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[freeformschooler]

tbh this sounds like its getting a might complicated for a forum game

I think you'd be surprised.

[Evil Lincoln]

Or have it so that FTL has to have both ends in equal gravity areas, requiring vessels to go to certain areas to get to certain areas.

How exactly would that work?

I think he is talking about "Warp Gates" as they are often enough called. While I have seen anything from tunnels spanning the distance to only sender and reciever, it is commonly a controled wormhole of some sorts. So they do make at least more sense than a ship breaking pretty much any physical law that you could think off.

That is actually a great idea - what if the team is to re/establish the gate in said area of the derelict space-station? With FTL only possible through these gates, we would have the much beloved cyro-option as a possibility, but with the long-term possibility of FTL arriving at our doorstep.

I'm not a fan of the whole portal network concept. If you guys really want it though I'll do it.

Just so you know, I'm not going to try and make this 100% accurate to science. It's only a forum adventure. I'm not a physicist so even if I really try to make it 100% accurate to real science i'm not going to be able to do it anyway.

I'm getting the vibe that people either want to have a game where it's like build a village/colony in terms of viewpoint but you either have a ship or a space station. Is that right?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Something like that would be neat. There's not much like it, either.

[evilcherry]

Or have it so that FTL has to have both ends in equal gravity areas, requiring vessels to go to certain areas to get to certain areas.

How exactly would that work?

I think he is talking about "Warp Gates" as they are often enough called. While I have seen anything from tunnels spanning the distance to only sender and reciever, it is commonly a controled wormhole of some sorts. So they do make at least more sense than a ship breaking pretty much any physical law that you could think off.

That is actually a great idea - what if the team is to re/establish the gate in said area of the derelict space-station? With FTL only possible through these gates, we would have the much beloved cyro-option as a possibility, but with the long-term possibility of FTL arriving at our doorstep.

I'm not a fan of the whole portal network concept. If you guys really want it though I'll do it.

Just so you know, I'm not going to try and make this 100% accurate to science. It's only a forum adventure. I'm not a physicist so even if I really try to make it 100% accurate to real science i'm not going to be able to do it anyway.

I'm getting the vibe that people either want to have a game where it's like build a village/colony in terms of viewpoint but you either have a ship or a space station. Is that right?

Let's make it a hybrid. Some shipbuilding and "engine" building elements, with some directly interactive parts like Maynard.

[Aseaheru]

But no us having our dudes make random guff or go hunt. should make it a tad easier.

[Mesa]

How about we are some sort of AI on a ship or space station and we have full control of it? (humans being the interfering guys)
Alternatively, the alien queen thing from the first page.


(technological hivemind, think about it)

[Aseaheru]

Depends on the ship and no station. that would make it a tiny bit too build a village.
I just say ship in general as it wont have us building crap.

[RAM]

It occurs to me that you could do a multi-character game centred upon a single location. So, for example, you could draw the bridge every update, having fun with various dials and whatever is on the obligatory big screen, and folk can extrapolate from that what is going on in other locales. You could presumably draw up other parts of the ship, presumably to go along with major upgrades, and probably have a simple map of the ship, possibly drawn up to look like whatever the characters are using, maybe a emergency escape route guide, and on rare(ground operations can be handled by robots and docking with another object is much more grief than just talking) occasions when folk leave the ship you could do mostly symbolic stuff with lots of copy/pasting, as one can choose to assume that 90% of most extraplanetary constructs are monotonous corridors. Or only portray point of entry and point of control... I guess the point of this all is that you wouldn't always have to draw characters if they leave the bridge.

I like independent F.T.L. travel. The alternative raises awkward questions about how you transport the F.T.L. travel devices across interstellar space in a timely fashion, and greatly limits your freedom. I think that the similar gravit

Or have it so that FTL has to have both ends in equal gravity areas, requiring vessels to go to certain areas to get to certain areas.

thing makes little sense, as it would require sensory data from the destination and will never really inhibit interstellar travel because most locations will have gravity levels that are consistent with your own. Also you could jump in-system pretty easily by jumping near to a planet and moving closer or further from it to rapidly adjust your current gravitational pressure and the jumping to the same gravitational pressure relatively distant from any planets to set your distance from the star...
 So it looks like your F.T.L. travel is restricted to going between points that are basically the same distance from the nearest star, but in practice you can abuse it like crazy. And it also requires extremely accurate charts of celestial bodies.

[Evil Lincoln]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It occurs to me that you could do a multi-character game centred upon a single location. So, for example, you could draw the bridge every update, having fun with various dials and whatever is on the obligatory big screen, and folk can extrapolate from that what is going on in other locales. You could presumably draw up other parts of the ship, presumably to go along with major upgrades, and probably have a simple map of the ship, possibly drawn up to look like whatever the characters are using, maybe a emergency escape route guide, and on rare(ground operations can be handled by robots and docking with another object is much more grief than just talking) occasions when folk leave the ship you could do mostly symbolic stuff with lots of copy/pasting, as one can choose to assume that 90% of most extraplanetary constructs are monotonous corridors. Or only portray point of entry and point of control... I guess the point of this all is that you wouldn't always have to draw characters if they leave the bridge.

