118 replies to this topic

[Kalshion]

I do have the same concerns as RT does.

What also concerns me are the farmers, IE: Gold Farmers. What's to help curve this possibility of people selling ingame currency for real money?

Because the LAST thing I want in my fleet is for some member to go to some gold farmers website and buy ingame currency with real money and then try to pass it off as them working hard to get it. In fact, that'd piss me off and cause me to throw them out of Prime (and I'd inform Shohashi and the other fleet leaders as well)

[Supreme Cmdr]

What I am worried about is that just like any MMO, the game will attract jerks, lots of them. Add to that the whole anti-derek smart thing, and I can see how some people would play just to mess things up and ruin "those derek smart sycophants' " fun.
Seeing how destroying stations in UC is easy once you get the hang of it (of course capturing is another matter...), that could be a serious issue if you consider allowing people to build stations. Sure stations have defenses, in the form of NPCs or other players, but this can be abused too: unless there are lots of people online at the any time, dedicated to station defense (which doesn't seem to be what you're going for), it will be easy to find a station defended only by its NPC assets (if they'll have such things, like they do in BC/UC). Those are easy to fool, and can even help you destroy the station they're defending (by trying to take you out if you're in range but the station is standing between you and them).
That means, a lone player could easily ruin your hard work for the sake of it.

All games have jerks. There is no defense and there is no point in worrying about it. Given that its an MMO, banning an a/c is trivial.

What could be possible to prevent this:
-no more blind spot in the stations PTA defense grid
-stations indestructible to everything but capital ship fire (as cap ships seem to be a bit too much work for you average griefer I hope)
-stations indestructible outside of planned events?
-making sure NPCs friendly fire is turned off?

None of that will do anything to solve the problem - so it is pointless adding more "stuff" to counter it. Plus all of the above will break the style of the game and can't even be done. e.g. the PTA "blind spot" is based on the station's design and nothing else.

I do have the same concerns as RT does.

What also concerns me are the farmers, IE: Gold Farmers. What's to help curve this possibility of people selling ingame currency for real money?

Because the LAST thing I want in my fleet is for some member to go to some gold farmers website and buy ingame currency with real money and then try to pass it off as them working hard to get it. In fact, that'd piss me off and cause me to throw them out of Prime (and I'd inform Shohashi and the other fleet leaders as well)

Gold farmers are not found in all MMO games. Thats because it depends on the type of game to make it worth their while. They won't have any incentive to be in GCO since the trading system is not like other games and the game is not about trading. So until they show up and it becomes a problem, I'm not concerned about it.

[canshow]

a few more fabricated questions for ya.

1) Will the chance of being able to spawn camp be eliminated?

2) What if a station goes boom and im in it...or will stations become undestructable in a sense and that wont happen?

3) Will lag be an issue? Because i really don't want to inflict 100 damage for every minute im hitting someone...lag is bad..=(

4) If you can, how would you gain credits from combat? (other than pods in space)

5) Artifacts...yes or a no?

6) What do you think you'll set the subscription fee at?

7) Will there be GDS's or you know, those satelites orbiting planets with uber owning capabilities? If yes, would they just be the same concept as in the game? 5000 M away from the space station for no purpose other than to lure poorly programmed NPCs into them?

[Supreme Cmdr]

• There is no spawn camping in any of our pre-existing games, given than there is a period of time when you're invincible during spawn. So this is a non-issue.
• You'll die. No. stations are not indestructible. One thing I'm planning on doing for stations/bases is instead of immediately triggering the destruction event when it is signalled, an alarm goes off and a with a count-down (e.g. 10 secs). So have time to get in your ship and get the hell out. It is similar to how destruction events are currently handles in our recent games (AAW/AOA) whereby something can still be destroyed, but lingers around for a bit before being removed from the world.
• Lag will always be an issue in multiplayer games if you have a bad connection. Since the client/server engine we currently have in recent games is as robust as can be, this is of no concern atm.
• You only gain XP from destroying objects or killing others. If they have cargo (e.g. you blow up a transport), you can of course pick them up - just like you could in previous BC/UC games. No change there.
• No artifacts. All upgrades will be in the same form that we currently have in BC/UC games.
• Sometime next year - but as indicated in the FAQ, a F2P version is definite.
• Yes, there will be Orbital Defense Systems. Given that their code logic has not been revised since the very first BC game, they will be completely overhauled for GCO to make them more effective.

