Anger's Alternative

I love these ideas. Having three damage types with different resistances would allow for some pretty good tactical warfare, because it would essentially require you to match your armor and weaponry to the opponent. Might I suggest having the option to reconfigure your loadout in the middle of a match?
What I mean is this: What if we gave pilots the option to have multiple loadouts at the start, and as the match progresses, they choose a different loadout according to the tactical situation. Keep in mind, switching loadouts does not automatically reload weaponry, to help avoid trolling by using a full salvo of high-yield missiles, suiciding, switching to a different loadout, suiciding again, and then going back to the first loadout with a full missile bay.
I'd also like to suggest a way to look at (Read: Spy on) the enemy loadouts. Maybe have a probe to look at the enemy's loadout?
To help balance it out, I'd like to suggest that each person has the option to either look at the enemy's weaponry, OR they could prevent themselves from getting probed. A player wouldn't be able to do both at once.

To help avoid monotony with the ships, which is a problem that Moon Breakers does have, maybe a person could build their own ships. Here's what I was thinking:

First, they select what ship class that they want. This would almost immediately reduce the maximum number of weaponry that a person can use. (In Star Conflict, an Interceptor can't use large missiles, while a Frigate can't use unguided rockets, just to give an example of what I'm talking about.)
Once that's done, a pilot can pick and choose different parts for their ship to have. These parts can include the main hull, which would have different parts that can be attached. Each of those attached parts could have different modules attached to them. Engines could have special afterburner parts, or the wings could have hardpoints for either heavy cruise missiles, rocket pods that launch a salvo of small, unguided rockets, or even a separate machine gun. A pilot could also choose what weapon goes on which hardpoint. That could open up many, MANY tactical options. For example, having the outermost hardpoints on a turn table would allow those (but ONLY those) hardpoints to aim backwards at a chasing enemy.
Aiming backwards would make a person think twice about staying on your tail, which is another problem with Moon Breakers: In a match, if an enemy gets on your tail, there is almost no way to avoid getting killed, unless you have a wingman, but that's a different story.

Hmm... You know what? Another good tactical ability could be the option to keep a friendly player targeted, to know where they are if they need help. You could also send buffs to them specifically. A good friendly-targeting system would be one like what Star Conflict has, where it shows a view of the ship, as if you're looking through a camera.

Another thing that might be cool, would be the option to have multiple players on one ship. One of the biggest drawbacks to the Empire frigates in Star Conflict is that when you aim with the Disintegrator, you're leaving yourself open to attack. A multiplayer ship would help prevent this problem by allowing one player to fly the ship, while another handles all of the weaponry systems.

One thing that would be absolutely amazing is free roam, where a pilot could just fly around, exploring the cosmos. Maybe, a pilot could find rare goodies in free roam, or even try their hand at asteroid mining, where they can then sell the raw materials for a profit. This would allow for more gameplay styles than just "Blow up the enemy before he blows you up". Working spaceports would be cool too, be they in orbit or atmospheric. (Hmm... If we use these ideas, we could potentially have a great Space-based MMO on our hands...)

Just an idea.

in no particular order...

free roam - i would like it but this isnt going to be MMO oriented in any way (inevitable with free-roam, mining, stations and so on), this is a game where people just want to fly around at breakneck speeds around obstacles and blow s*** up. i do too... im after 'UT in space' in this regard, i guess. however a sort of free roam will be available to test ship builds, but not much more than that.

multiple players on one ship - don't want to go there. even trolls aside, it is going to imply either a pre-arranged team, or that people can jump ship, neither sounds acceptable to me in this type of game.

targeting friendly players - could be worth while but it would need to facilitate some other feature / mechanic; on its own there isn't much point.

getting module / weapon into - in mech warrior, when targeting someone you can see their loadout, and ECM is the monkey wrench. seems fair to do it that way...

re ship construction...
at first it will be minimal, ie, pick your ship hull and plaster it with wings fins modules and weapons... at least until the game gets to a playable point...
after that i would be looking at approaches like in Robot Arena (http://www.robotarena.com/screens.htm) for building the ship. RA's method isn't exactly fast, so im looking into compromises between, essentially, in-game modeling and rapid building of ships. its why i made the reference to Spore, that sort of ease and freedom is what im after, but appropriated for single-pilot space ships

I got this idea not only from star conflict, but also from the Ipad game Galaxy On Fire 2, since there is shields, armor, and hull: armor and hull cannot regen, and if the hull is destroyed, you go boom and game over.

