What to do while in space

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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Psyco Diver 69 »

I don't really like any of those but I like the no autopilot, but make is a purchasable extra top of the line ships would still have it but cheap ships or older class ships wouldn't

I like the concepts of getting news, maybe a in game bullitin board where "extra" jobs can be posted so if your flying through space you can pick up a extra job, maybe "help I need parts to get my ship moving" you go and buy said parts, dock with the ship and you get paid, maybe "help being attacked please save me" type stuff too. It would also be good for finding what system or planet needs what, in case you picked up a mission hauling some sort of cargo, and find out a planet needs it and is willing to pay more than the mission is willing to pay. Maybe make it so if you abort a mission to sell it somewhere drops your rating with the faction you promised to do a job for. Want to be a honorable trader OR a greedy one that has to watch your own back??

I would like the see systems larger and make spec speeds acctually upgradable, that way it takes 5 minutes to cross a system (doesn't seem long but time yourself the next time you go jump point to jump point) for you to start with and end up how getting accross systems much faster due to faster drives
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

While Siddis and I often agree on things, in this we do not. I think that auto aim and cargo sizes are ok. I just upgraded to a mule and it takes a long time to do in system runs. However, I think upgradeable spec and sub-light thrusters would be better than a scale reduction. As far as no auto pilot or auto-as-upgrade, this thought was put forward in the auto-dockthread. It was generally decided that autopilot is simple enough for it to be a standard feature and to have been for quite some time.

Cargo runs should take a long time. Long-hull truckers are away from home weeks at a time. Container ships can take weeks or months between ports. More sound alerts (when hostels are encounters, nearing destination, etc.), some ship-board maintenance, and that kind of thing would be more helpful to my mind. A long cargo run is a great time to do some laundry while playing!

Another thing that should take a long time is exploration missions. here there may be sensor stations you could monitor. Bottom line, space is not empty when you can cross star systems in at most a few hours! If there is a major move that transit time should be skipped, then just skip it entirely by dropping the player near the destination and add time to the game clock. Otherwise, fill that space with fun tasks and/or audio flags to let you know that your attention is required again.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Deus Siddis »

travists wrote:I think that auto aim and cargo sizes are ok.
The thing is enormous accelerations have become a game play patch for very heavy cargo payloads and auto aim has in turn become a patch for enormous accelerations.

These 'fixes' don't really solve the problems though, and create new ones, for example strike craft which are always essentially unburdened by cargo, have up to 30+ g accelerations (without SPEC!) But this can't be turned down too much without also needing to change cargo craft, since it wouldn't make sense for interceptors to have inferior agility to haulers. And haulers can't be totally unfun to fly at full payload.

However it turns out normal players have a hard time hitting small ships with insane relative speed and unpredictability, so auto aim, automated turrets, guided missiles and ECM help them out with push button warfare. But push button warfare largely takes away from the player one of the most involving things you currently do while in space-- combat. (And it's not even realistic.)
However, I think upgradeable spec and sub-light thrusters would be better than a scale reduction.
You might have misunderstood, I think the systems should remain realistically big as they are or almost are. Only artificial objects like stations could be made smaller. You see they are actually much, much bigger than they look in game. This is because the station models have no fine details yet, because the models are ancient, and your ability to accelerate is so enormous. And primarily as a matter of perception and aesthetics, I want them to actually be as big as they look, and for your speed to look as fast as it really is, when approaching them.

But this need not have any effect on travel times.
Cargo runs should take a long time.
I agree. All I was saying was, there is a compromise between those who want faster travel and those who don't want time compression, that could be achieved through merely adjusting spec and the dynamic universe.

