Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ratakari]

@ hemmingjay:

1) confirmed. However, I donīt like the idea of selling individual items like in free2play systems, so I want to try something different:
Why not crowdfund game extensions? If enough players are interested in getting a new mission or fuselage, they could chip in $1 and everyone gets the new content at the same time. 100 Players can get a large expansion (10 Missions, 10 Ships, 10 Rooms) for a few bucks, 1000 Players for a few cents (the funding goal stays the same) - less of a "cash cow" for me, but I just want to make this game, and make it big!
This would also enable me to set up different proposals, and players can choose with their wallet, what they want to have in their game next - more Missions or more Rooms?

Tell me what you think!

2) the reward content will not be available to non-contributors. However I donīt want the game to forbid players to sell or exchange their stuff ingame - thatīs what this game is all about!

3) The Core game is about 40% done.

@ Girlinhat: The Campaign mode will be possible at funding Level 3.
The Missions are just a small part within the game. If you donīt really enjoy designing and re-designing a ship, striving for maximum performance in the missions, I can understand that you think the core game has not much content.
It will be possible for players who mostly like to do missions for existing ship designs to do just that - but you have to wait for a mission pack to be funded, or hope for the project to reach Level 3.

[Girlinhat]

Well, see, what's the point?  You have a nice idea.  You can do missions and you can tweak your design and get it to be -perfect- and run like silk.  But, why?  You can "sell the design" but to whom?  Once you've made a great warship for yourself, what are you to do with it?  Run more missions?  You already ran all the missions and aced them, that's why your warship is great.

Basically, you can prepare your ships.  But what for?  What are you designing things for?  Are you designing them in the hopes of reaching $26,000 funding?  Or is there any free-roam style of play where you can actually put your ships in space?

Keep in mind that "campaign" doesn't have to mean "this plot."  Mount and Blade has zero plot, it just drops you in the world and tells you to run wild.

[BigD145]

I suspect a fascination with games like Frozen Synapse and DEFCON and games with "instances".

[tootboot]

As the "whatever-kickstarter-clone-this-is" stated, it appears to be only roughly based on Atlas Shrugged - a young whatever rises to become a powerful whatever.  The issue is that they act like this is a new idea, but really pretty much every game ever has done this to at least some degree, they're just being unique by using a few more hype words.  Comparing yourself to a literary classic is one way to generate hype.

Atlas Shrugged could only be called a literary classic in that lots of people have read it, and on that note, you could say the same thing about Twilight.

[Girlinhat]

Actually, "literary classic" only really means "it's old and people still remember the title."  It doesn't have to be a good book, or even a popular book.  But it's one that people remember and it's from long enough ago that remembering it is significant.

[MrWiggles]

Well, see, what's the point?  You have a nice idea.  You can do missions and you can tweak your design and get it to be -perfect- and run like silk.  But, why?  You can "sell the design" but to whom?  Once you've made a great warship for yourself, what are you to do with it?  Run more missions?  You already ran all the missions and aced them, that's why your warship is great.

Basically, you can prepare your ships.  But what for?  What are you designing things for?  Are you designing them in the hopes of reaching $26,000 funding?  Or is there any free-roam style of play where you can actually put your ships in space?

Keep in mind that "campaign" doesn't have to mean "this plot."  Mount and Blade has zero plot, it just drops you in the world and tells you to run wild.

+1

I can see this game be nothing more then a toy.

There was a Star Trek Starship building game? You didnt get to design the deck plans per floor, but you got to select components, and different styles of the saucer, nacelles or body of the ship, and finally select its bridge crew? Then sent it out on missions. Fairly shallow game, it was very much just a toy. I think, I got maybe 15 hours out of it? And it felt like I exhausted the game fairly quickly.

With how its presented right now, it doesnt seem like there is going to be a lot of content or depth of play to make it more of a game vs. a toy.

Maybe if the game does get to the Campaign level, there will be necessary peak in content to encourage replayability and rewarding different designs to play through the campaign. But most Crowd Sourcing projects only reach 100-110 percent funded? But unless its reached (And given the amount of press you've manage to get for your game), it seems likely you will, it cant be really assumed to be part of the game yet.

