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Multiplayer Ship Idea - From Single seater to Capital Ships & Space Stations


Ripper

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Hi everyone,

 

It's important to establish a good foundation, and have a vision of what you want.  Realistic goals must be set in order to achieve your vision.

 

This post will address two issues:  Ship/Station Security, and delegating functions such as flight control to certain players when you're flying larger ships.

 

Consider this:

 

Imagine you have a decent sized ship.  From a multiplayer perspective, you could have a boarding ship with a mixture of 50 players and NPCs in the cargo bay.  Have you personally vetted EVERY player so that you're confident none of those players won't attempt to take over your ship?  How do you keep certain players from entering certain parts of the ship, such as the bridge, while allowing other players to enter the bridge?

 

Another scenario:

 

You have graduated to a multi-player ship.  Due to the ship's obvious increase in size and ship systems, how do you manage all of those systems effectively?  How do you delegate certain functions to certain players or NPCs?

 

SOLUTION:

 

Establish security based upon player ID and allowing players to create groups and sub-groups.  The player could then create "force field" security checkpoints on his ship that allows certaing groups or individuals through.  He couls also assign certain functions to those groups.

 

HERE'S THE EXPANDED VISION:

The player's HUD/interface is grouped into several functions / Tabs:
Flight - Ship Controls
Navigation - Map and Waypoints
Weapons - Obviously killing stuff
Engineering - This is COOL ships are balanced with thrusters defaulted to 80% power. The engineer could adjust power levels to increase performance or compensate for a damaged thruster, with obvious trade offs of course. ALL individual ship systems would have a DEFAULT setting, but could be tweaked by the engineer, with associated pros and cons.
Communications - Breaker One Nine. Come in good buddy.
Science - Scanning of systems
Medical - Life support and medical

As a pilot of a single seater, the player would be responsible for all functions. But larger ships will have more things attributed to each function, necessitating the need for help. Initially, each function would be limited in capability, due to the size of the space craft, but each "function" could be fleshed out for much larger ships.

Multiplayer ship suggestion based off of the above:

The player can assign "rights" to users or NPCs. This includes rights to boarding the ship, but also includes creating groups, and group membership setup by the player. The group membership would allow the player to delegate the above functions to the other players and NPCs. A group could support multiple functions (like comms/sci/med). AND multiple groups could have identical functions. This would allow for player redundancy, in case one of the players or NPCs is killed in battle.

This would allow the primary player to captain the ship, with a bridge of players and NPCs. He could delegate what he wants, and continue to perform the functions he likes. He could also ask engineering to increase performance "Warp factor 10, Scotty"... Or tell the weapons officer to target a specific group of ships on the combat map.

Now imagine the weapons officer, who has also been assigned as administrator of his "group". He could create sub groups, with players and NPCs that would control specific weapons batteries. And the same could be said for any other group, "Science Officer", Navigator, etc..

So this suggestion could essentially scale out to capital sized ships.

 

IMAGINE HACKING:

 

Consider the boarding party.  They're going to need to bypass those force fields.  Then they're going to have to take control of the ship.  Each force field, or ship system would need to be hacked.  This would create another level of immersion within the game.

Pretty cool huh?

My first post.  What does everyone think?

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@Ripper:

 

These points are well brought up. Certainly no one would want to hijack a massive, incredibly valuable capital ship would they? Naturally we're all peaceful, law-abiding comrades here *wink* . Of course in the real world, this is unavoidable, so NovaQuark has developed a system called the Rights and Duties Management System to manage these problems. I'm sure the devblog (see it here) could do a much better job of explaining itself, but in a nutshell, the owners of a construct, organization, ship, etc. are able to give "tags" to other players that allow them to access things or parts of things (for example, a tag that gives the right to open x container or access y console or build on z plot of land). This is the basic idea of roles and access in the game and can very simply be applied to delegating assignments and roles on a large capital ship. So yes, it would be based on player ID and the particular tags that player possesses that would determine what parts of a ship or any other construct he/she would be able to access.

 

Now, your point on hacking is an interesting one. During my inital reading of the RDMS devblog, I was under the impression that tags and their respective abilities were fixed and hardcoded, so that this certain ability was the only ability you were given and none other. It certainly would add a whole other layer of gameplay should players be able to bypass the limitations of a tag and gain unauthorized access to certain elements of constructs or land. However, since I am no expert on this system, I will allow Nyzaltar to give a more informed answer.

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I was under the impression that although hacking may not be in Alpha it will be a gameplay element later in the future. As someone who tends to have some pirate-y tendencies the ability to steal or otherwise mess with other people's property is intriguing. I am curious how it will all be handled and or balanced because it would be a shame for hacking to be easy enough that if i go to bed my ship will be stolen by morning. I think some sort of interesting dynamic where hacking is harder when the owner is offline (say 1 hr after last log in to avoid people disconnecting for the bonus) could help allow hacking to be a powerful tool that doesn't destroy gameplay for the more casual user. I think that as a dev i would want to encourage hacking as a gameplay mechanic when both parties have the power to do something about it - like if i break into your base and want deeper access while discouraging people from stealing ships while the owner is offline. Finding the balance might be difficult.

 

As for multiplayer ships, i am looking forward to the implementation  of my trading space station, I think a properly managed layer of secure bays for each trading mechanism could be a lot of fun to run. I was imagining some sort of trading bay for the "rougher" types where we arrange for trades by providing a secure trading space with enforcement if trade goes wrong. For the eve players - some sort of operation similar to Chribba's brokering, but for people that are actually likely to backstab you.

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As for multiplayer ships, i am looking forward to the implementation  of my trading space station, I think a properly managed layer of secure bays for each trading mechanism could be a lot of fun to run. I was imagining some sort of trading bay for the "rougher" types where we arrange for trades by providing a secure trading space with enforcement if trade goes wrong. For the eve players - some sort of operation similar to Chribba's brokering, but for people that are actually likely to backstab you.

 

I am sure we will see quite a few here and there, both legal and illicit. All those giant space stations could serve well as trading bays. Can't wait to see someone create the Pirate Bay on DU! :D

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I will have to think about it pretty hard but i'm already imagining a cool vertical disc shaped ship with two entrances/bays on the opposite side of the coin for people who need to trade and feel insecure about the other person shooting them. Would be awesome to build in a border system between two planets so that people coming from different factions can safely fly into the system/location from their respective origins without being afraid of the other. A marketplace for civilian trade between two warring groups so as to not disrupt the non-military folk.

 

On second thought i am thinking way too much about it.

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