[Space]

Wow, 256 players in a universe is a lot for a fighting part of a game since most fps games this days support around 30 players, yet little for trading and exploring since all you transmit is data that doesn't have high real time value. It's a difficult thing to balance a number of players with server capabilities. It would be nice to have a story in the game because most (and I do know that AD3000 doesn't want to copy other titles) MMO offer choices in which you can do what you want or do quest and explore more about the game you are playing. Something like:

When you begin the game you can choose to enroll in a academy or get a random class in a draft.
With either option you have a choice of either enlisting in a army/navy, and follow a career or roam the galaxy as you want to. You do get an option to go through training (which you can skip, because most will be covered in a 100 or more pages manual or two ) which offers you a quick introduction on how to do stuff with a chosen asset.
Enlist and you get steady income + bonuses for missions and a chance to be promoted to a higher rank. If you choose free roam then you make your own money doing quest, trading, bounty hunting and so. Both parties can form and join in a player fleets.
Example:
After few months exploring and fighting in a space navy you finally get promoted to the rank of a captain of a battleship (doesn't have fighters but does have hangar in which transports can deliver goods and has storage space for a ship or two to dock ). With that rank you can plan combat missions for npcs and players and you can pay them with your command authorized budget. If the npcs are in your navy fleet you can give them patrol routes. For PC you can set something like scan system x planet y (or sector z ) for xyz credits and put that on a public job offers which can be accessed in job offering system/ship. All big ships come with a map room and in that room you can plan those missions.
Some ranks in player fleet's should be able to do the same.

Will it be possible to construct buildings on planets, such as industrial, military, and commerce types of buildings ? And even possibly connect that with space station in orbit. If you have trade station you get more income of the planet, if you have military one you get more protection general purpose station populates planet faster and so on.
Will this game have total destruction enabled, so that you can destroy the station, bomb (orbital bombardment ?) the planet and ultimately allow one race to destroy all others completely.

Things that would be nice:
-personal data pad
In which you can take your notes, get reports from your assets...
-respawn system with a twist
besides regular insurance on assets which you can choose to pay in some time cycles you also have to pay some tax value on your life. The more secure the location the more expensive it gets. Basically you can transfer character info to less secure locations which transmits your info once every month to permanent storage (race home planet) but can be destroy and set you back.
-offline location
you can die even if you are not online
-offline progression
you can go to the gym => increases your movement speed
do chores => earn more money
counseling => increase morale
study => get xp per min and so on...
-fleet morale
constant loses on a battlefront can turn some of your races assets to pirates and as such endanger some areas for assets
-natural expansions
every so often race will try to colonize another planet (if you have high enough rank you might influence that )
-”smart” AI
AI can chose to run from a fight if heavily outnumbers (more important navy assets of another race)
-maneuvers
each ship should have thruster hard points which you can preprogram to be used as you wish (if you don't like default ones) and those maneuvers into quickslot bar for use in combat. Limited by the amount of fuel/refueling time and usage.

Some ideas:
For taking down a station, I would recommend that you as a attacking player/group of players also have to invest a lot of money to destroy it. Such as 1. (less expensive) block the comm chatter out of station so they can't send sos, and new npc won't rush to the system, player owner of the station will lose communication with that station, but can be bypassed by launching a probe or sending a fighter to send an sos outside of the blockage. 2. (expensive) Put out some sort of device that block's fast speed arrival of ships via ftl drive, minimum 5-10 minutes distance to cross if you are outside of that's thing range. Can be destroyed . Otherwise nearby police and navy npc assets will rush to the aid of that station even if they are few systems away.

For system traveling:
You can jump one system of distance instantaneously. More than one you have to wait certain amount of time unless you are in your race territory, where you can travel instantaneously as well because you don't have to slow down so that your nav computer can process data
If you chose to jump in a system which is controlled by the enemy and more then 1 system away their sensor will go off and they will welcome you with their full arsenal. And outside their systems are regular patrols, satellites and so on (something like Star Treks' neutral zone).

[Supreme Cmdr]

I have answered some more questions over here at the HLP forums. I'll just cut and paste.

Hey guys, good suggestions and commentary all around - exactly the kind of discussion we should be having. Let me highlight some points which I need to make clear.

If you haven't yet, PLEASE do the following:

1. Download and play the Echo Squad SE demo (2008). This will give you an idea of the twitch based fighter space combat.

2. Download and play either All Aspect Warfare (2009) or Angle Of Attack (2009) game demos. This will give you an idea of the aerial combat, first person engine etc. These are ALL new technologies which will be used in GCO and will remain largely unchanged.

3. Download and play the freeware Universal Combat (2004) game. Though this is a much older game, without having to buy the newer Universal Combat Collector's Edition v2.0 (2009), this is the closest that you will get to having an idea of how the cap ship combat, space<->planetary transition, fps etc will work since everything is rolled into these UC games.

As I mentioned in the GCO game's FAQ as well as on the forum thread, the idea here is not to change anything that works; but rather to lower the barrier of entry somewhat, while keeping intact the elements that more advanced players love about the games

Welcome back to HLP Mr Smart.

