About player counts and NPCs in between

Recently I thought about the final gameplay of the mod. If everything goes fine we will have thousands of players. Some of them will create big factions, others who didn't manage to gather so many followers will be crashed and absorbed into the bigger factions, others who couldn't team up with anyone will be flying on their tinny ships in a huge empty universe, maybe with some wrecks left after the recent clashes between the 3-4 biggest and only clans left in the game. This gameplay is very good for those who teamed up with the big guys and want to see some spectacular huge battles but it comes at the cost of the lone and the crashed who become an ignored minority that eventually quits.

Quite a dark imagination I have isn't ? Instead I have I suggestion. What I'm going to tell you right no I basically took from a mode already working in a game which didn't quite make a bang on the global market and which probably won't ring you any bells: Space Rangers. Due to poor translation and difference in gaming habits it didn't become famous outside it's homeland - Russia, while on it's homeland it became famous among gamers. It gave me some nice gaming hours and I replayed it all over quite a lot (It has great replay value) .

Basically the idea as follows: The world is in war against an invading alien specie. A few species including the terrans are trying to fight them back. Each one has it's own government and fleet. Turns out their fleets are not big enough and the governments decide to use a new tactic. They start releasing permissions for private armed vessel manufacturing and permissions to fly them. They are given to freelancers and private companies. Who now also fight against the aliens.

As those freelancers are privateers the governments don't have to pay them. How they make money is up to them. Will it be mining, trading, fighting pirates or becoming ones is up to you. Just remember you may piss off the governments if you kill too many civilians . Oh and you can also make quests given by governments such as delivering stuff, eliminating pirates and so on. Depending on your actions you will be treated differently on different planets and by different races, from prison to political shelter.

Now when you made some money you want to spend it. In the beginning of the game you start off with a small basic ship manned by one man (you). From there you may build your own ships, upgrade them, research more technology , buy and train your crew members, developing up to a whole battlecruiser full of crew. As a note research is made per man and not per faction as there each player is a freelancer in the beginning.

Now all those improvements are used to fight the aliens (or raid more freighters ... as always in this game it's up to you). Those fights happen in a dynamic universe with different events. Some systems will be attacked by the aliens marking them as under attack. You can then help the local military to repel the attack and gain some experience and alien tech. If the aliens manage to kill all the ships in the system it becomes under siege, The planets in it rise up their shields making them inaccessible. The aliens establish a forward base of operations in the system and bring in more ships, making the system harder to take back. You can then team up with other players or join a governmental assault to recapture lost systems. If all aliens in it are destroyed the siege is broken and you get glory, medals and money. Sieged systems under attack will also be marked.

I know the gameplay I presented here is different from what you are used to, that you probably don't see the gameplay of the mod the way I described at the top. I just say that you can't make a faction per man (as it goes in the RP section) and that not everyone will rule. Even if you are nit going to make it this way I hope you will at least consider it as a secondary gametype.

I thought this thread would be about using NPCs to crew ships and such, instead of having to have lots of players do it. As you may know, I support that very much. I would love to see tons of 1-man factions, that have fleets of ships crewed entirely by NPCs.

Jek Porkins wrote:

I thought this thread would be about using NPCs to crew ships and such, instead of having to have lots of players do it. As you may know, I support that very much. I would love to see tons of 1-man factions, that have fleets of ships crewed entirely by NPCs.

This will probably crash the servers . A ship with a player captain and NPCs would be much nicer. The reason I added NPCs to the name of the topic is because such gametype is very NPC based.

Iv121 wrote:

Jek Porkins wrote:

I thought this thread would be about using NPCs to crew ships and such, instead of having to have lots of players do it. As you may know, I support that very much. I would love to see tons of 1-man factions, that have fleets of ships crewed entirely by NPCs.

This will probably crash the servers . A ship with a player captain and NPCs would be much nicer. The reason I added NPCs to the name of the topic is because such gametype is very NPC based.

Yeah, 1 ship per man is good.
Allows for big fleets as well as make 1-man-factions with access to space travell possible.
1 man per faction with tons of ships crewed entirely by NPCs?
You do know that it would propably be insane to code a NPC capable of commanding something effectively, LJS?

I agree. Player should = Ship, in most instances. Maybe a leftenant on some vessels but no more. I'm also against 1 man factions as you are, check out my thread in this subforum on my thoughts on how factions should be handled.

And that kind of gameplay sounds really cool, but weren't aliens already turned down? Players should pose the biggest risk and enemy in Futurecraft, with NPCs as some form of grinding mechanic and easy kills. And, of course, crewmembers. Maybe all three! But anyway, having NPCs as a sort of looming threat sounds utterly awesome, it would break the repetition sure to introduce itself into the mod with PvP. You could stand to face them together, or squabble endlessly while they slowly creep into your systems.

