploration missions.

There´s no need for GMs to keep the universe alive. The players (and the AI) will do it, just by playing in they way they want to.
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Post by test3244 »

i hate to sound like a broken record but let me reword this again...

the first time I've heard about vegastrike, I happened to get hooked on it because I dig the idea of flying one ship, trading, doing missions, getting upgrades, or a new ship and flight stuff while flying with a joystick. like a space flight trading game that resembles the old frintier elite and privateer 2. i did the npc wingman and fleet thing and that belongs to a singleplayer game.

while playing vegastrike a few years back, I have again been dreaming for a multiplayer version to be something where social player interaction comes into place, like flying one ship(but own more than one ship) to make some cash or some other stuff, and then running into other players to see what squad they are in and if they are bad guys in anyway or not.

and of course there were also some npc ships who happen to pop up in my radar and some shot at me but they were not hard to defeat in a combat ship because, human>npc.

and also forming a player created squad, talking to other players in a squad to see where they are at, and flying together as players looking for some action or activity. the most exciting part of course would be me and a couple of friends who just happen to run into a couple of player killers and then coordinating out the battle tactics on teamspeak(or any voice chat)while fighting them. oh yes, a PvP skill-based(not skill points) battle moment.

and then in the long run, we took screenshots of me and other players in a fleet and often did convoys.

but vs wasn't a real mmo so there was a couple of servers listing for a certain type of community what it would either be in the USA, brazail or Germany.

i forgot to add that there were also limited amount of systems to keep the universe alive with players.

thats just only a dream to me.

some of the aspects that makes my previous online games, freelancer and tachyon the frindge very unique from a PvP standpoint is some of the limitations. like limited size universe, and flying one ship at a time and your role in the game universe as only being the pilot.
it was like a 3D mud(virtual world) thing, and an internet chat thing all together.

i understand that some people want more and more by playing the emporor and taking control over certain amounts of systems along with some single player RTS aspect to the multiplayer universe because they claim that it should be more of a realistic simulation and a dynamic universe then to just be a pilot.
i don't even remember if frontier elite even had that type of feature but more freedom in an elite style game means to me in a different way of treating this game more as a mp empire tycoon type of a game than just flying a ship, trading, upgrading and stuff.

but since this game is opensource and very configuratable to a point where you can make you own third party mod to make the universe have more of a realistic and dynamic view in your opinion by adding the X3 reunion style of gameplay.

everyone wants a different gameplay style for this game.
one gameplay style should not dictate another ones favorite gameplay style.
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Post by Paslowo »

From a technical standpoint from the multiplayer types of vegastrike..

However, my guess is that making a multiplayer mode where players can build their own empires, own stations, have tons of NPC ships where players can command them, even have AI control them when the player logs off, and almost 100% dynamic economy and others where everything comes and goes in the universe IMO requires signifigant amount of server resource and bandwidth in order to complete but it sounds like a nice idea though but more freedom for the player in multiplayer mode comes with a heavier server resource cost.

Now hosting a multiplayer server where you are only a pilot flying one ship at a time(the ship you purchased is the only avatar) on the other hand, indestructable stations, 10-25 systems. Sort of like the classic style of trading, upgrading things and getting another ship etc, would be a bit easier and require lesser resource and bandwidth for the server but it would still come with a cost unless done correctly. The other thing you have to keep track of is the dynamic market inventory.

I'm going to continue with the technical discussion on another thread.
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My view of space masive multiplayer gaming

Post by triato »

First let me tell you English is not my mother languaje so I am sorry for all the misspellings or gramar errors I can have.

I have allways wanted a multiplayer space game like this and here Ill post several ideas about how I think it could work, this ideas are mainly ways in wich bad player behaviour could be lowered without the need of server moderators and also how to make such game varied.

The universe should be set to be durable so that faction A killed faction B and C in two days and the game is over. However it should not be so static that it is imposible for that to happen. Following are things that could be done to achieve that.

Note: On the following by you I mean you, you and other friend players and \or your faction.

1.- Defending is easier than attacking

# Stations could have weapons or maybe orbiting automated defences

# Stations could automatically call for asistance to friendly players when enemies aproach or even if a probe two systems away finds an enemy ship.

# There would be a two system empty zone between factions.

# To capture a planet you would have to control the system for enough time for cargo ships to bring enough soldiers and surface military equipment, bring to little and they are all killed by the local army.