Personally I would prefer things take longer, be more eventful, and ultimately lead to bigger changes in the player's ability to affect the dynamic universe "sandbox".
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

Perhaps I did at that. It sounded like faster ships and less space between them! The in-game description of the autotrack indicates all guns have some autotrack ability, kill that have autotrackers only available as military surplus, and require an ITTS type system. Just don't kill them entirely. As far as auto-turrets, Theoretically that is a crew-able position, so needs to be maintained. However, reaction times or other features can be dialed back for AI controlled verses maned.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Psyco Diver 69 »

How about make 2 levels of autotargeting, civilian/hunter which is small range, and military surplus which is bigger. Personally I don't like how beam weapons track, to me it would make sense they would fire but not move while firing. This would obviously gear beam weapons towards bigger ships, anyways off topic sorry
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:
travists wrote:I think that auto aim and cargo sizes are ok.
The thing is enormous accelerations have become a game play patch for very heavy cargo payloads and auto aim has in turn become a patch for enormous accelerations.

These 'fixes' don't really solve the problems though, and create new ones, for example strike craft which are always essentially unburdened by cargo, have up to 30+ g accelerations (without SPEC!) But this can't be turned down too much without also needing to change cargo craft, since it wouldn't make sense for interceptors to have inferior agility to haulers. And haulers can't be totally unfun to fly at full payload.
Why do you think only thruster power is a factor here?

Fighters may have a limit due to structural integrity. The craft's frame may not be able to handle 30+G turns, and that's easily explained.

re autotracking, I think we could make it imperfect.

Because the issue with current autotracking is that it's perfect, and there's no reason to prefer manual targetting.

Autotrackers could have "grades", with military autotrackers faster than civvies, and stuff like that, and none could be perfect. Heavy mounts would also have slower autotrackers than light mounts.

Because autotracking exists today (ie: radar-guided AAA guns), it's not unreasonable to think that they exist, what is unreasonable is to think they're perfect and instantaneous as they currently are in VS.

I often play with keyboard only, and let me tell you, it's impossible to aim with a keyboard - autotrackers are a prerequisite to any kind of dogfighting if you're using the keyboard alone.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

Not only that, but the bigger the craft, larger thrusters can be used! A cargo craft with boosts normally used for ore carriers (ie overpowered thrusters and rcs) striped of all unnecessary systems and loaded down with weapons would make for a fast and nimble gunship! Theoretically, with the ion/energy systems in use in the Vega Strike universe with a large enough power source and thruster combo a cargo huller can be as quick as a fighter. Flight computers, however, would limit such to keep high mass vessels manageable.




Anyway, flight dynamics re-balancing aside, what else should we do while flying and how should it work? Also: crew discussions here, an existing thread, or a new "pull together" thread? Crew interaction has been brought forward as an in transit task.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Rattan »

One thing that I can think of is that most of the "problems" tend to be fights and trading..

Maybe some other sorts of things that need coped with, like a magnetic storm or anomaly that damages or temporarily disables scanning and/or navigation functions.

Derelict ships or wreckage floating in areas where there aren't many gleaners to have salvaged it. The player could view it as scenery, or might need to navigate around it, or they might even salvage it themselves or use it for target practice.

Docking bay problems requiring a manual landing at a very specific bay.

Aftermath effects that would kick sometime between a battle and when you can get to a station, causing some additional damage as damaged or overloaded ship systems fail.

Cargo runs with a bit more to them, like maybe "There has been an outbreak of Scrofulitic Space Influenza on the mining station. A premium price of ____ is being offered for the first _____ units of vaccine that can be delivered." Then have NPCs also trying to get there with the needed cargo, so that it's a bit of a race to see who gets the big money and who is looking for another place to sell some medical supplies. It also might be a bit of a fight, since NPCs may see a good opportunity to eliminate the player as competition, or pirates may target the player and/or NPCs in hopes of getting that valuable cargo to sell at inflated prices.

Maybe "radio stations" with music and some ads for the fictional in-game merch or propaganda that the player could tune in to during quiet times.

Some faction or group running a "blockade" in space between 2 locations, so the player would have to identify themselves (assuming they're friendly to the faction), fight, or take the long way around to get through.