I had a think about how i would do it and I would keep the ships relatively small and draw every room. Visiting space stations and planets for trade would get a map/picture of the statiom and mostly text. If something is going down on the planet or station I could draw some stuff for the location (I'd probably populate it with generic items and furniture to save time).

It'd just be assumed all the characters have something like a com-badge so i'd let everyone see all the panels. Even without the multi-character nature i'd do it in about the same way.

[GreatWyrmGold]

It occurs to me that you could do a multi-character game centred upon a single location. So, for example, you could draw the bridge every update, having fun with various dials and whatever is on the obligatory big screen, and folk can extrapolate from that what is going on in other locales. You could presumably draw up other parts of the ship, presumably to go along with major upgrades, and probably have a simple map of the ship, possibly drawn up to look like whatever the characters are using, maybe a emergency escape route guide, and on rare(ground operations can be handled by robots and docking with another object is much more grief than just talking) occasions when folk leave the ship you could do mostly symbolic stuff with lots of copy/pasting, as one can choose to assume that 90% of most extraplanetary constructs are monotonous corridors. Or only portray point of entry and point of control... I guess the point of this all is that you wouldn't always have to draw characters if they leave the bridge.

Very true. Many games have nothing but text.

[Evil Lincoln]

I'm pretty set on the whole starship crew idea. I do like a lot of the ones posted but I feel like I could do this adventure well. I haven't made up my mind on a few things though. Firstly and most importantly is whether or not to have actual players instead of acting on general consensus. I've never done it before so it'll be a bit of an experiment.

Secondly is how to start it. There are a few people who like the waking up from stasis setting. This is really interesting from a plot setting perspective since you've already got this plot driven beginning: 'what the hell is going on'. It also provides a nice mechanic in that if a player dies it's much easier to write a new player into the narrative, just pull another character out of stasis.

The other starting situation is something along the lines of You all meet in a space inn.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I linked to tv tropes, deal with it.

This gives a lot more player control over the start. You can pick the supplies, equipment and ship that you start with. Maybe even design your own ship if I bother to think of a simple enough system. Of course I could let the players choose what the ship in the cryo-start is doing but it just seems more fun to have you all wake up with absolutely no background at all.

I had a fiddle and I think I'll be making use of a fractal world generator on http://donjon.bin.sh/. I tried to draw a planet and it just didn't work out. I did a bit of a mock-up of the view you'd have of a system:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I thought i'd share since I bothered to do it up.

So, thoughts?

[10ebbor10]

You could combine them. You wake up in a massive!!!, heavily damaged cryoship*, spend some time gathering supplies and then leave in one of it's docked shuttles.

*It could be one of the first colonizers, before FTL drives were invented. Sadly, during it's century long voyage, technology caught up, and FTL was invented. Hence the ship is now flying through an already colonized area, and you need to leave before it flies back out of the system.

[RAM]

Well, I like. Having little personal control over the start is handy, as adventurers can spend longer selling their loot than looting it... But it raises issues as the mystery will largely die as soon as you meet someone familiar with your expedition who isn't being deliberately obfuscating on the issue. This could me mollified by taking you someplace alien, or being someone alien, showing up in terran space as the only amorphous blob monsters with a fixation on headdresses and hovershoes that anyone has every heard of lets you have civilisation without knowing your past... And no doubt there are plenty of backwater locales that will give you a chance to much about before finding any civilisation at all if that is a preference.
 I have a fondness for the freedom of having my own character, but it raises many issues, such as players not responding in time for an update, people being stuck of a waiting list, people running off on their own tangents with no regard for the rest of the group...  perhaps a hybrid system, people nominate a character they will control, but one character can have many controllers, or people can only submit actions to one character per update, meh, those are exploitable and difficult to police... If a player doesn't post within 24 hours then their character falls to mob rule? Events can happen that cause a character to change players? So, say, if you jump out the airlock, then you die and a new character rocks up with a new player, but if you see your best friend torn apart by the bugblatter beast of Traal then your mind breaks and you get a new one... Sanity checks to keep hold of your player could help with player turnover at least...

[10ebbor10]

Well, you could just  give the characters players an overriding vote on what their character does, and resort to mob rule otherwise.

[Aseaheru]

Good point.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I am just going to mention things.
FTL can still take years, its still incredibly fast but with interstellar space a trip can still take hundreds of years, thus requiring cyro. (this is assuming its only 1.5x the speed of light or something) Also, I can see every large ship with cyro for emergencies, sorta like life boats today, only they shove the survivors in stasis until some sap reaches them.