I wanted to create a massive Space MMO about three different species fighting for galactic domination:
-The three races are:
Humans (It was just an idea in my head, I didn't think about copy right or stuff when I made this up)
Empire
Hive
(I will explain in debt about the three races later)
-Objective of the game:
Galactic domination. I want this game to actually have an ending, not go on forever. Basically there will be new servers open up once a race achieve victory. The galaxy is divided into different sectors and each race start with equal amount of sectors and a huge neutral sectors in between them. Eventually your race need to conquor other races' sectors until you take them all, in which case your race win and winning players get a special cosmetic reward when starting in a new universe.
-Things to do in this game:
There are a huge amount of stuff to do in this game, and because of that there is no cookie cutter build or anything, you just derp around until you find what's right for you.
1. Mining (each race needs to mine, advance things sometime require minerals unique to certain sectors, often in enemy territory)
2. Training
3. Improve ship (or in hive's case, body)
4. Find legendary lost items
5. Fight pirates
6. Do quest storyline
7. Choose your race's develope path
(Some of the stuffs are race specific, so I am going to list it when I list races)
-Space travel
1.Human ships travel through hyperspace drive. The perk of this drive is that it got decent speed and your ship always arrive on location intact. The weakness of this drive is that hyperspace jump requires huge amount of energy, so arriving at the battlefiedl often means you need to fight with very little energy reserve. Although human ships have the largest energy battery out of all races, it's still advised to enter a distant away from the actual battlefield and give ship time to regen energy.
2.Empire travel using combination of time Dilation field and sleeper pod technology. Their ships are built to function more than twenty thousand yeats. When travel to another far away location, ship will generates a time dilation field making time pass by inside the field several million times faster than normal space time. Essentially ship will take say ten thousand years to travel to said location, but in normal space perspective it only took ten minute. The perk of this drive is, it is the fastest out of all three races, it arrive location is extremely precise. Weakness being, ship will deteriate somewhat during travel, your ship will lose hull integraty depend on the distant you travel.
3.Hive actually don't have distant space travel technology, what they have is 2 types creatures. First is \"Wonderer\" This is a summonable creatuer by hive players, it acts as a sort of transport, higher level hive players can summon wonderer with larger capacity, taking up to 200 players. Wonderer travels extremely fast for subspace travel, even fast scout ships can't catch it. And this is how Hive players get around space initially. The second creature is \"Cloner\", these can be permanently summon into space, although it's hard to do. When Hive players travel, they can telepathically create another body using \"Cloner\" and transfer their concious into the clone at \"Cloner\" location. The perk of this kind of travel is that \"Cloner\" can be set up in some places where other form of space travel can't reach, such as quantum distruption field, or gas clouds, \"Cloner\" can be placed at almost anywhere, making it very easy for hive players to place sneaky hidden ralley points. Weakness being it's the slowest type of travel out of the three races, and creating clones cost DNA points (sort of hive currency)
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- Human: Race of human developed space travel via Hyperspace Drive. Humans are economy driven, has the most complex economic system out of the three races.
1. Human government is democratic government, every single human player can vote for race technology development, however their voting power varies. Human player controlling planets (Yes you can buy planets, space stations, build space stations in this game) will have the voting power of combine voting power of the population in player controlled planets. You can also increase your voting power by buying shares in stocks, your total worth (your asset in monetary value) will effect your voting power. And each day players can vote for Government Tech Tree where players dictate the technology advance of human as a whole which in term effect the equipments you can use on your ships.
2. Human ships have onboard A.I, this is one of the most important feature on your ship. You can replace your default A.I (british butler/british homeschool teacher) when you can afford a more advance model. (From Street rapper to little girl to Arnol Schwaznigar, you can pick which personality you want on your A.I, some require unlocks, others are avaliable as soon as you can afford) A.I can help you discover hidden quests, navigate your ships, and also most importantly, control your weapon. The number of guns you can put onto your ship depend on two things. Your hardware, and your A.I firing program. A.I determind the accuracy of your turrets and also distribute your ship energy. Higher level A.I allow more efficient energy distribution, so you get more shield power, less scanner consumption for same generator. They also talk to you like a companion on board.
3. Human can set up space stations inside controlled space like Empire and Hive. The unique feature of Human space station is the ability to earn \"tax\" from staying vessels. Of course if you set tax too high players may decide to stay away from your station and causing you to lose money via station maintance.
