Forums » Suggestions
Bulk containers aren't actually a bad idea if we get ships capable of carrying scores or even hundreds of cargo units. If you made them destroyable, they could release a regular cargo.
Clones and memory dumps: Imagine that.. every time you lose a ship and a body your clone gets the memories from the morning _before_ you went out on your patrol. That would mean that you never gain experience from losing. "Dude, I'm telling you, you've roll a little faster in that maneuver. You die every time." Hopefully philosophers and neurologists would've decided by this time that the essence of humanity was truly in these brain waves and that changing the physical brain was no more significant than swapping out a hard drive... otherwise people would be pretty reluctant.
Escape Pods and Teleportation: If the escape pod can teleport to safety, why not the entire pilot? Or perhaps the escape pod is very small black box that not only records ship computer data, but the pilots' brain waves.
Unmanned Fighters: Well, Arolte, even if this is more likely as a futurists' prediction, obviously we want the game to have manned fighters for us. Perhaps epically proportioned tragedies illustrated the danger of unmanned weapons early on. The fighters may have had software bugs that caused them to obliterate the colonies they were meant to protect, or perhaps when circumstances change drastically while these ships are out of communication with human beings they make really poor judgement calls. I'd really like it if the human characters in the final game were all truly human, and any or most NPC's actually robots in the storyline. That would explain the differences in fighting the two... and maybe the bots could have an RPG-like probability of malfunction factored in...
Asp
Escape Pods and Teleportation: If the escape pod can teleport to safety, why not the entire pilot? Or perhaps the escape pod is very small black box that not only records ship computer data, but the pilots' brain waves.
Unmanned Fighters: Well, Arolte, even if this is more likely as a futurists' prediction, obviously we want the game to have manned fighters for us. Perhaps epically proportioned tragedies illustrated the danger of unmanned weapons early on. The fighters may have had software bugs that caused them to obliterate the colonies they were meant to protect, or perhaps when circumstances change drastically while these ships are out of communication with human beings they make really poor judgement calls. I'd really like it if the human characters in the final game were all truly human, and any or most NPC's actually robots in the storyline. That would explain the differences in fighting the two... and maybe the bots could have an RPG-like probability of malfunction factored in...
Asp
Asp brings up a good point. This idea of memory dumps calls into question a great deal of metaphysical ideas about the soul and the afterlife. Can a mass-media product sell if it invalidates the religious views of so many people? I don't think so.
You would need some method of "soul transfer" to make this clone or memory dump idea work.
I prefer emergency teleportation. Not used by preference since it is grotesquely uncomfortable, excruciatingly painful, and once the RPG elements are added, most likely to be rather expensive. And for some reason or other only the organism can go through. Your clothes and stuff can't a la Terminator.
You would need some method of "soul transfer" to make this clone or memory dump idea work.
I prefer emergency teleportation. Not used by preference since it is grotesquely uncomfortable, excruciatingly painful, and once the RPG elements are added, most likely to be rather expensive. And for some reason or other only the organism can go through. Your clothes and stuff can't a la Terminator.
Magus: "Can a mass-media product sell if it invalidates the religious views of so many people? I don't think so."
You mean commercial flops like Star Wars or Star Trek? You're probably right, they'd never sell.
I don't think anyone would notice unless you called attention to it, and you'd probably sell more games by calling attention to the metaphysical ideas and thereby proving you were a serious game than you would turn people away by tackling a serious issue in a mere game.
For example, you could have a sub-faction that has precisely that problem with mind transfer technology and basically considers the other factions to be walking dead. Ideally, you present this faction in a mature way so that people can have some sympathy with them instead of just cheaply labeling them as irrational villians.
And teleportation raises the same question of 'is the soul still in the body?' as is raised by mind transfer?
Asp: Unmanned fighters are certainly more likely than manned one, but no 'fighters' at all is also likely. It probably doesn't do us much good to project what is realistic in the distance future, especially if we are going to ignore realism when it suits the needs of the game. However, it doesn't take even that huge of a tragedy to convince people that weapons need human operators. While the computer can do most of the job better than humans, a computer is notoriously easy to hack and humans are notoriously resistant to it. A human pilot gives the computer an absolute reference for what is 'trust worthy' whenever its own data starts to seem strange, and allows for a hard to hack manual override in the event the computer gets hijacked.
That isn't an absolute truth. We could imagine that if we know enough about human brains we could hack them remotely too, but there is reason to suspect that even if we knew how, this would be very difficult from a distance. We could also imagine that computer technology has evolved along organic lines so that it too is resistant to remote hacking. But there is enough truth in the utility of human brainpower (low power consumption, resistant to hacking, massively parallel processing, so forth) that even in a society capable of producing transhuman artificial intelligences that I don't personally think that humans will ever be completely obseleted.
You mean commercial flops like Star Wars or Star Trek? You're probably right, they'd never sell.
I don't think anyone would notice unless you called attention to it, and you'd probably sell more games by calling attention to the metaphysical ideas and thereby proving you were a serious game than you would turn people away by tackling a serious issue in a mere game.
For example, you could have a sub-faction that has precisely that problem with mind transfer technology and basically considers the other factions to be walking dead. Ideally, you present this faction in a mature way so that people can have some sympathy with them instead of just cheaply labeling them as irrational villians.
And teleportation raises the same question of 'is the soul still in the body?' as is raised by mind transfer?
