A Update to how I see the Future of Cosmoteer
This is gonna be in part a Q/A if you will for @Walt however mainly be things that i would like to see Cosmoteer develop into
I will try to break it into different Categories to make it more organized
I feel like making this discussion is more important now then ever with Walt new working on the Campaign
The Campaign
As seeing that Bounty Hunter (BH) is being transformed into the new "Campaign" mode and is the obviously the main thing with the paid Steam release. Now currently we are just given a ship with guns and told to go kill, however assuming that mining, looting/trade, and missions will all be in the game with release, I think a few different starting "states" can be put in place. With the "New Game" menu instead of just having Galaxy Size and choosing between 3 ships, instead you are given a "Starting Job" these jobs being
"Miner" where you start out with a bare bone mining ship in a "mining distract/system" (Will discuses those later) and you will build up your credits by mining and selling ores, or if you don't want to sell your ores you can have them refined either by buying your own refinery and refining your own resources (However i see this being a thing where you need to own a station to d0) or pay the station to refine them for you, this might be more expensive in the long run, however with the pay off of upping your relations with the station (more on this as well later)
"Trader" Where you are given a freighter and go off to buy and sell goods, I see this as being a unlikely start as it will defiantly be the longer way to build up credits and would be best with some sort or living economy system probably and I'm unsure of how complected for Walt this will be, however assuming that there is some sore of system that has prices charge rather due to local stock, demands, and income, this start will give you as said a basic freighter with decent storage, however no protection, you will be required to keep track of who is selling what, maybe further down the road Walt can add a dedicated room that will open the galactic map and for all locations you have "Explored" will tell you what the stations are selling, what they are buying, and the activity of neutral and hostile ships. You will need to keep in mind however that you are always at risk of being attacked by Pirates, pirates may be able to scan your cargo bay and see what you are transporting, and depending on how hungry they are and what is protecting you, may attack, you can get around this by hiring protection, building your own fighters and managing a fleet (not a starting possibility) or modifying your ship and adding weapons. Trade can come in two forms "free lance trade" where you keep an eye on what station is selling what and "trade/transport missions" where you are given a mission to transport ether goods or personal. Transporting Personal or VIP will require specific rooms, there can be different rooms, one more expensive than the other, and depending on who your transporting will require nicer but more expensive rooms. (A faction leader or other higher up wont sit in a "Commoners" class room, they like their space wine and space steak)
"Mercenary" This will be the current start with BH you are given a small ship with your basic weapons and you can chose how you behave, either you can be a good pilot and help local miners, traders, and stations be taking missions to help transport cargo, protect mining fleets, fight pirates attacking stations, or even join a military campaign in clearing out a pirate's nest or even fight in ongoing wars. you do not need to accept missions, you can also just attack pirates that are attacking civilians, however you may not get credits or may get less then if it was a dedicated mission, however if it was a station you may get on their good side and get discounts.
OR you can go out and Pirate, you will quickly lose the opinion of local stations and deference forces however pirate groups may take notice and adopt you into their ways, you will be able to hunt down freighters and steal their loot, maybe even capture their ships through boarding processes, or even if a faction sees you attacking a enemy faction may hire you to loot and pillage their ships, and if you decide to get onto their good side, may want to adopt you into their military fleet. you can do this by flying into their territory and doing missions for them
"Explorer" This one i am the most unsure of however might be cool to see depending on how missions get implemented. As a Explorer your mission is "To explore strange new worlds, To seek out new life, And new civilizations, To boldly go where no man has gone before" yes you are Star Trekking it across space, you will be given missions to go to different systems and "survey" them, how you would survey them I'm not fully sure how you would do but maybe if there were distracts within systems and you had to go into them, once you do and "survey" them (by sitting there for a few seconds) you simply go back to collect your reward.
Throughout the campaign you will be able to Aline yourself with factions and even later own make your own, maybe even gain control of multiple systems and declare wars on other factions, if possible occupy the entire galaxy, however this might be a difficult thing to do if possible at all, as the larger you are not only will you have more pirate attacks but also will be seen as a threat by other factions.
