[Game] Start System Centurion

[Accname]

Hi guys,

I am working on a little project of mine for quite some time now.
I have to say though, I am not actively working on it. Its not my main project. Its just something for inbetween when i have some free hours.
Because of this progress is slow and I dont know how regularily I will update this thread; but I wanted to share my concepts with you anyways.

So what is Star System Centurion all about? Its an open world space rpg simulation something something game. Its just a little bit of anything mixed together.
You start the game as a single character with a space ship. You have some credits and you are docked at a port. There are shops, bars and recruitment offices.

You can choose to upgrade your ship. Add additional rooms and systems. You can recruit a crew, get some quests and travel the star system.
On your travels you will fight other ships and maybe even have to engage in man-to-man combat.
The games principle is kinda sandbox and open world. There is no definite ending to it. You play until it starts to get boring; then you can start all over if you want.

So, you probably want to see something:

Spoiler: How do I build my ship?

You can either pick a pre-made ship or build your own ship entirely from scratch. Building a ship is done in 3 phases.

Phase 1: Setting up the rooms.
At first you have to put differently sized blocks together which will represent rooms of your ships. Right now there are 3 types of rooms. Small 1x1 rooms, medium 2x1 rooms and big 2x2 rooms. Via drag and drop you put them in place on a grid.
In the hangar it will look like this mockup:


You can see that the amount of rooms you place will define some characteristics of your ship displayed on the right.

• Class:
  • The class of your ship is determined by its size; basically the number of cells in the grid.
• Shields:
  • What kind of shield generator you are going to need. The bigger your ship is either horizontally or vertically the stronger must your shield generator be to support the ship.
  • Bigger shield generators will naturally cost more money.
• Max. Systems:
  • The maximum number of systems you can install in your ship.
  • This is equal to the number of rooms you place.
• Max. Hitpoints:
  • The hitpoints your ship is going to have if you do not place any systems at all.
  • Installing a system in a room is probably going lower the max hitpoints.
• Costs:
  • How much you have to pay just for the room layout of your choice.

Phase 2: Installing systems.
The next thing you have to do is put systems into your rooms. You dont have to put a system into every room; its, in fact, recommended to not do this, but you will need a minimum of 2 systems before you are even allowed to leave.

There are several kinds of systems and each system can have a number of different versions and upgrade levels.
Here is an incomplete list of various kinds of systems you can get:

• Cockpit:
  • Needed in every ship. When disabled you are basically screwed.
• Engine:
  • Needed in every ship. Determines movement speed, faster then light travel recharge and evasive boosters.
• Quarters:
  • Needed to support more crew members. Having an insufficient number of quarters will have negative impacts on effectivity and health of your crew.
• Life Support:
  • Needed to support more crew members. When disabled or not available your crew will slowly die on your ship. But so will any boarding parties.
• Shield Generator:
  • Will provide your ship with an energetic shield to protect against laser weapons or smaller projectiles.
• Power Generator:
  • Needed to provide other systems with energy.
• Medi Bay:
  • Needed to heal your crew, cure sickness or revive fallen crew members.
• Communications:
  • Can be used to hack enemy ships or protect your own ship from getting hacked.
• Sensors/Radar:
  • Needed to reveal cloaked ships and show how systems are placed on enemy ships.
• Security:
  • Needed to remote control doors on your ship and protect against boarding parties by filling selective rooms with neuro toxin or extinguishing fires, etc.
• Various weapons:
  • Including: boltguns, burst and pulse lasers, rocket launchers, grenade launchers, ion cannons and many more...

You can place one system per room. Some systems need bigger rooms and do not fit into smaller ones. Smaller systems can be placed in either a small or a big room but they will not benefit from a big room at all; this will be a waste of space. There is one exeption to this rule: Crew quarters.
Many of this systems, if not all, will also be beneficial if you have several of them installed at once.
Two shield generators will restore your shields faster then one; having several power generators will be useful as well, just to name a two occasions.

You choose systems from a list on the left and put them into your ship via drag & drop. If you are not building a ship from scratch but modifying an existing ship you can also drag & drop systems which are already in your ship back to the shop. If you are satisfied with what you got you can pay the prise at the end and all of your systems you put back into the shop will automatically be sold and the ones in your ship will be bought.

This is how the hangar might look like:


Phase 3: Setting up doors.
The last thing you have got to do before you are finished is placing doors in your ship.
You can place as many or as few doors as you like. Having only few doors has certain advantages but also some disadvantages.
Just a quick list on some of the pros and contras of having as many doors as possible:

1. Pro: Having many doors makes it easier for your crew to move through the ship.
2. Pro: When certain parts of your ship are uninhabitable (due to fire, toxin, etc) your crew can take an alternative route through the ship.
3. Con: Many doors make it easier for boarding parties to move through your ship.
4. Con: Many doors will let fire spread faster since it can not move through walls; it will only reach adjacent rooms connected by a door.

