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+--- Thread: Let's discuss parallel realities (/showthread.php?tid=119475)
Let's discuss parallel realities - Tenacity - 08-21-2014
In other words, what 'could have been'. Do you think that, at some point in the past, discovery could have or should have gone a different direction? What direction would you have taken it, if you were the one making the calls? What would you change about the mod, at any point in its history?
BTW, keep in mind this is purely a thread for fanciful discussion, so (and yes, you're actually seeing Tenacity say this) try to keep it positive.
What I would have changed:
Story/Focus of the Mod:
Discovery began with more of a focus towards the development of the Nomads (aka Slomon K'hara), essentially a continuation of the single player story line. That, IMO, was the best time the mod had - being an order player during that progression, and then a K'hara myself, the environment was rich with RP, personal backgrounds, faction-scale wars, and the air of consequences that could have profound effects on the entire Sirius Sector. It was even a thrilling time for individuals not directly focused on the Nomad war, as any trader or police pilot could say "Yea, I really did see a nomad, and it scared the bejeebus outta me", and have that impact their own personal progression.
The downfall, in my opinion, was when the mod shifted focus away from that story arc and towards the invented Gallic house. Personally, I felt from the get-go that this was stretching really far for something that, in the end, didnt capture enough players to even fill the footsteps of the Nomad war. Sure, it effected a lot more areas of Sirius on a daily basis, what with kusari and bretonia being pulled into the conflict, but it just didnt seem as 'epic' to me, and the whole of the storyline makes little sense to me still. Vengeful french from earth-that-was storming into sirius to conquer the galaxy, simply because they're pissed off they got left behind? Stretching, really stretching.
So, if it were up to me, I'd have done two things:
1. Continued the story arc with the Nomads. Expanded that side of Sirius with new nomad systems, additional nomad ship types, an entire nomad culture to rival a Sirian house (at least) - and, in turn, expanded BHG Core, Zoner, and Order controlled systems and presence to make them competetive with the new Nomad content. Zoners would have a hayday exploring completely new systems with the threat of Nomads lurking at every jump. The Core and Order would have plenty of opportunities to both fight and work with one another in regards to alien technology and possible invasion.
The Nomads would be able to expand with deadlier, terror-instilling vessels and stations that would make the entire breadth and width of humanity seem small in comparison because, let's face it, what we really adore about aliens is the fact that they make us seem like insects, and we like the feeling of pride we get from fighting overwhelming odds.
2. On the opposite side of Sirus, add a slew of new, unexplored systems ready to colonize. This would have given explorers, militaries, and enterprising individuals alike the opportunity to go to a completely new, never-before-seen place and claim it as their own. I'm sure that, through some FLhook magic, we could add proper territorial claims and ever-changing ownership of static objects like planets or stations.
Eventually, this expansion could even have lead to contact with either new aliens (enemies or allies of the nomads, either would be interesting), or with human explorers and colonists from past expeditions who were cut off from contact with Sirius. No lost house ships though, that was a bad idea that should never be re-explored.
Ships:
Discovery has added countless new ships. Every little faction has their own vessels now, and honestly it can get downright confusing for a new player (or even a veteran player after a bit of shoreleave).
I'd have taken an entirely different path with ships for the mod. We already know that customizable ships are possible, done through other mods (essentially in the same way that the vanilla transports have customizable cargo pods). The idea is that you buy a core ship, and can then add different parts to customize it's appearance (parts being the equivalent of cargo pods). A modular system with a slew of different wing shapes, chassis shapes, engine types, so on and so forth.
How feasible this would really be is probably up for a debate of it's own, but it would've been an interesting path.
Alternatively, I'd have avoided adding so many nonconsequential factions in the first place, so that we could focus on creating second, third, fourth, etc. generations of the original freelancer ships. For conceptual purposes, imagine that this is Discovery 1.0, and you've just purchased a vanilla (first generation) Liberty Siege Cruiser. Well, you fly it for a bit, and then Discovery 2.0 comes out - you still have your First Generation siege cruiser, but now there's a second generation siege cruiser available. The second generation cruiser looks sleeker, a little more high tech, maybe has slightly greater power core efficiency or speed or additional equipment slots for new types of technology.
Now obviously the first gen cruisers are still around, they're the core of the liberty navy, but gradually players would upgrade to the second generation, then the third, the fourth, so on and so forth. Ideally each ship would look very much like it's vanilla counterpart, but with improved accents, made more streamlined, more advanced looking - in the future, you'd be able to compare a first generation cruiser to a fifth generation cruiser and say "well those are definitely formed on the same basic concept, but they're completely different ships", in much the same way that a heavy fighter or VHF looks very similar to a bomber from the same line, but you can tell they're not the same.
