What are some good mechanics for this kind of game?

So I've got an idea for a game, but I am unsure about how to go about keeping the player entertained. I guess you could say its a unique idea with a story/setting.

Your character is on an interstellar journey away from Human space exploring the cosmos. Apart from maybe three other interstellar ships; there are no humans or aliens out here.

Differerent from Oregon Trail like mechanics, how do I fill this with something exciting? Things aboard this rather large ship your character is captain of could break down... things could go awry, etc.

I was thinking that maybe if your ship, or the other ships break down or otherwise become damaged you would receive a distress call and be forced to make a decision. Your passengers and crew could become sick, mutiny, or morale could plummet.

The funny thing is I'm not even entirely sure what this game would look like. 3d? 2d? Strategic control scheme? I should mention this game is based on the crew management of your crew and passengers, preparation for the journey, and other related things.

IDEK.

 

"WHAT IS THE PLAYER DOING!?!?!" Now that you've got a great story, consider setting that aside for a moment. Spend the rest of your time answering that simple question.

No one can answer this for you, because there are no constraints. With this backdrop, any genre could apply, including: match-3, block puzzle, crossy-road, infinite runner, RPG, FPS, space sim, resource management, RTS, incremental, and the list goes to infinity.

Gigi

 

i think you need to be really, really careful about having random negative events. Players in general hate this kind of thing. It makes them feel powerless.

The more positive version is like rule driven crisis - FTL is a killer example of this. The oxygen room is on fire, but your ship is running out of air. Your crew is a mess and everyones hurt. In order to fix the oxygen machine you need to send in someone, and whoever you send will probably die.

It's that scene from battlestar galactica (or any movie about warships) where someone needs to sacrifice themselves to save everyone else. That the drama develops organically is amazing.

Random stuff can work - but randomized crisis is just a recipe for unhappy players.

 

What's more important to you, the story or the mechanics you have already devised? If it's the story then you need to find things that work in that context. If it's the mechanics you have already worked out then ditch the story from your head (for now) as it could be limiting your scope of ideas e.g. It could actually be a colony of mites on a dogs back trying to grow & travel & then expand into a new 'universe' (another dog) that then grows, expands to another etc etc until generations (of mites, it could just be weeks in our time) later the dogs meet up again & the widely diverged descendants meet each other having developed different attributes based in the environment they evolved in. The core mechanics of what this scenario can offer compared to yours are fairly similar yet the story can in some ways help to decide what other things can happen.

 

I thought about this for a while. Trouble is, there is absolutely nothing for humans to do in space between planets. In fact the biggest issue you would have on an interstellar journey is keeping from getting bored and going insane.

So there is your game. You play as the ships super computer. Your job is to keep the humans alive and entertained until arrive at the next planet. There would be no resources entering the ship, everything would have to be balanced. And there would be no leaving either. You would be stuck with the humans you started with or the ones you could breed along the way. Occasionally there would be random system failures to deal with, but more of the game would focus on managing the relationship between the characters and their environment.

Think something like the sims crossed with kerball space programme.

 

Yea I see guys thank you! I thought I had a good idea, and its inspired by a favorite book. I agree completely @frosted about the negative events. That was a major turn off for me when I was little and played oh so little of Oregon Trail. FTL is a good example. There is a game I saw being played on Youtube which was according to the Youtuber: "Oregon Trail in space". I think the Youtuber was Scott Manley, but I could be wrong.

My plans involved a crew management type of game. IDK. Never got far with it. I may just scrap this idea.

 

I love the idea! Do you think it would be good to provide a slightly randomized starting scenario each time that already has some existing problems and conflicts and keep the mechanics of the game non-random, so that in time a player can learn the cause and effect relationsships and get better at the game?

 

Okay your ship just had a battle with an enemy ship, you lost, badly, you only escaped by heading into a nearby asteroid field. You've spent the last two weeks hiding out in the asteroid field, your running low on food, oxygen, fuel, shields, weapons, your morale is low, people are going stir crazy, the enemy ship is actively hunting you. I guess something like god's will be watching could work.

 

That sounds good to me. I was thinking something like a simulation like civ or kerball. Do the same thing and you get the same results. But different starting conditions each round.

There are a bunch of different ways the game could play out.

 

Any chance you will actually make that game?
I believe I remember you very recently said you want to start a new project after you wrote your Pond Wars post mortem.

 

I normally wouldn't recommend watching Star Trek: Voyager for protracted periods of time - some of the plots are so dumb they run a chance of melting your brain - but this is the exception. Specifically I recommend looking for any episode with a holodeck accident (there's quite a few), as that may give you some ideas.

 

Not that one. A simulation of that size is still very much beyond my capacities. I'm still very much following my own advice and scoping small.

The core of my new project is only a few weeks of coding. At the same time it implements some techniques I've never coded before (A* pathfinding, an unusual input paradigm, some cool data structures, some new AI techniques, different platform targets).

It also has some different design principles from Pond Wars. (Single player, mouse/touch input). The style if engagement is totally different. And the game still offers something unique that I don't think has been built before.

It also has potential to get me a DMCA notice from one of the big guys if I don't manage it right.

You'll just have to wait and see. I promise I'll share a prototype on the forums as soon as it's ready.

 

Voyager came to my mind immediately as well. You could approach the game with the idea that ships can move between planets at a relatively decent clip but you're trying to reach a destination that is extremely far away and will take years to achieve. This way you have an excuse to bring other planets into the mixture.

 

Going even further, the whole Voyager thing makes a good backdrop for the game - your ship got somehow displaced and is trying to return to Earth. The crew is handling the hard stuff; as the ship's Entertainment AI, your job is to keep the ship's morale up.

 

Anyone tried Star Trek Trexels? It's quite good, & the devs are very responsive when issues arise if you contact them with the details.