I was just wondering what everyone's ideas for the perfect massive multplayer space sim would be. Of course, I have one of my own. It would be a mixture of a lot of things, most of which would probably be taken from P2. I'll start from the beginning. Upon registration, everyone is given a certain amount of money, which is just enough to get started. You can buy a basic light fighter, rent out a transport, and get come money through some trading, until you can move up and enhance your status through buying new ships. At the beginning, there would be three levels of ships available. Light fighters, medium fighters, and heavy fighters (boy am I creative). Now, a single person would probably not be able to move up that far from here. However, people are allowed to join up into official clans, guilds, nations, whatever you want to call them. When these groups are officially joined, the total cash between the members in the group becomes pooled. That way, more money can be made. As these groups grow larger and wealthier, they can buy Captial Ships, which provide a mobil base of operations. This provides two primary advantages. First a mobile base. Members of a group could land on their group's cap ships. However, different cap ships would have different capacities. A destroyer, for example, would be able to hold four ships. A cruiser, 12. A light carrier, 24. Etc. Etc. The numbers aren't important, its just an example. Second, cap ships are nearly impossible for a fighter to destroy, as fighters are unable to load torpedoes, and cap ships pack a wallop, like they do in P2. Therefore, the cap ships give people a large advantage, as while they can't catch a fighter, a destroyer would be able to catch most transport ships. In addition, people or groups would be able to make scientific developments. These developments, such as bombers, more advanced cap ships, a stationary base, and cloaking would cost a lot of money, making it very difficult for an individual. Now, with just this, it makes it appear that everyone will be joining these groups just to belong to something powerful. However, there will be other rules in place to prevent. Specifically, a waiting period (90 days or a certain number of missions or something) that a character must be in the game until they can join or affiliate with one of these groups. This provides situations for an ever important group to be present. The Mercs. The Mercs could be hired by newbies to help them protect their investment or help them with missions, and could be very lucrative for the individual mercs. In addition, when a pilot is shot down in his plane, if he dies his character must start over, including the waiting period. If he ejects, he either loses his plane if he's solo and must buy a new one, or his group loses the plane. If the group has a member who continuously bales out and is costing them a lot of money in new planes, the group could banish the member. This would create a constant progression, from the individual trader, to pirate groups, to fleets of great power througout the system, that would be of vital importance. And on the outside, there would always be the mercs. In addition, ways of trading could be different. For example, if a smaller pirate group is looking for some merc help in fighting off a force of a more powerful group, they could offer the merc one of their ships, or an advance they have discovered. Of course, cash would always be accepted. Anyways, that's my idea. I'd love to hear others.
Bassman
Bassman
