Elite / Frontier So what makes your ideal space trading sim?

[Kipper]

So I have been wondering recently what Elite 4 would be if I were the designer.

Here's some ideas that have been floating through the vast emptiness that I call 'my mind'....

Firstly, and above all, I think it would be an online game. In a region somewhere between FPS and MMO. You get to develop your character, ship and career, but when it comes to combat, you need to use your mouse or joystick and get into the fight with some level of skill.

It would be set in a vast galaxy, preferably modeled on our own as per Frontier. They key is that the galaxy is so vast, running into other players as you venture further out becomes a rarer event due to the size of space. This is how it should be.

Core systems should be relatively safe, further out it gets less safe but more profitable - player-pirates can operate more freely. Even further out its less likely for pirates to be able to turn a profit due to lack of trade traffic, but miners would work and criminals would be searching for mines and fully laden, unescorted mining craft.

The more recently mined a planet, or area of a planet is, the less [valuable] resources it yields and they take a LOT of time to recover - forcing people to explore further out to get the best returns and making mine-piracy a game of cat and mouse (and luck and patience).

Space is BIG, you can't just 'wait' at an entry point to a system for someone to appear so you can blow them up and take their stuff, because when you enter a system from hyperspace - you could appear anywhere around its outer edge. This is a great way to ensure there is limited 'ganking' in an online game - because the game universe is WAY to big to be completely filled by players. Hunting others takes skill and patience, and they likely get some warning if they see you coming for them. Small ships can't carry much but can jump further, large ships can carry more (and be more powerful) but make bigger targets and can't keep up with a small ship in terms of the size of a hyperspace jump. Balance is important. A players choice of ship should depend on what they feel comfortable with and what suits their style of play - it should not be a race to acquire the biggest ship that can never be destroyed by any challenger. (Although maybe gargantuan vs tiny would probably just result in a stalemate).

As far as ships go - players buy hulls of varying sizes, and add their own systems, weapons, shields, drives, sensors and so on so the chance to develop a really unique looking ship is high and its difficult to determine an 'I-Win' configuration that will beat everything else without a fight.

The more equipment you buy, the less cargo you can carry. The bigger hull you buy, the less hyperspace distance you have.... So it entices people to think about a good balance rather than the biggest ship.

Criminals don't get a reward for killing 'legal' players except for a chance at recovering their cargo - so they have to ensure they have sufficient space to carry it. Likewise, higher yield weapons have a greater chance of vaporizing the cargo when the ship goes, so its not just about carrying a big laser and one-shotting someone. Not only does this result in zero profit, but it makes you more valuable to a bounty hunter. This should remove incentive for players to just kill others for fun, because after two or three of these, they will get chased across the galaxy by other players and find it very difficult to find a safe docking place. Legal players get bounties for destroying known pirates (AND a chance at their cargo if they don't vapourize it using the same rules as above).

Anyway. Thats enough of my random thoughts. What are yours?

 

[Geraldine]

Yep, some great ideas there, to get other's views you could have a look at the super massive "Collection Of Ideas For Elite IV". Most of the regulars on here have contributed their thoughts in there. Here is a link http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=86&page=21

 

[Kipper]

And I forgot to mention, a complex economy of course!

Surface bases would be linked to cities which would have realistic industries - some cities would be mining colonies, some would be manufacturing, some would be commercial and some tourism. If you went directly to the surface bases you could pick up the goods at the cheapest prices or sell them directly for the best prices.

Next tier up would be the orbital stations which would run cargo or passenger shuttles regularly to the surface of their world, easier to locate and quicker to to get to and dock, they would buy and sell goods on behalf of the planet below, but the prices for buying and selling would be slightly worse accounting for the fact that you're no longer dealing with the 'end' industries.

Larger systems might have a larger class of orbital station which would feed out to the small stations, again, a larger station would make the pricing slightly worse but you'd be able to buy and sell more of what you wanted in one place, and with more people buzzing about you might find smuggling a bit easier (or harder, depending how you look at it - maybe a better smuggler delivers his illicit goods direct to the customers at the very end of the supply chain!)

Not every system would be interested in every trade item, not all trade items would be bought by all locations - over supplied items would fetch minimal prices and under supplied items would attract a premium. Some systems or planets might have special items ("Martian Beef") and the further away you get from the production, if a system has a taste for it, the more they'll pay for it (to a point of course, if they are over supplied on it, they'd stop buying it for a good price).

All systems trade basic commodities and luxuries like food, water, precious metals etc which all systems 'use' at a rate determined by their population, so you can almost always make a small profit trading safe items.

Players affect the economy and each other because they may be competing to get their stocks to a planet first to get the best prices - while one player takes the time to go direct to the surface of a world, another freighter might come into the orbital station and affect the prices throughout the system or region, and trade may even become cutthroat as players try to beat the markets!

And there'd be no silly MMO quests or levels too ... all 'missions' would be procedurally generated based on the location and the reputation/factions of the player - a world running low on food would spawn a trading mission to get xx tons delivered, first to arrive gets the premium price, while a tourism city might spawn a mission to bring in xx number of visitors from outside the system, and so on. All players would be basically equal barring their ship, its equipment, the players combat skill if fighting, or their bank balance if trading.

 

[turwhitt]

If you went directly to the surface bases you could pick up the goods at the cheapest prices or sell them directly for the best prices.

And this should count as smuggling as you are trying to circumvent the established ports and their customs processes. Risk/reward!

 

[Kipper]

And this should count as smuggling as you are trying to circumvent the established ports and their customs processes. Risk/reward!

Hmm, I see what you're saying there... it depends on how you look at it though doesn't it?

I was approaching it like the stations/bases were running as businesses, so it wouldn't be untoward to try and cut out a middle man or two, at the cost of the extra hassle involved with making several smaller transactions instead of offloading everything at a distribution point.

I guess if you're approaching it like the systems are sovereign countries (so to speak) then they wouldn't take too kindly about circumventing customs control... though would they not have customs officials in each port? It seems as though that would make sense if ships can legally dock anywhere.

One argument though might be that in the massive orbital station, because it handles more goods, it has a more effective customs process to ensure less illegal stuff gets through.... or you could counter argue that because they deal with more stuff, it would be easier to slip some illicit cargo through unnoticed. (I guess it depends to who you must deliver it, and where they are located & where the demand is!)

 

[turwhitt]

I'm really just enforcing the idea that if you are getting better prices then there should be some downside, otherwise it's a no-brainer to always go to the bases.

 

[Kipper]

Yeah, the downside is that is you have to go to the trouble of heading out to the planet, locating the base, and landing there. And when you do, that base is only interested in the specific things that its interested in, and only really sells what it produces.

So a varied cargo might mean 2 or 3 visits (with additional fuel costs and landing fees) to different bases.

Docking at the main station in a system or orbiting a planet means you can offload everything that entire planet (or system, for the biggest stations) buys and stock up on everything it produces.

A further thought might be that the bases have an uplink to the orbital station or main system station (in larger systems) that tells them when goods have arrived, even if they've not been transported down and they might adjust their pricing based on those events. This means that the extra time in going base to base might cost you if in the meantime, a 5000t freighter above you puts into port and floods the market with what you're carrying!

Is that enough of a risk/reward?

 

[deej]

*My* ideal space trading sim would be a single-player one.

 

[SuperG]

*My* ideal space trading sim would be a single-player one.

If I would go for extreem realism. PvP means the need for balancing. And in reality thing are extreem un balanced.
But Cooperative play is doable.

So my ideal space sim would be a Singleplayer and Cooperative spac3 game.

Handeling one spaceship with two gamers.