FireOfEarth wrote:I got this idea not only from star conflict, but also from the Ipad game Galaxy On Fire 2, since there is shields, armor, and hull: armor and hull cannot regen, and if the hull is destroyed, you go boom and game over.

that's the plan.

should point out though, that just about all space shooter games that have hull (or armor), work this way. at the least i have yet to find one that does it differently aside from moonbreakers.

thinking on it some more, the defense parameters are excessive, but the idea i like... so ive simplified it some but there are one or two things that remain ambiguous, you'll see what they are quickly...

the parameters have been simplified to 2 per damage type per defense layer (not counting hull, which takes all damage uniformly). the two parameters are Pr / Point of Resistance and Pb / Point of Breach. damage below Pr is ignored as before. damage scale between Pr and Pb rises quadratically such that D=Pr results in 0 dmg, D=Pb results in D dmg. the largest difference between raw and final damage is at D=Pb/2. the positive difference between raw and final damage will be expressed as visual effects, eg, a bullet worth 20 kinetic dmg that does 5 dmg in damage will have a visual spray coming off the shield / armor worth 15 pts...

numerically the calculations look like this:
incoming damage (D) between 0 and Pr = 0 final dmg.
D between Pr and Pb = D * (D - Pr) / (Pb - Pr) final damage.
damage is most reduced when D = max(Pb/2, Pr).

so then what to do when Pb < D, or even when Pb << D?
it depends on the interpretation you take of Pr and Pb... when D<=Pr, the instantaneous damage is supposed to be totally nullified by the defense layer. when D<=Pb/2, the defense layer is absorbing as much of the damage as it can as D approaches Pb/2 (parabolic peak). for Pb/2 <= D <= Pb, the instantaneous damage starts to overwhelm the defense layer and damage is too great to absorb or resist. when D approaches Pb, almost no damage is resisted due to the 'strain' on the defense layer.

if we are talking about a charged/powered shield, i interpret Pr and Pb like so - forces below Pr are totally dispersed, forces above Pr are too strong to completely disperse; forces at Pb/2 are maximally resisted (defense layer is damaged), forces reaching Pb are too strong to be resisted at all (incoming damage = actual damage).

what / how should the shield react for incoming damage that is higher than the threshold where damage cannot be resisted at all anymore? should the excess damage leak through to the next layer, and if so how much excess damage is fair? leaving things as they are, damage above Pb simply is not resisted, so final D = D for D>Pb. however i feel that something, anything, ought to happen above that point... defense breach makes the most sense (ie damage above Pb leaks into the next defense, armor or hull or whatever), but remember that these are instantaneous damage numbers (one explosion, one bullet impact, etc) so the situations where this can occur is limited to weapons with very high alpha... penetrative damage can only be justified on the fact that the shield regenerates without end, so the typical scenario to consider is a survivor of a high caliber weapon - their shield will have suffered 50%-90% damage within 1-3 hits or so, but surely internal component damage would happen too... (basically, sidewinders surviving to 1 bar from a rocket / missile and back to full shield in 20-25 seconds... fun, but without some permanent damage it may go on without end, which won't be fun for everyone else necessarily)

for that matter i'm not sure armor is even necessary, but some sort of hull below shield i would want to keep. so at the least you have ship HP and shield HP in some form...

thoughts so far anyway...

ive started a V3 notes thread in the moonfix section (figured this is the best place for all to see who have been out of the loop for a while), this one will keep the debate and planning going while the project finds its feet again - likely once there are specs to work towards...

its a placeholder atm, but i've left something to feed discussion...

I'll check it out.
Let me know if you need me to draw more attention to it from the Moonfix group.
I can also move the existing stuff into an archive to clean up that section.

im not too thrilled about everyone jumping on board right now, i don't have that kind of time yet, and probably wont for 3 more weeks due to life circumstances.

im tempted to leave everything as is in the moonfix section, at least until the spec is done. we can then take the spec and open a dedicated forum (or whatever we decide to use) using that as the source material for discussion...

Hi anger, fwiw I think you should keep the spec under wraps while you're thinking it through, only asking for input on specific points where you're not certain that what you have is the best solution or where you just want feedback.

If everyone dives in with comments and ideas you'll be overwhelmed trying to keep up and you'll lose focus on what you wanted to achieve. Software's best developed by benevolent dictatorships, not by democracies

longshot wrote:Hi anger, fwiw I think you should keep the spec under wraps while you're thinking it through, only asking for input on specific points where you're not certain that what you have is the best solution or where you just want feedback.