+1

MISLEADING BIRD wrote:

I agree. Player should = Ship, in most instances. Maybe a leftenant on some vessels but no more. I'm also against 1 man factions as you are, check out my thread in this subforum on my thoughts on how factions should be handled.

And that kind of gameplay sounds really cool, but weren't aliens already turned down? Players should pose the biggest risk and enemy in Futurecraft, with NPCs as some form of grinding mechanic and easy kills. And, of course, crewmembers. Maybe all three! But anyway, having NPCs as a sort of looming threat sounds utterly awesome, it would break the repetition sure to introduce itself into the mod with PvP. You could stand to face them together, or squabble endlessly while they slowly creep into your systems.

+1

Remember that players can also fight among each others, it's just not the purpose of the game and fighting players may result in some trouble with the governments. This way there won't be big factions bulling players around. There will be pirates and stuff especially in some less protected systems but it won't be PvP all day around.

*big factions sry

So your suggesting this but without governments?

I wouldn't really like to raid a government...unless it was mack's

Governments are just another type of NPCs that will help you most of the time unless you blow up too many civilians or act against that government (Like blowing up their cap-ship by request of another government ). It's possible to create governments that protect pirates BTW , there was one in the game I described .

Ehhhh

NPC governments? Have fun programming that.

I doubt NPC's will seriously play a viable role in this. I thought the purpose of this mod was so you could lure your friend in his big expensive ship to your server, then kill them and hijack the ship, not blow up some twit NPC who can't make a decision on weather or not he should go left or right.

eazymc wrote:

NPC governments? Have fun programming that.

I doubt NPC's will seriously play a viable role in this. I thought the purpose of this mod was so you could lure your friend in his big expensive ship to your server, then kill them and hijack the ship, not blow up some twit NPC who can't make a decision on weather or not he should go left or right.

I thought that instead of going down to meet the government, when you arrive in orbit of a planet a GUI pops up with a quest or message from the planet. This would be easier to code.

eazymc wrote:

NPC governments? Have fun programming that.

I doubt NPC's will seriously play a viable role in this. I thought the purpose of this mod was so you could lure your friend in his big expensive ship to your server, then kill them and hijack the ship, not blow up some twit NPC who can't make a decision on weather or not he should go left or right.

What's the problem to do it ? It's just another stat. Do this quest get +10 to your reputation on the planet, blow up this ship get -10 reputation. if your reputation = 0 send ships to imprison or annihilate this player.

As for AI you know space is empty ... simplifies coding. Also to teach the bot to make right decisions we should take a closer look at how we think. Eventually you'll notice that it all comes to comparing strength and our character. Calculate the DMG/s of the ship, AR/block, put a series of ifs that decide either to engage or not and where to engage, make a variable that stores aggressiveness value for the ship's captain and use it in your calculations. It's mostly math and methodical work on the paper and doesn't have anything too cleaver programming wise. Heck I can write this stuff for you if you want .

Iv121 wrote:

eazymc wrote:

NPC governments? Have fun programming that.

I doubt NPC's will seriously play a viable role in this. I thought the purpose of this mod was so you could lure your friend in his big expensive ship to your server, then kill them and hijack the ship, not blow up some twit NPC who can't make a decision on weather or not he should go left or right.

What's the problem to do it ? It's just another stat. Do this quest get +10 to your reputation on the planet, blow up this ship get -10 reputation. if your reputation = 0 send ships to imprison or annihilate this player.

As for AI you know space is empty ... simplifies coding. Also to teach the bot to make right decisions we should take a closer look at how we think. Eventually you'll notice that it all comes to comparing strength and our character. Calculate the DMG/s of the ship, AR/block, put a series of ifs that decide either to engage or not and where to engage, make a variable that stores aggressiveness value for the ship's captain and use it in your calculations. It's mostly math and methodical work on the paper and doesn't have anything too cleaver programming wise. Heck I can write this stuff for you if you want .

So you are suggesting we have NPCs like Millenaire, just with more awesomeness?

I don't mean full NPC factions. They don't even have to be able to really control their ships. Think about how your ships work in SoaSE. In this you would be on a ship instead of commanding from above, but that's not important to this. You tell all the ships in your fleet what planet to go to and stuff like that, and give them orders for things like attack ranges, but then once there are enemy ships in range, it's up to them. FC NPCs could do something similar. You're commanding your fleet from the bridge of your flagship, probably looking at a hologram table or something like that to get an overview of the battle. You tell your ships to attack whenever there's an enemy in the gravity well, or only when the enemy comes within a certain distance, or once other ships have engaged, or something like that, and then when it happens, your ships move to attack. They could be set up to prioritize larger targets, or the ones that are closest to the planet, or whatever. They could even be set to rotate the ship so the maximum number of guns can hit the target. All that would be fairly simple. The player can select a ship on his tactical board and tell it to move to some specific other place, or target a different enemy, or whatever. None of that should be too hard.