As I said before, I think BC3000AD would work quite well as an MMO, it allows the universe to flourish without having to be pushed along, which leaves a lot more room for the real fun stuff server-side.

Indeed. Which is primarily why there are absolutely no quests, missions or anything of the sort. The IP's underlying storyline which seeds alliances, territories and such - are all there is. So this will keep the game's open ended nature intact.

I was an Eve player, but I quit, because the game was dividing too heavily into 'haves' and 'have-nots', there were too many in-crowds, and no chance to simply wander around and experience the game universe in general, the hard part of any MMO, I suppose, is catering to the vast spread of playing types there are out there, some people prefer non PvP games, where they can sight-see, others prefer one on one combat, personally, I'm not a big fan of unsolicited PvP, something Eve was absolutely rife with, I think, to be honest, CCP got too obsessed with it being a community and not obsessed enough with it being a game. That's my experiences/thoughts on Space-based MMO's anyway.

Exactly. And this is the reason why we're scouting the space sim communities and getting feedback. I certainly don't want the game to favor expert players or to have an unbalanced game world. My goal is for those starting the game today, to not be at a significant disadvantage against players who came in months before. That of course is going to be tricky, but if the game is not complex and rewards all gamers equally, I don't see that as being a problem. Sure, some issues will arise, but thats what game balancing is all about and is exactly the reason why I'm going to start the public testing from the late Alpha stage and right through to the final release.

As to the PvP vs PvE issue - I am well aware of this and will rely on the testers to shape that path. Due to how the game world is designed, I don't see PvP as being a big problem. For example, a Terran/Military player starting off at GALCOM HQ station (in orbit around Earth) can still trade and explore the Terran quadrant without fear of being attacked. Of course if you get too close to a hostile station (e.g. in Sygan), you will be. One thing I have in place is a "weapons off" directive whereby via electronic locks, your weapons simply won't work. Period. The problem with that is say this is activated in Earth region, this means that no combat can go on in that region - hence the station there will never be attacked.

So it is going to be a balancing act - especiallyh for a game that have PvP components. As there are no quests or stories, being that the game is neither instanced nor sharded, PvE is going to be just players going up against NPC station or base assets. e.g. if you engaged the Sygan station - even with no human players in the region - the station will launch defense assets, fire its turrets, missile batteries etc. This means that it works exactly as it does now. If you just want to trade, then you stick to the friendly trade lanes. But tbh, without PvP in this game, its not going to be much fun for long. I guess the thrill is going to be seeing how deep into enemy territory you can go with illegal arms and such withough getting blown to bits. Since the game world is already seeded, there is a lot of exploration to be done. And the richer you become, the more likely you are to find a barren rock and build something on it without anyone knowing about it.

My goal for GCO is the same as my previous BC/UC games in that I want gamers to make their own adventure. Anyone who finds this to be an issue, will have to go play something else.

Ah, but part of the appeal (to me) would be that you COULD, if you so wanted, move from space combat area of engagement to atmospheric flight, or land, or disembark your vehicle, all continuously without activating a planetfall cutscene or anything like that. And also if you were not careful, you could end up burning in the atmosphere if you overstressed your craft... or if you dropped too low in a space craft not qualified for atmospheric entries. It would be largely non-issue if the player started at 36000 km altitude at geosynchronous orbit; for all intents and purposes, orbital mechanics wouldn't really disrupt combat there.

Our games have no cutscenes. Never did. The transition from space<->planet takes place in an external camera view once you set in motion the event that drops the ship into planetfall. Having it any other way (e.g. how Infinity QfE does it) adds nothing to the game and is of no consequence whatsoever. The issue with airfoil stress, atmospheric burnup etc - again - add nothing to the game and just adds another barrier for newcomers who have to learn all that stuff. Thats not my goal. My goal is to make the game easy to get into, play and fun, not work. None of the above bear any relation to that goal.

It would also introduce some pretty interesting dynamics to the space combat, since you could then have spacecraft that are capable of only spaceflight but be more optimized for space combat (lack of wings and other accessories required of airplanes reduces weight), vehicles capable of both atmospheric and space flight, and airplanes that would only operate on the atmosphere.

None of that equals fun.

The way I see it, space combat would be concentrated on a very small areas - mainly, stations on geosynchronous orbits and Lagrangian points in the system. Players interested mainly in space combat would be deployed on these areas, however it would be possible for them to traverse to the planet's surface if they so wanted. Similarly, people interested in atmospheric flight combat would be spawned either on air starts or airfields depending on the mission, but if some hardcore player really wanted, he could pick an space flight qualified airplane, get into orbit and attack the enemy capital ship on low orbit. Or a flight of ground attack craft could undock from that low orbit capital ship, descend to the atmosphere and commence a ground attack. Being deployed on the immediate vicinity of action would make the game accessible to people who aren't intersted in long sessions of simple transition from place A to place B, but continous game world would make that possible too.

