special equipment?

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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discord
Space Kraken
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Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 12:00 am

special equipment?

#1 Post by discord »

just a thought that having all those wierd ass gizmos might be useful every now and then, a tractor beam can come in handy, those high quality telescopes the civvies insisted on for stellar cartography might come in handy to detect stealth ships...teleporters? we know how nice they are...machine shop for some specific gizmo for the fight, science labs...

well you get the idea, and we have all seen what those people in startrek can come up with....having 'perifernalia' can give you an edge in battle, perhaps you figure out the frequency of one of the opponents beam weapons making the two first shots with it do nothing....or whatever, just wanted there to be more of a reason not to hate all that junky stuff, spin the idea on.

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eleazar
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Re: special equipment?

#2 Post by eleazar »

discord wrote:...well you get the idea, and we have all seen what those people in startrek can come up with....having 'perifernalia' can give you an edge in battle...
that sort of thing makes tolerable TV, but would be rather annoying in a tactical battle in which both sides have several ships.

I mean you have whole planets of scientists devoting years to researching how to get "weapon X", but with star-trek magic, and paraphernalia lying around, somebody invents "weapon X" in the middle of a battle?
How to do you simulate that? A small chance that the capacity of somebody's ship will radically change in the middle of battle? Will that "feel" like a star-trek victory— or will it just be an annoying way to loose, and an uncontrollable, cheap way to win?


To make this idea sound compelling you need to explain in more detail how it would actually work in the game.

Sandlapper
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#3 Post by Sandlapper »

I think something like tractor beams in combat could be made automatic, very easily, and easily implemented(edit: I'm thinking in context of repulsing an enemy ship, to specifically target and grab another ship would be more involved). However, something like a subspace teleporter would likely require manual user guidance at times, and would be more difficult to implement within our current scope of combat interaction.

marhawkman
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Re: special equipment?

#4 Post by marhawkman »

eleazar wrote:To make this idea sound compelling you need to explain in more detail how it would actually work in the game.
It'd be kinda like the "critical hit" feature in many RPG type games. But there's no real need to do that here. The TV show had that to make the episodes entertaining. but it would make sense to have at least some races with an ability to somewhat reconfigure their ships during battle. the effectiveness of this should be limited, but you get the idea.
Computer programming is fun.

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utilae
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Re: special equipment?

#5 Post by utilae »

Certainly one of the best points of these Space 4X games is the technology and the capabilities they give your ships, planets, etc.

Star Trek "tricks" were quite specialised, so we wont be having any of that, eg the hack into the enterprise sensors and display romulan warbird trick, but then again there is no reason why we cant have holographic tech for trickery.

I would like to see some planet based, system to system weapons. Eg in the late game, your planet has a "inter system laser" which you can use to "bomb" planets in systems X parsecs away.

In the very lategame, maybe you can kill a system in one shot with one of these, and later kill a bunch of systems, which would really cut down the conquer time in huge galaxies.

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Skaro
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#6 Post by Skaro »

Coffee mug holders, no ship can leave dock without them :lol: :roll:
A sucking chest wound is Nature's way of telling you to slow down. --Murphy's war laws

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