Today at work, my colleague was showing me some videos of some games he plays and wants to play.. It got me thinking about some of the old text/time based games that I used to play online, and I realised that I should have enough experience to build one myself.

Not only that, but it would also increase site activity.. Anyway, I thought I would invite you guys for your input in the design stage, but no firm fingers crossed that the project will go ahead. The game will be free too, and completely online, no downloads required.

Genre suggestions? I was thinking space based.. buy planets in a solar system, expand your own personal empire, take over planets, farming planets, asteroids, building sector alliances, 30 hour light year time scale between sectors, different ships and war ships, research systems leading to different ships and weapons and farming, etc..

Of course, it will all be planned out in more details, depending on what you guys want.

Count me in. I can help out with story, ideas, artwork, that kind of stuff.

No story.. Just player vs player.

I'll do a beta when I've got something, but for now we need to start coming up with ideas.

I kind of Sims meets sim city sort of thing ?

How about a Warcraft type of theme where players can build their own army. I'll join too

count me in. Ill have a few ideas in a day or two when my mind starts exploding with energy lol.

World of Warcraft? No, the genre wouldn't work for this type of game.

And I'm not doing The Sims, since this is text and stat based. No 3D characters moving around, or even 2D for that matter.

I want this to be tick based, to reduce server load... Anymore complicated and I'd have to charge for it from day one, which I don't want to do.

Me and Jet spoke last night and got some ideas flowing..

A quick summary would be, a space based turn based game. Each turn is 1 hour, 1 day is 30 hours long. The galaxy consists of sectors which take time to travel across.

Each player starts with one planet and one ship. That one planet can function without the ship, and has between 4 and 10 economy slots depending on the size of the planet. These slots are used for farming, development, etc (we'll get to those details when we think of them). You can build more ships of different classes. Each class of ship has a diffrent purpose, speed and strength. These ships can be sent across the galaxy to find other planets. Different planets can have different classes, making some uninhabitable for a time being.

Each planet costs a certain amount of money or resources depending on the size, but allows for new economy slots to expand research and income.

As your number of planets and ships increases, you can form an empire. Other users can join your empire for protection, at the cost of planet resources and ship resources or money.

Ships can intercept eachother in sectors for trade negotiations or war or peace talks, or whatever, and cannot communicate over broad range of an undetermined length (my guess will be about 5 sectors).

Planets have the ability to become arms dealers, selling weapons to planets who haven't used an economy slot for researching weapons, as well as crop dealers, etc, selling resources to other planets who need them, at their own prices.

Ships can be destroyed, planets can be conquered up until the original homeworld, which can never be conquered, or can, depending how much risk you want in the game.

Galaxy is currently an X,Y system, but may consider expanding to X,Y,Z on a grid of 100 sectors, possibly more. Each sector will have a random number of planets of different sizes. The larger the planet, the more money or resources it costs to own. The larger the planet, the longer it takes to conquer.<br><br>Post edited by: enterthehatrix, at: 2007/08/04 05:25

Details so far:

Time: Time is measured in light hours and light years. 1 light hour is 1 real time hour. 1 light Day is 30 light hours.

Planet: Planets can be purchased and sold. They can be converted to different classes. Each planet can have 1^2 development slot per 500km radius planet size. So, a 1000km planet will have 4 slots, 2000km planet will have 16 slots (since it has more surface area). Planet sizes will range between 500km and 2000km. The price of the planet will depend on the size and the class.

Planet Class: There are multiple types of planets. Different types of planets, are more suitable for different things. Moons are more suitable for mining, F planets are more suitable for farming, R class planets are suitable for production and research, D class planets are worthless and H class planets are standard inhabitable planets. Planets more suitable for mining will give higher throughput for mining than planets not suitable for mining. This adds to selecting planets carefully for their purpose. D class planets can be converted to any class planet once the appropriate research has been taken place, which could reduce planet harvesting over time. S class planet is a standard planet that is capable of supporting any type of development.

Ships &amp; Ship Classes: Ships come in all shapes and sizes, and have different purposes and defensive and offensive abilities.
Ships have basic systems, but can be upgradeable over time with new weapons and defensive systems, including improved speeds. They can be expensive, depending on their purposes. Ships can be independantly moved across the galaxy carrying goods, attacking other planets, etc..


