I think it would be really cool to have a way to create our own game modes and scenarios. Instead of having Walt make and test game modes himself, he could set up a system for us (the community) to make our own and playtest them ourselves so he can work on more important things 😉
Possibilities of 'startup' commands
- Being able to spawn in a non-player controlled Ship or asteroids
- asteroids could be used for cover in battle/make the fight have some 'flavor' in it
- the non-player controlled ships could be just set to ai or have custom actions (see more further down)
- Being able to set players or non-player controlled ships with a custom 'tag' that would be used by the
gamemode in some way. ex) a kill/defend the commander/loot/base gamemode
- Being able to set custom spawn points for players to spawn at rather than the game's default setup
Custom Action Ideas
Basicly being able to set a 'path' that a ship could use. Basically it'll be a list of actions that the ship would do in order, one event after another.
Example actions:
- Move towards x,y, or Move to a tagged ship, or move to closest/furthest/smallest/etc. enemy or allied ship (can be paused/resumed by a condition)
- Wait x seconds, or wait until enemy gets close/enemy goes to a specified area
- Tag closest/furthest/smallest/etc. ship (to be able to refer back to later on)
- Attack tagged ship, or Attack closest/furthest/smallest/etc. ship
- Flee tagged ship, or Flee closest/furthest/smallest/etc. ship
- Event action (create an 'event' that other ships would react to. ex) a ship gets to the end of it's path and spawns in a fleet )
And then some conditional actions aswell, overwriting/pausing the 'path' the ship has
- if at x% health do [action]
- if weaker/stronger than enemy ship do [action]
- if at a certain distance to enemy/ally do [action]
- If tagged with a tag do [action]
Things you could do with tags
- Reference ships
- Make ships indestructible
- Make ships untargetable
- Repair a ship
- Make ships 'respawn' ex) create a co-op wave survival gamemode.
Other
- Being able to give money to players for destroying enemy ships (for a store system)
- Being able to have players spend money on repairs or buy another ship for a wave survival gamemode
-
Istrolid (another ship building game) has a custom AI system like this and allows you to create custom AI for your fleet so you don't have to micromanage all of your ships, but for this I'm mostly wanting this sort of thing to create custom scenarios and game modes for multiplayer. I think this would be a really cool and unique for this already amazing game and it would add a whole lot more to do. people could make co-op wave survival with a store system; people can make an awesome looking battlefield with broken down ships, stations, and debris; people would be able to make a 'push the payload' gamemode. This I think would be really cool to have in the game and it would really spice things up 😄
