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Glares at Mazca, wonders how I've managed to acquire a reputation with a post rate somewhere near 8.5 per month, and timidly clicks on "Post New Topic" for the first time in gods know how long
Right. Anyway. I'm going to keep this brief and just use it as an opening point for a discussion - what do people think of the playability / plotline potential of a scenario set entirely within the confines of the solar system? Backstory can come later. What's your take on the actual gameplay issues?
-reg
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I'm actually making a TC plug that will start that way, during the beginning of man's exploration of the stars.... But I don't want to give lots of detail....I want the story to stay secret.
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So 9 planets + a few stations? It may be a bit.... boring. Would it have one system called SoL, or a seperate system for each planet? Only the latter makes sense, because the former would not even require the use of hyperspace. I suppose that, if done well, this could be very interesting.
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Probably lots of orbital stations, mining outposts, and at least a few spaceports per planet (Dallas/Ft. Worth, Kennedy Space Center, the Cosmodrome in Khazakstan, etc.) I imagine there would be at least as many places to go as the original EV, given the sheer amount of crap it's possible to put in orbit, not to mention the Jovian/Saturnian moons and asteroid belt.
They would most likely not be all in the same system. Probably one system per planet/moon, with associated space stations in-system, and then a whole bunch of empty systems besides.
Hrrmm... That actually sounds pretty cool. In the asteroid belt you could have colonies built on asteroids and stuff. This may actually be really cool.
Yeah. It could be kind of cool.
I'm already starting to think of ideas for a plugin set in it...
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I think one of the best ways to go would have it start off at the beginning, perhaps with just the moon, earth, and maybe a few space stations colonized. Then the player helps colonize the rest of SoL, fighting against a group of aliens or rogue humans who are, for some reason, against colonization of the galaxy, or perhaps want to do it themselves.
Two major governments: Anitoda and Mechworks (just example names) are in a race to colonize the solar system. Or perhaps two nations. Russia vs. United States. Or Britan vs. US or something. Maybe they will unite to fight off the pirate menace, a group of pirate plundering the colonization ships for their own gain.
And how will you handle gas giants? Obviously you can't have anything on a gas planet, unless it hovered or something.
Quote
Originally posted by ares1: And how will you handle gas giants? Obviously you can't have anything on a gas planet, unless it hovered or something.
Moons, or orbital stations. Or stations orbiting moons! ha ha, clever I am...
As for exploration, i'd rather shy away from that. Exploration and colonization are slow and grueling processes that take centuries. If you want to make a realistic approach, there's not much room for drama. My current thought is that we should make FTL possible (to account for hypjumping between planets) but declare, for example, that the fuel requirements increase exponentially with distance, which makes it impossible to travel to other stars at FTL speeds.
shrug Actually, i've got a decently formed plotline. I'll post ideas tomorrow.
Originally posted by ares1: **So 9 planets + a few stations? It may be a bit.... boring. Would it have one system called SoL, or a seperate system for each planet? Only the latter makes sense, because the former would not even require the use of hyperspace. I suppose that, if done well, this could be very interesting.
**
Well, I made an outline of the solar system's objects, and last time I checked, there were more than 9 celestial bodies orbiting the sun (look up into the sky right now -- see that little white circle or crescent? It's called the moon). Here's the breakdown of the number of moons we know of thus far (and don't forget the asteroid belt, Kuiper belt, Oort cloud, and other objects that populate our solar system):
Mercury - 0 moons Venus - 0 moons Earth - 1 moon Mars - 2 moons Jupiter - 28 moons Saturn - 30 moons Uranus - 21 moons Neptune - 8 moons Pluto - 1 moon
So that makes it 9 planets + 90 moons + a few stations. It's a crowded solar system we live in, people.
As far as the hyperspace issue goes, it obviously would have to be used, even in EVN (I highly doubt it'll support having 100+ stellars in a system). In reality, it would anyway, because even at light speed it takes quite a while to reach the outer planets (hours to get to Jupiter already). I was actually thinking about this issue once, and I figured that one could just make a system for each planet, but four of the planets have more than 3 moons, (and even if 3 moons were placed, there wouldn't be room for stations). I think to make it most realistic, you might have to make a system for most stellar objects (you could probably combine lots of those asteroid-sized moons around the outer planets), then make it take several jumps to go between planets. Of course, this wouldn't take orbital movement into consideration, but that's not within the scope of the EV engine.