Thats now how my games work. The game world is open and with no restrictions. Also, adding artificial barriers does not equal to fun. If you see a planet, you can fly around it, do what you want etc. And if you decide to enter it, you just target it, press a key and planetfall is engaged.

...or you could have orbital drop shock troopers (with another name to avoid trademark conflicts ) seamlessly deployed from low orbit to surface. Or you could have a transport pilot delivering a Marine squad on a space station, or other endless options.

You can already do that in my BC/UC games. But this won't be in GCO because there are no NPC crew. The only way cap ships are going to be able to deploy troops to a planet from space using the transporters, is if the troops are human players on board the ship.

Myself, I would prefer to fly single pilot craft in either atmospheric or spaceborne ship-to-ship combat, but the option where you would be able to gather my survival kit after crash landing on enemy territory, and try to avoid capture is sort of interesting too.

Thats already part of the current BC/UC gameplay mechanic. Even in All Aspect Warfare, you can shot down out in the middle of nowhere and can teleport to a friendly nearby base using a key sequence. I intend to preserve this gameplay mechanic in GCO but with some penalities.

Regarding form of combat, I'm sort of torn. I personally greatly prefer visual range gun combat (aka dogfighting) to BVR missile fights, but on the other hand it might be implausible to exclude missiles altogether. Perhaps making them a commodity might work best; that way you could both make them plausibly destructive and explain why there aren't too many of them.

...and although visual range swarm missiles are visually stunning, I don't think I would want to deal with a Macross Missile Massacre being unleashed on me... :nervous:

This is space in the 30th century. Use of missiles and BVR combat is inevitable. By the same token, the advance jamming tech means that using missiles doesn't always guarantee a success. Especially since the game is twitch based and thus player skill comes into play.

People have to remember there is a very big trade-off involved with First Person perspective from an MMO point of view, because a heck of a lot more data needs to be passed around about projectiles, angles etc, that's why most MMO's work a 'dice-roll' system.

If you think a stand alone server has trouble keeping track of the lasers shots from a single Multiplayer game, wait until you try keeping track of the shots from a hundred skirmishes across the universe. I think you'd have to do something like turn local combat into a 'mini-multiplayer' game, and that might cause problems with ships moving locally, arriving on the scene etc, because the current state would have to be transferred to those ships as well from the combatants.

That may be an issue for someone who has no experience with networking or building large game worlds. But its not in our case. Bah! we already did that back in 2003. Our networking architecture is client/server based and one of the reasons that I'm keeping the player limit to 256 per server is so that everything runs as best as it can in real-time. This is not P2P. The server doesn't send data to clients that don't need it. So its not like if you're in Terran quadrant, you're going to be getting server data packets from the Gammulan quadrant.

Elementary stuff really. Been there. Done that.

Yes, and that's not even the smallest of problems in a real-sized, continuous planet/solar system sized environment. To look good, the planet would need some serious model detail, and that alone would be... significantly large amount of data. :nervous: The Earth looks like crap in Orbiter when you get down from the orbit...

Realities bite. I suppose we need a couple more years until we can simulate an universe in our universe so we can fight wars while living in peace...

Visual quality has nothing to do with networking. The server is console based and doesn't do any graphics processing whatsoever. The visual quality of the planet as seen from space is down to how many polys are used to draw it, the quality and size of the texture used and whether or not mipmapping and/or Perlin noise is used when up close.

Again, elementary stuff that is of no consequence.

Make Resnig an NPC and make it possible to kill him in the most visceral way imaginable. I recommend some sort of cinematic when you throw him out of the airlock while orbiting Jupiter.

Anyway, my advices would be to:

- Make the interface follow the industry's standards. Last time I played BCMG I remember the FPS part having some unusual key configuration.
- Storywise, I'm not sure if it was resolved, but some info on the crashed probe (who launched it? what was it doing?) would be nice.
- Make it possible to invade other ships. In BCMG and UC you could never invade other ships, but you were always the one being boarded. I think this was done because of some technical difficulty but it's kind of jarring.


The BC universe always fitted an MMO better than a single-player game as someone already pointed out.

Ah yes, no BC/UC conversation without reference to Resnig. hehe, since there are no NPC crews in the game, I guess the only way there is ever going to be a Resnig is if a player happens to play as him and is part of your ship.

If BCMG was the last game you played, man, you're like ten years out. A LOT has gone on in terms of interface, key commands etc. Try playing one of the games I mentioned at the start of this post and see for yourself.

There is no storyline in GCO. Though there will be planned "events" which can be scheduled to take place at a certain date/time/place. If a player misses that event, then it never happens again. I intend to use this to flesh out some of the underlying mythos of the game world and its various nations. These events will be planned and announced well in advance of their occurence. And yes, the crashed probe is one of many such stories that I intend to resolve in GCO.