Economy:
Just in the time that I've been gone from the mod (a year or two, maybe?) The number of commodities for trade seems to have doubled, along with the number of buying and selling locations. I know back in vanilla it was hard enough finding good routes, but now it's just overwhelming. You practically have to download flcompanion or flstat just to be able to figure out what to buy and sell without bankrupting yourself.
I think we've gotten a little too far away from the idea that each of the major houses and factions is a consumer of certain commodities, as well as a producer of others. I think a focus on the major commodities would have been more practical - focus on starship parts from rheinland, or raw materials from bretonia, or fuel from kusari, or consumer goods from Liberty, or black market goods and alien artifacts from the borderworlds. Leave the 'everyday items' to the NPC traders, we dont really need to be hauling around candybars and matresses.
To me, the best economic system here is one where you have three points of transaction:
1. Harvesting Raw materials for the production of goods
2. Production facilities that turn raw materials into a product
3 (a). Consumer locations that buy said product
3 (b). Unlawful locations which require the product as well
This way you've got miners harvesting raw materials and taking them to production facilities, traders taking the materials from production facilities to sell at consumer locations, and pirates intercepting traders to provide the product to their own. Preferrably this system would somehow encourage the piracy of cargo, rather than the piracy of credits.
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - Fluffyball - 08-22-2014
However your idea is interesting, there is one big and major problem:
There is already too much space place in Disco and little players, so why to disperse them on yet bigger territory?
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - Tenacity - 08-22-2014
There's a reason there are too few players. Anyone can speculate as to what that reason might be, but my opinion is that it was the addition of gallia and the utter lolfest that Disco's RP turned into that caused a mass exodus of our veteran players.
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - Vicho Deivis - 08-22-2014
I have a theory about that see an example
Disco is based on a very old game of an unpopular genere. Old people gets... well, old and the young see Freelancer as a relic of the pass. New players have to:
1) Like space games
2) Know about freelancer
3) Know about Freelancer's mods
4) Try Disco and like it.
As for what you said, I think that the Omicrons update is what you want to do without deleting everything that have been done this years.
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - MÃmir - 08-22-2014
Story/Focus of the Mod:
I think the story should have been developed slower, with an equal focus on every single faction, rather than make huge story progressions in the field of Gallia and neglecting most other stuff.
I also think story should reflect the in-game situation better, ie. Texasburg should have been a reality a long time ago, and Liberty could take it back if they showed strength over time.
Gallia wrecked the story, no doubt, but seeing that they just *have* to be there for some reason, I would have liked them to be positioned a little less as pure badguys, we've already got nomads for that, and it severely limits the room of possibilities. Even Hitler and Nazi Germany had friends.
I would have kept a keen focus on the Omicrons as a zone driven by player events, rich in resources like 4.85 Dublin so there'd be an ever-changing tide of war between several factions. Also a zone heavily subjected to change, collapsing jumpholes, new systems, nuked systems etc. so people don't get too settled and start to feel entitled to stuff. Wild West, yay.
Ships:
A complete separation of caps from snubs in PVP. No b/b on caps, transports and gunboats. No botfeeding. Caps can have fun with each other in fleet engagements, snubs can have fun with each other in brawls and noone will be able to wreck the fun. As an added bonus, transports without escorts find themselves very dead very fast, forcing the trader to actually make some decisions and take calculated risks - "do I pay for scouts and take this super profitable but super risky route, or do I go solo and stay off the radar while making less credits?" / "should I join a faction so they can help me stay alive?" etc. etc. A lot of the ships (especially transports) in Disco are too strong on their own, promoting solo play over cooperative play.
Devs always seemed very reluctant to admit that RP does not come first on this server. Like, at all. People use their toys within the scope of the rules no matter how angelic they like to fashion themselves here on the forum, and roleplay comes second to that. That wouldn't be a problem if the toys were distributed and balanced accordingly.
Fewer ships, crappier civ ships, BW tech only available to unlawfuls, fewer choices for one faction supports cooperation with other factions with a different configuration of ships. Also a swell way to ensure that those factions that should be dominating (navy factions) are in fact dominating, by having complete ship lines. I loved the time when Hessians needed the Outcasts to effectively combat Corsair caps, as soon as they got their own stuff, the in-rp ties to Outcasts were suddenly broken for some random stuff regarding RoS I believe.
No Zoner caps. Like none. No gunboat with cruiser shield research ship civilian I'm a neutral stuff. Just Dromedaries and maybe some borrowed GMG tech, cool Karasus and whatnot - I bet that faction would be played by the elite, and would be the single most awesome (and difficult) faction to play, unlike now where the Zoner ID and ships works like a magnet on nubs (again, thats the thing about assuming roleplay comes first, rather than accepting that human beings utilize everything at their disposal to succeed). Zoners would be "hardcore mode" of Disco. End-game stuff for those who are tired of ez-mode.