So, as for playability, I actually think any solar scenario (and I can think of several ideas, and I'm sure developers can too) could be quite playable if made well enough. There are even enough stellar objects in the solar system to make a large "galaxy" to roam around and get lost in (an essential to making a plug-in that lasts long).
BTW, if anyone wants my outline, which has the solar system objects in order, I'll type it up and send it (or even post it here).
------------------ Mike Lee (Firebird)
Originally posted by Firebird: Of course, this wouldn't take orbital movement into consideration, but that's not within the scope of the EV engine.
I wonder, could we hack this using visbits and the crön resource? Would it be worth it? We certainly have enough s˙st and spöb resources to spare.
The main problem would be re-explaining the concept of "hyperspace" in the context of interplanetary travel rather than interstellar. That said, I've considered doing something like this a number of times. There are a bunch of good interplanetary space opera-type series that I've thought might be a good basis for a TC -- Issac Asimov's Lucky Starr series of novels, Cowboy Bebop, and so on.
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Wyvern and I are working on just such a TC. Our website is at (url="http://"http://www.ped.org.uk/espialhome.html")http://www.ped.org.uk/espialhome.html(/url)
The project has gone quiet recently due to personal issues, but we fully intend to pick up the batton again soon. Our system includes... well go to the site and find out for yourself
We've got a BB system going so if you have any questions, drop us a line there.
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Originally posted by Azdara Ace: **I'm actually making a TC plug that will start that way, during the beginning of man's exploration of the stars.... But I don't want to give lots of detail....I want the story to stay secret. **
Yeah, I thought about a TC that would start in pre-stellar travel times. I think such a scenario would be do-able, interesting, and fun to play. I abandoned the idea because I couldn't think of a reasonable way to make the transition from a single system game (with 9 planets plus moons, astroids, and stations) to a multiple system scenario.
Originally posted by Regulus: **I wonder, could we hack this using visbits and the crön resource? Would it be worth it? We certainly have enough s˙st and spöb resources to spare. **
WOW! That would be an amazing hack. A solar "simulation" using the EVNgine. Great idea.
-STH
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(This message has been edited by seant (edited 10-22-2001).)
Originally posted by seant: **WOW! That would be an amazing hack. A solar "simulation" using the EVNgine. Great idea.
In fact, it would only be a basic use of the VisBit and cröns. And it would be even easier to do if Pontus updates his very good Developer's Map - visual s˙sts and spöbs editor.
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You mean, having cron resources that change the visbits of systs so that the planets appear to orbit the system's primary? There's a problem there -- if you accept a mission to a planet, and then the syst "moves", the new planet isn't the same one and the mission doesn't complete when you land.
There might be a way to hack it so that the mission gets automatically updated if the syst changes, though, i.e. that the mission gets aborted and a replacement mission to the new syst gets started.
One problem that might be very difficult to fix is, what happens if the systs change just as the player jumps into one of the systs that's changing? I don't recall if ncb expressions can test which syst the player is in. If they can, you could set it to zap the player into the new syst if it has changed.
All this would be decidedly non-trivial. Would be quite a clever hack if you could pull it off, but if you weren't sufficiently clever to do it properly, or if it weren't entirely within the abilities of the Nova engine, it would suck.
All things considered, you'd probably be better off having fixed systs; fewer problems, less complicated development, and more likely to work without problems.
Okay, Thoughts:
On in-system FTL What if the fuel requirements per length unit increased exponentially? Due to, say, overheating of the jump drive? This would make it necessary to stop frequently to let the engine cool off, thus allowing only short FTL hops, and rendering interstellar travel via the FTL drive uneconomical.
Perhaps we could change the way fuel works somewhat: use one-jump ships, change the "refuel ship" button to "cycle coolant" or somesuch, so that you can use planetary resources to cool off your jump drive faster. In liu of this, we could use ramscoops to slowly "cool off" your engine while in space.