Now, some of this stuff could be done as missions, of course, but I'm thinking more it could sometimes be stuff that just happens when you're cruising along.

I view VS players as falling somewhere in a sort of a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum lets say we have Travel Oriented Players (TOP). A TOP like the journey, enjoys the scenery, wants to know more about their ship(s) and what's going on in them, and destinations are stopping points in the game where one refuels, gets repairs and hopefully turns enough profit to keep on going. Action Oriented Players (AOP) are more about the encounters and payoffs and the journey is what comes between those things. Almost an obstacle to those things, sometimes.

Where a player falls in that spectrum will have a lot to do with whether they see the game as too fast or too slow, and what options they'll want. I don't think most players are strictly to one end or the other. A TOP may love a good dogfight now and then, and an AOP might really get into the occasional long mission with a good storyline and some things to figure out.

But if we bias Vegastrike too much in either direction, we cut down on the possibilities and we lose potential players. The ideal is to try and figure out a way to allow for both extremes, so that how a player plays and the choices they make in equipment and game options would allow for them to settle in comfortably, like the game already does with different player "roles" and the factions.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by greenfreedom10 »

Rattan wrote:But if we bias Vegastrike too much in either direction, we cut down on the possibilities and we lose potential players. The ideal is to try and figure out a way to allow for both extremes, so that how a player plays and the choices they make in equipment and game options would allow for them to settle in comfortably, like the game already does with different player "roles" and the factions.
One way that has been suggested is a difference between core (safe) and fringe (dangerous) systems so the user can choose his/her environment. There could be some other adjustments also like population density and of course faction associations. (All mentioned here.) If those 3 environmental dynamics (and other, better ideas) were unable to provide a broad enough range of playing experiences, then maybe some upgrades like for SPEC could be added, before trying time compression.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

Population density would be rather easy to implement.

The engine would only need a map of population densities, showing how dense are which systems, and modify ship spawning and stuff using that as a guideline.

The difficult part would be creating/generating the maps, since VS has 2000 systems more or less.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

As you may recall from the other discussion, pop density is thought of as radiating out from home-worlds. My base maker project is kind of back burnered right now, Let me take a look at the file again, I think code to generate maps should be fairly easy.

***Edit: There is only one homeworld listed in the milky-way.xml (as of the 5.0 version I have access to at work) I think the easiest way to handle pop density is during dynamic universe creation. Set up homeworld flags in the XML that DUC can read, and let it populate traffic patterns based on general diminishing outward modified by habitable worlds and other resistive/conductive patterns.
Last edited by travists on Tue Mar 15, 2011 5:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

Yep, it's counting hops from home/hub worlds, and storing the info somewhere.

Not hard at all, except picking the home/hub worlds and their influence.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

Home worlds

Rlaan: 4th planet in system SCx9362
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/Species:Rlaan

Klk'k: Ktah (System)
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/Species:Klk%27k

Whatever "TBAL" means, most species are listed as such. I'd recommend someone open a new thread with the specific goal of filling in that data.

***edit: did one
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote: Why do you think only thruster power is a factor here?
Fighters may have a limit due to structural integrity. The craft's frame may not be able to handle 30+G turns, and that's easily explained.
No that's 30g linear acceleration, doing some kind of turn or braking in an atmosphere, the acceleration could be even greater I'd imagine. But yeah, craft integrity ranks among the impossible to explain issues with realism, given the current physics.

