Who would find this fun?

#1 well, some jobs would be pretty stupid, I mean, I would much rather be the guy moving the ship around other than give the ship more power.

#2 Yeah maybe if I was firing the weapons. Can I blow up small planets??? :)

#3 Like most coop games, this could be a lot of fun assuming clueful teammates that knew how to work together as a team (like a well-functioning "clan" in an team-based action game such as Sierra's SWAT 3: Elite Edition).

On the other hand, one incompetent or immature player in any position can ruin it for everybody and, unlike the real world, peer pressure and such aren't that effective on-line. Too frequently, you encounter people who derive some kind of weird pleasure from bringing down their team and annoying their more serious-minded teammates.

Even direct retaliation in the game hurts the team. Let's say I'm the captain and the weapons officer is endangering the mission. After giving him fair warning which he ignores, I draw my sidearm and execute him on the spot (or "boot" him from the game). But now one of the bridge positions is not manned, so we still lose.

Yet forming and maintaining a clan of "known good" teammates has its own issues. I might want to play SWAT 3 tonight, but unless my clan is on-line, the quality of my teammates is the luck of the draw.

Random thought on dealing with this...

Players could have persistent identities, with a "reputation" that is visible to other players. The "captain" can manually decide whether to accept a player based on their rep, or can automatically filter out players below a certain rep level.

At the end of a session, each player has the *option* of giving positive or negative feedback on his or her teammates. The feedback is weighted based on the "reputation" of the voter and perhaps on the balance in their voting history (if they always vote that everyone sucks, their opinion should be discounted).

So, let's say I have a good rep in your game. But I'm a little under the weather today, so I make a critical mistake that costs my team the game. Another player with a good rep gives more a poor rating. This would affect my rep more than the same vote from a player who himself has a bad rep and thus might just be a loser.

New players would start with a neutral rep. Each player's rep would then just be a running total of the weighted votes. Thus, my one mistake won't ruin my rep if I have a long history of being a good team player, but a consistent pattern will.

This "reputation" concept could either supplement or replace "rank." I'd see "rank," if it's included, as being based on more objective criteria (# of victories, # of hours played, etc.).

Note that this isn't the "Survivor" mentality of "voting people off the island." If I play with a good team, it doesn't cost me anything more than a few mouse clicks to give all of them positive feedback, whereas the "Survivor" model eventually forces you to turn on your former teammates.

Yes, I have a sort of elitist attitude about this. But, based on some on-line chats, it seems these issues really discourage a lot of serious players from playing team-based on-line games. It also reflects a social model from real world - in realms ranging from sports to the military, your informal standing amongst your peers can be just as important as, or more important than, your formal rank or status.

#4 Great idea...

I'd go the EBAY way, myself. They have a nice real-world program for that.

#5 Sounds like you read a piece of my mind...

how serious are you about doing a game like that?

#6 fred. ill have a go if you want to.
i mean, its really not that hard if you think about it.
lets imagine for a moment we do this in HL cause thats what i know best.
the bridges. all done in worldcraft. i can do that.
the characters. reskins of the 30+ high quality models i have already here from other projects.
The character stations. might need an artist for that. if your not one i know several who are pro artists. one working at a game dev house in in the UK the other a webby.
the code. from my limited understanding of it for this it wouldent be tragically hard.
audio. one of my good friends and partners is a pro audio engineer.
lets see, what else m8. hmm. i dont know but hey, we can talk. im up for anything and most of my buds will be as well. i like side projects.
you can mail me at pinforok@rochester.rr.com or we can chat more here

#7 Im a modeler myself.
Ive got half a plan somewhat similar to yours sitting around on my C: drive somewhere, gotta dredge it up again and compare. maybe it will give you a few ideas ;)

Ive only made meshes and a few drawings for it to help set the mood, but never got as far as textures or anything.
I was forced to stop because it was so removed from what I had resources to actualy make.

It was a ship combat game based on a idea I had years ago for a 3 man combat shop. a sort of corsair (smaller than a cruiser, better equipped than a corvett)

To solve the "sucky player" problem, a less effective automation process for each role would take over if a player goes missing or is booted. keeping the team combat ready.

but it was more of a simulator than a fighting game.
Ill e-mail with details.
(you got icq?)


I know at least two modelers and one coder I think I can talk into it.
( fury@13rt.com )

#8 I would love a game like this.

The problem with idiot players will exist in any team-player game. Tribes 2 is a perfect example.

It might be interesting to have a Captain that can kick players out of seats so others can sit.

Maybe enhance the game a bit with fighter escorts or something. "Cowboy" players would be more likely to get into an escort fighter than play in a navigator or even turret gunner position, so that might help solve the problem of bad players taking up crucial positions.

#9 The idea is not hard to like.
I can see it expanding quite a bit before you hit the limits of a modern computer.


side note:
I tracked down most of the pieces of my old project.

Unfortunatly, the old game plan I had is toast.
I did however recover quite a few drawings and some rather cheezy meshes in 3ds format.
I think I can piece together a basic summation after I get back from work tomorrow.

#10 anime influenced...i like your pic. i think that would be the way to go.
for the look and feel i was thinking more along the lines of star trek. crisp, cold, clean. but anime has such a quality that draws me to it. i like it. its very eye catching now a days. its used badly a lot but when its done right "WHAMMO" you got a fantastic looking enviroment
nice art by the way Frederick :) look forward to your email

#11 That drawing in particular is a robotic drone called a mauler. comes in many classes, everything from ground vehicles to capital ships. The story I made it for takes quite a bit of explaining, lol
Ill save that for another time ;)

For a capital ships game, I think I would prefer a "dirty" world war 2 like theme. metal on metal with lots of violence.
war is about people, and a machine based war isint as "real" if the people inside cant get hurt or killed independant of the machine.

