KlatuSatori
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Posts posted by KlatuSatori
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+1 to "speed dial" comms
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In a single shard MMO I feel players have additional incentive to band together because their actions and achievements have wide-reaching and long-lasting effects. The idea of being able to shape the political, economic, or industrial landscape is a huge draw for me at least and that is far more easily done in a group. What a group can achieve depends on how large they are, how well organised they are, and how good and well-implemented their plans are.
I feel strongly that a well-organised, highly skilled (read: actual player skill not in-game stats skills), group of players should be able to defeat or outplay even a much larger, less prepared group. Pure numbers should not be the only, or most important aspect of what makes a gang successful. Having said that, I don't think smaller groups should be given artificial incentives or advantages, it should simply be a consideration throughout development: does this particular mechanic/map/landscape/item/etc give an unfair advantage to a blob? In other words always ensure that superior numbers is not an I-win card.
@astrophil I don't think a nation should be restricted in any way on who they can and can't declare war on. If a legate of a nation is a rival electronics company, why should they not expect their nation to drive off the opposition? This is player driven content generation! Consider this scenario. A "nation" XNation is made up of a military and multiple mining and manufacturing corporations. Up until now the military has claimed territory for the nation by crushing poorly defended mining corps and driving them away from where the best resources are. Electronica is a small company living not too far away and so far XNation has ignored them because they are not a threat and there is no overlap in interests. A group within XNation finds out that the electronics business is very lucrative and wants to give it a go. XNation declares war on Electronica to drive off the competition and increase profits. Electronica, being rich and well organised, have a base with a lot of defenses but they are hugely outnumbered and aren't really great combatants. They hire a mercenary gang to help. The mercenary gang are superior warriors because fighting is all they do, and despite being outnumbered they manage to continually rout XNation's military. Eventually a peace agreement is reached.
These kinds of interactions create "jobs" or "market niches" for other players and player organisations - such as mercenary, spy, arms manufacturers, hostile market traders, etc - and should not be restricted. Crucially, these emerging roles have the potential to give players/guilds a sense of real purpose within the game.
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My initial reaction to this was that it doesn't really have a place in this kind of game. On the other hand, assuming it is a purely aesthetic feature that costs very little development effort to include, it's not really much different to other aesthetic features. Even hardcore players interested only in racking up kills or credits take time to make their avatars look cool, or spend time/money on clothes, or decorations, or an interesting bio description. If the ability to marry were an extension of those kinds of "fluff" features then I wouldn't be opposed to it.
If it were implemented I would go even further than some others have and say that there should be no limitations on it at all. Players should be able to marry any gender/race, or marry more than one other player, or enter into multi-person marriages, get divorced, etc. Marriage should not have any financial impact whatsoever; there should not be a marital estate or complicated divorce proceedings - one person wants to get divorced, they click divorce and they are divorced, nothing else happens.
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Hey Astrov, another idea that could be thrown into that list is the following:
Communications Disruptor
- a space ship modification, this device allows for a blockage of all voice communications within x kilometers radious of the ship outfitted with it.
Or something along those lines. I would imagine it would come in handy in space battles.
I love this idea, and I had another one - put a speed limit on comms so that calling in help from a distance isn't instantaneous.
Problem is neither of those ideas would work as intended because people will always be able to communicate by out-of-game means. If there are situations where the in-games comms won't work, players will never use it and will instead always opt for a third party system.
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What I'm curious about is whether there will be mechanisms in place that will allow leadership and ownership of organisations to pass hands by means other than voting. Perhaps these means and/or conditions were written into the "constitution" when the organisation was created or written into by legates voting at some point after it's creation.
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Thanks for the explanation Nyzaltar, that all makes sense.
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Well the conversion rates will be player-led, dictated by the best buy and sell rates on the market. The only thing missing is allowing traders to accept/offer different currencies for the same item on the market but that could easily be added. What isn't clear is the exact process by which a new currency can be created and how more of an existing currency can be introduced into circulation. I would say allow the creation of new currency to standardised against one or more market items at a set rate and percentage - or against absolutely nothing at all (kind of like how it is in the real world...).
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I don't think the complexity lies in the conversion. To simplify things, on the trading market, make buyers and sellers select a single currency that they will trade their good/goods in. When browsing the market you select a currency and item and you can see all the buy and sell orders for that item in that currency. There'll be a drop down menu to switch to a different currency to see if anyone is buying/selling the item in other currencies.
In addition to that you have a currency exchange market. It is exactly the same interface as the normal market with buy and sell orders, except here people trade in currencies. In fact it wouldn't even need to be a separate market. Currencies would simply be other items that you can search for on the market and buy and sell.
What would happen is local markets would see a small number of currencies become dominant and most people on a localised area will trade in one of two or three currencies.
The complexity comes in deciding how players and organisations set up a new currency. For currency to mean anything there needs to be a finite amount of each currency in circulation. A player or organisation, when setting up a new currency would need to standardise it against some particular item and then distribute their new currency in exchange for quantities of that item.
As comrademoco says, it makes sense to have a default currency that players start with and might be the only currency allowed in the arkship protected areas. But it also makes sense for large organisations to want to create their own currencies as this brings control and wealth.