The reason I didn't bring this realism up, besides the fact we covered the issue last year, is because I don't want folks to think this is a realism versus game play issue. It's a game play, aesthetics and realism versus project inertia issue.
re autotracking, I think we could make it imperfect.
IMO, the ultimate way to do that would be to simulate it, the way turrets are simulated. Create an actual rotating object (with optional graphical representation) that has limits on rotation speed and acceleration, like turrets but with a much tighter range of motion (since the weapon system is much heavier and more cumbersome than a turret mount could easily handle).
I often play with keyboard only, and let me tell you, it's impossible to aim with a keyboard - autotrackers are a prerequisite to any kind of dogfighting if you're using the keyboard alone.
From my own experiments I find the game is actually quite playable with only the keyboard if the accelerations and governors are turned down to reasonable levels, especially if turning accelerations are reduced more than their governors. The keyboard is only twitchy if the physics are twitchy (though of course a joystick is still always an advantage).
Travists wrote:Anyway, flight dynamics re-balancing aside, what else should we do while flying and how should it work? Also: crew discussions here, an existing thread, or a new "pull together" thread? Crew interaction has been brought forward as an in transit task.
Seems perfectly on topic to discuss crew here if you wish.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:IMO, the ultimate way to do that would be to simulate it, the way turrets are simulated. Create an actual rotating object (with optional graphical representation) that has limits on rotation speed and acceleration, like turrets but with a much tighter range of motion (since the weapon system is much heavier and more cumbersome than a turret mount could easily handle).
My thought precisely
Deus Siddis wrote:
I often play with keyboard only, and let me tell you, it's impossible to aim with a keyboard - autotrackers are a prerequisite to any kind of dogfighting if you're using the keyboard alone.
From my own experiments I find the game is actually quite playable with only the keyboard if the accelerations and governors are turned down to reasonable levels, especially if turning accelerations are reduced more than their governors. The keyboard is only twitchy if the physics are twitchy (though of course a joystick is still always an advantage).
Yea, I was thinking of lowering angular acceleration limits radically - even fully laden ships seem to turn on a whim now, and that seems just wrong.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

Deus Siddis wrote:Seems perfectly on topic to discuss crew here if you wish.
How about a compromise? A random selection flag. If radiating system is set than the engine uses that, but if the flag is a placeholder it picks. This could be further refined so that client or sub-species spawn within so many jumps of the benefactor. This would let the dynamic get started while the specific locations are discussed.


OK, I see some areas of crew to figure out before the code is even considered, though a coding impossibility can be brought up.
  • Logistics: Higher, fire, assign, pay, crew cabins etc.
  • Function: positions, effect on ship operations
  • Humanity: Learning, interactivity, panic, etc.
My thoughts:
logistics:
Firing and position assignment would be handled through a screen.
Hiring can happen in bars and through the bbs similar to missions.
Pay would either be a set amount or a percentage of profit to be paid every set amount of time.
Crew would need somewhere to sleep and a galley. There are already passenger compartments to be bought as an upgrade, so a space for people test should be easy. I would also think that accommodations would influence effectiveness: your crew sleeps on hard bulkheads = poor performance / your crew has private cabins = top notch and ready to go!

function:
Turret gunner: accuracy of turrets
Engineer: repairs and overall performance
Comm. officer: ability to goad or soothe NPCs
Quartermaster: Cargo space and load/unload times

humanity:
The longer a crewman serves in a position, the more experience they have in that position thus performing better, but giving you a loyalty discount vs. what such experience would cost as a fresh higher.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Deus Siddis »

travists wrote: function:
Turret gunner: accuracy of turrets
Engineer: repairs and overall performance
Comm. officer: ability to goad or soothe NPCs
Quartermaster: Cargo space and load/unload times
I would make every post optional, so depending on where and what the player thinks he'll be doing, he'll want to take on different people or assign them to different positions. I would also add some more posts:

Security: fights and leads crew against boarding forces or during boarding actions of your own.
Navigation: influences autopilot accuracy and efficiency.
Management: improves how well other crew perform.

Some of these might be campaign based as well, like a science specialist "on loan" to you from the faction you are working for.
humanity:
The longer a crewman serves in a position, the more experience they have in that position thus performing better, but giving you a loyalty discount vs. what such experience would cost as a fresh higher.
Character Classes

Not all of your crew member options are human. Different human factions, human subspecies and various alien species and subspecies, would all have potentially radically different abilities and mental/emotional aspects you need to understand and manage to get the best results.