Asp: Unmanned fighters are certainly more likely than manned one, but no 'fighters' at all is also likely. It probably doesn't do us much good to project what is realistic in the distance future, especially if we are going to ignore realism when it suits the needs of the game. However, it doesn't take even that huge of a tragedy to convince people that weapons need human operators. While the computer can do most of the job better than humans, a computer is notoriously easy to hack and humans are notoriously resistant to it. A human pilot gives the computer an absolute reference for what is 'trust worthy' whenever its own data starts to seem strange, and allows for a hard to hack manual override in the event the computer gets hijacked.
That isn't an absolute truth. We could imagine that if we know enough about human brains we could hack them remotely too, but there is reason to suspect that even if we knew how, this would be very difficult from a distance. We could also imagine that computer technology has evolved along organic lines so that it too is resistant to remote hacking. But there is enough truth in the utility of human brainpower (low power consumption, resistant to hacking, massively parallel processing, so forth) that even in a society capable of producing transhuman artificial intelligences that I don't personally think that humans will ever be completely obseleted.
Just a thought, if the ships are remote controled, like Genka and other have sugested, then why do they have big blue windows in the front? These are very advanced races, or a single race, of people, who probably didn't add them to look good, because something like glass or whatever they use is not going to be easy to get or cheap, especially if they have to make it inches thick to stand the vacuum of space. This makes it obvious that they have pilots in the ships themselves, other wise they would just have cameras mounted on the hull as to see, which, upon close inspection of the ships, they don't. This brought me to the conclusion that either our bodies are suffed into the cargo pods we somtimes drop after being killed, or we somehow "magically" are teleported out of the ship, both of which are not likely. The two most feasible solutions to this is to have escape pods, like every other space-going vessel in existance, or suffer extinction because our people are constantly being killed by other pilots or bots... Just a few thoughts...
~Nendain~
~Nendain~
Or the other option is to say to yourself, its just a game.
replying to Magus's post:
"One question though. If we're capable of instantaneous transport, why do we need spaceships? "
> the transpiorting in marathon is of an *extremely* complex nature. only AIs are capable of calculating the stream, and sometimes not even them (in some levels, you have to relocate because Leela and/or Durandal can't transport yout from where you are.
okay, i admit it, i just like the Tuncer Mirage Effect (TME), but that is beside the point :)
"One question though. If we're capable of instantaneous transport, why do we need spaceships? "
> the transpiorting in marathon is of an *extremely* complex nature. only AIs are capable of calculating the stream, and sometimes not even them (in some levels, you have to relocate because Leela and/or Durandal can't transport yout from where you are.
okay, i admit it, i just like the Tuncer Mirage Effect (TME), but that is beside the point :)
Personally, I stand extremely against escape pods on anything smaller than, say, the Frigate.
Why bother explaining it. Its a game. You end up back at some station...
Hell, maybe its quantum. Your soul if you really want to explain things at this levle of deteil is quantumly linked with the clones ... when your current/real body is destroyed, the soul instantly zips back to the linked body.
Hell, maybe its quantum. Your soul if you really want to explain things at this levle of deteil is quantumly linked with the clones ... when your current/real body is destroyed, the soul instantly zips back to the linked body.
Well, another idea going with this escape pod idea. See, if there were a way to eject, and leave the empty shell of a ship just floating there, this could open up new avenues for trading, i.e. an Itani charging 40000 for a valk to sell to a Serco, to save that Serco the trouble of going to s18. See?
-rc
-rc
Well, I'd assume you'd only eject when your ship is blowing up, so...
No, no. You misunderstood my post. Take a look at this scenario:
<Serco player> So, Itani player, if I pay you 40k, will you give me your valk?
<Itani player> Yeah, sure, but give me the credits first :p
Serco player transfered 40000c to Itani Player
<Itani player> Thanks, here's your ship.
Itani player ejected from his ship
*Serco player ejects from his, and latches onto the valk*
See? Now, there wouldn't be a way to ensure the Itani player actually giving the ship after the credits were transfered, but that's ok. Real life contains swindlers.... After this, the Itani player could fly in his escape pod back to the nearest station, and buy another valk and such, with a net gain of about 10000c. That's not including accessories, though. Anyway, do you see the idea now?
-rc
<Serco player> So, Itani player, if I pay you 40k, will you give me your valk?
<Itani player> Yeah, sure, but give me the credits first :p
Serco player transfered 40000c to Itani Player
<Itani player> Thanks, here's your ship.
Itani player ejected from his ship
*Serco player ejects from his, and latches onto the valk*
See? Now, there wouldn't be a way to ensure the Itani player actually giving the ship after the credits were transfered, but that's ok. Real life contains swindlers.... After this, the Itani player could fly in his escape pod back to the nearest station, and buy another valk and such, with a net gain of about 10000c. That's not including accessories, though. Anyway, do you see the idea now?
-rc
Okay, I've decided to change my stance.
The only reason I'd ever accept escape pods would be if character skills were introduced that reset to a lower level if you died, unless you ejected in an escape pod.
And even then, make them ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. If they're mandatory, the game might become a little, no wait, a lot tedious.
The only reason I'd ever accept escape pods would be if character skills were introduced that reset to a lower level if you died, unless you ejected in an escape pod.
And even then, make them ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. If they're mandatory, the game might become a little, no wait, a lot tedious.
"The only reason I'd ever accept escape pods would be if character skills were introduced that reset to a lower level if you died, unless you ejected in an escape pod."
That's my reasoning as well. Unless there is a penalty associated with death (death, rather than the destruction of the ship), then there is no need for escape pods.
That's my reasoning as well. Unless there is a penalty associated with death (death, rather than the destruction of the ship), then there is no need for escape pods.
having escape pods is a good idea. i like it.