Distracts
Distracts will be different "ecosystems" within star systems, basically if there is lets say a ring around a planet or a asteroid belt these areas with raw ores will be classified as "Mining Distracts" other places like gas clouds or even special stars, black holes, planets, etc, these can be science distracts, areas with high pirate attacks or even a pirate station will be pirate distracts, you get the point. These ares will be visible in a "system map" this is different then the galactic map.
System and Galactic map
There will be two maps, where with the Galactic map you will be able to see where the systems are, how there connected and who control them, the system map will show all information within the star system that you are currently in, it will tell you what stations are around you, what ships are around you, where the jump gates are and who controls the system you are in (along side the name of said system) if ships and stations are within your sensor range then it will tell you more general information like whose piloting the sips, what faction if any there with and if they are hostile to you or not. within this map you will also get to jump using the blink drive, however you have to be within a cretin range away from systems and other ships, these areas you have to jump outside of can be outlined in the form of distract.
Mining
Mining will be a big thing, this is going to be the easiest way to get the materials you need to build new ships and stations, there will be different ores scattered across the galaxy, with the more rear and harder to obtain ones being within more dangerous systems. Your basic starting system will have you common ores, these ores will be the ones that will allow you to build you bare bones ships, those being hull, thrusters, control rooms, and storage's (might need to "mine" gas clouds for thrusters maybe to add diversity) while more "high risk" systems will have there ores that will allow you to build armor and other more "complicated" things, however first you will have to refine these ores before anything, I will talk about refining later)
Trading
Trading between systems will probably be a thing you do in-between missions unless its a mission itself, there will be two forms of trading.
First there will be trading goods themselves, the more common things will sell for less in most places while more expensive and higher quality things will sell for much more, however you will always be at rick of being attacked, however not just by pirates, rival traders may go rough and want to take over your job and transport your cargo for you, or if you are transporting illegal goods local security might demand that you were to shut off your ship and prepare for boring, if caught you will get a bad rating with the local security however if successful you will be making big bank.
Second will be by transporting VIP's, there will be different levels of "transport rooms" starting with you basic one that will have a higher capacity of people, here you will transport you common person for relatively cheep, there will be more expensive rooms that will have less room however you can charge more or if you get the "VIP Room" transport high value individuals who will pay you a very shiny penny.
Stations
Stations will be common through the galaxy, here you will be able to buy and sell items, hire crew, accept missions, and communicate with local faction heads or leaders. However you will also be able to build your own stations, how this could work is that you buy a foundation block, and from the block you expand your station, you will have special rooms and be able to be a lot more self efficient, however at a hefty sum. with your own stations you can create a faction, manage fleets and create ships.
Maybe to add more life to systems there can be stations with specific jobs or roles, like ones focused on selling weapons, one on selling ships, one on selling raw goods, so on and so forth
Refining and Factories
Refining will be a necessary step in producing your own equipment, with refineries you will transform your ores into sheet metal, electronics, computer chips, and so on, all of these equipment pieces will then be put together to create your "functionality" blocks, basically everything. the only way you will be able to refine your ores into equipment is by having a station, this will be a multi step process, first you will need to mine the ores, from there off lode them from your ship into your stations storage, from there your station will need a refinery room, these rooms you will be able to tell to refine the ores into lest say from 1 to 5 different precise of equipment, from there the equipment will either be transported back to storage, or to factories what will combine the equipment into your blocks, maybe even through a system like crew management you can tell a cretin refineries to only store its output and tell those storage's to only receive items from certain rooms
Docking
Docking will require you to go to docking bays/zones, there are what will allow you to interact with stations, rather that is loading and unloading cargo, or handing in completed missions. For stations you will need to buy a docking bay to store ships or to load and unload your cargo
Boarding
Unlike docking where you are interacting with stations boarding is more so an offensive measure in attacking ships, to bored a ship you need a boarding party in the form of solders, this being dedicated crew members equipped with weapons and their own rooms, a teleporter to enable them to board the enemy ship from their teleporter room, or boarding hooks, so you can breach the outside of enemy ships and enter that way. while attacking the enemy ship will have their own solders to protect the ship and its crew, if the enemy is too strong you will have the option to retreat, if you entered through the teleporter you will have to go back to the enemy teleporter and go back to your ship through that, if you breached, you have to go back through the hole you made, however the enemy can kill all your solders, or capture them, either for ransomed or slave labor. however if you are stronger than the enemy solders then winning conditions will be if all enemy solders are killed or if the surrender, from here your solders will capture all control rooms (this can be done by having to have all crew rooms have access to all control rooms, maybe the more crew you have the more access ways and wider hallways you will need) from here you have 3 options
- you can capture the ship and either run it off of your own spare crew, higher extra crew from those already on it, depending on faction alliance or if there are slaves the pricing may be more or less to hire them
- loot the ship and give it only enough crew, fuel, or resources to get to a station to repair and flee
- fully loot the ship and destroy it.
