#46
For the record, my preferences follow Aldo's for the most part where it comes to technology - I think low tech is a lot more interesting, and easier to identify with/understand, from the players POV.

The differences I have are mostly related to aliens and intersystem FTL - Intersystem might be useful, but perhaps as a very limited thing, possibly only available to one faction, probably only going to a few relatively close stars.

As for aliens, I like the ability to have a wildcard - potentially, they can be a totally unique entity, with technology and motivations entirely separate and distinct from those of the humans. That can be useful. They wouldn't need to conform to any cliches (No need to make them great destroyers, or cosmic watchdogs, or super intelligent benevolent entities or whatever - they certainly don't need to be the catalyst that unites old enemies), but just having them increases storyline potential by a massive amount IMO.

I think one of the things to consider is that nobody wants to play a rehash of FS2. The more we can differentiate this game from FS2 (while maintaining as many of the good qualities as we can, of course), the better, IMO, because it'll demonstrate the flexibility of the engine, and be more fun than a FS clone. After all, if people want 6 km beam wielding destroyers, they can play bearbaiting, no?

Of course, these are just my personal views. If this is going to be a collaborative effort (and as I understand the concept, it is) I'm very open to other ways of doing things.
TI - Coming in 2011 - Promise!
:flag9:
"Everyone has to wear clothes, and if you don't, you get arrested!" - Mr. T

#48
I'm with aldo and BW on the tech. I preferred FS1 to FS2 because in FS1, we weren't advanced and it had a better feeling of desperation.

How, in 30 years, did the GTVA rival shivan technology? Bullshit, IMO. We should have still been getting our asses handed to us in the sequal...

#51
Well, there are no rules whatsoever, so you could have multiple races, one race could be low-tech but in a symbiotic relationship with a much higher tech, etc, I suppose that's the whole beauty of the FSO like this, we really do have carte blanche.
Check out my music on my YouTube channel :

https://www.youtube.com/user/PRDibble/videos

#52
Low tech seems a lot better to me too, if you don't mind me spouting my opinion.

Desperation seems like a nice way to tell a story, especially if you add some personalities.

If you do more with lots of small ships, you can have a better effect of one or two behemoths later on, as well.

Now, I'll write a longer post with my ideas later, if anyone cares. Now, I'd just like to add that I can't code, FRED or mod, but I could create something website like. If necesary, you could do great stuff if you add a bit of an RTS element for multi, and connect it all to a website for 'squad leaders'. Basicly, add the ideas for FSCZ into this.

Just something to perhaps consider. I could write a part of that website.

#53
Some abstract scenarios; I like blue-skying this s###, it's sooo much easier than actually working.

- Mankind finds a giant monolith/artifact in a gas giant, which is inadvertantly activated to create some giant portal/black hole from which an alien race swarms in.
Note;
- can be set anywhere. I like the idea of an event-horizon type discover of said artifact in Neptune.
- Alien region can be yer standard parallel dimension / other galaxy type, or something nutty like Hell (even horizon again)
- open tech levels. Can be a primitive Earth just exploring the Solar system and forced into a fighting retreat, or an advanced Terran empire forced to invade Sol in order to free it from occupation and repulse the invaders.
- Likewise, aliens can be highly advanced, or primitive swarmer types.
- little straightforward in the storyline, though.
- many ways to resolve; destroy the artifact, travel through the portal to some hellish region of space to destroy the portal from that end, find some ancient race that build the monolith, got an arse kicking and sealed the portal.
- quite a bit like one of the B5 movies, though, depending on how you spin it.


- Near future. EU/N & S American alliance fights with Chino-Russo-Arab union over Mars, in a campaign playable from either sides. Perhaps characteristed with low-orbit style missions.

- Mid future. Standard Earth + Moon versus Mars + outer colonies situation.

- Either of the above 2 settings, set pre interstellar transport; campaign is driven by the battle to recover either some alien artifact or a decades old test vessel, either of which have suddenly appeared and promise the chance of interstellar technology. (again, Event-Horizon ish)

-Very near future, Earth under seige from some alien race ala Independence Day and using psuedo modern technology (like Harriers with jumpdrives - !)

- Proxy war. Instead of fighting a normal war, the 2 dystopian super states dominating Earth in the future control their population and dissent by sending conscripts off to Alpha Centauri to fight each other. Only for an alien race / suddenly returned 'lost' colonists to turn those fleets against their leaders, and send a 'peoples' fleet back to Earth to destroy their oppressors.

- Nutty cell shaded mod; monks flying wooden starships are forced to fight an evil robotic race flying metal ships.

- Nutty cell shaded mod (2). No story, just a player ship / wing with ludicrous weaponry and swarms of enemies.

#56
I'd just use the SCP as a base and look at ways of either making a new UI or even rejigging the whole system. We have an engine there that we all know how to work with, the capabilities of, etc.

Failing that, doesn't Vega Strike have a good reputation?

#57
I thought the point of the whole exercise was to use the SCP to create a new game, independent of FS2? It hardly seems like there's much point if we're changing engines...

And, if we're just throwing out storylines, how about this:

In twenty two something, the Sol system was invaded by an unknown race of aliens. During the final days of the conflict, after it had become obvious that defeat was inevitable, it was decided to convert the colonization project that was underway (since before the invasion, but put on hold by the war) to a sort of Noah's Ark - If earth was to be sacrificed, then at least a part of Humanity would escape the invaders, and return one day to reclaim their home world. Unfortunately, the only way out of the system was to use a newly constructed warp gate that led to the 61 Virginis system, only 27 light years away. In other words, in just over a quarter of a century, they would be detectable on earth by emitted radio waves. Nevertheless, they went, destroying the warp gate after themselves, trying to make it look like a malfunction so that, if the aliens even realized what it was for, they wouldn't go looking for the last remnants of humanity.

For whatever reason, they didn't, and the human colony lasted 27 years, spending as much of their time as possible building up an invasion force to take back Sol. However, trying to do this without an established infrastructure meant that their final force was considerably less powerful than they had hoped for. However, rather than let themselves be detected and be forced onto the defensive, they sent the bulk of their fleet back to earth, to try to force the invaders out.

The actual gameplay would consist of hit and run missions against alen targets in the Sol system, culminating (presumably) in a major battle for Earth/against the Alien command ship/most powerful warship/whatever.

Pros - Limited resources angle could be played up, as could the very real time limit (as soon as the radio signals are detected from 61 Virginis, they'd be able to head over there and wipe the colony out).

- Low tech (the warp gate was the first attempt at interstellar travel by the humans).

- Familiar settings in Sol, with potential for a lot of interesting, well established locations (Rings of Saturn, Asteroid belt, moons of Jupiter etc. etc.)

Cons - Humanity is clearly united towards an obvious, noble goal, with a clearly defined enemy, so there's not too much room for intrigue and politics and betrayal and all that fun stuff.

- Might be a tad too low tech - even if they'd managed to put FTL drives onto big ships, you'd still be more or less completely tied to fairly big ships if you wanted to fight a gurrella war (Ie. hitting and running - more or less requires FTL), which would limit the diversity of missions quite a bit.




To be brutally honest, I don't think this'd be the ideal game to make. However, I only really realized that when I was typing it out (I've been thinking about it on and off for a day or so now, but never written it down - amazing what forcing yourself to constrain an idea in words can do to its attractiveness), and I'll be damned if I'll let all that typing go to waste. :D
TI - Coming in 2011 - Promise!
:flag9:
"Everyone has to wear clothes, and if you don't, you get arrested!" - Mr. T
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 266 guests

cron