I would also say death penalty, but I changed my mind about that. There are too many ways to force a very unsatisfying "no contest" in this game, and people would utilize those even more if it wasn't just their pride that got hit when they die.
Economy:
Fewer commodities, less profit. More choices in unlawful-to-unlawful trading. I remember when I first started playing, I played with some of my real-life mates, and we spent ages discovering (ye, not sure there was a flcompanion, or maybe I was just a noob) and mapping, so that we'd get sale point prices for various commodities banked on the ship, and over time figure out really profitable routes. Now there's something at almost any (lawful) station that will bring a huge income. It's too easy and not in any way challenging, and thus not rewarding. I've started out from scratch a couple of times, and the most fun part is working your way up to get a decent transport, but from then on everything just sucks. One roundtrip and you've got yourself a fully kitted AU8 VHF, two for a gunboat and a couple more for a cap. Zzzz. It also takes away value from those ships that they are so easy to obtain. Ship prices should be tiered very differently, so that a lf, hf and vhf varies greatly in price, so that, as a new player or starting from fresh, you can get into a LF fairly fast, work your way up to a HF and from then on work hard to get a VHF. This time when I started from scratch it was so disappointing to find that everything just cost the same - when playing a computer game, I need to feel that I progress or "level up" somehow, but there are only really two levels in the game: No transport and 3K+ transport.
Also no PoB's, or at least make them disposable. The level people invest themselves in their bases is not healthy or conducive of anything positive, and that can be fixed by balancing them differently. In EVE Online, for instance, a lot of PoB's (POS's) are deployed to support a mining ops, and is only meant to survive for a fairly short time, and people don't lose their cool when the base gets fried at some point. In general, the tougher treatment you get in Eve leads to fewer tears and more fun, ironically. The tears of disco stems from expectations that aren't met, but if you expect to bend over and take it every time you undock, you'll be thrilled when you get to keep your pants on. Disco could have learned from that.
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - Thunderer - 08-22-2014
It could be interesting. Current Disco isn't bad, but that could have been even better.
It has become a bit more complicated than I like, though.
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - Vipera Berus - 08-22-2014
I think its more a question of one game getting old. An example is - I used to play a lot of Age of Empires the first 2 of them anyhow more often than not and now if I go on ether more than once in a blue moon its unusual. This is the main issue IMO.
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - Flakface - 08-22-2014
I must say I agree with most of your points.
If it were up to me:
Ships:
I agree that ships should be more balanced and harder to obtain. Like you said, there should be a progression.
Player starts at level 1 with a very light fighter, with LVL1 ships available to purchase (slightly different stats but balanced). then as the player advances in level, (with money earned, oviously thats how FL works) you can reach lvl25 and buy one of the lvl 25 craft.
then from 25-50 would be the medium type, upgraded stats.
50-75 are heavy, and 75-99 (IDK if FL goes to 100) are VH.
Planets + Backgrounds:
This is more of a nitpick regarding the graphics and not balances or anything:
I would like to see planets actually be to somewhat of a scale to real life, instead of like 1 k big, have them be at least 5k or something. and with way more detailed textures (and if possible, make a city lights texture? and also, can we get updated nebulae and star fields? I'll make them myself if I have to :p
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - An Old Guy - 08-23-2014
I played vanilla FL a long time and then did the mods, and then got into other games. I remember when WoT came out and the graphics and teamplay pulled a lot of people (me included) away from FL. But the need for a good space game brought me back and here. I have always found the planet size vs. reality to be an very minor bother as noted above. I like the way they went with ships and all the 4.86 add ons, player bases, ship upgrades, prometheum (lol) and all it does. But I agree Gallia should have been 'less' and more devoted to fine tuning and enhancing the existing systems and gameplay. However, I think that with 170+ ppl on the server having Gallia and all it offers would be nice. But like they say, it is what it is..
RE: Let's discuss parallel realities - Ironwatsas - 08-23-2014
The issue with Gallia is it's heavily overbuilt and was basically shoehorned into an already-long standing conflict (The Kusari/Bretonia war). It's introduction and the aftermath thereof was rather contrived and a number of the political developments occurring in it's wake (Kusari Regime Change) simply don't make any sense in the way that it was presented up to this point.
Nomads meanwhile have suffered some severe decay in their overall threat perception by mere virtue of being spammed all over the place. They went from a mysterious veiled threat nobody but the Order and Core knew about to one that's basically the prime suspect for half of the things that happen in Sirius, today!
If we're discussing a parallel version of the Discovery mod, I would basically put the point of divergence at about the 4.84/4.85 era. The Kusari-Bretonia war would be seen through to it's conclusion. Depending on player actions, either:
- Kusari would win a limited victory, and annex most of the taus, leaving Bretonia in a weaker position and forcing them to attempt to colonize space elsewhere.