In the event of you getting boarded you have different ways to defend yourself, either you can set up points in your ship for crew to hold off at and defend, detach the main part of your ship and have it fly off or if you have another ship with solder's, have them bored you to help defend
In System Travel
Seeing that FTL will allow you to jump withing a solar system to make travel easier while also being required to jump from system to system with assistance from gates, I think having interdiction fields can not only be a easy way to explain why ships have to jump a certain range outside of distracts where stations and asteroids are, but would also be a fun mechanic for trapping ships, there will be different versions, mainly two. One will be for stations, these will create distracts and require ships to jump a larger distance away from where the interdictor is. Second will be ship class interdiction fields, this can either be a room within your ship that requires you to stay motionless while activated, meaning that if you have a fleet, having a dedicated interdictor ship would be a helpful asset, or as a deploy able beacon allowing you to fly around, however it has to be in-range of your control room or sensor room.
While within systems traveling around random events can happen, these will pop up on the system map in the form of "event beacons" these events can be anything from a stranded ship that needs a either a toe, or some fuel, an abandoned wreckage, available for boarding and looting, to traps set up by pirates and enemy factions wanting to plunder and loot.
Inter Galactic Travel
with the adding of jump gates that are going to be the (Currently) only way to move from system to system, they will obviously become high value targets, currently from what Walt has said, these will assist your FTL drives and will allow you to move to adjacent systems, there are also currently said to be built by a ancient race however possibly being updated and if needed reared by modern factions, I like this idea as it makes controlling these gates more important for factions as they are the only thing allowing for easy travel across the galaxy, if destroyed they can not be repaid or will take a long time and will leave that system lost to the galaxy, i am not sure if destroying gates will be possible, however temporarily shutting them off could be a cool thing to do to stop enemy ships from leaving
Faction Relations
Faction relation will mold how you play the game, interactions with factions can be done through how you behave like attack pirates or civilian/security ships and doing missions for factions
By having positive relations with factions you can receive sales in stores, and gain access to higher ranked missions, maybe even be given access to certain star systems like faction capitals. However having a negative relation may require you to pay stations to dock and depending on how upset you made the factions, even have a bounty put on you and when entering certain non-allied or hostile systems you will be seen as a "shoot on sight" target
Fleet Management
Fleets are going to be an inevitable, however being able to controller multiple fleets and give them orders would be a lot of fun. Currently the fleet system is to the extent of controlling all the ships around you and giving them orders to attack, however I think that if you have a separate fleet command room of some sort you should be able to give orders to more ships and fleets even within different systems, to control other ships within your fleet could be done by having a flag ship with a special room, this room will be part 1 of 2 that will allow you to create "fleets" the "flag ship" (main ship of the feet) in other ships you want to control you will need either a sensor room or some other dedicated room, both of these will require control rooms to be adjacent to them. once set up you can give orders to the other ships within your fleet as long as you are within the same system. If you want to control fleets outside of the system you are in you will need another dedicated room, lets call the "Fleet room" you will only need one of these room at any given time to control multiple fleets, this room will allow you to control other flag ships and give those flag ships orders to fallow, for example if you have a fleet that is dedicated to mining recourse, you can order the flag ship to mine within a given system, it will fly to that system along with the other ships in its fleet then it and the other ships in its fleet will begin mining, you can also give orders like for ships to dump all their cargo into secondary ships until all cargo is full, once full to sell it at a chosen station.
