I don't like seamless landing all that much. It's a neat thing to do, once, and marvel at the might of the programmer who pulled an all-nighter for it, but in the end I'd rather tell my pilot to set course for the planet and wake me when we're there. I just don't see it enhancing gameplay.

What Ixos said about RTS control made me think. Wouldn't it be nice, once (and if) you have a capital ship, to be able to command your navigation officer to move around instead of manually controlling a thousand-ton mammoth with a joystick? Maybe not a full-fledged RTS control scheme, but a more indirect way of managing your ship's systems, just as a capital ship should.

God I love Homeworld! Maybe all those backgrounds were unrealistic, but the atmosphere! The atmosphere they created! *drools*

Johnman wrote:I don't like seamless landing all that much. It's a neat thing to do, once, and marvel at the might of the programmer who pulled an all-nighter for it, but in the end I'd rather tell my pilot to set course for the planet and wake me when we're there. I just don't see it enhancing gameplay.

What Ixos said about RTS control made me think. Wouldn't it be nice, once (and if) you have a capital ship, to be able to command your navigation officer to move around instead of manually controlling a thousand-ton mammoth with a joystick? Maybe not a full-fledged RTS control scheme, but a more indirect way of managing your ship's systems, just as a capital ship should.

God I love Homeworld! Maybe all those backgrounds were unrealistic, but the atmosphere! The atmosphere they created! *drools*

Johnman, I'm pretty sure that would be possible. I mean, if you can already give orders to AI controllers of other ships, then it is quite easy to implement an "autopilot" to give orders to your own ship. I will almost certainly allow this to alleviate the tedium of, for example, navigating to a certain waypoint.

And you all can expect nice RTS top-down displays where you can click/drag to select units and give commands to them as a group! I am very interested in seamlessly merging the RPG and RTS gameplays.

Johnman wrote:I don't like seamless landing all that much. It's a neat thing to do, once, and marvel at the might of the programmer who pulled an all-nighter for it, but in the end I'd rather tell my pilot to set course for the planet and wake me when we're there. I just don't see it enhancing gameplay.

I knew it! I knew it! I knew I couldn't be the only one feeling that way!

To be honest after I had landed more than 10 times manually I would probably skip it too.

Are planets going to be fully destructible? Maybe suns too, if so? Also, the ability to create ring worlds, and other variations.

Jason Schupfer wrote:To be honest after I had landed more than 10 times manually I would probably skip it too.

Yes! Yes! Two is company, three is a crowd!

I'm not alone!

I'm assuming there will be a time acceleration feature i.e. if you're travelling between waypoints, you can speed up time until you are either close or something happens (attacked? Close to surface of a planet?) Shouldn't this mean that if you have AI doing the landing, you can speed it up and get the best of both worlds? Actual landing from space but it not taking 10+ real minutes each and every time.

Josh would you prefer to continue ideas here or start a new thread for each idea.

Also if this is a phpbb 3.x then nested forums are available so you could have a nested forum here called Gameplay Ideas.

So another Idea, and perhaps more cosmetic than gameplay actually. Also all suggestions I give I don't push to have them in the first release I understand that few or none of them may appear in the jan 2014 release, but i'm sure that won't be the end and you can have ideas going forward after that.

Basically in films like Star wars, Fith Element, Blade Runner there is traffic in the cities that fly between the buildings. If you are procedurally generating the cities it is relatively easy to put way points between buildings at say 50 ft height intervals. You can then have small versions of your ships traveling these waypoints such that they slow down if a ship is in front. Hence traffic. As traffic travels at different heights between city buildings then it can be say north south travel is not at the same height as east west travel and hence simplifying the traffic. Certainly flying traffic at a single stroke will make your cities look ultra cool. Of course there is an issue of performance so you may have to determine the amount of traffic depending on the computers performance capabilities.

