Crazy idea for a mission - racing ships

[Blitz]

How about a RACE? Make tracks using those barriers used for battle arena and have ships go through them as fast as they can. This would be a test of how well you can control your ship rather than how well you can aim. You'll need to be skilled in turning and thrusting your ship quickly over bends to succeed. Divide the ships into categories so that you don't have unequal match ups like windslavers with salvager nomads.
Ships don't need to have identical maneuver, thrust and topspeed. For example a dwarg master with maneuver=5 and topspeed=22 may be able to compete with a ronin with maneuver=4 and topspeed = 20. The challenge lies in making the track balanced enough so that some ships aren't advantaged in the same group. Having different ships being better at different tracks would have been good but since you can't change ships mid-game, you'll have to make the tracks compensate by not making the differences too great. New player ship mods will have to specify a group.

[goat not sheep]

How extremly slow. A freighter with lots of cargo. Oh! The CSC mod!

[Blitz]

*reads GnS's post*

hmm... gimme a sec. I'll figure this out.

*tries to read GnS's mind*

looks like i can't do it myself

*calls for an interpreter to translate from GnSpeak to English but nobody understands the intricacies of this not-so-ancient language completely*

All right. I give up. Could you PLEASE elaborate so that us pure sapiens can understand it.


Anyways, that cargo part made a little sense. The player has his cargo hold emptied before the race like it is in that commonwealth fleet mission.

I got this idea after playing Freelancer. Freelancer is somewhat like a 3D version of Transcendence albeit the kill-loot cycle isn't emphasized so much. It had a single race called Hovis's race or something like that. It wasn't like the regular gameplay at all but was fun. I finished it loads of times with different ships just because it was fun. So, I thought it would be fun if something similar was in Transcendence. It would give variety to the game and make it feel like more of a do-whatever-you-like GTA-style RPG. If you want an idea of how piloting a ship in 2D can be fun, I suggest you get Space Escape which can be found as a downloadable game on miniclip http://www.miniclip.com/games/space-escape/en/

P.S. No offense meant GnS but your posts make little sense to me sometimes.

[evilbob]

I don't think many of us understand GnS

[goat not sheep]

Eh...i spent 5 seconds typing that. Well... what if i used a CSC mod... the slowest ship(if it is one) in the game... i can't imagine anything which is same or slower than it. What would you think i will be racing? Also, you understad what took me 2 secs to type... empty cargo. There should be nothing but fuel. And the racers... are they green dots or red ones? I believe red ones can be disabled using a CPU...which is cheap...no? And it is even more fun if we get to blow up other competiters.

[Blitz]

Well... what if i used a CSC mod... the slowest ship(if it is one) in the game... i can't imagine anything which is same or slower than it. What would you think i will be racing?

You'll be racing other CSCs of course. When and if the ships are divided into groups, then the CSCs will probably have a group for themselves. So, in normal games you wouldn't find yourself racing CSCs. But you could if you ever get the urge for an extremely slow race you could do so.

And the racers... are they green dots or red ones? I believe red ones can be disabled using a CPU...which is cheap...no? And it is even more fun if we get to blow up other competiters.

I think there shouldn't be any killing because its very easy to kill. I sorta assumed shooting at another player will automatically disqualify you. Perhaps you could implement this by having the player respawn after a kill (after a small delay of course) but there'd no plausible way to explain it. All other racers will be green (i.e. friendly or neutral). You'll need a Targeting ROM to enter because I plan on using checkpoints and I guess you could use that to target other players. Also I've been thinking of having the AI race by using a series of points the AI has to reach in order but if you include fighting, it could get very tricky to do it. Besides won't omni weapons have an advantage if you decide to include fighting?

And if I make this any more complex, this would become a separate game....

[Boris the Cat]

Eh...i spent 5 seconds typing that. [...]

The obvious thing then, would be to spend more time typing, and less time hurrying. Try it, it works wonders for legibility.

[Czert]

Perhaps you could implement this by having the player respawn after a kill (after a small delay of course) but there'd no plausible way to explain it.

WOW, micromaschines in space.

[goat not sheep]

You do not require answers...

EDIT: oo...i did 5 seconds to do that tooo!
What I mean is...why is battle arena invincible? And explanations? And where's gravity?

[Blitz]

The game does attempt to explain everything that happens to the player. The explanations may not be very convincing but the fact that there IS an explanation makes all the difference between Transcendence and asteroids. Too many unexplained phenomena make it an arcade game. With a game like Transcendence you'd want to avoid that.