You can't board other ships or stations in the first release of GCO simply because there won't be any first person gameplay mode inside those assets. This will be added maybe a year or so after release as an add-on expansion. With that in place, sure you can board other ships and run around inside them in first person perspective. The FAQ has a link to shots of the Engstrom carrier levels to show as an example.

Yup, they can all be done, of that I'm certain, if there's one thing I don't think about Derek Smart, it's that he would be considering the concept if he didn't feel it was possible, and I wish him luck with it, but I will admit to being interested in how the first-person hurdle would be overcome, as I mentioned earlier, the way that occurs to me is creating a 'mini' multiplayer game that works peer-peer between the ships involved, if you could keep most combat outside the main traffic zones, that would ease a lot of weight on the servers.

Not sure I understand what "first person hurdle" you're talking about. There is no "first person hurdle". We've had first person in my games for the past ten years or so. Made even better in the recently released All Aspect Warfare and thats the same fps engine that is being used in GCO as shown in the movie currently on the teaser site.

All the server does is send data back and forth between clients. It is pure client/server architecture and with 256 players the server won't even break a sweat. It is all down to server CPU, memory and bandwidth. Nothing to do with the game itself.

Mr. Smart, I'd advise you to look into the Infinity: Quest for Earth forums. They have a whole lot of good sugegstions on their board and will probably be your competition in a sense. And competition is healthy

uhm, I don't think so. I'm not going to go to someone's site and rudely peddle my game.

Apart from that, they are a totally different community. For one thing, Infinity is more of a tech demo and proof-of-concept, than a viable game property. Each time I think about it, I go back to how I started out with a ton of ambitious ideas and such - then ended up with very niche games decades later. I do not believe that it will evolve into a game that many people will play.

My advice is to adjust the controls to the craft. Fighters are twich-based and should handle and be controled like that. Large capital ships are about planning and strategy. So as you move from smaller to bigger ships, the controls and mechanics move ever more from twich-based to point-and-click strategic.

Have that already.

What else? A certain level of modularity between ships, but not too much. Infity is going for a non-specialization principle and it's a good thing - up to a point. But if the difference between a military battelship hull and a freighter hull is miniscue, then what's the point of having different categories?

Have that already.

A good selection of weapons and defenses. No levels. No grinding. Let simple logic guide the universe. No traders flying state-of-the-art military warships. What kind of a retarded military would sell you one anyway? If you want it, you have to be a trusted and distinguished memer of the military. Otherwise, go buy civilian hulls/ships.

Have that already.

I made quite a lof of suggestions on the Infintiy boards. May be simpler to just try to find them and copy-paste. Or if you go and read the boards there I won't need to bother.

Nah, thats ok. As I said, GCO is built off my game properties and tech that already works.

Yes, but when the environment gets big enough, the amount of data that the client side computers is needed to recreate from given random seeds (essentially compressed format) of the game world, the loading times and hardware requirements shoot up sky high (pun absolutely intended). Procedural terrain data that uses a material system for different surface types would be the only sensible solution, but even then the sheer size of the thing would be... troublesome. The accuracy of the terrain needs to be the same for everyone so that collision detection with terrain works the same for everyone, so that means either everyone is required to use the same level of terrain detail (bad idea if you plan on making the game available for a variety of hardware specs, unless you plan on limiting the level of detail on the level that can be run with minimum hardware requirements) or you need some very intelligently designed LOD system that would decrease the surface model detail on long distance while keeping the detail constant at the immediate vicinity of the player.

Infinity is sort of close to what I have in mind... but I'm not having high hopes of it being finished in any reasonable time frame. :blah: Hopefully, they prove me wrong.

Not an issue. Even procedural terrain has its limitations. Unlike BC/UC games, GCO is not modeling entire planets because it is pointless and wasted data which nobody is going to see or play on. Sure it will be a large map, but where you emerge from space or start on from the planet side of things, is currently no larger than a 500 sq. km stretch of area. Our recent AAW/AOA games used a 400 sq. km stretch of land on a single planet - and people still complained that it was too big. Since GCO is only going to have 256 players per server, creating massive planets is pointless and adds nothing to the gameplay.

With the 500 sq. km map area, the terrain data is trivial. Heck, the map itself for each planet is only 32MB. And since gas giants don't have any terrain, of the 216 or so planets in the game world, only about 175 have any terrain. The server demand loads the entire galaxy without issue.

They are making steady progress. At least in the models department (which remids me... I have to get off my ass and finish the Deltan station).
I'm not so sure about the coding, but the trade system seems to be coming alone nicely too. That said, I do fear the game is trying to be too many things at once.