Thats it for the door systems. Not pictures for this one; its quite simple.

But here are some quick hints:

• All your rooms must be adjacent. Its not allowed to have a room which is not connected with the rest of your ship just floating around.
• All your rooms must be connected via doors. It is not allowed to have parts of your ship inaccessible from the cockpit.
• You can have doors which leave your ship. If these are opened during the flight the air inside the room will be sucked out. This will extinguish fires and remove neuro toxin but it is dangerous to your crew as it will drain your life support meter.
• Many systems are optional but offer helpful abilities.
• Your cockpit is an allround systems which includes: minimal sensors and radar, minimal communications, minimal security, life support for 1 person, a quarter for 1 person and it provides itself with energy.
• Many systems will have less health then an empty room, reducing the total health of your ship. The only exeption is the cockpit which has even more health then a regular room because of its special fortification. Its an essential part of every ship.
• The cargo space of your ship is lowered for each system you install. Empty rooms give you the most space to put your cargo for obvious reasons.

Spoiler: What does the crew do?

You already read it, you can hire your own crew.
You can have any number of crew members on your ship; the only restrain is the number of quarters and life support systems you have installed. And of course your cash since these guys wont work for free usually.
Your captain is a crew member himself but doesnt require any cash; that guy is basically you.

Each of these crew members can be assigned a job on the ship. To do this simply put a crew member into a room with a system. The crew member will automatically start working in the system.
Only one crew member can work per system though.

Each crew member has the following stats:

• Piloting:
  • Determines how well he can control a fighter or drones. For the captain it also gives benefits to movement speed of the ship and boosts your evasive maneuver skills.
• Engineering:
  • Determines how fast this crew member can repair damaged systems or rooms. This skill can also increase the effectivity of crew members working in a power generator, life support or the engine.
• IT Skills:
  • Improves your crew members ability to hack other ships or defend your own systems from being hacked. Does also give benefits if your crew member is working in a shield generator, a radar/sensor, or security.
• Weapons Training:
  • Increases the bonus to weapon systems used by this crew member.
• Combat:
  • Increases hitpoints and attack damage for man-to-man combat for this crew member.
• Medical Knowledge:
  • Increases the healing rate for allied crew members when this crew member is around or working in a medi bay.

Your crew members will improve their skills as they use them. Have a crew member stay in the shield generator for long enough and his IT Skills will gradually improve; if he is always fighting boarding parties his combat skill will increase.
If you have two crew members stationed in the same system only one of them will work, but both of them will improve their skills. In fact, the lower leveled crew member will learn faster by watching the higher skilled peer.

Crew members can be recruited at most space stations and sometimes at other places too. They always come with some skills already quite high and others low. They will usually want some money first and then a share from all bounty and loot.
Crew members might get different (random) personalities too. Some might leave your crew if your actions dont match their point of view or if you pay too little or get them heavily injured in combat.

Spoiler: Traveling the star system you say?

Right now there is only one game mode planned (but more might be added later on.) and it is a random, open-world sandbox style.
You can generate a random star system by setting various values, for example:

• How many different factions will live in the star system (from a limited selection)
• How much presence (ship count, number of planets / space stations, strength, etc) each faction should have (in percent to a cumulative 100%)
• How many planets / stations exist in total
• How big the star system is in total (empty quadrants / nebulas / asteroid belts / etc)
• How high the tech level is advanced at the beginning
• How fast the factions will expand, tech up and become stronger (difficulty)
• How greedy merchants and crew will be (difficulty)
• How much starting money you have
• etc etc etc

The star system will then be generated and you can start from a randomly selected point.
As you play the game the star system will evolve and change. The factions might fight each other or wipe one another out entirely. You can choose to ally certain factions or declare war on them.

There is now fixed winning condition right now. You just play until a game over or until you are the most powerful bastard of the universe cruising a gigantic ship with an endless army of mooks. Its really up to you and how much time you want to invest into your save state.

A campaign / multiplayer might be added in the future but are not planned right now...

Spoiler: How does the gameplay look like?

The gameplay is divided into stages. Some with action packed battles and some which are more dialogue focused.