Space Rangers sounds amazing, I really want to try it out now. Is it worth buying? And which version should I get?

my view of ship crews is similar to a factions in a pvp server, except with less players and a stricter system of command. 2-5 players per ship with some NPCs to help with combat, cargo, and maintenance. Admirals, captains, or the CO of a ship would be able to assign and reassign a player to a ship.

How about this: Player Governments; player ships, player players, player humans.

NPCs that do nothing.

How would you even get the npcs? I mean you just build the ship and Boop there's your 70 man npc crew, you would need a way to "make" the npcs.
That said, you could have npcs on a tier system with: clones, droids, androids, and holograms being in there.
Craft droids androids and holograms.
Make a cloning chamber for the colones?

My idea on the wiki was you'd collect a 'manpower' resource from colonies that would enable you to create your ship with ze NPCs. The less NPCs you have aboard, the less combat effective your craft.

Prime Arc Thunder wrote:

How would you even get the npcs? I mean you just build the ship and Boop there's your 70 man npc crew, you would need a way to "make" the npcs.
That said, you could have npcs on a tier system with: clones, droids, androids, and holograms being in there.
Craft droids androids and holograms.
Make a cloning chamber for the colones?

Yeah. Clones are grown in tanks. Each tank will produce x clones/minute, for y resources/clone.

Jek Porkins wrote:

I don't mean full NPC factions. They don't even have to be able to really control their ships. Think about how your ships work in SoaSE. In this you would be on a ship instead of commanding from above, but that's not important to this. You tell all the ships in your fleet what planet to go to and stuff like that, and give them orders for things like attack ranges, but then once there are enemy ships in range, it's up to them. FC NPCs could do something similar. You're commanding your fleet from the bridge of your flagship, probably looking at a hologram table or something like that to get an overview of the battle. You tell your ships to attack whenever there's an enemy in the gravity well, or only when the enemy comes within a certain distance, or once other ships have engaged, or something like that, and then when it happens, your ships move to attack. They could be set up to prioritize larger targets, or the ones that are closest to the planet, or whatever. They could even be set to rotate the ship so the maximum number of guns can hit the target. All that would be fairly simple. The player can select a ship on his tactical board and tell it to move to some specific other place, or target a different enemy, or whatever. None of that should be too hard.

The whole point in my suggestion is NOT to have one fleet per man as it will crash the servers. You have SoSE for this, here you want more combat.

Laserbilly wrote:

Space Rangers sounds amazing, I really want to try it out now. Is it worth buying? And which version should I get?

Do you know Russian ? Than no. Also it's a different playstyle then usually you'd expect. There are some written quests which are basically interactive short stories or logical puzzles where you need to think and read quite a bit, there are also planetary battles which are like RTSs but without many cleaver functions, yet quite satisfying. Basically this game has a lot of text and including the fact it was poorly translated there is a high chance you won't be able to enjoy it.

Prime Arc Thunder wrote:

How would you even get the npcs?

You hire them just like you get any other manpower . There are lot's of people on those planets that may need a new employment... Also preferably they are humanoids and not clones or droids or holograms (dude why would you make a hologram of a crew member ? It's just visual stuff holograms cant control ships ! ) because they feel more human which means you will take better care of them as like they were true crew members. Maybe even small quests to help their family and boost morale ...

I'm not against using NPCs to fill out the ranks, but I would also like to encourage player cooperation, by which I mean crews of players working together on a single ship or station, not just everyone hiding from everyone else and blowing up npc houses. Minecraft has enough of that already.

So how to accomplish that? Naturally, we can't make it impossible to operate a ship with a single player or you'd be stranded whenever your buddies are offline. And if one ship flown by one guy is good, a fleet of 10 ships flown by 1 guy each is better (ignoring server capacity). How do you even those sort of odds without upending all semblance of game balance?

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

I'm not against using NPCs to fill out the ranks, but I would also like to encourage player cooperation, by which I mean crews of players working together on a single ship or station, not just everyone hiding from everyone else and blowing up npc houses. Minecraft has enough of that already.

So how to accomplish that? Naturally, we can't make it impossible to operate a ship with a single player or you'd be stranded whenever your buddies are offline. And if one ship flown by one guy is good, a fleet of 10 ships flown by 1 guy each is better (ignoring server capacity). How do you even those sort of odds without upending all semblance of game balance?

10 ships by one player is another genre called RTS , one ship per player is enough. As you said what if your friends are offline ? What if you don't have players playing the game ? Player only ships can be in special PVP matches, where players build ships in the primary game mode and then fight on them with friends against other players.