Purists might be industrious and usually quite easy to work with, but while they get along as well as language barriers permit with aliens, they bump shoulders with the more radical human factions/subspecies and possess only moderate creativity and intelligence. Shapers are much more demanding and difficult to manage, but highly intelligent and adaptive, albeit initially often lacking in useful shipboard knowledge. Mishtali are much harder to manage but very efficient at work and courageous fighters in battle.


Dynamic Characters

You also need individual-specific differences-- personality. This partly random but largely influenced by a dynamically generated history for that particular individual, which might in turn could be influenced by their faction of origin and the location you picked them up. For example, individuals from the fringes, would generally have rougher experiences somewhere in their history and this would influence their personality. By interacting with them to learn more about their history, the player can gauge how to handle them socially, what uses to best put them to, and where their emotional limits are and what ulterior motives they might have which could be harmful (or beneficial).

Then you have individual psychological states, which is where they are in the present. This is affected by what's happened recently on the ship. Attacking or assisting an affiliate vessel of a faction a crew member has some allegiance or animosity towards could change that crew member's present psych state. Positive and negative interactions with other crew members could do the same or the frequency or severity of hostile attacks on the ship or the ratio of working hours to rest and leave. And similarly, player interaction with a crew member can also help gauge his present state and how best to handle it, if at all.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

About implementation, we should do all this moddable - and for that, we could use the base interface, so all this would be a special case of you docking with your own ship.

There's already some API to invoke the base interface, only the game usually pauses when you do.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

Deus Siddis wrote:
travists wrote: function:
Turret gunner: accuracy of turrets
Engineer: repairs and overall performance
Comm. officer: ability to goad or soothe NPCs
Quartermaster: Cargo space and load/unload times
I would make every post optional, so depending on where and what the player thinks he'll be doing, he'll want to take on different people or assign them to different positions. I would also add some more posts:

Security: fights and leads crew against boarding forces or during boarding actions of your own.
Navigation: influences autopilot accuracy and efficiency.
Management: improves how well other crew perform.

Some of these might be campaign based as well, like a science specialist "on loan" to you from the faction you are working for.
I don't see why a science posistion can't be standard along with a "mission specialist" Given a large enough ship each department may have a head. If fleet opperations is to become a reality, a Pilot posistion would be needed to.
humanity:
The longer a crewman serves in a position, the more experience they have in that position thus performing better, but giving you a loyalty discount vs. what such experience would cost as a fresh higher.
Character Classes

Not all of your crew member options are human. Different human factions, human subspecies and various alien species and subspecies, would all have potentially radically different abilities and mental/emotional aspects you need to understand and manage to get the best results.
...
Do we then assume that non Nitorgen/Oxygen carbon based crew are alwase in environment suits, or do we have levels of atmospheric control for crew cabins?
Dynamic Characters

You also need individual-specific differences-- personality. This partly random but largely influenced by a dynamically generated history for that particular individual, which might in turn could be influenced by their faction of origin and the location you picked them up. For example, individuals from the fringes, would generally have rougher experiences somewhere in their history and this would influence their personality. By interacting with them to learn more about their history, the player can gauge how to handle them socially, what uses to best put them to, and where their emotional limits are and what ulterior motives they might have which could be harmful (or beneficial).

Then you have individual psychological states, which is where they are in the present. This is affected by what's happened recently on the ship. Attacking or assisting an affiliate vessel of a faction a crew member has some allegiance or animosity towards could change that crew member's present psych state. Positive and negative interactions with other crew members could do the same or the frequency or severity of hostile attacks on the ship or the ratio of working hours to rest and leave. And similarly, player interaction with a crew member can also help gauge his present state and how best to handle it, if at all.
I like the general idea here, but will leave it to those codding the crew section to figure out how much backstory is possible.. There will need to be a new CSV saved with the game to handle crew from what I see.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote:About implementation, we should do all this moddable - and for that, we could use the base interface, so all this would be a special case of you docking with your own ship.
Sounds like a plan.
klauss wrote:There's already some API to invoke the base interface, only the game usually pauses when you do.
What if it never paused? Would it be difficult to disable the pausing code and allow the universe simulation (minus the player's fleet) to continue to run while you were using the base interface, in any case?