2.- Building is not that easy.

By having building to be not so easy gaining terrain would not be so fast since you would be getting farther and farther away from your ammo, supplies, fuel, etc.

# If surface of planets (and first person playing) is modelled then there would be zones of interest wich if you controll would give you resources (fuels, metals, etc), military vehicles, ships, station components, etc. This zones of interest could be destroyed or captured, they could also be constructed but not very fast (more than one day).

# To build whatever (buildning in zone of interest, space station, or sometimes even a cap ship) you would have to bring shipments of the resources that are necesary to build what you want, also you would have to bring robots or workers to the place.

# On the zones of interest on the surface of planes (again if my hypotetical game will ever exist and if it would have surface of planets modelled) you could build:

Space ships factory: Can build small and some medium spaceships.

Surface vehicle factory

Mine: would give you diferent things depending of the planet and the zone.

Component factory: Would give you the things you need to make spaceships, vehicles and space stations.

Trading center: These would be places where local industry sells what they produce, also, here food would be sold, there would be no need to make a food producing facility since local farmers, fisherman, etc come here to sell. Also, all the products from previously explained buildings would end up here for sell.

Space port: no need to explain this one.

Other: There could be others if they could cover an important function.

# Space stations.- Space stations would serve a variety of functions, they could be repair outposts, space ship factories, etc. Each function would need a station module that would be put in an already built station frame (not sure if this word is correct I mean the skull of the station). So, to build an station you first build its frame and generator and then build modules on it.

To build a station frame and generator you have to bring the components needed for them, like 100 tons of metal structure, 50 space building drones, etc.

Asteroids could serve as station frames, but you would need to anyway bring some things (less than what you would have to bring if there were not an asteroid) however small asteroids could limit the amount of modules you can have.

Modules would be:

Trading center: Same than before but could also recive cargo from planets and re sell it to ships that can not land on the surface.

Docking bays: Complete with a mision computer, bar, etc.

Repair facility: Could be aded to the docking bays.

Automated defences: Some could say: Ill fill my station with defences so nobody can attack me. Wrong, station defences would rise the maintenience needs of the station, so it would be hard to make them an impenetrable fortres. (see number 3)

Cap ship repair tools: Robotical arms, large cuting lasers, drones, workers, repair parts, a warehouse and living quarters for those things.

Zero G factory: Could serve to build some things that can't be built on planets.

Component factory: Bring metals, fuel, etc and it will build computers, ship hulls, etc. for other factories to build ships or to make stations

Ship factory: Bring what is necesary to build it and it will build a ship

Cap ship factory: Only here cap ships could be built, it would take an special station frame to have this module. Once all materials required to make the cap ship are on the station the station would build a cap ship in a time from 1 day to 1 week depending on the ship.

Listening and comunications center: Radar, subspace waves for comunications, probe launching ability, etc.

Mining tools: On stations that are to mine an asteroid they would need this module.

# It would be hard for a station to have all modules since such station would need a lot of maintenience parts and materians (see number 3)

# A privateer player could build an station (but it would take a LOT of money and time. So it would only be practical to do it with others privateer players, after it is finished everything it produces and sells is given to the players (minus taxes to the faction) and the player has to buy and bring things it needs to be maintained. Also he can allow the mission computer to post missions to do so (of course he will have to pay to those who do them) The player station can be attacked by pirates or factions your fation is at war with unles such factions are on a war that does not include civilians (se politics bellow).

3.- Economy and mantenience.

# Planet and stations would sell only the things they have surplus of.

# Some planets and all stations would lack some things and would need some of the things they lack. That way a station with a component factory would need metals, plastics, etc. So if said station don't have those things it would have to import them.

# Stations and planets would need things to mantain their infraestructure, mantenience parts and resources could be obtained in the planet or station itself but would have to import the ones they lack.

# Te mission computer would post cargo misions acording to the planets need of imports, it would rise the pay as the reserves of the things it lack grow thiner. Also, since there may be to many missions, they would be in submenues acording to space zone, urgency, etc. The cargo would be paid in advance by the faction and you would only need to pick it and take it to its destination.

# Taxes would be managed automatically by the game, taxes would give money to factions to buy everything and pay to the military, the amount of money a faction has would depend on its population size and its industry size. At the begining of the game the taxes should give the factions mor money than what they need to mantain their infraestructure, however war and overbuilding may lead the faction to be unable to mantain their new building and ships (for lack of materials, spare parts, fuels, etc.) Therefore they would have to stop maintaining some buildings in order to be able to keep the others and maybe after they reorganize its economy go back and repair what they had abandoned.