Anyway, it was just an idea I had. I realise it complicates the economy and would require more detailed thought put into it than I have done so far. But it would also allow for more diverse trading opportunities, niches and potential career paths for players, complex economic warfare between player organisations, hyperinflation, etc.
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I understand you've decided on a single currency, but I'm curious. Did you ever consider having no default currency and giving players and organisations the ability to create their own currencies? This could add a great deal of depth to the economies of the game and to diplomatic relationships. Admittedly it would complicate the market interface. Buyers and sellers would have to declare which currencies they can pay in / accept.
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The idea of a local, realistic talking and hearing system is intriguing. I'm not sure how viable it would be. Perhaps a simplistic model would work, but I'm not sure how desirable it would be. It would need testing to see if it makes for good gameplay. Imagine a crowded marketplace with sellers yelling and shouting to grab people's attention! Could be cool.
I wonder if a lot of these can be reconciled into a single unit. Some kind of broadcasting unit. Perhaps these units could even be automated to mark territories. Organisations could set them up in space or on planets/moons to auto-hail nearby ships with a pre-recorded message warning them that they are trespassing in XYZ empire's space...
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Yeah, my guess is you'll need players to be able to fill multiple roles and you'll need a certain amount of redundancy - more players than you need to run the ship, but not so many that there's nothing for people to do if everyone is online. Leaders will need to balance the numbers carefully, I think.
I don't think having AI is the way to go though. What would stop someone from running a massive powerful ship all by themselves with AI controlling various systems and stations.
Regarding balancing, all things being equal, would 100 1 man ships stand a 50-50 chance of taking down 1 100 man ship? Obviously it will depend on the situation, individual player skill, ship designs, ship strengths and weaknesses, tactics, etc, but do you envision these two extreme play styles and everything in between to be equally viable?
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I don't think it would be hard to set up a fleet. Everyone in the fleet would be a member with role that describes their rank. Assuming all ships are multiplayer crewed and you have a very large fleet, your ranks might be Ensign, Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, Commodore, Admiral, Admiral of the Fleet. Commander and above might be able to promote some of the lower ranked members. Each ship could be its own organisation with the captain at its head, but the ship itself is the member of a larger organisation of say 5-10 ships which answer to a commodore. Those 5-10 ships might be called a "wing" or something, which in turn is a member of sub-fleet, which is a member of the fleet with the AOTF at the very top.
As I understand it legates are basically owners. So the legates might not be members of the fleet at all, i.e. the legate(s) could be another organisation such as an empire, or just another player(s). Or the legate(s) might be members of the fleet.
What I'm not clear on is whether the organisation can be set up such that once a member has a certain role they automatically gain some shares and become a legate. Say you want all captains and above to automatically become legates with a certain number of shares.
And are legates' powers absolute? Can a legate be ousted by members? Or by other legates?
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I have to say this sounds great. How could you set up a small crew of pirates on a single ship, roaming space? Everyone is a legate and a member, but the captain has total control through delegation. Shares a distributed unevenly by rank with captain holding the greatest number of shares. There are no salaries but crew members get a share each time they score some loot. The captain can maintain control as long as he brings the money and glory in, but if he doesn't, there could be a mutiny - maybe a Klingon style fight to the death after which the victor becomes the captain... That leads to a question though: can shares in the company be redistributed or a legate ousted altogether by force or would it require the losing captain's/challenger's consent?
I can see how a single ship like this might be a part of fleet, with commodores and an admiral in charge of multiple ships, and the fleet might then be a part of a larger organisation or empire. This system has great potential.
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I'm a bit older than you guys. I was about 5 when I started gaming and it was on an Amstrad CPC 464 with a green screen monitor and tape deck with 5-20 minute loading times. I was at uni when GTA 3 and the others came out - awesome games especially San Andreas. Then again I've got an older friend whose first gaming experiences involved having to copy, i.e. type the program from a book or magazine before getting to play...
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Hello! I was wandering the web a few days ago searching for single shard MMO's when I stumbled across this game. I am a science fiction fan and proponent of the open world immersive sandbox concept of gaming so Dual Universe being as ambitious as it is has really appealed to me. I hope to watch it grow and develop all the way to launch and beyond.
DevBlog - Rights & Duty Management System (RDMS)
in DevBlog Feedback
Posted
I had pretty much the same question. Computerised locking mechanisms and vehicle controls automatically becoming unresponsive makes sense, although I do believe there should be some scalable, non-trivial means available to "hack" such systems. Besides that, a payment not being rendered should flag up a warning and nothing else. To use the dev blog's real world example; if a citizen of a country decides to break a law, there is nothing stopping her/him from doing so. She/he can break the law. It is up to law enforcement or other citizens to a) notice that a law was broken,
discover who broke the law, and then c) bring the perpetrator to justice. I think this kind of freedom allows for more emergent gameplay.
Regarding the system of roles, duties, management outlined in the blog; it all sounds incredibly well thought out and in keeping with the sandbox mentality. Would this same system be used for short term contracts as well as long term contracts and internal politics? Like a payment being released from entity A to entity B once an entity B fulfils some task?