If everyone dives in with comments and ideas you'll be overwhelmed trying to keep up and you'll lose focus on what you wanted to achieve. Software's best developed by benevolent dictatorships, not by democracies

the big irony here is that i have the range of possible specs in mind, and am after feedback to narrow it down to what people will actually enjoy playing
i can't write the specs behind closed doors, if there is anything i have learned so far it's that everyone here has moonbreakers in common but where we differ is virtually everywhere else - i could do it but the only guarantee is that i would enjoy it and most others wouldn't...

even that aside, left to my own devices i'll lose interest; i need to participate actively in discussing these ideas to build up interest in them, it isn't enough that i have ideas in their own right.

Ok In that case might I suggest starting with a simple brainstorming on what is fun (gameplay wise) and what is not, and go from there?

it's loosely what im doing - as i find the time, im noting down the details of things i would like to add on top of moonbreakers' gameplay and mechanics. at the same time anything i detail is subject to review and scrutiny by anyone...

i think it is necessary this way as a compromise... since my game designs tend to get very very complex and intricate, and often needlessly so, i need people to point it out when i get carried away. the flipside is i have a lot of such ideas to go over in detail. ie, write down in enough depth and reasoning for others to make an assessment of said features before i get too comfortable with it and start to consider them as being in the end specs.

that is what started fracturing the project imo, too many assumptions / too many ideas presented as a package at once, with not enough room / time for debate surrounding it. so this is a way to still unload all my ideas, still have them debated, but without anything slipping through since i like to present these ideas in the form of short novels.

Ok, understood. I do think though that someone has to eventually decide what's going to be done after the debate etc on each point, and make the decision known to the community working on the game & that is that until/unless testing down the track proves that a change is needed. Hence my comment re benevolent dictatorship.

I've been involved in a game that worked as a democracy before, and the end result was that I never felt authorised to work on anything as there were always people who disagreed with every change, discussing/voting on things was a slow tortuous process, people with loud voices & frequent posts were heard rather than those with the best ideas, and the game lost focus on what exactly it was trying to become. I'd rather not see that experience repeated

i like to think of this as a 'russian' democracy - you have the vote, i have the say

I have little knowledge of this project's situation right now but I kinda like it. Can I alpha test?

Also I have an idea. Why not make the customization similar to kerbal Space Program's? It will have freedom of customization while still staying within your faction's tech boundaries. and the ship won't look ridiculous.

kerbal Space Program's - not familiar with it... any more details?

We managed to land on the moon of kerblin once. We survived it but the main nozzle broke, so we weren't able to return home.

Abstractness wrote:We managed to land on the moon of kerblin once. We survived it but the main nozzle broke, so we weren't able to return home.

Did you died?

Loki wrote:

Abstractness wrote:We managed to land on the moon of kerblin once. We survived it but the main nozzle broke, so we weren't able to return home.

Did you died?

No, still sitting on the moon. we never run out oxygen or water or food. The game is constantly being improved so maybe they'll add the possibility of dying because of lacking resources.

KSP's customization is rather snap onto each other at certain points.
It can still have the freedom like spore's but at least it will limit it to certain parts or functionality of the fighter and that it would limit it only to certain places so that it won't look awkward or totally out of place or something.

Just so to set standards.

I'm not really good at describing stuff.

Ooh, shiny ','

I'm not a coder, but I can do things such as conceptualize, designwork, and other things that could work on the artistic side without breaking into the actual modeling (I has no access to 3D designs, simply a head full of ideas, a love of spacey games, and a pen and plenty of paper)

GratuitousLurking wrote:(I has no access to 3D designs, simply a head full of ideas, a love of spacey games, and a pen and plenty of paper)

similar boat as me when thinking this up - coder, head full of ideas on space combat games, but no artistic direction in mind whatsoever without others' help. not much happening right now, i (or loki) can add you to the group so you can see what has been thrown around so far if you'd like...

Just to say i cannot help with this project at all, i dont have the talent. But kep it up and i know you lot can come up with a REALLY good game.

Think of me as your male (non-homosexual) cheerleader lol

Believe i maybe albe to contiube to some programing, Lua is not language im currently familiure with but a quick glance over it would reviel it is simular to C++, will do some research into the language and will post in furture how i get on learning Lua, i believe i should bealbe to pick it up quickly tho and be ready to aid.

As it stands id probly be must useful in improving physics, such as veriable projectil volocity based on ships current volocity and ships handling physics.

Will report back in a week or maybe sooner about my progress on Lua, good luck to all in this project