3.- War

All of the things before are designed for war to be slow but still winable in some months, a side could starve the other side economy by attacking their supply lines, destroy its infraestructure, keep on defence untill the other side looses to many ships, do a frontal attack on a smaller faction, grow its industry and populate new planets, etc. However every strategy would take time.

# Orbital bombarding could be done by positioning the ship and attacking the planet with special missiles, they would damage the planet infraestructure on a probabilistic way depending if the planet has interceptor missiles for defence against such attack, if the planet does not have such missiles the attack would have a 100% chance to hit the buildings if not you would need a hi group of missiles (or even ships depending on the amount of defences) to hit anything. You could choose what kind of target to destroy but giving the missile AI the choice would rise the probability of an impact. This kind of attack could be done with or without first person playing and with or without without the existance of a rendered planet surface.

# Diferent ships would have diferent scan ranges and they could be customized (at the expend of not having other things) to have a wide scan range, that way ships could hide in the far parts of star systems with a ship that has a wide scan range and attack cargo ships when there is no military oposition. To prevent this there would be stations equiped with radar, probes, etc. Probes would work as stationary observing drones, they would have a set range and would be positioned by players from either a cap ship or a space station. There could be ships with a lower signature, however they would be limited in their weapons. Also, doing things like rising your shields or arming a missile would rise your signature. Groups of ships close to each other would also have a bit more of signature than ships that are alone.

# Going in alone would be hard cause of the avantage of defence, mostly war would be done by massing forces on a target system in order to have numbers superiority, of course your enemy could be doing the same somewhere else or he could know your plans and be massing its forces near or in the system you want to attack. However you could go alone by being carefull, using stealth, having luck and by attacking only weak and unsuspecting targets. Also some attacks could be made as a diversion in order to get lonewolfs or pairs of ships into enemy territory by othe systems.

# Loging of, when you log off you could do severall things:

-Set your ship in automatic to go to the nearest friendly station.

-Set it to go to a station of your choosing (could be one farther from the border)

-Set it to patroll a place

-Set it to patroll but flee on diferent circumstances of your choosing (amount of friendly ships compared to enemy ships, ship clases of both sides or a mixture of both)

- Go far out of everybody scan range and turn off everything that is not needed to survive in order to lower signature. This is the safest option since if you leave your ship parked on a station then the station is destroyed. However you will slowly loose your food and VERY slowly your fuel while your not playing. If the food or fuel gets to a limit (set by the player) the ship flyies to a designed base or, if it can't reach it to the closest one.

In the game options you could set the ship to do any of those things in case you log off by accident.

# Death while logged of. You would have to tell the game you'll log off 5 minutes before you do so, that way we force players not to logg off just when they are in a situation they are going to die. If you're ship is destroyed while logged off you will loose your ship but would survive on an escape pod that is undetectable and will automaticly fly to the nearest friendly or neutral base, there you could use your credits to buy a new ship or get in debt (don't pay and there may be a bounty on you in the mission computer) to a faction of your choosing in order to buy a new ship. If you logg of by accident you're ship would do the behaviour you have set it to but in case it is destroyed you're escape pod will be detectable and killable for five minutes after the moment you logged off. For example: you logg off, after 3 minutes of your logging of your ship is destroyed, that leaves you on a detectable pod for 2 minutes.

# Normal dead.- If you die you die, end of it, make a new character.

# Clones.- I have been carefull, I have done everything you asked, I have follow orders and gained a hi rank, I've not cheated, but when I was doing my duty a n inmense task force jumped out of nowhere and destroyed my ship and killed me. Not fair I am so frustrated I'll uninstall the game and flame you everywhere BUAAAA!!!!

Well, you can buy a clone, clones would heir your rank, memory, money and ship if it has not been destroyed (if you died in another ship like one of your carrier fighters for example). Clones would be expensive however so this could not be used as a save feature, they would cost you like a medium ship but would be somewhat cheaper to the military (since they can earn less money than privateers) Some people would use all their money on ships and weapons while others would by a clone on every step they take. You would be able to buy only 3 clones, after you die you can buy another one so that you have 3 again.