Honestly though, you can easily bend a games story to suit your needs. nothing says you cant have both extremes in the same storyline.

#12 I like the stat tracking idea with a rep system of sorts. You could use it also give basic information about the player. Say you often play navigator, you would become a navigator in your profile. If you're a good navigator and don't keep flying your ship into that asteroid, or planet, you could go up in rank to Navigator First Class With Distinction (lets say), if you seem to have a real love of those asteroids you could receive trade demotions. Say when the guy joins your server you get the message Navigator License Revoked (lowest of the low), if you wanted to stick him in the chair and let him fly your ship fine but it would give a nice gauge. That way if people just log off and give no feedback (positive feedback is much rarer than negative feedback) good play is not lost, otoh bad play isn't either.

Owen

#13 now that you put it that way, I think youve got something there. anyone with less than a certain number of flight hours would not be as well trusted.
almost as bad as anyone whos flight certification has been pulled.


about the "having jobs that people want to play" thing.

assuming we give each station just enough important work to keep them busy, but not so much as to be overpowering. you can balance the actual fighting (shooting, hitting, dodging, and blocking) as an almost secondary part of the game.
who wins the fight is then as much about planning, tactics and stratagy, as it would be about flying/shooting ability.


In the old project I had planned on lots of changing physics. your ships weight, cargo balance, engin type, and current weapons load would affect how it moved.
if it was overloaded, you would not be able to control it properly during a mission.

even a simple Corsair like this one:
was intended to turn like a pyramid brick and be a nightmare in flight mode.

The model wasent finished, but we were making them to be high poly and pretty detailed animation wise.
can the halflife engin deliver that performance without major modification?

#14 simply: No.
but Lithtech can :)

#15 if anyone have play B-17: Flying fortress 2, its kinda the same idea, like you can be a gunner, or pilot, or a couple others...

#16 Ive had dealings with that lith thing before, The business "packages" they usualy offer never smell too good.
code wise Its really none of my business, since I dont care where it comes from long as it does whats needed ;)

#17 What I think should also be done is that players should be able to jump between positions. So say your engineer bails ship your captain can leap into the engineering seat, if stuff needs to be done, or if your engines have been taken offline and your gunner bails your navigator can switch to weapons operations, so the loss of a team member doesn't automatically mean you are screwed.

Owen

#18 how I figured it, we should give up on the concept of seperate "stations"

In a real plane, you can do any job from any command seat.

so each seat should have access to the full set of controls via changing panels.
so one player can flip between:
a panel for naviation(sensors, automatic flight control, vor, ranging and visual aquisition)
a panel for power and weight allocation(fuel shifting, cargo dumping, flight modes)
a panel for the actual flight control (manual steering, emergency thrusters, nervas booster access, manifold control(pressure and temprature) landing and docking gear)
and a panel for weapons (blocker mines, missiles, ecm, projectile weaponry, nukes, plasma, and so forth)

In theory, one person could then fly the entire ship. but their performance would be so poor they wouldent stand a chance in combat against a fully crewd ship ;)

so if you divide the job among 2 3 or more players, you can then improve how well you fight.
Multiply that by the number of ships you can co-erce(sp?) into helping you in each battle, and very quickly youll see team work and alliances start to pay off.

#19 i was thinking posistions on the spaceshipe could be held in rank like more important jobs would be held by people of higher rank and this would also motivate people stuck in the crappy jobs to get through them do more fun jobs. but whatever thats just one thought i have but it sounds like it would be fun especially if there were no jack*sses on your crew. also you could have an underlying plot (of course) but in the sense that you are a capital ship thats part of a fleet and the more expeience you gain the better shipd you have and you end up one day the captian of the flagship or somthign would be the ultimate goal. You could stop at trading post upgrade your weapons and equipment. you could be a pirate and prey on other space vehichles or something but theres is a lot of capability with an idea like this

#20 A friend and I started working on an idea like this about 5 years ago. We never got anywhere with it but that's not because the idea doesn't have potential.

We wanted to do the same sort of thing, where you have a small crew, each person at a different "station" in a ship. In particular, we we thinking of piloting a submarine. Not a realistic submarine, but one in a fantasy world.

I have forgotten a lot of the details, but I remember that my biggest concern was making sure that all the "stations" are involved and important enough to engage a person's attention. Additionally, it's important IMO that the design *forces* the players to interact, such that one player can't do their job effectively without receiving some information only available to a player at another station. Otherwise it's like everyone's in a little box, and much of the point of the game is lost. For example, imagine a tail gunner... without some creativity, the tailgunner player's experience turns into tracking targets across their field of view when they appear and shooting at them. But what if the tailgunner had a zoom lens, and another station's player had to provide coordinates to zoom in on? That would require teamwork and be rather interesting.

The submarine thing is particularly well-suited, I think, to meeting these design goals. For one thing, the players' situational awareness is based on a multitude of sensor data, such as sonar in particular but you could easily use your imagination to come up with more. In my design I envisioned the sonar operator to have to work hard to interpret the incoming data. Experience would teach the sonar operator the difference between another sub and a whale, but it would require time and effort, justifying having an entire person spend their whole time at that station. If the players have to work together to develop their situation awareness, it makes them work together an should add a lot of tension.

That's the theory anyway. In practice, I think it would be very difficult to pull off an idea like this. For one thing, you're essentially making an entire game for each station. Making one game is hard enough, making 4 games that all interact is very challenging. The other thing is that playing a game like this would simply be difficult. Even if perfectly executed, the game would have a high barrier to entry. And of course there are the "how do I get a real team together?" issues but those apply to any team-based game so I think it's a seperate (but important) issue.

Anyway, I hope that adds something to the discussion. I would love to play a game like this someday, hopefully someone will follow through.