Indeed. And thats what I was talking about earlier. To me it appears to be more of a comp.sci experiment more than anything else. They are quite competent of course but the fact is, there is a big difference between a science proof-of-concept experiment and a game.

My guess is that it won't evolve as a game anytime soon. The terrain engine - if it actually does what I've read on there in any meaningful way and with decent performance - is something that they should consider packaging and licensing out. In fact, at one point I had considered joining forces with them, but decided against it because I wasn't convinced that they actually want to make a game out of it. Going from tech to game is a major leap that most first timers tend to underestimate. I should know - I've been there.

[fluxax]

IMHO there is no need to put storyline in GCO, because I almost never played BC/UC campaign based on storyline. For me the best part of game is free roam mode. I played campaign once in BC 2.09 and thats it.

When add to this MMO elements of gameplay in GCO there will be plenty of fun without storyline.

[Kalshion]

That answered quite a few of the questions I had lingering in this head of mine. I knew there was a reason why I stuck with 3000AD (Derek sticks to his guns, and never runs out of ammo)

[Supreme Cmdr]

From another board posting:

Not a fan MMO games myself,but just out of interest will there be any animal life on the planets,can you fly/drive all the way around the planet or are they level based,will there be day/night sequences and will there be any weather or exotic atmosphere on the surface of the planets

Though there will be planet life on some planets, there are currently no plans to have animal life on any planet.

The accessible planetary areas cover about 1000 sq. km (twice the size of the surface area of the world used in AAW/AOA) and are not level based.

As mentioned in the FAQ, the planets all have day/night swquences as well as various weather patterns.

[ShoHashi]

The accessible planetary areas cover about 1000 sq. km (twice the size of the surface area of the world used in AAW/AOA)

And, I will point out, is going to be huge! :-)

-Sho

[canshow]

Another few questions regarding planets and other stuff...


1) Would hiring FCs to defend a starbase be possible? (like how FCs automatically launch from NPC ones in UCCE when i fly near them)
a) Same thing with starstations?

2) The defenses of starbases, would they be hard to break through, or would a little maneuvering through a FC would be enough to break through defenses and do some damage? (considering if they have time to maneuver over and over again until the base defenses are destroyed)

3) Is the option of capturing starbases/starstations there?

If yes:

a.) Will i have to make the health drop down below 300 before they give me the option?

ab.) Would the "owners" of the starbases/stations be able to set an automatic surrender/distress point? Like once the health or shield drops below a certain number, the station automatically sends a distress call or surrenders?

b.) Will the fleet be notified if a base/station is destroyed or possibly captured?

c.) Does the person get something other than EXP for performing one of the two acts on the base/station?

4.) Will there be any "group-loot" things be implemented? Like joining a formation (or fleet i guess) and when someone destroys a ship or something else, everyone gets a share of the EXP or w/e, or would this not be implemented because of possible abuse/difficulty/dumbsiness?

5.) Will there be random events (or special events) to make trade prices for a certain NPC starstation go up or down like a planet/system famine, natural disaster, ETC (some kind of reason)?

6.) Will Fatigue affect players(if any) and how?
a.) Same thing with health.

7.) Will fleets be affected by friendly fire?

8.) Will there be alliances or diplomacy with other fleets? And would friendly fire affect mutual relationships with those fleets?

9.) Asteroid belts? Fly-through nebulas? BIG mobile fleet HQs? Flux fields? SECRET HIDEOUTS IN FLUX FIELDS?


That's all i have for now.

Expect more questions when i think of them SC :B

[Supreme Cmdr]

Another few questions regarding planets and other stuff...


1) Would hiring FCs to defend a starbase be possible? (like how FCs automatically launch from NPC ones in UCCE when i fly near them)
a) Same thing with starstations?

No. There is no such "hiring" concept in the game and there won't be. Stations and bases will still launch fighters/troops if hostiles are detected. Thats the PvE part of the game.

2) The defenses of starbases, would they be hard to break through, or would a little maneuvering through a FC would be enough to break through defenses and do some damage? (considering if they have time to maneuver over and over again until the base defenses are destroyed)

I can't answer real-time game tactics since I have no idea how things will play out in each session.

3) Is the option of capturing starbases/starstations there?

Read the FAQ.

If yes:

a.) Will i have to make the health drop down below 300 before they give me the option?

Though subject to change, I don't expect it to work any differently than it currently does.

ab.) Would the "owners" of the starbases/stations be able to set an automatic surrender/distress point? Like once the health or shield drops below a certain number, the station automatically sends a distress call or surrenders?

No. It is automated. Just like it currently works. Of course someone in a fleet can send a chat message just as you would any other message.

b.) Will the fleet be notified if a base/station is destroyed or possibly captured?

See above

c.) Does the person get something other than EXP for performing one of the two acts on the base/station?

Probably.