# Cloning center.- There would be one heavy defended and unique station for cloning in the home system of your faction if it is destroyed, no more clones can be built for that faction and every time someone dies he will have to create a new character. This will be a very valuable target so it would make players plan to destroy it and defend it creating interesting situations.

# Castes: Castes would be the places in your society you have, they would make some things able to you and some unable.

- Privateer.- You know have your ship do what you want, wourk for hoever you want, etc. Privateers could work for merchant companies and gain ranks in them. (See ranks bellow) A privateer could gain acces to other castes avantages by gaining their confidence (10, 20, etc. players from that faction acepting him to have equipment from that caste).

- Military.- You are given your ship acording to your rank and avaiability of ships, you are payed a salary and from any trading you do part is send to your faction (a large part), but, you have acces to some upgrades and ships that civilians cant have. You can quit the military and become a privateer but your ship is taken from you and you won't have much money unles you are already in a hi rank with a good ship (in which case few people would want to do so)

- Scientist\ technician.- Few people would like to play with one, but that is fine since the idea is that there would be few of them, scientist missions would be trader misions (go pick up this, send ith there, etc), investigation missions (go to this planet and study this, go take lectures of this space anomaly, some of this missions could be dangerous and in enemy territory), investigate enemy (take lectures of their weapons, recive hits from them). However hard or boring this missions could be, they with time may rise the tech level of your faction or give them strategic avantage (discovery of a new jump point or gaining a copy of an enemy weapon for example). Scientists would be the only ones able to use certain ships (unarmed, some frail some very hard to aproach dangerous places in space)

# Ranks: Your rank in a faction and caste would be rised by the amount of damage you do to such faction and caste, the amount of good you do to your faction and lowered the amount of equipment you loose of your faction and the friendly fire you do. Rank would allow you to get better ships (for free or very inexpensive) from your faction/caste and to get upgrades that are not available to others. Ranks would not be linear, you could be a military cargo runer and then get the chance to get a gunship if you train combat in a simulator (see training bellow) or be a fighter pilot and then do merits to get said gunship.

# Rank and orders: There would be a simple interface in wich you could recive orders from players from ranks above you, if you are in a squad your squad comander orders would have priority. Orders could be simple follow me, attack this or that, pick this or that, etc. Or there could be a 3d interface to give orders like go to this place, patroll from here to here, etc. If you disobey orders it will count against your rank, if you follow orders it counts in favor and may help you rise in rank. Orders would only be valid for 5 minutes so no player can abuse their rank and left a player stranded by telling him go to this desert spot and stay there, alsoyou can quit an squad. (For squads, and military organization see bellow).

# Ranks and ships.- What happens if you have the rank of a cap ship comander but your side is loosing and all cap ships are destroyed? Well youll have to wait for one to be built meanwhile you can choose among smaller ships and will be told when your cap ship is ready. New cap ships woud be given to the corresponding ranked players giving priority to the players that have made mor merits for its faction and caste.

# Training: You could do training with other players in a VR simulation (with no effect on the game universe) and you could gain ranks in it (but not hi or medium to hi ranks) if a number of players that have a rank above you recomend you (by telling the game you are ready for a hi rank)

# Squads, task forces, etc. There could be player organizations recognized by the game that have its own chat chanells and being part of one puts you under a chain of comand (a hi ranking officer can't give you orders, it can only give orders to your squad capitan) or on the top of it.

#Spying.- You could go to enemy territory, scan the place and then send a subspace signal to a friendly base, hi ranking players could contact the base and see everything you see on that system plus what others player in the system are sending to said base.

4.- Politics.

At the begining of the game all factios would be on a peace or cease of fire situation, that could change this way.

# Each weak all players of a faction would be able to vote on the following questions:

-Do we allow civilian ships from A, B, C, etc in our territory for trade? (one question for each faction)

-Do we allow military ships from faction A, B, C, to enter and/or pass trough our territory.

-Do we allow them (military from other faction) to pass trough certain systems? Which?

-Do we attack this faction?

-Do we ask for peace to this faction?

-Do we acept this faction peace asking?

-Do we ask tribute for peace?, how much? what kind (uranium, money, metal, etc?

-Do we attack civilian targets from this faction?

-Do we ask them not to attack our civilian targets in exchange for us not doing so?