- Empire: Empire is a heavily traditional and religious race first encountered by Humans when Empire was fighting Hive in the sector. Empire technology came from a even more ancient race which they believe to be gifts from gods (not the ancient race, they just think the technology they left behind is a gift from god). Their religion decreed that all technology outside the ancient technology they possess is the doing of evil and heretics. And it's their mission to purge the evil.
1. Empire government is council formed by the most talented warriors of the race. There is no currency for the Empire only Honor. Honor cannot be spent. Once you gain honor it can't be used up. It CAN however be taken away when something shameful was done such as thieft and to smaller extend retreat from battle to save life. You can take equipments from empire store without paying a dime, but you can only take what your honor has earned you. Say you have 10 honor, then you can take anything that require less than 10 honor, but you can't take anything above 10. Same goes with ships. The 100 Empire players who rise the fastest in honor ranking form the Council of One (which refresh weekly). And the council dictates the Empire technology advancement by voting within the council.
2. While Empire may have lack luster economy and politic, it makes up with advance combat. Unlike Human, who use A.I for ship control and targeting system, Empire players rely on their extreme mental and physical abilities to pilot ships. Empire players can choose to become three sub-classes. A: Mentat. Mentats have computer like mental capacity, Mentats usually take the roll of fleet control, they can link themselves with other mentats, and their combine mental attributes effect the targetting effectiveness of the fleet they control. B: Paladin. Paladins are the muscle of the fleet, empire's bio synthetic technology allow them to directly connect to the ship they pilot (kind of like that girl in homeworld, only they can disconnect once the fighting is done). Their physical ability determind ship's speed and energy distribution, which in turn effect the shield and weapon onboard. C Priest. Priest is like Paladin only they focus on their psy energy (yes it exists in the game), they are specialists of the fleet. Their psy capacity effect firepower of the ship to a much larger extend than Paladin but has no effect on ship's speed or shield (until later stage where you can emit psy-shield to make up for lack of defense). Priests can also cloak their ship, they have sensor ability which allow them to essentially act like fleet's scanner. Priests can link together to expand their psy scanner, [To simply put, they act as scanner and sniper of the fleet, extremem long range attack and stealth]
3. Empire players gain honor through combat. Lower level players gain more honor for killing higher level players and higher level gain less when kill lower level players.
- Hive: Hive is a race of extremely powerful aliens with ability to survive in space, they don't have a home planet, they drift among stars consuming everything in its path. Hive creatures have TRUE MEMORY, a genetic code that allow them to remember every memories of their ancestors all the way up to the very first Hive creature. Hive creatures travel by the mean of \"Wanderer\" and \"Cloner\"
1. Hive has no government. Each player has an ancestor acting as guidence. Hive is the only race with no economy. The only trading Hive players do is gene sharing which involve a player trade DNA points to learn another Hive player's genetic data (explain later).
2. Hive players are relativly fragile compare to Human and Empire ships, however Hive player can use its genetic make up to mutate minions of different type to serve its purpose, or \"summoning\". Hive players unlike Empire or Human don't need to train A.I or themselves, instead they need to gather DNA points from space debris (where other race would mine for mineral) and search for new genetic datas by hunting for different creatures. genetic datas are scattered on different planets with living organisms. In order to summon more powerful minions, Hive players need to travel to different sectors and search for genetic makeups by finding planets with living things and hunt themm, once a Hive player finds 4 types of new genetic makeup, he/she can unlock new minions in the skill tree. It's also possible to learn new minions from players already possess it by trade a large amount of DNA points for the new gene design.
3. Hive players are essentially a fleet all by itself and with their main body as the command ship. Due to how fragile hive players are, it's essential to summon out the fleet quickly and effectively before engaging in battle. A couple dozen hive players can amass an amazing amount of force on short notice, each serving different purpose, but due to the time required to summon and less that desireable travel means, it's possible to shoot down Hive assults before they get the snowball rolling or escape the massive hive when things start to look grim.
4. Summoning require DNA points like making clone require DNA points, which is why the main focus of Hive is mining and exploring.
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Pirates: I am thinking about making this a playable race. Pirates work sort of like Hive, essentially you gain notority points when you do bad things (such as steal mineral from other races, or destory wandering ships). Pirates can't control planets but they can control astorids. Once you have enough notority point you can go to a pirate astorid and recruit ships for your fleet. These are npc ships with various abilities that following you around and assist you in combat. The higher the notority point, the bigger your recuitment can be. NPC owned astroid can only provide basic pirate followers. Private owned pirate astorids can provide better pirate followers if facilities are upgraded, however you need to share a percentage of your \"booty\" with the station owner each time you succeed.