Trade: Planets with research &amp; production require produce to stay active in addition to resources for production. If the planet has its own farms and mines, it can have a self sustaining economy. Produce and resources can be traded from planet to planet, or can be traded by other players for money or other produce and resources.

Money, Produce and Resources aren't the only tradable items. Planets, ships, defences and weapons can be sold to other players.

Money: Money is universal currency which is not allocated to any given planet. The account holder has the money at all times so that the user can purchase planets, ships, weapons, defenses, resources or produce at any given time.


Developments:
Mining: Mining costs money per hour, the amount of mining that takes place can be changed in percentages. Resources have to be transported via cargo ships (cheap, but defenseless). 10,000 resources at a time.

Research: Research requires time, money and produce (researchers need to eat afterall). Once something has been researched, it can be developed. e.g. a new class of ship or shield. Once the research is finised, it can lead to new research that can improve farming, mining and weapons and defensive systems.

Production: Production requires time, money and resources. After something has been researched, it can be produced. This includes ships, weapons, and defenses. Products can be sold and bought by any other player, regardless of their development.

Farming: Farming creates produce, which is used to supply other planets or can be sold. It is self sustaining and doesn't require money or resources. Produce has to be transported via cargo ships (cheap, but defenseless). 10,000 produce at a time.


War: The fun part... Ships can meet in space and attack each other. Each ship has hit points and the last man standing wins. The faster ship attacks first, automated. Planets can be attacked, and can be defended by planetary defense systems. Those planets can have their resources and produce raided, but not conquered.
After an attack, a repeat attack cannot be carried out for 1 light day on that planet (prevents whoring).

Empires: When a user owns enough planets in a sector, they become sector Controller, which allows them to name their sector. The sector controller can then join that sector to an empire. An empire can be created by any sector controller. Any sector controller can apply to join an Empire. Once inside an empire, no planet within that sector can be attacked by the empire. The empire will receive 5% of 1 light days earnings, which can be used as damage control to repair or replace ships for any attacked ship in the Empire by outside forces.

Space Travel: The galaxy is comprised of sectors. Each sector is composed of 30 x 30 spacial grids, some containing planets and moons. There are 100 sectors in a galaxy. Travel between star systems takes 1 light hour. Travel between sectors is 1 light day.

Star Gates: Star gates create a small one way wormhole to allow the ship to travel to any star system in a sector, but cannot get back once there unless they can access a star gate. It takes 1 light hour to get across a sector. Star Gate owners can travel for free, other users have to pay to use a star gate, at the owners fee.

Warp Gates: Warp Gates creates a one way wormhole to allow users to travel to any sector in a galaxy, but cannot get back once there without access to a warp gate. It takes 1 light hour to get across a sector. Warp Gate owners can travel for free, other users have to pay to use a warp gate, at the owners fee.

Neutral Zone: The Neutral zone is a non-aggression area where players can meet, trade, without fear of being attacked. The neutral zone is in two sections, one on the outside edges of the galaxy, and one on the inside of the galaxy.

Development Plan:
Here is the development plan.

1. Create Galaxy
2. Create Sectors
3. Create Neutral Zone
4. Create Planet Types
4. Create Account &amp; Planet
5. Create Time
6. Create Sector populator
7. Create Ship Classes
8. Create Ship travel

Others coming soon...

Edit:

I'm revising the development plan.

1. Create Galaxy, 20 x 20
2. Create ship travel
3. Create ship types
4. Create time
5. Create planet types.
....... And the others<br><br>Post edited by: enterthehatrix, at: 2007/08/05 06:59

How about having people on the planets, whom you can allocate to different jobs and sections? The more people you have, say, building a ship, the less ticks it takes to build it.

No, because there's no way to regulate population growth and allocation.

Should I have this as an extension of the site, or independant of the site?

By the way, is anyone actually bothered, or are you just waiting for something to happen?

I'm kinda dry on ideas, so I'm waiting.

Well what about everything I've put so far? Your opinions?

What about making it a site feature, or making it indepedant?

I think we should make it a feature of the site. Also it does seem to have some similarities from starcraft which is more of a Real Time Strategy rather than MMORPG. As to Ideas I think we need to have separate colums for it and we all send you some ideas and whichever ones makes them post them up that way we can know what has been done and what needs to be done.