Players could vote yes, no or neutral. Votes from hi ranking players count more than votes from low ranking ones, but not so much that low ranking votes are not woth.
All this questions and maybe others would direct the politic rules of your faction, break a rule and it will cost you in rank, money or you could become hunted, rules of your faction may change each weak.

# Faction ules would be diferent with each of the other factions: with a single faction they could be:

-All out war: As a member of your faction you can attack any ship with a faction that is in all out war with yours.

-War without civilians: If you attack a civilian ship from this faction you will become hunted, in case you are a civilian too. Or if you are military your enemy faction would report it to your faction, with proves by game records automatically (for game records see bellow), that would lower your rank, earn you a fine, ship confiscation, etc. a lot or may even get you hunted by your own faction. In order to avoid such penalty for accidentall killings, if a civilian ship is close to an enemy military ship, you can kill it without penalty.

- Cease of fire: You can not enter the space of the faction with which your faction has a cease of fire, if you do and are detected you'll become hunted by said faction and will gain a penalty. You can't attack them unless your faction votes to restart the war. You can spy or attack them when they can not report it (see gaming rules bellow) only if you are ordered to by a player with the highest game rank or if you are one yourself.

-Peace: You may or may not enter their systems, you may or may not allow them to do so.

- Free civilian movement.- civilians can enter the space with wich you have free civilian movement, they may enter only if your faction gives them free civilian movement.

- Free Military movement.- Same as above for military.

- Restricted civilian movement.- you can only enter certain systems.

- Restricted military movement.- Same as above

- Alliance two factions ar merged in one faction for the time the alliance is previously set to be. After that they separate or they can prolong their alliance.

5.- Gaming Rules

There would be none (at least none that I can think of) except for the legal ones and not puting obscene names to your ship, etc. The game should be able to punish not wanted behaviour by its one with the following mechanisms.

# Game reports.- Every time you are attacked you can report it to the game and if the circumstances in which you are attacked are against the rules the attacker will get a penalty like loosing money, his ship, rank or become hunted by his faction and/or other factions too. Penalty would depend on the circumstances. For example if you are a civilian and are attacked under peace with the faction attacker or are attaked from someone from your faction then if you report it the attacker will recive the penalty acording to the circumstance (a few shots give him a little penalty in rank points, killing you would get him hunted if he is from your faction)
As said before, if you are close to a valid target of your attacker you can get killed with no penalty for him.

# Cuting chat.- You can ban a player from chating with you, if you do you wont hear him and the game will do as if he is no speaking to you, you can not do that with a player of a military organization you are part of with a rank above you, so if a comander starts spaming you can report him to the other players on the same organization or you can leave the organization.

# Orders.- If someone with a rank above you in your military organization (squad, fleet, etc) gives you an order and you don't follow it you will loose rank points, for example if he tells you to go somewhere and you don't you'll loose rank points, if he tells you to attack something and you don't get to a certain distance of it you'll loose rank points (you'll not loose rank points if you don't land shoots on it cause being a bad attacker does not mean you did not tried)

# Characters: You can have up to 3 characters of the same faction only, the game will check the servers and will maintain the military proportions, so if a side has killed so many ranked military oficers that they have 3 hi ranked military for no you have; and you are a hi ranked that by joining would change that balance to much (like 3 to 3) you may be forced to use a non military character untill a hi ranked oficer of your faction loggs off. This rule would be ther in order for a faction to be unable to set a date and time for all the cap ship owners to logg in and kill a faction in one our. Once there is enough players this rule will not be there anymore.

# The pirate.- You don't wanna follow the rules? You think you can be a criminal and survive, well... you can
You can attack players and if they dont manaje to send a signall reporting the attack in time, they can kill you, disable and board you without a penalty, so if you are weak you better be near a base or other friendly ships, if you are within the scan range of a friendly ship, space station or probe then you can do the report after death (as if they had saw all and reported your attacker to the respective autority). If you have a penalty you don't want to pay or if you are hunted you can join one of the pirate factions by requesting it to them (see bellow for pirate faction) but it will have a lot of disavantages and you will be hunted by all non pirate factions.

6.- Factions.-

Factions would be of diferent kinds, Super powers, small powers, independent planets and pirates. A faction could only exist if they have at least one planet or station left, if you are on a faction and all its planets and statios are destroyed or captured, then you can surrender (and face a penalty that can be death), become hunted and die or talk to other players of your faction to see if toghether you have enough materials on your cargo bays to build a new station. Factios would have a set of objectives like survive the game, conquer this other faction, grow to this size, get this powerfull, etc. The first faction to achieve them wins, except for the ones with the objective to survive, they cant win.