However when it comes to doing missions you yourself have to be there to accept them and complete them
Missions
missions are going to probably end up being the main form of income, or at least be a easy and quick way to make income while improving relations. I see almost anything you can do being available as missions, all the way from "mine X amount of ores" to "destroy X amount of hostile ships" more risky ones resulting in both more credits and improving faction relations from whoever payed you, while depending on who your attacking, lessening it with the target faction
To accept missions you must dock at a local station and go to its "mission bored" once you accept one and complete it you have to go back to the station that you accepted the mission, or if it tells you to go to a different station, go to the required station and once docked you will receive the credits posted.
General Map information
currently the "galaxy" is more so a star cluster, it would be nice if we can see the galaxy become more galaxy shaped, with choices from ring galaxies, 2-armed bared spiral, regular 2,4,6 armed spiral, and even cluster or elliptical galaxy shapes. along with this I personally think the smallest galaxy should be around 25 star systems unless you are starting a creative game which you can start a 1 system save
Fighters
Currently the basic build grid is just Terran, however being able to have different grid sizes will be nice for things like making stations and fighters, although at fist and still kind of am against having an entirely separate grid size for fighters that will be smaller than the regular, I am open to it, I'm not entirely sure how fighters will work but I can see it go one of two ways
First they can be a thing you can manually control and fly around, you can dock them to a carrier with decouplers or landing pads, and be able to switch control from the carrier and fighters, maybe being required to have the previously mentions "fleet control room" to give fighters orders
Second (and probably least favorable however easier) is that you have a dedicated Hanger block that is stack able maybe being around 10x10 or smaller, and each hanger holding 1 or 2 maybe more fighters of your design,to launch them you need a "Hanger Bay" block that will be adjacent to the hangers however have to have access to the outside, this will allow fighters to launch and land, a third block can be behind the hangers in the interior and can be a "fighter command room" where you give orders to the fighters, the hanger rooms will only act as landing pads and repair bays if a fighter gets destroyed you will have to go buy a new one at a shipyard where you can order pre-designed ones you upload your own blueprints
Other blocks
Hopefully soon we will see more armor shapes and types, having weaker and lighter armor would always be nice while also having stronger ones that are heavier
More control rooms, larger ones that give off some sort of bonus, maybe for fleet management, and maybe will allow you to higher better experienced crew
Player Deaths
So in the event that you "die" 2 results can happen
At the event of a enemy ship damaging your ship enough you have a few option, A: pay them to stop attacking you, this can be from you losing all your cargo and a few credits, or if you dont have a cargo hold a good portions of your credits B: run to your escape pod and flee from your ship, the Escape pod will only have a few thrusters so you wont be able to jump from system to system let alone easily move from planet to planet using the FTL as you have none. This means you will either have to be in a system that has a friendly station that sells ships, or hope a ship will come by and pick you up and help you get to a station that will sell ships, if you in a pirate or enemy system then maybe they will capture you and a security force or friendly faction will pay for a ransomed to free you. To get a new ship you will have to pay the station however if you do not have enough credits you can ask them to lend you the ship till you pay it off.
If you have a fleet of ships then the destroyed ship will eject the crew in escape pods and you will have to save them, if you manage to lose all ships in the fleet well refer back to "1"
Taking on Dept/lone (IDK the proper term)
This will probably be a more common thing among "Early/Low Level" parts of the game, and will usually take on in the form of an event of your only ship being destroyed and you needing to buy a new one, however you can not fully cover for it, you can simply take on a "Contract" (Once again not sure of the proper term) with the station where they will grant you to buy the ship for all your credits that you currently have while also requiring you to pay extra to cover both the left over cost for the ship plus interest, this interest can be lower or nullifies depending on your relations with them, maybe at higher levels and with different factions even being given a ship for free, however only in the case of you not having any more ships. Other ways you may be required to pay back factions is in the case of bail or being freed from pirates by a faction, these costs will likely be low and unlikely that you will be put into dept if you get captures as wars and bounty hunting to where pirates will want you alive will be "late game" things.
