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Planet-based play

#1
I feel (and just my opinion, don't know how many agree with me) that it would be amazing if you could get out of your ship once on the planet. You said "The Limit Theory economy is dynamically driven by supply and demand. Moreover, events that occur in the universe - raids, blockades, factional takeovers,..." And "AI players live their lives as well, and throughout your journey in the universe you will see factions fall, planets overrun, wars waged, treaties signed, and so on." (Both pulled straight from http://ltheory.com/about.html )

What if you could participate in those planet-altering events? Such as Planetside-style combat, for example. And you could help decide the fate of the people on each planet.

Maybe a customizable Character, too. I don't know how in-depth it would be, but that too would be great. And procedural weapons developed by factions and societies. Different every time. I don't know, what does everyone think about these?
"Though we've heard of the stupid haste in war, cleverness was never associated with long delays." -Sun Tzu
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Re: Planet-based play

#2
They're amazing ideas that, of course, I wish I had time to implement! Unfortunately, I just am not going to be able to pull that off for the first release. I would love to see this implemented in a future LT ;)
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Planet-based play

#3
JoshParnell wrote:They're amazing ideas that, of course, I wish I had time to implement! Unfortunately, I just am not going to be able to pull that off for the first release. I would love to see this implemented in a future LT ;)
well of course they wold take time, there's no doubt about that! they were just me spilling out planet-related ideas I had. :lol:
"Though we've heard of the stupid haste in war, cleverness was never associated with long delays." -Sun Tzu
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Re: Planet-based play

#4
Honestly, I, and I'm sure a lot of people here don't want this. As a "Space Trading and Combat Sim", which is the category I would place this in, you should keep it centered around space. Try putting in ground combat, and you end up with something that feels...I don't know, cheesy. You don't expect a pilot to land, jump out of his craft, and go charging into battle. Anyway, when you want ground combat, go play Planetside. ;)
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Re: Planet-based play

#5
I think that there are no limits in limit theory. So, getting out of a ship should be a part of everything else. Granted, for one incredibly dedicated guy (Josh, you are an inspiration and I hope you prove your philosophy successful) implementing it would be difficult. Still, I envision this universe having expansions, once the space aspect is done why not implement a full fledged landing system. Until you interact with a planet, all it is is a seed number with a certain degree of development. But once you become a part of events, there are NPCs spawned into the world and you shape the course of a planet. You might not even leave, hours and hours would be spent exploring this procedural world that you have a say in. The ships overhead may govern interplanetary resources, and would have dire consequences for a few cities, but the intraplanetary aspect is ripe fro exploring. Like I said, this would be either a full fledged expansion (I would definitely pay for it as an addition to the core game) or a total sequel. Either way, I would love to see it happen.
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Re: Planet-based play

#6
Anything that involves Space -> Planet combat I envision as being a bit like Eve did with Dust.

Bear with me. (scary thought eh?)

I know this is currently single player. But who's to say that there aren't PCG mercenary groups that'll fight a ground war for you? Next release would be awesome in depth and scope even if only 10% of the suggested planetary content is implemented.
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Re: Planet-based play

#7
I think it would be highly worthwhile expanding on the planetary side of things as it would add a whole new level of depth to the game which would be awesome.

Hell for a special start: you start off on a colonised planet after a crash landing, first quest is to repair it (can we go podracing? :D).

Trade goods: maybe you can contact a clever engineer working on a prototype weapon (railgun?) or have to smuggle that illegal cargo to outside the city.

Contracts: maybe you accepted an assassination contract and they are just too well protected for your current ingame assets... so you tail them and take out the target on a planet... if you can tail them anyway :)

Resources: competativeness and wars would be fought over rare minerals. I personally enjoyed the resource system implemented into mankind (the mmo) where you had to goto the planet surface and then look for mineral deposits in specific locations, from a tactical point mankind also had a good concept where some ships were not built to enter the atmosphere of a planet (capital ships and large transport ships mainly). this could manifest itself as a small/mid sized ship fleeing a larger vessel entering a planet atmosphere to repair, hide from the capital ship (i imagine it'd be hard for a capital ship to track a small freighter or fighter that's gone to ground on a planet and bombarding the planet would be wasteful unless you were really really lucky... or unlucky) or even set up an ambush if they send a fighter squadron to find you. (this way boys, my secret base here has a nice AA emplacement i've been itching to try out...)
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Re: Planet-based play

#8
Well, in LT1 it seems there won't be flyable planets, but there could still be menu-driven access to them.

If a planet has an orbital station, then that could be the gateway. As we'll use menus to interact with the station, there could be extended menus to interact with the planet it serves. That way you could trade with planetside companies, buy and sell assets, maybe even set up extraction sites. Essentially they'd be an extension to the station. I suggest that shipping from surface to orbit should have a cost (whereas the reverse is negligable), so that should be factored into all such trade. Large, developed systems could even have space elevators which significantly reduce the cost of travel to orbit.
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Re: Planet-based play

#9
I'd be happy with being able to walk around in space stations, space-ports (planet-side), and inside the bigger ships. Just because I like walking around in a big and impressive complex and say "Yep, this is all mine. I built this!"

