Normally I perhaps don't bother with this sort of thing but honestly come on: Neil Patrick Harris + Joss Whedon + Nathan Fillon + supervillains + musical format = AWESOME^2, yes that is awesome SQUARED my friends. http://www.drhorrible.com/ Not to mention it's groundbreaking format (a professionally...

On IRC Betel and I were thinking of some ways to differentiate ships more. The first is sets (as discussed often elsewhere, a set is a bunch of items, devices, or ships that, if you have all of them, provide a bonus) - if a ship is part of a set it may be better with energy weapons for example, or h...

It's perfectly acceptable not to capitalize yacht in this case - in much the same way you don't need a Dell C omputer or a 12-string G uitar, you don't need a Sapphire class Y acht. EDIT: If you are going to insist that yacht is part of the product name then at least it should be "Sapphire-class Yac...

As turning fast is generally an action which needs to be done quickly, and thus simply, I suggest that a double tap activate a slow turn (should a double tap be used). An alternate solution is to have a fast and slow modifier key. Hold the fast or slow key in addition to the regular turn key to exec...

I don't like classes at all - why not let the player choose what kind of player they want to be by their actions (.i.e. playstyles) - a "fighter" is just a player that buys a lot of weapons and attacks enemies directly, a "rogue" is just a player that fights indirectly with autons, mines and CPU, et...

On IRC we were discussing ship behaviors with the goal of making combat more interesting - what can ships do that can make combat more interesting? A lot of individual enemy ships could benefit from maneuvers that the player already uses - a freqeuent thing I do it to take up a more or less stationa...

If one removes spawns from the game entirely I think you need to have 'ambient' enemies wandering around - otherwise you get the empty universe Periculi describes. However it does allow for the inclusion of many more enemy ships a LOT more, something like ten times as many - remember they are just w...

What kind of help did you need with it? Texturing? I can probably help you in that area. What kind of texture were you thinking? WHen you first posted this this I started to play around with the idea but forgot about it - I was playing with procedural textures in Blender to try and replicate somethi...

Keep in mind the game does need cash sinks, and that not every crime is automatically recorded. You have to first be seen doing it and then you have to get caught. Enforcement is likely to be thin on the frontier and who is going to come fine you on the front lines? I frankly think it is ridiculous ...

as for shooting friendly ships, they are too frail, and if enemies are around should be ignored sometimes, or perhaps a fine at most. Why? Why should you be allowed to take their items and lives for free? Just because you don't want to aim carefully when you are firing? "Accidentally" killing peopl...

We have been discussing diplomacy/relationship systems on IRC (yes we have been busy). We have come up with this system: Relationships are handled between sovereigns (the player is a sovereign) in pairs. Each relationship has three values expressed in numbers from 1 to 100 or -100 to 100 or whatever...

We have been discussing crime on IRC lately. We think crimes ought to be handled like this: when you commit a crime, it gets added to your "rap sheet" (only if you get caught however). Each crime has a specific punishment, more often than not a fine. The number of crimes you hve and their severity d...

A side from that, is it not Domina who is compelling the player to reach the core? If that be the case, wouldn't Domina want to help clear a small path to make that happen? So what would be silly about having a power that would rid a bit of the friction that's hendering the player from reaching the...

With one it is trivial to escape from any foe - and there is not a large penalty for using them. I suggest that if you use a jumpdrive it will take everything near you with it. This has a lot of interesting applications. In addition to making it harder to escape from anything you want, it allows you...

I was the one that brought up specializing on IRC, let me explain more: The 'specializing' was more of an idea that was "domina as a playstyle", meaning that you would use domina powers as exclusively as possible. We came up with the idea of conducts or rules - say, for example, the player taking a ...