Penalty of death:
1. After death, player cannot enter combat sectors in set amount of time (This is to prevent ppl just die then res, then jump back into the battlefield they just died from to get revenge kill or whatever, also gives the fleet with more skill a better chance of winning.
2. For humans, death meaning the lost of credit. For Empire deathmeans loss of primary ability (mental, psy or physical), For Hive death means lost of all DNA points. (I am thinking about Hive's DNA mining rate, basically it's a constant used currency sometime in large amount, not so large that players will just spam summons for every little thing but enough that they CAN get a large fleet if they mine every once a while, which makes DNA point very easy to obtain in larger numbers, so the death penalty justify this as well, also encourage Hive players to carefully protect the host, not to over extend in battle)
Ship types/classes
1. Types: For Human and Empire, ships pretty much have similar types. There is Tank, focus on Shield or Armor or both. Fighter, small quick ships that's mainly used in early stage of the game for minor skirmishs and possible recon and sabotage. Mining, Like the name said these ships are mining ships. I haven't thought about whether Empire miners should be aware honor for mining. Seems like an easy way out, make people side track from combat nature of Empire. There may be substitute rewards for mining though. Sniper, Mike probably wants this These ships have stealth capabilities, superior sensor array and you guessed it, sniping weapons. They normally are equip with extreme long range weapon and stealth bomb. You can either hang back and snipe ships somewhere outside the heat of battle or sneak behind enemy line and use stealth bombs to pick off enemy snipers. They act as Scanner of the fleet as well as the sniping. Command Ship, I will explain combat later. For now, you just think them as the RTS player controlling units while themselves are inside the battlefield. There can be moer than 1 Command Ship in a fleet, in fact Empire encourage more than 1 since mentat abilities stack when inside same fleet.
2. Ships can be modified much like it is in Eve (I didn't steal their idea, they just happen to thought about it also). Your ship has a modular design which allow you to switch around hardwares as long as your ship can support the hardware you installed. It is possible to use enemy technologies on your ship, although it's not possible to pilot enemy ships. To use alien technology on your ship, both Empire and Human require an alien technology adaptor (ATA). This will take up some of your hardware space, take some of your mental ability/A.I processing power, and also use up some energy. It's not a major set back consider you might find some alien technology very useful on your ship.
3. Combat. Combat will differ according to the ship you are driving. Except for Hive, in which case you act like command AND fighter, although you don't want to do too much fighting yourself lest you expose your host body to enemy fire. For Human who uses backward thruster, ship will fly pretty much like Halo CE Banshee, you can only go forward and turn. But human ships often have more auto turret slots than Empire ships, allow a compensation for the limited ship manuver. Empire on the other hand uses gravitational subspace drive, allow them to move pretty much in any direction they want, they move like fly hacked minecraft players, you can go in any direction and chance direction without turning. The weakness of Empire's subspace drive is that it's slower than human thruster, and early game battle without many physical trainning, a human ship will pretty much dance around Empire ship in circles. Moving on the Fleet Combat, you can form a fleet like you do party invite for a raid, people will join and people can request you to change ship or whatnot . Command Ship acts like control tower for battle. They can see as far as Sniper Ship's scanner range go, with uncloaked enemy dotted in red. Command ships can select parts of the fleet to A engage, in this case, selected ships of the fleet will have an arrow and enemy indication showing them their target. B Protect, in this case, selected ships will see a green arrow point toward target of protection. All enemy ships firing at the target of protection will light up in red until they stop firing, red dot has 3 second linger time, so you can track enemy ship easily for 3 second after they stop firing.C Guard, in this case, a green sphere will appear indicating the guarding space, and when enemy ships enter side space, it will light up red telling selected ships to engage target.
Architecture I gave some thoughts on it, but not a lot, mainly human structures will consist space stations which comes in two types, defensive station and economic station. Defensive station acts like stationary outposts guarding and altering any enemy presences, they can be upgraded to have larger scan range or greater firepower and defense. Economic stations are mainly used for repair purpose, they can also be post near mining astroids as mineral drop off points. Players can choose to have them charge taxes for entering a station or weave the fees. All three races can build defensive turrets (in Hive's case a permanent summon that acts like defensive turret).