#Super powers: Just large factions.

# Small powers: Factions with few worlds they can defend themselves but can be crushed by superpowers. To maintain their independence they have to make attacking them not worth it.

# Independent planets: They are able to maintain their independence becouse they are in an exceptionally good position for defence, cause they are very rich and help other factions, if they are attacked the damage would make them poor and therefore the faction that trades with them would not recive what they want. Or becouse they are between two oposing powerfull factions and they fear that by attacking them they will side with the enemy. They can be independent becouse they are so poor nobody would waste a bullet in conquering them.

#Pirates: As said before this is the faction for players that don't wan't to follow the rules, they are in an exceptionally good strategic position and the jump point leading to their base is know only by them at the begining of the game. To find a path to them, a faction has to do a set of missions with puzzles and scientific ships in order to find them, such expence of resources may not be worth it since a faction enemy (if it has any) can use the moment they search and attack the pirates to attack the pirate hunting faction. Pirates may be destroyed at the begining of the game or can survive to the end.

7.- First person playing.-

First person playing would not be necesary for this game but it could be implemented. It would be worth it only if the game managed to get a real large amount of players.

# When there is nothing to do: Train or use a character that has an space ship. Training would be done in a world with constant battles re ser every day like it is in planetside, however you could take parth on boarding action or in planets assaults when they are done. For example if you are on a cargo ship full of soldiers, you can put a message in the game server lobby like: Planet asault in 10 minutes. So if a player wanting to play a soldier enters the server lobby he can choose to wait or to train for 5 minutes, exit training and then join the asault, also if you are on a mission in which you think you'll board a ship, then you can post a message like: Posible board soon. The player who wants to play in first person can choose to train and in the midle of the training he can be called as soon as the boarding starts.

# If you have soldiers in your ship (as cargo not actual players) and board another ship or unload them (an their vehicles) on a planet but no one comes from the training planet or there are not enough players playing in first person, then AI takes the place of the soldiers and follow orders from you (as long as you stay there at the risk of your ship) or from the non AI players in the field.

# You could play in first person on a ship just chating and waiting (maybe use a chess table) untill something happens, you could however not use your weapons untill you are in an official game combat situations. Same aplies if you leave your ship and go for example to a bar, etc. your guns are taken from you on the base entrance, of course if it is an enemy station and you are trying to board it, then it is an oficial combat situation and you can fight.

# Boarding in first person: To board you have to destroy the target shields and if it is a ship criple its engines, generators or anything you need to make it stop (hit boxes would be needed for this) Then you can damage it more to make sure people inside die, however if you do you may destroy the cargo or damage the ship beyond your ability to repair it, or you may even destroy it. After that you can board, how? By sending soldiers in spacesuits (or going with them) or puting a bridge between the two ships (if you have a boarding bridge. After that you can use the main gate (not advisable if there are soldiers inside) Or by the controlled use of explsives on damaged parts of the hull (in other parts it would not work). After that kill everybody who don't surrenders, stabilize the ship (it may be critical) take what you want or repair the ship and have an AI to follow you or give it to a friend. If you cant repair it you can drag it to a friendly base and pay for it to be repaired, if you are military or want to enter the military with some rank you can give it as a present. You would have to be carefull cause if you board a ship that has many enemy soldiers they may take your ship instead.
Same applies for boarding space stations, however you dont have to get them not to move since they are not moving anyway, after their shilds are down you could also get small ships inside full of soldiers, there could even be automated guns inside.

8.- Playing without first person:

All the things you would do in first person would be probabilistic and when you enter a bar or any module or building on an space station or planet you would enter a chat room and would have the option to use its features (if you are ranked enough)

# Boarding: Same without the first person, disable the ship, get in position or if its drifting match speed, send soldiers (not 3d, only probabilistic) Capture the ship or have yours captured if you made the bad move to capture a ship with more soldiers and you did not killed them first.

9.- Ending.-

The game would end when a faction conquers the others or if the game gets stalled, when at least 85% of the players vote to end the game, if a faction is wining and has conquered more than 50% of the space then in order to vote for a game ending your faction has to make peace with the big faction even if it means to surrender to their terms, also the big faction can not refuse such surrendering. The game continues under this conditions for a weak only for the winer faction to see the universe they have created.