On interstellar issues I suggest that we do have interstellar colonies. They were established some time ago by flotillas of generation ships carried by solar sails. However, since the closest is 4.3 years away at light speed, it's not really possible to do much more than trade research papers twice a decade.
This sets up an interesting scenario if we want to bring in a large-scale adversary. Imagine if one of the second-generation colony systems (colony of a colony) who had been lost, or had no contact at all with earth was able to develop an efficient interstellar FTL drive and invade their neighbors? We'd never actually be able to visit the neighboring systems (unless we were really bored and wanted to visbit out ten or twenty other complete systems until interstellar FTL is discovered), but we could hear about it in the news or find ourselves threatened by said invaders.
On politics This necessarily has to be more realistic than most other EV plugins, because it's more immediate. How do we deal with the fact that as it stands, modern space angencies are nowhere near ready to do anything but fight with eachother over resource shortages in the middle east? We need a motive for exploration, and that has to be resource acquisition. Obviously, nobody is going to find oil in the asteroid belt, and I can't really think of any metal that's so precious we'd send an expedition all the way to outer space to collect it.
So let's suggest something new. Some new, post-nuclear superweapon which requires an ingredient so rare on earth that it's worth sending out extraterrestrial expeditions. A mining colony is established, the products are shipped back to earth, who then proceed to use them to destroy most of civilization and set themselves back at least five centuries. With the nice, green, self sufficient earth out of the picture and a bunch of resource-starved stranded in the asteroid belt, colonization finally becomes logical. Set the story some centuries after this event - Mars is a self sufficient colony in certain domed and protected areas and is well on its way toward being fully terraformed. We have colonies in the asteroid belt, the trojan asteroids (clusters 60° ahead and behind the orbit of jupiter), the jovian moons, research posts in orbit of/underneath the atmospheres of titan and venus, and a whole crapload of stations in orbit of every single body in the solar system. Earth is well on its way back to space-age technology, but there's been such a huge cultural gap that misunderstanding is bound to take place.
Speaking of which, this opens the opportunity for a crapload of multicultural niftyness, a la The Frozen Heart. What if the initial mining colonists were asian/pacific in origin, and you have to employ some not-universally-effective translator at every non-terran port? You could have indecipherable pictograms in faded blue print overload by the not fully coherent output of your translator.
And other nifty stuff.
Originally posted by many people: **< a lot of ideas> **
Would a faster than light drive be discovered? If so, then after doing a whole lot of missions in the solar system, a drive is discovered to move faster than light. Obviously, the first thing that would come to mind would be a colonisation of the solar systems around ours... then the galaxy, etc. This would be especially effective if the VisBits were used correctly. After colonizing the next solar system over, it is discovered that a colony that was thought to have been lost was actually a few light years off course. They landed on a planet, and immediatlely(sp?) began terraforming and building new ships with the plans stored in the origional ship. The ship was named (Some name). For that reason, they called themselves (name)ians when they were discovered by you. Unfortunately, they blamed Earth for giving them the wrong coordinates, and had spent the last 200 years mining the nearby moon, and growing to a community almost as big as Earth's. They wanted revenge...
Anyways, just my 14˘... Feel free to chew and spit...
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ftp://ftp.ambrosiasw.com/pub/evo/plugins/...xysEdge.sit.bin
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Originally posted by WickedDyno: if you accept a mission to a planet, and then the syst "moves", the new planet isn't the same one and the mission doesn't complete when you land.
This is either simplified immensely by NOVA or complicated enormously. Note that the spöb resource in EV/O has a field, System which links it to one and only one s˙st resource. In EVN, this field is not present (it is replaced by the Tribute field.) This either means an infinite number of s˙st resources can point to the same spöb in the NavDev field, or it means that we're still restricted to a 1:1 limit. If the former is true, we could build a ring of s˙sts in the orbit of each planet and have the same spöb resource appear in every one of them, controlling their appearance via the visbit.
David Arthur, any thoughts?
As far as insterstellar travel goes, one word:
Hypergates.
Regulus -- Hmm, if that's so, that could be quite interesting... Spobs being pointed to by multiple systs? Let me take another look at the EVN bible. Maybe ask on the Nova board.