The System Map:
The star system is a grid and each cell marks a location you can travel to. Some of these locations might have nothing but empty space there, but other times there might be:

• A planet and a nearby station orbiting around it. Usually a place to repair / buy cargo / get quests / recruit a crew.
• A space station. As described above it offers several services.
• A research facility. Might be dangerous if owned by an agressive faction; but there is also the chance that you could buy very rare and useful systems here.
• An asteroid. Can be mined for resources if you have the proper equipment.
• A minefield. A dangerous place to be at. Even more dangerous to fight in here.
• A debris field. Dangerous if you dont have good shields to protect against collisions.
• A nebula which might be dangerous depending on its kind and if you get into a fight or not.
• A super nova. Very dangerous indeed.
• A black hole. Really bad news, get away from here asap!
• Or other things i might come up with in the future.

At first you havent explored anything on the map and you will not see what is coming ahead.
But after visiting a cell once it will be marked on your map on and show the type of location there is.
After traveling to a point there might be an encounter with other ships or maybe a wreckage or something. An encounter is not avoidable and will immediately trigger the close up view of your ship.

Here is an early mockup of how the system map might look like (but hopefully better):


The Close-Up look:
This is how the close up might look like in a battle between ships!

A quick explanation:

• The players ship is on the right. We can see the room layout, the systems (the color indicates health) and crew. We can also see how strong the shields are depending on the transparency.
• There is an enemy ship on the left. Our radar/sensors are not good enough to see the health on the systems or their crew, but we see which system is located where.
• The two crosshairs seen on the enemy hangar and generator belong to the players weapons; the boltgun and the burstlaser. Each weapon has its own unique crosshair.
• In the lower right we see our energy management. On the far right is our generator symbol. It indicates how much energy our ship has in total. Having multiple generators on our ship will not display multiple generator symbols.
• Then we see all of our other systems; again, with the color indicating the hitpoints.
• Energy can be taken away from systems or given to systems by clicking the energy bar above with the left or right mouse. Some systems need full energy to operate; others can work with less then full energy but lower efficiency or speed.
• Is an energy bar lit green it is an indication for invested energy. A grey energy bar is not used. If an energy bar is red it means that the enegy bar can not be used at all due to damages taken to the associated system.
• There is a light blue square around one of our systems; the boltgun. This indicates, that the boltgun is currently selected (via leftclick) and the player is giving it a new target.
• Not all systems show an icon in this area; only those which actively consume energy. (Examples for systems which dont need energy: Quarters, Cockpit, Generators)

At the top we see several buttons. Clicking those buttons will open windows displaying all kinds of useful information about our ship, crew or cargo. We can open as many of these windows as we like.
The windows can be moved around and the size is adjustable (like a regular window of your os).
Clicking the buttons will toggle visibility of the windows. The game will go on without a pause and you can open / close as many windows as you like at any point in time.

If you hover over an icon or a crew member a popup window will appear displaying more detailed information about the object in question.

The Battle System:
The battles are fought in real time. There can be any number of ships involved and the player can freely move the camera around (press rightclick and move), zoom in and out (mouse-wheel).
The battle can be paused/resumed at any moment by pressing space bar.

You can move your crew members around by selecting them like in an RTS. You select single members or groups with left click (or press leftclick and draw a square for multiple selection).
When crew members are selected you can rightclick on a spot to have your crew members move there.
When they are stationed in a room they will automatically attack any enemies within the room or use the systems / repair if there are no enemies.

You can select any of your systems by leftclicking them in the lower right area (see mockup).
Not every system has an active ability but most have. If the selected system has an ability you can rightclick to activate it.
Some example abilities include:

• Engine:
  • Rightclick somewhere on the map to have have your ship move there. More energy for the engine equals higher movement speed.
  • Rightclick anywhere on your own ship to start an evasive maneuver. Your ship will dodge any incoming attacks while the maneuver is performed.
• Radar:
  • Rightclick an enemy ship to scan it. This might temporarily reveal crew positions and health.
  • Rightclick an empty area to scan for cloaked ships.
• Communications:
  • Rightclick any enemy system to try to hack it. A hacked system is temporarily unpowered.
• Cloaking Device:
  • Rightclick anywhere to activate / deactivate.
• Security:
  • Rightclick to fill a room with neuro-toxin or remove neuro-toxin / fire from the room.
• Any weapon:
  • Rightclick empty space to release target.
  • Rightclick enemy system to set target for attack. The weapon will keep attacking its target forever.

More might eventually come, but i am tired for today @_@.

 

[Varine]

The layout here is much nicer than the previous versions I've seen. I don't have a lot of time to read it right now as I have to go deal with some other matters, apparently, however I will try to later tonight.

 

[tom_mai78101]

I kinda forgotten how to add titles to the spoilers.

Spoiler: Like this?

Just add quotes inside the opening tags.