# The first games would have only a part of the game universe since there would not be enough players for a big one, after this game ends the universe restarts with more systems unlocked. The idea is for the game to last for from 2 months (if a faction gets REALLY lucky in conquering)

10.- Thanks for reading.

Oh well, I've been writing this for several hours and trough severall days in my free time, I thank everybody who has been patient enough to read it, again I ask forgiveness for my errors with english.

I think that a game like this, in which there is variety, reason for virtual social interaction (politics would be a theme of much debate and would make players chat about it and try to convinve others), long term objective that give you a sense that anything you do has a meaning in the game, diferent gameplay experiences, etc. I know not everything can be done but computers get better vey fast.

Many of this ideas are mine, but some are taken from other people in other forums or from other games.
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Post by loki1950 »

triato lots of meat in that post to chew :wink: i think we should all let this thread rest a couple days and think carefully about it before we start the flames :wink:

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Post by triato »

I now realize my post bellongs on off topic since it is not about VS going multiplyer, instead it is an idea for a game. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Post by loki1950 »

triato don't abondon this yet some very good ideas in that post which is why i posted as i did.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Post by triato »

Oh, I won't, and I don't think your post was disencouraging. Some of the ideas above could be used for a multiplayer vegastrike, I am no programer so I don't know which. However my post is not exactly about a Vega strike multiplayer thats why I posted that in my last post. If everybody agrees we can discuss my post here, if not we can do so on the off topic forum.
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Post by loki1950 »

then lets just do that triato 8)

Enjoy the Choice :)

edit this way we save some disk space :wink:
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Post by triato »

I would not like to see pilot skills in a space game, the only avantage one should have over new players should be the ships and weapons you have.

Bars could be chat rooms.

Players could post missions on the mission computer and pay to hoever completes them.
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Post by loki1950 »

skill will always be a factor as well as your control setup kb/mouse or joystick/kb or game pad/kb each has pro and cons that effect what you can do and how easily and new players are at disatvantage because they are unfamilar with the key bindings etc just but skill and bindings come with experience so maybe noobie leagues with a couple of old timers as mentors or ajudicators and a open league where anything goes. just random ideas that might be useful.

Enjoy the Choice :)
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Post by robothead »

lets set aside all the RTS crap from vegastrike. the more options you give to a player like to have an empire style of building, the more it would be a second chore. so by default, if your role in the universe is a pilot and the ship that you are flying represents your avatar, theres virtually nothing to worry about and it's quite simple to do in the short run. you dock at a station, your ship object disappears and you log off.

i really don't want to see vegastrike get turned into another X clone. unless if it's a seperate mod that simulates the X clone that would be fine with me.

since multiplayer version of vegastrike is coming with a quake in space aspect first, it would be interesting on what type of gameplay styles that will be added to vegastrike.

*deathmatch
*capture the flag
*mining wars - defend your mining tug and attack other team's mining tug. the most ore deliverd wins.
*some gameplay aspects ripped from WWI and WWII flight simulator.. oooh that would be interesting. talking about war breifing and stuff.
*openparsec style of gameplay.
*basewars(from tachyon the fringe by novalogic)

but would that be nessicary to have it would we go from deathmatch to open ended style space trading game? something that the developers of vendetta online did with having 3 teams, capture the flag first and then it got evolved as an actual space trading game.

p.s. I had a hell of a lot of fun playing vendetta since the capture the flag days.. i'm sure some vendetta players would come to this game if this game had the capture the flag or deathmatch style aspect. unlike, there won't be one server, there will be many servers hosted by players.
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Post by glarbl_blarbl »

First let me say that I agree with pretty much everything triato said.
I especially like the idea of rank, it's an interesting variation on XP - sort of... The training idea meshes well with rank.
Here are a few ideas I've had:

Some of the diplomatic aspects, and also the production/technology triato talked about are used in Freeciv. It's written in C IIRC, so perhaps we could adapt some of their code to VS. At least it would be worth a look. The big difference is that freeciv is turn-based, so time would have to be dealt with differently.

I have also been thinking about systems/levels which are artificial - I'm imagining something like a squadron of death-stars or a Dyson Sphere (!) - but I'm sure other people could come up with much more creative ideas. Perhaps we could make some sort of point system for system design, to ensure balanced systems. This would be better suited to FPS-style multiplayer, but I have an idea... it's been brewing for awhile, keep reading.

