Game Guides Archive

You're GOING crazy Imperio? You're a little late. I've already gone off the deep end and sunk.

GREAT ideas people! Keep it up! This thread will not die as long as I'm here even if I have to keep bumping till may, lol.

---

Crazyguy111 wrote:

GREAT ideas people! Keep it up! This thread will not die as long as I'm here even if I have to keep bumping till may, lol.

---

I met a "well-known" Dev yesterday on Tc and i told him about this thread, he seemed interested in reading it. I'm not sure any dev will reply to it, but i'm 80% sure someone will (or is) reading this thread

Anyways, I was thinking about the SE (again) during math earlier

Hyperspace travel and space in general:

I played Earth and Beyond and Eve Online (Beta) before. Space in those 2 games was HUGE! In Eve beta, you could hardly find anyone with a server pop of 3000 or so. I mean, there were around 1000 different systems. Each system usually had 3 or 4 planets. Each planet 6 or 7 moons. Each sector usually 10 or 12 bases to land on. You literally never met anyone.

Earth and Beyond also had vast space, but in more reasonable proportions. I didnt play a lot there and i don't remember too much how big space was, but it was big too, yet if you went on a space sta, you could usually meet 2 or 3 folks, at the LEAST!

Now, in both these games, space was like real space to some degree. Both hadused warpgates. You access a "system" by going through a warpgate that is the bridge between one system and another.

In a system itself, there could be planets, or space stas (space stations). But You could literally go anywhere in that system. And in eve beta, systems were HUGE! Literally HOURS to get from one end to the other at sub-light speed, if not days. You had warp speed, and sub light speed. To fight someone you had to be at sub-light speed in both these games.

In Earth and Beyond, your warp speed could 'break' and you had to get to a space sta "onfoot" (at sub-light speed) and i remember it taking 20 or 30 minutes once after a nasty fight with a mob waaay too high for my level...

So, in the couple of posts on the SE before, people assumed you would have a small "space" surrounding a big planet (a kind of "system" if you will) where you could naviguate at sub-light speed, and to move between "systems" you'd plot in the course, hit thehyperdrive and that was it, no turning back till you arrived at destination...

Ok, But take the analogy down to earth (or the ground rather). On planets in SWG, there are not just small "spaces" around cities, and shuttle routes in between. The wolrds are huge, and you can walk and explore between them, and find mobs between them, and res concentration, put down harvies, etc.

Now how should our SE space be like? It should be using the "planet's space" system, and here's why:

EnB, Eve Online, both used warpgates. But In SW, there are no warpgates, there is hyperdrive. Warpgates were usually a tactical point in both games. Vendors hanged around to sell stuff or advertise to people who went through the gate. PvPers waited eagerly for an enemy to come through the gate, etc...

But our "warpgate" is hyperdrive. Here's what i think we should have. We should have Big "chunks" of space around planets. Think of it as a solar-system-like space. You have the main planet (naboo, corellia, tatooine, Talus, etc...) and they each have their own system. But in the case of moons (rori for instance), Two planets can share the same system. You can navigutae in these systems, and they are quite vast. They have asteroid fields (to mine ressources and eventually put down space harvesters), they have maybe space stations, they have imperial and rebel presence, NPCs, space mobs, etc...

To jump from one system to the other, you use hyperdrive. You can warp to another system from anywhere, but you will end up in the same destination spot. for instance, i could be jumping from rori or from talus to naboo, it doesn't matter where i come from, I'll end up in the same spot, where everyone else ends up too!

That way, you can have pretty large scale battles, while keeping the feeling that there are other people near you. When you go to coronet, you feel people, you feel the first "M" of MMORPG! It should be the same in space.

If you have this huge blob of space that contains ALL planets and moons in it, and you can stop anywhere in it, then it will feel empty overall.

Of course, there will be a Z axis, i actually think that the system spaces should be sphere like (hard to code) or at least cube-like (easier..) That way, strategy has an entire new point of view, and you have a third coordinate to waypoints: /waypoint x,y,z

You could be standing "over" or "under" a force and not meet it. You could decide to go "up" to avoid someone that is lower than you, etc etc...

That was my idea of the day! Going to eat now

Sigh. I said I would so I guess I will.

/bump

Common people keep up the posting!

Space is a good idea, but the only way to incorperate it without adding to the lag (like the huge lag with the stormtroopers in Imperial Crackdown) would to have a space station where all the ships dock/launch from. I know it dashes everyones hopes of blasting their way out of dockingbay 94, but it wouldsolve so many problems presented (i.e. killing ground targets with photon torpedeos). The other problem with space is you're asking for lag whenever you bring in the Imps, because if you introduce space people will also want Star Destoryers andDeath Stars to go fight. As far as the size of playerships, i would say no bigger than a Blockade Runner (for your guilds) and will allow for crew posistions. Maintanence should be handled like the harvesters, the bigger the ship, the more it costs to power and maintain. This would allow for a good balancing between size and cost.

Space would also create a few new skill trees;

Pilot-which could be achieved via the scout or marksman skill trees

Starship Gunner-which would come from the marksman or brawler skills

Starship Engineer-which would come of course from the artisan skill

The biggest problem withspace is how would it be played.Would space be played like a flight sim (i.e. X-wing vs. Tie Fighter), or play like Planetside where your friends board your ship and can gun from a 1st or 3rd person view. I've read other posts where people want to walk around in their ships while flying them and i don't think that would work due to the flight model (if you're in a moving vehicle and you want to walk aroundin it, clipping becomes your biggest enemy.)

So this is my take, for what it's worth.

Well the planetside-type gunning is a good idea, but planetside lacks one thing that Battlefield 1942 has: the ability to switch between posts during flight/moving.

But that's for multiple people starships. This can work, fi you have the ability to eject at any time and "pod" back to a station/your ship that is nearby.

What people don't realise, with regards to lag, is that space will be on totally different servers. That means that you will not see actual ships flying overhead in the sky on land, and you will not see cities or people from the sky. These are 2 separate worlds, remember, the expansion has to be bought, it's not patched in, some people will have it, some won't. Those that don't have it (poor saps) will only have to download the "landing" art, for ships landing, and not much more than that...

---

JulianSpeed wrote:

I also heard that some players may have a change to do missions aboard a Death Star. In what shape or form I have no idea. It would be cool though to get aboard a Death Star as a Rebel to steal valuable plans and then have to get off the Death Star and deliver them to a NPC rebel..

---