So, I'm a huge fan of porting the Freelancer/Discovery universe to Star Citizen. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. Current schedule puts the release of the singleplayer campaign and the persistent universe module at at least a year from now. Plenty of time to brainstorm and figure out what we want to see in Star Citizen: Discovery.
I'll be using this thread to structure and document all of the ideas we have, so that in time we can build a comprehensive plan to start building and modding when Star Citizen arrives. I'm hoping we can do this as a community, so I'll try my best to get devs, factions and everyone else involved.
The Question: what would you like to see in a Discovery-based mod for Star Citizen?
Addendum: I am aware of the other threads on Star Citizen. This thread is not ment to discuss the unmodded game or whether we should make a mod in the first place, but purely to discuss and document ideas for a Discovery mod. Please limit off-topic chatter to other threads.
I doubt that this is feasible.
The effort to remake/import Disco ships with interiors and stuff is just too great.
Economy and other complicated balance issues- you can forget about it. SC would be so complex that I doubt anyone would properly mod it. CIG wont want also anyone to mod it. since they would loose money that way,private servers that does not use their cash shop are bad for them. The Modding tools thing is just PR. Also it is already discussed here: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=102731
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)
The first step of failure is not trying. I don't want to sulk over what's not possible without first figuring out what -is- possible. Freelancer: Discovery wasn't born in one night either. Let's keep negativity out of this thread. And I've already referenced to the other thread.
So, as a first suggestion, I propose we set SC: Discovery a few centuries into the future of the current mod, to give us ample space to resolve, modify and add new story arcs, systems, planets and so on. Also gives us more room to wiggle with ship design, given that in the future we won't be flying the exact same ships we fly now. We can keep the look and feel of the current ones, but they needn't be exact replica's.
Second suggestion is to identify story arcs. Quite obviously these are geared towards the seven Houses.
Question: What with the Zoners, the Colonial Republic, the Sirius Coalition? Can we identify them as major houses in the own right? What with the Canada & Australia, whose colonists were on board the Liberty and the Bretonia respectively?
As an added note; one thing I would -love- to see/create, is much more cultural variety within an individual House itself. I feel like this is something that's lacking in the current universe.
Anyway, I've tried to identify the major story arcs as the themes that touch upon more than just one House. I believe these take priority as they paint the canvas for all other stories to fit in. Feel free to correct me if you feel I'm wrong somewhere. So far I've found five (blue) and propose three new ones (red):
I'm wondering if we can give the Junkers more of an edge. In addition to 'just' clearing debris fields to build ships and stations ... how about them finding a way to build scrappy jump gates and buggy trade lanes from old, discarded materials. Obviously these things won't look and work nearly as perfect as those from Ageira, but at least they would work in some capacity. Such a move turns the Junkers into true technology manufacturers for spaces and factions that Ageira won't deal with for all sorts of reasons.
What's your motivation for planning this ahead of the S.C. release? Shouldn't the new game's mechanics and modding environment significantly influence your planning?
Not trying to rain on your parade, but what makes you think any plans made pre-release will necessarily apply to the game after it's playable?
(08-20-2013, 04:06 AM)Challenger Wrote: What's your motivation for planning this ahead of the S.C. release? Shouldn't the new game's mechanics and modding environment significantly influence your planning?
Not trying to rain on your parade, but what makes you think any plans made pre-release will necessarily apply to the game after it's playable?
Because now is as good a time as ever.
As you probably know, Star Citizen doesn't have a traditional release scheme; it's being released in separate modules. In fact, the earliest version of the ship hangar module will be out this weekend. That alone will give us a pretty big amount of information on ship design.
We can't yet do everything, but there are some things we can do. Half the process is finding out what those things are and then acting on them. The great thing about Star Citizen is its openness. The amount of design info they release this early on is staggering, meaning we don't have to wait for full release to start thinking about possible mods. If you check Star Citizen's own mod forum, you'll see some pretty damn amazing ships proposed by modders already.
Sure, we don't know the exact details of everything in Star Citizen, but we know the general lines of where it's going. Enough to get started. What I'm trying to create is a design plan, not an implementation. What I'm proposing here, is a collection of mostly lore, art and discussion on what would be nice to have, *if* it can be done. The point is to have something to start from when the modding tools are released.
Your idea makes some assumptions which I do not believe are valid.
1) Demand for the replication/continuation of the Discovery mod in Star Citizen. While many people here are interested in the game, they are likely looking for something new, rather than a repetition of well-explored themes.
2) Willingness and ability of sufficient members of the community do the work actually required to develop the mod. Re-creating the ships and system of Discovery in the CryEngine would require a stupendous amount of time and skill, neither of which I am aware that people here have.
There are also some non-logistical, non-technical barriers to creating a Freelancer-based Discovery mod in Star Citizen.
1) Freelancer's copyright is owned by Microsoft, which means copying intellectual property from Freelancer might be illegal.
2) The concept of the Discovery mod can be primarily attributed to its original creator, Igiss, and it might be worth requesting his permission to port his work into Star Citizen.
(08-04-2013, 02:56 PM)Echo 7-7 Wrote: I'm not sure if we'd want to recreate Discovery as it is now on the Star Citizen engine. There's no doubt that some modding communities might spring up with work inspired by Freelancer, but I would think that a majority of the community would relish the opportunity to explore new territory. Concepts such as a parrallel universe, or alternate timeline, could help merge Freelancer-inspired themes with SC mechanics.
Quote:Because now is as good a time as ever.
I, for one, know that when Star Citizen is released, my interest will be focussed on playing on the main server. Perhaps, many years in the future, better mods may be more fully realised, in order to cater to demand for content and gameplay more diverse than what Cloud Imperium Games is offering. That would parallel the development of mods for Freelancer: in the early years, there were more mods than you could poke a stick at, but they were somewhat more crude and of fluctuating quality. As the years went on, interest in all but the best mods died out; for better or for worse, Discovery has stood the test of time. That's not to say there weren't other good mods out there, just that the most popular survived. I would hazard a guess that a similar pattern might emerge, so it may be better to wait until post-release to even consider the viability of a Discovery-inspired Star Citizen mod.
