official campaign proposal: sandbox

[Atarlost]

I think that, for those who aren't interested in the destination as much as the journey, a sandbox campaign would be fun.

A large mesh topology would represent the quarantine zone. Heretic, if present, would not be escapable and the player would not be a pilgrim.

I see five "roles" and all should be fully developed. Joining the Charon Pirates should be as permissible as joining the korolov escort company and you should be able to engage in trade with anyone depending on your allegiances.

Miner
Mercenary (you do stuff like mining station and korolov missions full time)
Pirate
Merchant
Smuggler

As an example the pirates might invite you to join if you've been selling stolen goods on the black market and haven't killed many pirates, though a few would be seen as unavoidable. Joining other normally hostile factions might involve random encounters with their agents in disreputable locations.

The economy would be more fully realized, having stations cycle their inventory and possibly determine their prices based on what else is nearby. Resurrections should not be permitted for this campaign apart from insurance and the only endpoint would be death. Fuel drops should be limited so you can't live off the land except possibly as a pirate in order to keep the difficulty level up.

More equipment selection is probably indicated with more gradations of mining equipment and cargo holds in particular in order to put the currently simple professions of merchant and miner in greater depth.

This could be set at the same time as Domina and Oracus to maximize the use of the same resources, but could be set earlier if there is enough interest in adjusting things to another era.

[Ttech]

I would like to add a difficulty increase as you progress in 'levels' would be very interesting and the characters would not need to be any new ones except those in the quarentine zone.

Anther option or to include this is to have campaigns e.g be a CSC camptain and run missions and then break off (Antartica Anyone?) to a different group such as the Venari and preform attacks.

[Atarlost]

The CSC idea is a lot like one George has already had.

[alterecco]

I like that idea Atarlost.

I think it would be great to add more "lifetime" to individual systems, letting them regenerate over time (including enemy/friendly presence), so the players path through the systems does not need to be as linear.

Perhaps move a bit away from the idea of systems having such fixed levels. I would think it reasonable that you could find high end weaponry side by side with the low end weaponry, and only let the price tag be the limiting factor. Some consideration should be given to spawning enemies though... not sure how that could work (handled by script perhaps?)

I general I think it is a splendid idea, and would like to contribute to it's progression, any way I can.

[Prophet]

I'm certainly in!
I've been thinking of this for a long, long time but never tackled it because of the vast amount of work necessary.

Making systems more dynamic is a big step. There's been some work done for trade stations, having them restock, having them change stock, and have the prices set according to what else is in the system.

Enemies are a bit more tricky. My plan was to make the stations much more difficult to kill, and once killed they will be rebuilt after a cool down period. Enemy strength would increase as the player moved out of the friendly-controlled systems and deeper into hostile territory. Making a mad dash through without upsetting them too much would allow the possibility of joining them. Of course, the factions and sovereign relationship mechanics would have to be built from scratch.

I also toyed with the idea of 'leveling' in skills or trades, a merchant would gain xp by turning a decent profit, a new level would unlock new tradegoods for purchase. Buying and equipping weapons would require a certain rank in the milita or fleet, etc.

It's a huge project, to be sure, but I think it would be well worth the effort.

[alterecco]

I think we should be wary of lining up too large a project from the start, and perhaps just get started with a base topology, and stick to a kind of vanilla game feel, albeit without the Domina mission and direction.

After having something that is playable, there is plenty of time to add improvements, such as dynamic trading, dynamic enemies and dynamic systems.

So, I suggest a base static topology that outlines the systems we feel are necessary, and then we can always add in the requirements for a dynamic topology later.

Basically this could be the player controlled "vanilla" game, where it is easier for us to make changes as ideas crop up on irc or forums and have been vetted for consistency. Perhaps it could be our "chocolate", "caramel" or "pistacio"?

Atarlost, you started pitching this, so I don't want to run off in a tangent to your intent. I think you would be a good candidate for laying down a realistic baseline. I will gladly provide scripts and ideas as needed, but I don't think we go wrong by designating you as a lead on this. Any thoughts?

[Atarlost]

Atarlost, you started pitching this, so I don't want to run off in a tangent to your intent. I think you would be a good candidate for laying down a realistic baseline. I will gladly provide scripts and ideas as needed, but I don't think we go wrong by designating you as a lead on this. Any thoughts?

This isn't really my baby. It's origins are an IRC discussion between Ttech and myself and he thought I would make a better forum pitch.

I'm not going to have much time for a while and have no experience working the topology. As you say the topology is the basic thing. I thought you and Prophet were already working on dynamic trade systems. Once that's done all that remains is tweaking for balance in the altered environment.

[digdug]

Perhaps it could be our "chocolate", "caramel" or "pistacio"?

If it's chocolate, I'm in

This could be a very nice project in parallel with official adventure extensions that George planned
For example, the campaign "Underworld" sounds very much like your Smuggler sandbox idea.
http://wiki.neurohack.com/transcendence ... extensions

[alterecco]

Some thoughts/suggestions/proposals:

1) keep this mod as an Adventure Extension, even though it might impose some limits/issues. We would probably have to make clear that having this extension installed and active while playing vanilla probably isn't a good idea. It will be a bit of a pain to handle UNID's over multiple files, but we will just have to live with that (keep one UNID.txt file and note down the ranges + every used unid in there, then regularly copy to each mod).

2) the player could start out in a completely neutral "meta" system, where he is instantly presented with a dockscreen. In this screen he can make some choices about his initial state, such as faction/equipment/difficulty, or just choose random. At the end of the screen the player would get deposited in the system appropriate for his choices.

2a) The advantage of choosing initial state this way is we would need fewer ShipClasses defined in the xml. The traditional way of doing this would be to define one ship of each type for each faction, and have them selectable from the initial ship screen.

3) I propose we dub this venture the "Box of Chocolates", with a sideways glance at the RNG ("Life is a ..."). It would also refer to the fact that this mod should be full of delicious little bites :)

4) I think starting development in a shared folder on Dropbox is sufficient for getting started, but we would probably need something a bit more heavy duty after a while (to prevent accidental overwrites of others work). I am not sure what a good solution would be here (it has to be something that is easy to use and install on windows, or it becomes pointless).

[Atarlost]

I think it would be more elegant to start in a state of neutrality and be able to gain access to other factions using combinations of the BM and Huari methods.

[Ttech]

i'm in for working on this as well.


I agree that the dynamic systems / play would be a big step and a simple would indeed to be remove the driving forces (domina and csc and research) and add easier access to the items those provide without the story line

[Prophet]

I think it would be more elegant to start in a state of neutrality and be able to gain access to other factions using combinations of the BM and Huari methods.

I agree with this format and it fits better with the T canonical universe than a standard RPG style class system. Basically, everyone starts in the same place and you gain rank in a class according to your actions rather than allocating XP points to a particular class.

The type of gameplay discussed would benefit from a network topology.

By prophet01 at 2010-08-09
Where the quadrants of the grid would be designed to cater to a specific class. This game would necessarily include a lot of backtracking and/or running trade routes. Enemy factions can have their own entire sections and the friendly systems can be positioned as oases (plural of oasis) at key positions. It also kind of looks like a box of chocolates

[Aury]

If unfolded, that would look like a linear with two stubs (basically, as if there were two of the hauri systems.

[Atarlost]

A network should look more like this:

[Ttech]

We discussed it and made a system of 1 central gate with sub gates which could unlock more challanges dynamically? (as time went on)