4.) Will there be any "group-loot" things be implemented? Like joining a formation (or fleet i guess) and when someone destroys a ship or something else, everyone gets a share of the EXP or w/e, or would this not be implemented because of possible abuse/difficulty/dumbsiness?

No. Its not that kind of game. If there are cargo pods around, whoever gets it first, owns it.

5.) Will there be random events (or special events) to make trade prices for a certain NPC starstation go up or down like a planet/system famine, natural disaster, ETC (some kind of reason)?

No.

6.) Will Fatigue affect players(if any) and how?
a.) Same thing with health.

This part of the game mechanic has not changed. So yes.

7.) Will fleets be affected by friendly fire?

It will work just the way it does now. So yes.

8.) Will there be alliances or diplomacy with other fleets?

Thats up to the players and not something the game mechanic enforces.

And would friendly fire affect mutual relationships with those fleets?

See previous answer.

9.) Asteroid belts? Fly-through nebulas? BIG mobile fleet HQs? Flux fields? SECRET HIDEOUTS IN FLUX FIELDS?

Yes. Probably. Probably not. Yes. Probably.

That's all i have for now.

[thomasc]

Looks good and sounds promising. Can't wait to see it in action...

[canshow]

Round 3! (or erm...4?... If FAQ is updated, or questions answered already, my bad)

1) Windowed Mode available?

2) Ok, so, market will not be player controlled, correct? Or atleast not player controlled while everyone is in a gunship/shuttle.

3) Will larger ships need to be bought with Exp., Credits, or both?

4) This is based off Q2&3 - Can fleets set discounts/their own prices for ships? If not ships, then shuttles, FCs, upgrades.

5) Im assuming we sleep in our assets or a station/base, correct?

6) Ground combat similar to UCCE? Yes/no? - Im asking this because i die pretty quickly when im shot at in UCCE, >_<.

7) Will there be some kind of, attacking restriction? I'm not sure how this would be done, but if it can be done, will it be done?

8) Follow up on Q7 - I assume ground vehicles/people can't shoot at air targets? No lock on missile launcher?(Would be pretty sick)

-----SUGGESTION-----
How about BCs? Or err...Bomber Craft. Mainly for destroying ground units/building since an FC would be shot out of the sky in a few minutes without doing much damage.
Could replace FCs, and could be more expensive
--------------------------

9) More/less NPC activity in some regions/system then in others?

10) How do you plan on making our Profiles look like? Kind of like in the UC series(like the roster page or w/e.) or something new & spicy?

11) Random server time EXP. Bonuses? Like if you kill something between 4-8PM on a sunday you get 50% extra experience points from it?

12) Say if you were to kill EVERY merchant/trader ship coming into a starstation, would that inflict consequences, or not?

13) Im just going to say this --- FC TO FC Combat is VERY DIFFICULT (for me atleast when playing an NPC), are you going to change it around in your MMO or keep it blastfully hard to kill a moving FC? (considering EMP(or whatever it is) can still be used)

14) Chats? What kind? --- Any game admins?

15) Considering this will be played in a massive server, how many players do you expect playing in... lets say a month or two?

*i know your not finished with the MMO, but just taking other MMO stats into consideration, how many people would flock over to your game?*

16) Can fleet's potentially destroy other fleets? (You could make a battle system of some sort, using the fleets bank account, Fleet bases/stations, or just a given ammount of HP that's subtracted when something in the fleet dies)

17) Will be able to upload our own songs into the game? (like copying MP3 files into the music folder or something)

18) New ship types? Yes/No/Maybe so?

19) Ships are all player run, correct? No NPC staff, no nothing?

20) Could you share some details on the ODS overhaul please? =)

21) Multiple-part question:

a) Will you start out with default weapons (rocket launcher, rifle, shotgun, or w/e set you pick)?
Could it still be possible for me to kill (or severly damage) ships using a rocket launcher at close range? (kind of rigged if the ship doesn't move)
c) Will ship turrets target people in space also? In theory, if enough of us have no life, a good # of us can travel by jetpack for a few hours to a starstation, and fire our rockets/laser at the same time at the shields, overwhelm them, and then possibly destroy/capture it by the way of person
d) Will there still be an ammo limit?

[Ekre]

cant wait! it seems, my dream will finally come true! i always wanted an mmo, based on your games, thanks Derek!

[Supreme Cmdr]

I am going to skip anything that is either irrelevant/unrelated/out of scope/already discussed in the FAQ or this thread/rubbish

3) Will larger ships need to be bought with Exp., Credits, or both?

You can't buy anything with XP

4) This is based off Q2&3 - Can fleets set discounts/their own prices for ships? If not ships, then shuttles, FCs, upgrades.

No such mechanism exists. All prices are set by the game. Remember, this is primarily a combat game.

5) Im assuming we sleep in our assets or a station/base, correct?

Sleep?