A gameplay idea: The ability to own planets and make them your base for various things

Also, the ability to manufacture your own ships and their attributes.

treefrog59 wrote:A gameplay idea: The ability to own planets and make them your base for various things

That could be the next stretch goal. [url=viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21]There's a poll to decide that.[/quote]

Also, the ability to manufacture your own ships and their attributes.

The $75k stretch goal is "In-Game Ship/Station Editor." Is that what you wanted or do you mean something else?

Reputation: At a certain scale of action that a player does for an NPC (or faction), the NPC tells his/her friends (and they theirs, etc). Eg, you save a cargo ship from certain destruction by pirates, he tells everyone that you're great and everyone favourable to him likes you more; or you attack and wipe out most of a fleet, they call a vendetta on you. Maybe even to the extreme of triggering UWI (Universe War One) - all alliances are called in on one side or another.

Hierarchical Organisations: It's already been said that you will be able to give NPCs high level orders? Have that expanded out a little bit so that NPCs can take high level orders from NPCs that you've given high level orders to. At a high enough level (you own multiple fleets), you could tell a sub-commander NPC in charge of mining to be in charge of a mining fleet and he gives orders to everyone under him in the fleet to mine in different areas (and scouts to find good mining spots) with the only command from the player being the equivalent of 'go mine'.

... Just some random ideas, really looking forward to the game

ring worlds, not just the Larry niven type but the halo type as well, oh and also Dyson spheres, these could be explained by "an ancient civilization spanning tens of thousands of years" it was done in free lancer (Dyson sphere) so it might be able to be in this game??

it wouldn't have to be overly complicated, considering this game is using realistic proportions between planets and stars, all it is is a procedural sphere with maby one or two input conduits aka cities, space stations, or some form to interact with the Dyson, ring world or halo? maby this would call for the most awesomeness branching quests?

but obviously if this is just too far and hard to implement then maby in a patch?

hey josh if your reading this!, have you ever heard of SHORES OF HAZERON?????? because that is a free first person view game where you control a single being, you get to customize how your being looks like aka, the most ugly big and scary alien ever or the most slick looking human, you get chucked into a massive 80,000 star galaxy on some random uninhabited planet in a persistent universe with only a knife, torch and this random copy of you who acts as your tutorial, the game is not realistic when it comes to planetary proportions but if your patient enough you can build your first space rocket (through a very long logistical process...)

the point is, only less than quarter of that galaxy has been discovered and that game uses procedural generation of DNA so each habitable planet will never have the same two species of animals OH and they have ring worlds....larry niven ringworlds, beginning to sound to good to be true ey??? well heres the cons, THE game is SO! SLOW, not as in computer performance lag, but as in server client lag, imagine playing minecraft but everytime you step you wait one second and it feels like a pigeon . . . . . not ________ u know what i mean? it just not smooth, the other thing is that the graphics are ancient

heres the link..: http://www.hazeron.com/

bloody hell..... i actually second what i just said!! well it seems shores of hazeron has some sort of single player version.. which means theres no more lag YAY

Atarun wrote: Again, I think the ability to skip it is much better. That way nobody has to choose: you always start in seamless landing, but if you get bored, you can skip. Perfect.

Agreed, I think that strikes the perfect balance. You could fly into the atmosphere and all the way down to a city if you wanted, or just get bored of it and punch a button when you're part of the way down and insta-land. It would let you experience new procedurally generated worlds and enjoy their unique atmosphere and topology, until you get bored of that particulate planet.

insolent wrote:

Atarun wrote: Again, I think the ability to skip it is much better. That way nobody has to choose: you always start in seamless landing, but if you get bored, you can skip. Perfect.

Agreed, I think that strikes the perfect balance. You could fly into the atmosphere and all the way down to a city if you wanted, or just get bored of it and punch a button when you're part of the way down and insta-land. It would let you experience new procedurally generated worlds and enjoy their unique atmosphere and topology, until you get bored of that particulate planet.

But that might not give it time to load the area. Maybe your views teen is covered in fire from re-entry(randomly generated, for fun) to give the game time to load the area below.