Okay, since this is the place to dump game ideas, here's another one.
===Roll to Independence War: Badlands Cluster===
Who are the players:
- The players are a motley group of independent enterprising free traders, specializing in trade good redistribution. Or, as the evil corporations that have their iron grip on the throats of the honest workers of the cluster say - pirates. Space pirates.
- Each player has a ship. Not in the sense of being the "captain" of a ship, but rather being a "pilot" - most, if not all available ships are primarily small fighters - relatively, of course. Smallest fighters, i.e. those used by the police, measure 20 meters in length, and mass in at 40 tons - just shy of a Boeing 737, though they don't have a wingspan to speak of. Each player is limited to just owning one ship at any one time, but they are free to upgrade it as they see fit, or trade it in for another ship if the opportunity presents itself.
Where does this happen:
- The setting for the game is the Badlands Cluster - a collection of eight reasonably nearby starsystems, loosely populated by people of various callings. Most - indeed, nearly all - events take place in space, since planets are mostly civilian, and have very little presence in the cluster if you don't count the production and consumption of trade goods. The Badlands provide a lot of space for action either way, and there is little reason to go to the planets, even if you somehow find spacecraft good enough to survive reentry and get back into space.
- The Badlands cluster isn't a terribly hospitable place for a bunch of pirates, so this necessitates having a base of operations. Similar to the game the setting is taken from, players will be inhabiting a derelict Bio-Bomber (giant terraforming ship) stuck in the middle of a tumultous asteroid-filled nebula called the Effreet, that blocks all communications and generally messes with sensors, preventing the base from being discovered.
What will the players be doing:
- Generally, there is no overarching goal to this. Not at first, at any rate. Unlike the game, this is going to be a complete sandbox - though certain events will still transpire that push the plot along.
- In the meantime, the players will do what space pirates generally do - hunt corporate freighters, steal their cargo, and trade that cargo in. It won't be as simple as that, of course.
- There won't be a "medium" tradesystem. All trade is strictly deal-based. No trading goods in for "money", and buying goods for "money", with one exception. Normally players, as a group, will need to find other independent groups and strike deals with them, trading giant 50x50x50m pods of cargo for new guns, ammunition, and schematics. Or just skip the middle man and find shipments of what you need - just be aware that weapon shipments tend to be escorted by sizeable fleets.
- Inside the base, the players will be free to engage in creative upgrading of their ships. Ships are pretty modular by default, but changes via cutting and welding are possible - if not exactly easy to make compatible with the autorepair systems. The base can also be upgraded, in limited ways.
- When not flying a ship, players can mostly do anything, imagination and base equipment permitting. Due to having a Bio-Bomber's nano-assembly plant, the base is equipped with a near-limitless supply of expendable drones and flitters, allowing anyone to set up practice ranges for just about anything. This also means that any useless cargo can be recycled into material for this assembly plant, rendering it not as useless, and schematics for ammunition and missiles and whatnot would be quite the sought-after prize.
How will this all work:
- The game would likely use the Advanced RTD system, because it's fairly serious in tone. Player stats will mostly be limited to piloting, technical, and social skills - there is hardly a use for strength and agility when your ship does the fighting. Ships are complex bits of tech, including shields, armor, autorepair systems, power systems, different engines, sensors, and navigation systems, and of course weapons, which will all compound to define several key stats of the ship that will be used as roll values. During combat, the player is "one with the ship", stats-wise, merely adding his skills into the ship's stats pool. Combat would be complex, with overheating, power distribution, sensor signatures, shield covering, and weapon arcs all being important - though not necessarily tracked. Most actions would be resolved in opposed rolls.
- Outside of combat, ships can fly on autopilot, which guarantees success in flight, navigation, docking, and assorted maneuvers, plus provides a decent bonus to automatic collision evasion - though they automatically fail anything related to dodging incoming fire, or flying fast, because they obey established safe speed limits.
- All content and maps for the game will be taken from the source, Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos, but operating more as little fleet than a single ship. Starting players will get a choice of several basic ships, differing by the roles they are intending to perform. There will be a number of NPCs doing various tasks around the players - including being secondary ship crew and flying the cargo-ferrying freighters, unless some player will want to volunteer for flying one.
...any other information I can't think of at the moment may be added later. Of course, I won't be able to run the game (unless I dump the Whaler RTD on somebody), but anyone is free to take it up and I can provide universe knowledge, should it be required.