- Liberty would intervene, turning the tide in their favor an ultimately lead to a negotiated truce.
- Fifth Column tactics within Kusari on the part of foriegn or domestic parties leads to a political collapse, resulting in a sengoku-jidai or gempei-war style power vacuum IN SPACE.
Or some combination of the three. Point is, the war shouldn't be dragged out unnecessarily, as has basically been done, merely with Gallia as the antagonist. It's driving a lot of the player base out of the region. The convoluted nature of the jumpgates/holes in the area has also made trade virtually impossible.
Either way, in my scenario, Gallia wouldn't exist. Someone else would. Most likely either some relict of the old Coalition having stumbled into Sirius, a new and exciting Alien Race, or some full-blown Lovecraftian or Psuedo-Arcane threat.
The area Gallia now occupies would have some Colonial Remnant and Unexplored frontier systems northeast of the Taus.
There would be a lot less Nomads in Sirius (NPCs atleast). Resolving the conflict between the Noms and Humans would be the "End Goal" of the overall storyline in this scenario. Adding a large-scale tertiary threat would simply be an enabling factor. By logic being some large-scale alien or cosmic force which is mutually hostile to the Nomads and Humans, ultimately forcing them to put their differences aside.
A resurgent coalition (Either a heavily expanded SCRA or one or several "mini houses" representing the Sol Coalition or remnants thereof) might exist. One idea I had is that the old "Rheinland Revolutionary Alliance" is taken to it's conclusion: An overtly communist Coalition instigates a full scale revolution in Rheinland, pitting the Bundschuh, Red Hessian Army, and LWB against the Rheinwehr full-scale.
The Liberty-Rheinland war would not take place. The LN would occasionally launch foreign interventions, deploying large scale fleets into remote regions for various purposes. But any "wars" it fights would take place far outside it's borders. Having too many conflicts in house space makes trader life hell and directs player activity to more stable areas. In the Rheinland scenario above, I could imagine that the Liberty Navy would potentially deploy to Rheinland proper as a peacekeeping force, ultimately leading to a showdown with the "Real" Coalition in either the Omegas or as-yet uninvented systems in the west/southwest.
As for other aliens, a few possibilities exist. Since the Nomads sort of have a monopoly on squishy biotech, anything new should go the other direction. I've always liked the idea of military Von Neumann machines or Strogg-like alien cyborgs as a possible threat. They could easily take the place of the current AIs, and their power and technology levels are fairly broad enough to be any level of threat.
As for ships: Only a few factions (house navies, Outcasts, Corsairs, Hessians, and those factions that are logically capable of building them) would get their own shiplines. Giving Gaians/GC/Farmers/Lane Hackers/etc their own ship classes is silly, since they wouldn't have any indigenous construction capacity.
Colonial Remnant would be expanded into a mini-house with two or three systems, and would get their own ships of course (the ones they have now are decent enough). The Hellfire Legion would also be expanded, gaining access primarily to a mix of Liberty Navy hardware, with maybe one or two unique ships (Spyglass comes to mind), and would be the primary "Symmetric" military threat within Liberty's borders (e.g. able to fight the liberty in cap-spam battles like the LN-RM duels in Texas). RoS would still be outcasts. SCRA would be expanded into the coalition as stated above. And a few other unique groups might exist (Bretonian Buccaneers or Oracles come to mind).
The only other unlawful/NGO groups I see as having any major shipwright capability are the Blood Dragons (via co-operation with the Order), Guild Core (via AP Manufacturing), Outcasts and Corsairs (and even then, to less of a degree then they have now), and Red Hessians (due to the overwhelming numbers of industrial workers in their ranks and possible unlawful mining operations).
Smaller groups have to make due with the Pirate Shipline (which would no longer be exclusive to Rogues/Mollys), Borderworlds, Civilian, etc. The current Zoner capital ships would also be made "Free Use" (anyone who's ID allows flying caps can buy one) as colony ships, or very heavily armed explorers/escorts/supply craft. The threats existing in the edge worlds are quite sufficient to justify such heavy firepower, even with a less overt Nomad presence.
Doing this would free up a lot of the extraneous faction ships, decrease mod size bloat, and give room for more interesting ships that would be more widely available.
As for systems: Guard Systems would go away. Similarly to what is being planned at this time. A few "back trail" systems would themselves exist to provide smuggling routes and unlawful supply bases, and places for freelancers to go, but they wouldn't be monolithic faction strongholds. In the same vein, there would of course be a whole bunch of sparsely populated or completely unexplored frontier systems in the vein of Kansas or Omega-9. Said systems would be far off the beaten path, and thereby meant to be sparsely populated and barely visited.
Positioning of trade routes and equipment availability would funnel most player activity into core Sirius space, but things like codename wrecks and neat things like the Shrine would be put out in the middle of nowhere, as far from core Sirius space as possible.