I think it would be interesting to have a distributed system of servers - sysadmins would be responsible for maintaining their particular system and communicating with other nodes, especially those systems which are connected. I had this idea when I first started making levels in the Unreal Editor and realized that you could both make an unreal:// link in your webpage which would load up your level (if the user had unreal installed, natch). and make a portal which would load another map or (again, IIRC) web page. Originally I was thinking about a 3D website, but it's kinda silly to expect anyone who wants to go to your site to have a copy of Unreal, so I didn't spend much more time on it.

Obviously, the big problem here is that the Sysadmin of each particular system effectively becomes God for that particular patch of universe :twisted: ... There would need to be some code-based method of preventing the sysadmin from "cheating" (or exploiting their position) and making sure that the version of VS they're running is compatible.

Most of the processing would have to be done client-side, to keep the bandwidth and server requirements low. This would be better suited for an MMO(RPG/RTS), since each server is only responsible for what's in that particular system and communicating sync/news/economy signals (I'm thinking about something similar to the DNS system, where information makes its way across the network from one server to the next, until the root servers get it - or vice versa). There would need to be a couple of authoritative servers which maintain maps of the universe and issue updates about navigation hazards (nodes which go down would have to be routed around).

Many people have said that the system count should be kept low.. This is probably a good idea until there are enough players to make it fun. Once they fill up though, it will be cool to see all the creative systems people design.
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Post by robothead »

since this game is very customizable, you can turn vegastrike into whatever gameplay style you like(as having a squadron of capital ships, RTS/RPG style) as long as it's a seperate mod and does not overwrite the original vegastrike game because of boy would make my blood boil.

i shall talk about this in a different topic.
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Post by triato »

loki1950 wrote:skill will always be a factor as well as your control setup kb/mouse or joystick/kb or game pad/kb each has pro and cons that effect what you can do and how easily and new players are at disatvantage because they are unfamilar with the key bindings etc just but skill and bindings come with experience so maybe noobie leagues with a couple of old timers as mentors or ajudicators and a open league where anything goes. just random ideas that might be useful.

Enjoy the Choice :)
I mean skill in a sense of role playing game skills. Of course personal skill should give you an avantage, if you are good, you are good and that's it. What I would dissagree is to have for example a mechanic skill that acelerates the self repair of your ship or other things like that.
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Post by triato »

robothead wrote:
since multiplayer version of vegastrike is coming with a quake in space aspect first, it would be interesting on what type of gameplay styles that will be added to vegastrike.

*deathmatch
*capture the flag
*mining wars - defend your mining tug and attack other team's mining tug. the most ore deliverd wins.
*some gameplay aspects ripped from WWI and WWII flight simulator.. oooh that would be interesting. talking about war breifing and stuff.
*openparsec style of gameplay.
*basewars(from tachyon the fringe by novalogic)

but would that be nessicary to have it would we go from deathmatch to open ended style space trading game? something that the developers of vendetta online did with having 3 teams, capture the flag first and then it got evolved as an actual space trading game.

p.s. I had a hell of a lot of fun playing vendetta since the capture the flag days.. i'm sure some vendetta players would come to this game if this game had the capture the flag or deathmatch style aspect. unlike, there won't be one server, there will be many servers hosted by players.

I also like fast pased non persistent multiplayer games, however there are plenty of them already. It could be a good experimenting ground for new things and it probably would be fun.
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Post by robothead »

there used to be plenty of multiplayer space flight combat multiplayer games back in the past but none of them today.

today I have not seen one new space flight multiplayer game out there. if VS MP was a space flight multiplayer game, that will hold me for a while.

i ran a google search for space flight multiplayer games and the only ones I can find are allegiance(which didn't hold me for long), and starwraith(costs money which I cannot afford 2 buy).
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Post by lee »

DM is the most boring kind of gametype.

CTF comes down to DM, mining wars would also. They are utterly boring.

What´s openparsec and basewars?
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Post by robothead »

you may say that dm, ctf and other stuff is utterly boring.. then it might be fun for other people who are old-skool space simmers. only if this game had a lot more exposure...

but that is the very first thing that will happen to vegastrike once it hits network capabilities. the game it self will not instantly go open ended space trading like what singleplayer was. it's for testing putposes. then it usually evolves to more of an open-ended space trading game little by little.
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