I was wondering if passengers would be added into the economy and create the possibility of player and non player space lines transporting passengers between planets and stations? Like regular economy class passengers, not high class military personnel or prisoners.

Interesting!

If colonization will be in the game eventually, then space lines make sense. You'd want to transport people to new colonies.
Perhaps growth of population might be another AI incentive to expand territory.

Would pirates be able to turn the people into slaves, or sell them as meat to some alien race?

Suddenly I thought of Transportation Tycoon Deluxe (or OpenTTD for you opensource/freeware guys).

This could be really awesome and allow for another facet of the game. +10 to you my good sir!

Why not have more?

Regular passengers - don't really care about your ship. Medium urgency. Low-medium pay.

Slaves - don't really care about your ship. Low urgency. ILLEGAL. Medium-high pay.

Prisoners - "want" a secure ship. Medium urgency. Can damage ship. Medium-high pay.

VIPS - want a FAST ship. Very high urgency. High pay. May lead to additional missions in the future.

Spies - want a undetectable ship. High urgency. Pretty darn illegal. High paying, opens up new missions.

Rebel faction leader - wants a fast, heavily armored ship. Very high urgency. Extremely high pay. Be ready to run military blockades. Will dramatically change faction relations (for better or for worse). Opens up entire factions.

Etc.

Yes, I was also thinking along the lines of that game , and hmm having different classes of passengers is also an interesting possibility, although I was thinking less mission like... of course you could run important passengers around, but I was thinking more like being able to manage a space line of ships running regular routes transporting passengers low middle and first class.

An automated system. That's interesting. I suppose you could actually do the same for cargo, and open up a Galactic Express. Hm...

Yeah exactly, and you could either choose to run a company yourself or work for one

The way the new Sim City is doing their transfer of goods is pretty unique. They use the same method for everything. Basically they're just packets and depending on how they're defined is how it acts. Definitely something to check out.

This is the link. Even though it's a strategy video, you can see deep enough to get a good idea.

I'd like to have my own little Planet Express ship

I'm imagining setting up trade lanes / material flow as in settlers 2.
LT already has pathfinding and ships finding the fastest (but perhaps not best?) way to travel to a point.
The engine knows what you're producing and what your needs are and where.
Now all you need is a way to tell the engine what material flows are the most important. Perhaps you're building ships and your resources have to arrive faster? Or you're waging wars and the missiles from your stockpiles need to be delivered to the front?

Depending how much you'd like to micromanage (or perhaps the difficulty level), it could also be handy to have an AI assist you to locate bottlenecks (more warehousing needed in a certain system, more transporters, more production/buying capacity needed for the production you're doing, ...)

Katorone wrote:Depending how much you'd like to micromanage (or perhaps the difficulty level), it could also be handy to have an AI assist you to locate bottlenecks (more warehousing needed in a certain system, more transporters, more production/buying capacity needed for the production you're doing, ...)

Maybe something like a traffic overlay so you can see where the congestion is or where supply > demand or supply > processing. You don't want to lose mats just because they're not being processed fast enough, and you don't want your processors sitting idle most of the time.

DWMagus wrote: Maybe something like a traffic overlay so you can see where the congestion is or where supply > demand or supply > processing. You don't want to lose mats just because they're not being processed fast enough, and you don't want your processors sitting idle most of the time.

Great idea!
This overlay could also be used for military might, cultural influence (if applicable), money streams, ...
A bit like the overlays you can use in games like galactic civilizations 2.

Gahhhhhh... this sounds like sooo much scope creep.

But as I don't have to code this it sounds like a great idea!

A definate +1 to CptAWatts

Jambo wrote:Gahhhhhh... this sounds like sooo much scope creep.

How so?

In a simulation on this scale, each piece needs to be in-depth enough that the universe can survive without the player and (hopefully) expand. While there is fighting and battles involved, the non-combative routes need just as much fleshing out. People immediately think that the fighting and battling might be easier to code and that economy of this magnitude seems overzealous.

In reality, we don't see something like the battle system being complex because we're used to it. Those who play games like TTD/OpenTTD find that even stuff like this is simple in comparison to the economy and production aspect of the game.

*shrug*

I see something like this akin to the shields on ships for the fighting aspect. It's a touch that needs some information about, otherwise it starts breaking down when the system tries to run on its own.

jimhsu wrote:Why not have more?

Regular passengers - don't really care about your ship. Medium urgency. Low-medium pay.

Slaves - don't really care about your ship. Low urgency. ILLEGAL. Medium-high pay.

Prisoners - "want" a secure ship. Medium urgency. Can damage ship. Medium-high pay.

VIPS - want a FAST ship. Very high urgency. High pay. May lead to additional missions in the future.

Spies - want a undetectable ship. High urgency. Pretty darn illegal. High paying, opens up new missions.

Rebel faction leader - wants a fast, heavily armored ship. Very high urgency. Extremely high pay. Be ready to run military blockades. Will dramatically change faction relations (for better or for worse). Opens up entire factions.

Etc.

+ 1




I like the idea of smuggling especially, if you get caught you obviously suffer penalties, but you can enjoy a nice financial gain for say, smuggling people from a more "backwards" system into a prosperous one.

Same for spies, who as you said would want to contract someone with a fast, low energy signiture ship that is capable of shadowing "enemy" fleets and whatever else.

And the faction leader sounds damn cool, help a faction overthrow the current government of a system, hell yea


Might be difficult to implement but would provide a very interesting dynamic to the game. But as Josh said, some things that we think are complicated (such as the ship editor) are actually far easier to implement than many other things, perhaps this is one of 'em?

Transport Tycoon

ahh, that brings back memories of the good old days. Wasted entirely too much time playing that game haha