[Fikes]

Well, see, what's the point?  You have a nice idea.  You can do missions and you can tweak your design and get it to be -perfect- and run like silk.  But, why?  You can "sell the design" but to whom?  Once you've made a great warship for yourself, what are you to do with it?  Run more missions?  You already ran all the missions and aced them, that's why your warship is great.

Many management games follow Ratakari's model. You play a mission, build up a company (Industrial Giant) or a park (Roller Coaster Tycoon) to meet specific objective. Objectives for this game might be to win a government contract or to build a profitable station to mine an asteroid belt.

You may have different restrictions for each mission or maybe you don't have the budget to build your perfect ship again. It wouldn't be that difficult to keep people from using the same strategy over and over again.

About the payment model... I don't like it. It is confusing to say the least and in the long run will result in less revenue. In a year when I show this game to a friend and they want to start playing it, they won't even have the option to get the extra missions.

What is wrong with (good) paid downloadable content?

[cerapa]

There isnt really anything wrong with a toy. Dwarf Fortress itself is without a goal. So are many other sandbox games too. If the systems and requirements for different designs are good enough, then the depth should appear organically.

Personally I have a soft spot for construction and design, so this seems like it would be excellent for me.

[Sinned]

I do like the idea of having a more free roaming / sandbox mode more then a cutscene driven story line also.

I will admit I wasted more then enough hours in Gratuitous space battles fooling around with ship designs and the "limited" (It had a good number of em though) missions. So nothing wrong with that, I even really like it also. Still one can dream

Still a good skirmish option / survival mode or even sandbox option will give the game a lot of re-playability. This also --if given the option and the tools-- puts the community (and its modders) behind the game into creating content and adding to it. Longevity adds the option of creating DLC's/Expansions pack, that really contain something, the community is asking for and is willing to pay for. (The dev needs to eat after all )

[Girlinhat]

Now you're not seeing the point, cerapa.  Imagine if DF only let you carve out rooms and place little dwarf icons, but they didn't do anything and you couldn't progress.  It sounds like Starship Corperation is just that.  You can set up what looks like a nice empire, but there's no game mechanics to use it.  Design a ship and you have a design, but there's no plans to let you use the design in the "real world".

[forsaken1111]

More like if DF let you design a nice little fort and then you could click various scenarios which ran in isolation against your fort. Goblin siege 1, 2, 3... elf siege 1, 2, 3. The fort is reset for each scenario, no progress is made, you're just running a scenario.

[Sinned]

Now you're not seeing the point, cerapa.  Imagine if DF only let you carve out rooms and place little dwarf icons, but they didn't do anything and you couldn't progress.  It sounds like Starship Corperation is just that.  You can set up what looks like a nice empire, but there's no game mechanics to use it.  Design a ship and you have a design, but there's no plans to let you use the design in the "real world".

There will be missions, like I mentioned above, Gratuitous Space Battles also pulled that off + ship designing. Of course they did keep adding content in the form of DLCs for missions, ships etc.

Question is (for me) if there will be enough missions, or enough hulls and options to keep playing for any amount of time.

I do see your point though, but looking at the stuff we got to look at... *flips a coin* Well, still looks promising for me. Like you, I would rather see an sandbox like option then a story driven campaign.

But maybe multi-player can be expanded to such a thing. The groundworks will be there, but lots more on AI needs to be created then. (that's probably the hard part )

[forsaken1111]

The real question is... what will the majority of the content be? Will I be an aspiring space businessman who is building up a company, making important decisions about sales and pricing and research, or will I be testing increasingly refined ship designs against predetermined missions for 90% of my play time?

[Girlinhat]

GSB didn't make a good game though.  They made an interesting puzzle, and let's be honest, that's what it is.  You enter the fray, and you figure out what specific tools beat this specific enemy, and then start over next mission.  The only way they stretched gameplay time was by doing DLC.  A good randomly-generated mission would far outstrip the DLC deal.

[Frumple]

Is... is there anything wrong with it being just an interesting puzzle? Puzzle or not, GSB was enjoyable t'me. Don't really care what semantics decides it's called so long as I'm entertained, y'know? S'long as the price is right for the product, I'm good.

Still, let's see what dev says, yeh? Don't really know what the product is, yet