travists wrote: I don't see why a science posistion can't be standard along with a "mission specialist" Given a large enough ship each department may have a head. If fleet opperations is to become a reality, a Pilot posistion would be needed to.
It could, as long as there is enough dynamically generated examples of the game play that a specialist helps you deal with. In other words, replay-ability outside of a campaign. You might want a "planetologist" with you if you are going out to set up a planetary colony. Or a cryptographer if yours is a spy ship. Or maybe all of these possible jobs would be filled by one multidisciplinary jack-of-all-sciences position.

Also a medical position would be useful.

Fleet operations are already a reality, if you buy fighters as cargo inside your "mother ship" or "carrier" vessel (anything with enough cargo room to fit them), you can launch them as permanent escorts and tractor them back in for safe keeping and maybe repairs. Or you can hire escorts which fight in your fleet until the next time you land.

Thing is you should just be able to buy escort vessels outright, but the game interface doesn't allow this at the moment. But it's basically just an interface issue; you can deploy a fleet already.
travists wrote: Do we then assume that non Nitorgen/Oxygen carbon based crew are alwase in environment suits, or do we have levels of atmospheric control for crew cabins?
They should bring aboard their own living/maintenance chambers if they have exotic requirements. From what I understand of the current canon though, this would be little more than a futuristic swimming pool and/or a cybernetics workshop, with two or three exceptions. (Those exceptions are the Rlaan and one or two of their client species.)
travists wrote: I like the general idea here, but will leave it to those codding the crew section to figure out how much backstory is possible..
Call me crazy, but I think it is possible to develop a personality simulation and closely tied personal history generator that add more to the game than well written campaign characters. The task of creating such a system might be quite a fun little challenge too.

My main concern would be voice acting though. If it becomes a quality control requirement for this project to have everything voice acted eventually, then that would mean having to use larger, coarser content building blocks to create dynamic-character-to-player interaction dialogue.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote:My main concern would be voice acting though. If it becomes a quality control requirement for this project to have everything voice acted eventually, then that would mean having to use larger, coarser content building blocks to create dynamic-character-to-player interaction dialogue.
It should - dialogue is more than just ear candy, it's functional - it grabs your attention and communicates information without requiring visual processing.

It also adds a lot for immersion.

But it should be possible to build a lot with some prerecorded phrases that we can stitch together, along with written "reports" for greater freedom.
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

Deus Siddis wrote: What if it never paused? Would it be difficult to disable the pausing code and allow the universe simulation (minus the player's fleet) to continue to run while you were using the base interface, in any case?
It is a possibility, and some mods do that.
But it's hard for playability, we still have no way to notify the user of things happening on the outside. Until that gets resolved, the only acceptable gameplay dynamic is to pause the game.

I'm thinking, one way to avoid that would be to allow "transparent" base interfaces - you invoke it, and the interface is overlaid (transparently) over your HUD.

That could represent both "dialogue box"-like interfaces and ship interiors with windows. It's worth considering.
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travists
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by travists »

Deus Siddis wrote: ...
It could, as long as there is enough dynamically generated examples of the game play that a specialist helps you deal with. In other words, replay-ability outside of a campaign. You might want a "planetologist" with you if you are going out to set up a planetary colony. Or a cryptographer if yours is a spy ship. Or maybe all of these possible jobs would be filled by one multidisciplinary jack-of-all-sciences position.

Also a medical position would be useful.

Fleet operations are already a reality, if you buy fighters as cargo inside your "mother ship" or "carrier" vessel (anything with enough cargo room to fit them), you can launch them as permanent escorts and tractor them back in for safe keeping and maybe repairs. Or you can hire escorts which fight in your fleet until the next time you land.
...
I have played some with fighter cargo, but can't get them stand still long enough to tractor in. Defiantly needs to be a return to base or hold position and wait for pickup command.