Procedurally generating the planet terrain sounds like an unnecessary diversion from the theme of the game.

I think that, should Josh do this, it would be nice if those of us who aren't interested in that aspect could ignore it entirely without gimping ourselves. Clearly there are more than a few who would like this, and I don't want to deny them their fun :)
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Re: Planet-based play

#10
JabbleWok wrote:If a planet has an orbital station, then that could be the gateway. As we'll use menus to interact with the station, there could be extended menus to interact with the planet it serves. That way you could trade with planetside companies, buy and sell assets, maybe even set up extraction sites. Essentially they'd be an extension to the station. I suggest that shipping from surface to orbit should have a cost (whereas the reverse is negligable), so that should be factored into all such trade. Large, developed systems could even have space elevators which significantly reduce the cost of travel to orbit.
I think this is a good idea for serviceable day-1 functionality. Basically Freelancer-esque (just no cutscenes, please!). I also really like the idea that the amount of cargo that you can buy on a planet is different than on a station due to the physics of reaching orbit (thus if you want to fill up from the surface the density of the cargo becomes important). This seems like a simple-to-implement but interesting mechanic that could make for some different gameplay (or not!).
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Re: Planet-based play

#11
mcsven wrote:I think this is a good idea for serviceable day-1 functionality. Basically Freelancer-esque (just no cutscenes, please!). I also really like the idea that the amount of cargo that you can buy on a planet is different than on a station due to the physics of reaching orbit (thus if you want to fill up from the surface the density of the cargo becomes important). This seems like a simple-to-implement but interesting mechanic that could make for some different gameplay (or not!).
If it's designed with the future in mind, then it could do a useful part of what may eventually be done by flyable planets in a later version of LT.

In well-developed systems, it would be assumed that there's a regular shipping service to/from the surface, and so the price of planetside goods would take that into account. There may be a number of stations with competing shipping routes, which keeps prices low. In a frontier system there may be nothing regular, so you'd have to pay a higher price to charter an atmospheric freighter. Or buy your own, if it's your planet. However, I'd say there has to be a minimum of one basic orbital station in order to use a planet, so you'd have to build that yourself if you want to exploit your own planet. Or pay someone to do it for you.

When a planet is blockaded, that would include blocking to/from surface shipping.
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Re: Planet-based play

#12
Holy thread resurrection.

With the latest update, planets got some love... so I figure we can dust down this thread from way-back-when.

A few things occur to me:
  • Having more than one colony on a planet surface looks great... but the utility of making that distinction isn't immediately clear to me, unless LT is going to perform some form of planetary simulation to determine if two colonies are not talking to each other (or are at war). Otherwise I would anticipate that the markets of the two colonies would reflect identical prices, since it seems to be unlikely that huge fortunes should be makeable simply by trading between two colonies on the same planet.
  • The concepts in this thread are possibly worth a visit, especially the idea that landing could potentially have an impact on the price of the goods you sell - at least when compared to selling the same goods in an orbital station.
  • An extension of this idea is that perhaps landing is not something every ship can do. Instead, ships should require some additional piece of equipment to handle planetary landings and reinforced hulls to handle the extra stresses that would exist in a high gravity environment. This may be an appeal to realism, but the upshot would be that ships that can land would have very different properties to those that don't. Drawing such a distinction means that players would be forced to make some compromises in their ships: sturdier and with additional equipment so that planetary landing is required; or lighter and with a bigger cargo capacity/sharper turning radius if landing isn't required.
Of course, Freelancer had none of those things and didn't really suffer. But since making decisions is what it's all about, adding some extra requirements may be worth it.
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Re: Planet-based play

#13
Resurrecting this because it received an honorable mention elsewhere.

To mcsven (got your name right this time):

- The primary utility of multiple colonies on a single planet, I believe, would be increased resource output. More habitable planets could house more colonies, thus making garden worlds far more valuable than frozen planets. In addition, it would be far more difficult to orbitally bombard and take a colony if there's a colony on the far side of the planet raining fighters on your head.

- Your second thought, combined with the third, I like. It would make it useful to have a smaller ship so you can land, but you'd have to weigh whether the increase in trade profit is worth the lost maneuverability in space. I don't think it would need to be much "sturdier", though - you're just trading landing for something else.
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Re: Planet-based play

#14
I think it could be interesting to have colonies competing amongst themselves too, and that when two different factions each have colonies on a planet they can engage in a 'land war' which would have a higher manpower cost but lower economic impact than a full sized space war. It wouldn't be shown, but it could be simulated using a series of algorithms and could effect supply and demand chains that link all the way back up to the wars in space.
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Re: Planet-based play

#15
Colonies, just like nations on Earth may have their own specialties and available resources, and may be as much in competition with others on the same planet as they are with space stations and distant worlds.

Humans though we have our differences, are pretty much identical to each other when compared to other species on Earth, let alone what aliens would be like, so perhaps colonies would be of the same species (one set of genetic/culture based traits) while having different personalities (AEGIS traits)
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