Multiplayer Discussion

[gamemasterme]

Two Things:

Building stations & Defenses
When building a station I imagine the view being moved away from your ship and to a station anchor, you would have a HUD with tabs that were labeled things like storage, production, general, misc, and defense. In the defense tab would be things like shields, and maybe those bubble-bouncy things that reflect lasers, and, most importantly, the turret node. The turret node would allow you to build a ship that would stay in one place and appear to be on top of the station, like a turret. You would be able to switch to the turret node and then build a turret onto it. Also if you wanted to you could shoot the turret manually. If you didn't want to shoot it manually, it would automatically shoot at boot/jackers and pirates, and if you told it to, other players.

Where your ship would go when you were building a station:
I have no idea...
you can come up with that? Right?...

Right?

[auburnattack21]

Well, unfortunately, the ship can't just leave; what happens if a jacker squadron destroys the station while you're in the interface? How about if the ship has a shield put around it while it's in interface. Also, you have to be out of combat for 30 seconds in order to engage the station. When a squadron attacks, the interface disables and you are put back into the ship to fight off the squadron.

In that case, I don't think it would be possible to fire the turret manually, but you can have any kind of turret you like. Torpedoes, missiles...perhaps even some sort of artillery piece?

I think the current system in Captain Jameson works very well - we could have menus (F2 - F6) for the tabs you're talking about, and then go from there. ASCII representations of stations? Definitely could work.

[Perez]

Hope you don't mind if I come up with a few additional stuff for the station idea;

The General Tab
- Building section:

The player is given a list of attachment in different forms and shapes. They are the ones you can find on stations like Apartments, Factories, etcetera. Perhaps there are only some parts found in one area, and other parts found in another? Each item is purchased as you drag it out of the list, and sold whenever you remove it. It'd be cool if the different modules have different reasons to be used. Let's take the oxygen tank you can find on apartments. You know the oxygen field around stations? Maybe the oxygen tanks can be the utility behind it. Now, if we say these oxygen tanks would run out of oxygen ('Cause why not?), a refinery would come in handy. I did some research on Silicates -- which I thought wasn't real -- and I found out they contain oxygen. Yup, that's probably why they're sold for fortunes. Now, if you, say, have another station create droids dedicated for different tasks, where in the refinery they go out and collect minerals. Whenever they collect silicates, the mineral is turned into breathable oxygen. So we've already ended up with three homemade stations needed to automatically produce oxygen fields. What do you think of that, eh?

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Perhaps factories would use the iron found by refinery droids to make tools and weapons, where, as mentioned in this thread, the factory can create more than just one item. The higher the tier, the more is iron needed. These could be attached to the turrets (I like this idea about turrets!) to enhance offensiveness or defensiveness. The droids can have repair tools attached to them, turning them into repair droids who fly around and, of course, fix things, like damaged turrets.

What if the turrets are only able to use transrotators?

Me, myself and I have always dreamt about a good game where you can either be hostile or friendly. A world players could become jackers/pirates and take over peoples settlements, whilst other players could defend and work along with alliances to prevent their base from getting conquered; can you imagine?
Also, do you think the turrets should automatically fire at players who damage the station?

You wrote that you don't know where your ship should go once you enter this station-creator menu; How about it goes into some sort of hibernation, extending the duration of oxygen? Maybe there could be some sort of template to help you build the structure quickly and get the oxygen field up and going.

[auburnattack21]

You do realize that combat in this game is going to take a bit of a while longer than in previous titles? If we're going to have oxygen at all (and I'm still wavering on the idea) we need to be able to start with more than 30 L. Maybe 50, or 75, or even 100.

Incidentally, iron ore also has Oxygen in it, and in fact Oxygen is the primary partner of Iron in these ores. When smelted, you get carbon dioxide as a waste product, which from each unit a molecule of O2 can be extracted. Indeed, solar cells can be used to power a sort of Photosynthesis that naturally generates O2 from CO2. So, when you see those solar arrays, hold your fire.

My point is that I was thinking we should have more than two minerals. Perhaps one for each tier of ammunition and one for each type? Then a material for girders, trusses and decks. So on from there. Iron ore, specifically, serves by itself in the first tier (Alpha/Bravo/Charlie), then alloys with a higher mineral in the next (Delta/Echo/Foxtrot).

According to Wikipedia, examples of silicates include tons of useful stuff - topaz, emerald, talc...tons of other minerals I've never even heard of...and in the vast majority of these there is a lower Oxygen ratio than in Iron Ore. I'm going to have to ponder over why the stations can maintain the oxygen field.

Regarding players interacting with each other, I'm providing for there being both PvE and PvP sectors, and possibly some hybrids. You know, the more I think about this, the more this is starting to look like City of Heroes. Man, what a great MMO right there. Closed down for no reason in November of 2012. Sad end to a great tale. It's where my name comes from; Auburn Attacker, level 50 Fire/Empathy Controller.

[gamemasterme]

One quick thing: having factories able to sell more than one thing, I am currently in a spelunky sector, and I really hate that you have to travel from settlement to settlement to get one certain part I want.

[auburnattack21]

That would be the point of player-made settlements, or better yet, leases, then: being able to build factories which provide a different type of module than is provided in the city itself.

[Captain Michaela Nul'dolaer]

Since all of this has been implemented, shouldn't this be locked?