So what do we have for crew positions now?

Turret gunner: accuracy of turrets
Engineer: repairs and overall performance
Comm. officer: ability to goad or soothe NPCs
Quartermaster: Cargo space and load/unload times
Pilot: Flies NPC fleet ships
Security: fights boarders/boards other ships
Science: various research tasks
Mission Specialist: mission/campaign specific provided by fixer
Medical: attends to crew health/ aids in medical related missions
Crew chief: overall management of crew

On large ships, each position may be a department each needing a head. I think only the head of each department on each ship being interactive should suffice.

In fleet operations, I see several cap ships working in conjunction. Possibly even heading to different destinations! I don’t know how doable that is, but I have one mule, and already am nearing the ability to buy another. (anyone know where I can by an ox, Then I’ll need somewhere to fill it up) The other interface issue with fleets seems to be limited ability to upgrade cargo ships. I want to be able to by a fighter, outfit it, load it on my carrier ship, and then fly it if needed!
Deus Siddis
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by Deus Siddis »

klauss wrote: But it should be possible to build a lot with some prerecorded phrases that we can stitch together, along with written "reports" for greater freedom.
Hopefully, but it get's more difficult when you combine dynamic speech, emotional nuance and face to face communication (as opposed to radio with its lack of character animations plus background and technical noise to help hide flaws.)
klauss wrote: I'm thinking, one way to avoid that would be to allow "transparent" base interfaces - you invoke it, and the interface is overlaid (transparently) over your HUD.

That could represent both "dialogue box"-like interfaces and ship interiors with windows. It's worth considering.
Sounds like it should do the trick.

Then years later, with ogre in hand, real time 3D interiors could gradually replace it. 8)
travists wrote: Turret gunner: accuracy of turrets
. . .
I'd call this just gunner or weapon's officer (or whatever sounds generic). Because the position could involve more than turrets. In fact the exact effects of these various positions could grow and evolve a bit with the game's larger feature set.
travists wrote: On large ships, each position may be a department each needing a head. I think only the head of each department on each ship being interactive should suffice.
I'd say this could go either way, because for ships larger than say 100 or maybe 200 meters, things will be happening much more slowly and the player's role might begin to change as a result. He'll be less rewarded for micromanaging the ship's flight and weapon systems as he would on a corvette, strike craft or shuttle, which leaves more time and room for other forms of micromanagement. But I agree that this should be optional, the player might be able to reap some benefits from direct interactions with everyone at some point, but delegation should also work fine at this scale.
travists wrote: I don’t know how doable that is, but I have one mule, and already am nearing the ability to buy another. (anyone know where I can by an ox, Then I’ll need somewhere to fill it up)
Ice and industrial worlds have oxen and clydesdales, IIRC.
travists wrote: The other interface issue with fleets seems to be limited ability to upgrade cargo ships. I want to be able to by a fighter, outfit it, load it on my carrier ship, and then fly it if needed!
You can do all those things, but again using the weird interface.

What you have to do is launch the ship, then take direct control of it using like one of the bracket keys "[]" maybe while holding shift (can't remember exactly which hotkey it was). Now either fly around and attack stuff or land and buy upgrades/repairs. You might be able to dock with your own ship this way actually, but I think it is the same as docking at a neutral base. Also I don't know it if the engine tracks the upgrades on that fighter if it get's sucked back into the cargo bay. Would have to test this.

The game will greatly benefit from a better fleet management interface.
klauss
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Re: What to do while in space

Post by klauss »

travists wrote: I have played some with fighter cargo, but can't get them stand still long enough to tractor in. Defiantly needs to be a return to base or hold position and wait for pickup command.
There is one such command, I know WCU uses it.
It may not have a key binding in VS though.
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