Getting captured
In the chance of you being caught by the security force or enemy faction while unlikely if you know what your doing may be possible, unless they have a "Shoot first ask questions later" policy. if you get captured rather by being boarded, or your escape pod being captured by the wrong people what will happen is they will take you to their station and from there send out a report to the security and allied factions, here they will come pick you up, send you to their station and either give you a ship for a price, or give you one for free however either will will still ask for compensation.
For security forces you will either have to pay for our own bail, wait for a faction to pay you out or wait out you sentience. Only difference with waiting out for your sentience is that where you wont need to pay to get out, however your relations with other factions will begin to go down the longer it is.
Scavenging
Do you like Mining but don't like only getting raw resources from a bunch of floating space rocks? do you want to be able to go out and get those yummy parts and other refined goods? do you want that shinny thing that enemy ship had that you killed peacefully disabled and allow the captain to finally retire? or saw a fight between ships and want to do your civil duty of cleaning up others trash? well this is the job you want. Long story short is you have a special weapon like the mining laser, or maybe equip your fighters with "arms" and "Cutters" where they will break down these peaces either down to they individual parts, or leave them whole for you to repair and attach to your own ship.
Fighter "Types"
So i wanna go further in depth with "fighters"
Fighters will be on their own grid type with their own parts, maybe 1/2 or less the size of the normal grid. Rather you will dock them by the one of two ways i said above, well originally I was against haveing a "Hanger" block and wanted to see you be able build them freely, and just have them dock to the ship with Decuplers and other docking parts, however i think having separate parts where you have to buy your ship from sations with blueprints will be better as it will not only encourage getting on good terms with factions, while also leaving you wanting to build your own station so you can produce your fighters yourself, When building you will need to go to a station that sells fighters, here you will have an option to "Create" or even "Upload" your own blueprints, uploading in the case that you already have a blueprint, rather you found one at another station, picked one up from an enemy ship, or made your own but went to a new station.
Now getting to actual "Fighter Types" common types i can see will by, Fighters, Miners, Scouts, Scavengers, Repair, and Transport
"Fighter" This will be your basic fighter class ship, equipped with weapons, armor, and shields that are made to attack other ships
"Miners" While mining will be possible with your normal ships, having mining fighters will make the job quicker and easier, you will be able to equip them with mining lasers and small cargo holds, they will fly to the targeted asteroids and begin mining till their cargo is full, where they will go back to the mother ship and unload,
"Scouting" A fighter but more zoomy and maybe a special "beacon" they can drop
"Scavengers" A mining ship but instead of a mining laser, you can equip a extendable arm and cutting laser, and they can either grab the parts as a whole (IE grab a small cannon) and either brack it down to its "parts" (Electronics, iron, ect) or leave as a whole and drop it directly into your cargo hold to be repairs and re sold, or leve it drifting for repairs from repair fighters
"Repair fighter" can be deployed whenever and told to either repair your ship, targeted ship(s), or scrap parts. repairing scrap parts will allow you to then take those repaired parts and allow you to sell them later, or slap them onto your ship.
To repair anything you will have to have the required equipment and other resources in your cargo hold.
You can easily make Hybrids as all parts will be shared across the grid size, so if you want a mining fighter that can also salvage ships and repair those parts you can, however you will have limited space on the grid and it will not be as efferent as dedicated fighters
Drones
Drones ill be fighters however without the crew, in extant you will need a part so the drone can receive orders from the mother ship, the mother ship will also require this part in partnership, separately, or maybe not at all to the previously mentioned "Fighter control" part, the big advantage of having a drone over fighter will simple be the ability to not need to pay for crew needs, however where as fighter will have a further slight range, drones will have to be within a "Command range" basically a limit to how far from the receiver your drones can be. Not sure how advantages this may or may not be, but might be fun.
Easter Eggs and other References
how can we have a space game without references to other games or inside jokes, if I don't see at least one joke referring to a cult that goes by the name of "Cosmoteerisum" or other community founded references I will be very upset and will determine the game to be "Completely Unplayable"
Hopefully most of this makes scenes, i started this late at night and continued it the next day, kinda just started typing whatever ideas poured out my mind and how i see them working or possibly working, all of this is looking at it from a Single Player, if there's any questions or things you would like me to discuss further feel free to ask, or even if you have your own idea please do share