9) More/less NPC activity in some regions/system then in others?

Yes, of course

12) Say if you were to kill EVERY merchant/trader ship coming into a starstation, would that inflict consequences, or not?

Works the same way it does in previous BC/UC games.

13) Im just going to say this --- FC TO FC Combat is VERY DIFFICULT (for me atleast when playing an NPC), are you going to change it around in your MMO or keep it blastfully hard to kill a moving FC? (considering EMP(or whatever it is) can still be used)

As mentioned in the FAQ, are NO plans to change ANYTHING that currently works. So no, the flight dynamics and AI will not change. Bet start practicing.

16) Can fleet's potentially destroy other fleets? (You could make a battle system of some sort, using the fleets bank account, Fleet bases/stations, or just a given ammount of HP that's subtracted when something in the fleet dies)

No such mechanism exists in the game and won't. If you somehow manage to destroy all ships in a fleet, the fleet will still exist until it starts filling up again with assets/players.

17) Will be able to upload our own songs into the game? (like copying MP3 files into the music folder or something)

I don't see why not. That code in the previous BC/UC games hasn't changed AFAIK

18) New ship types? Yes/No/Maybe so?

No. The game is based on a fixed universe mythos that is not subject to change.

19) Ships are all player run, correct? No NPC staff, no nothing?

For the most part.

20) Could you share some details on the ODS overhaul please? =)

No big deal, they'll just have better target acquisition.

a) Will you start out with default weapons (rocket launcher, rifle, shotgun, or w/e set you pick)?

It depends on your initial class.

c) Will ship turrets target people in space also? In theory, if enough of us have no life, a good # of us can travel by jetpack for a few hours to a starstation, and fire our rockets/laser at the same time at the shields, overwhelm them, and then possibly destroy/capture it by the way of person

Turrets never target personnel and never will.

[Mogon]

Three questions about space combat.

1.) I share canshow's concern with SF Marines. What if a slow ship fell under attack by SF Marines in space, I know they do not pose much of a threat by themselves, but a swarm of them may potentially be a threat, will the captain be able to deploy an EVA squad of their own marines in retalliation?

2.) Ive heard that there will not be an NPC crew as we knew it in BC/UC, so assuming PERSCAN is out, what will this mean for Tactical/Logistics?

3.) Would captaining a capital ship in space in GCO feel similar to BC/UC just without crew management, or would there be any other change? with the exception of the 3D Bridges, that is

[Supreme Cmdr]

Three questions about space combat.

1.) I share canshow's concern with SF Marines. What if a slow ship fell under attack by SF Marines in space, I know they do not pose much of a threat by themselves, but a swarm of them may potentially be a threat, will the captain be able to deploy an EVA squad of their own marines in retalliation?

There currently is no SF marine character in GCO and it is highly unlikely that there will be; as they serve no functional purpose to the game. Which means that you won't be able to leave your ship while in space either.

2.) Ive heard that there will not be an NPC crew as we knew it in BC/UC, so assuming PERSCAN is out, what will this mean for Tactical/Logistics?

Both Tactical and Logistix have non-crew related funtionality and so will remain. Also note that the NPC cap ship crew may remain, but you won't be able to deploy them as you could in previous BC/UC games. Once the 3D levels are introduced, the ship's total number of allowed crew members may be increased to allow for human players to co-exist with NPC crew (all 3D models).

3.) Would captaining a capital ship in space in GCO feel similar to BC/UC just without crew management, or would there be any other change? with the exception of the 3D Bridges, that is

Yes. All of that will remain basically the same.

[Mogon]

Awww, I loved flying around the station in my space suit, the sense of scale was unparalell, when you realised how big the station was...
O well, Im sure there will be much more going on inside

Glad to hear the capital ship flying will be similar, I loved the cruisers.

1 more question I forgot to ask, with respect to the 3D interriors of craft:
Will there be the possibility of using TrackIR with GCO? e.g. looking around the bridge of a ship/cockpit of a fighter/shuttle

[Supreme Cmdr]

Awww, I loved flying around the station in my space suit, the sense of scale was unparalell, when you realised how big the station was...
O well, Im sure there will be much more going on inside

It may come back in some form or another at some point after the game is out. The issue is not with the SFM, but rather the fact that the playable SFM career as the alter ego for the CMDR career. Since the careers are all handled differently now, that sort of handling is not possible without a lot of hacking. At some point, if SFM was to be introduced, it won't be as a career like in the legacy games, but rather in the form of a suit upgrade. So if you wanted to exit a craft/station in outer space, you needed to have a suit to make it possible. Which of course means you'd have to buy one.

Will there be the possibility of using TrackIR with GCO? e.g. looking around the bridge of a ship/cockpit of a fighter/shuttle

There are no plans to add TrackIR support to any of our games.