Kavik_Kang

Maybe you could put Star Control III on Mars before your story begins... solve everybody's problems all at the same time!

It took me a little while to think of a decent example of what I am talking about. I often fall back on piracy because it adds dimensions to the situation that aren't otherwise there. Any "small side story" told within the "WWII in space timeline" of SC2 would need to be about a group of people on a ship with attrition units (fighters, gunboats, etc). It has to fit in with what the game is. A common, and very realistic, thing seen in sci-fi is a ship of pirate/mercenar

I think you can still largely ignore SC3, you just want to avoid intentionally insulting it. Most gamers who know it didn't like it, so most gamers understand why it is largely ignored without anything needing to be said. Anyone who looks it up will read what is said about it and think "oh, that's why Stardock never seems to mention this SC3 game, I get it." A remake of SC2 in your newer engine would be nice, a lot of people might light that. But everyone already kno

You know... Just a single "major appearance" of the original SC2 aliens would defuse a lot of what you are concerned about. You don't want to interfere with where Fred and Paul might want to take their original story, but what about where their original story already is? You could do a mini-campaign/story DLC set within the time of the UrQuan invasion of SC2. It doesn't change their story, or interfere with them, it simply focuses on a single "big event" and some assoc

That all makes a lot of sense too me, I don't see any discontinuity problems with it or anything like that. And it works for me, anyway. I also don't think SC3 is a very big issue. Just ignore it, occasionally mention that you ignore it. It's not like some big uprising of SC3 fanatics is out there to backlash against it. Those who played it are probably in near unanimous agreement that it should be ignored. I think acknowledging its existence while offici

Right, that isn't appropriate for Star Control Origins in 2018... and yet SC2 worked that way. It was just one example of what I was trying to convey. Today games are made a lot easier, in general, than they used to be. I am just hoping there is at least some feeling of playing a game and not just being walked through a story. In SCO, you would obviously do that with the "game-within-the-game" that the mothership has the potential too be. I don't want to be for

It's not so much difficulty level as it is the way the games are made. Modern games are made almost so that you can't lose, more a walk through a story than a game. There are occasionally exceptions, but most computer games want a child to be able to make it to the end of the game without ever feeling impeded in their progress. Once you've done that, "turning up the difficulty level" on it isn't the issue. The game you wind up with isn't the kind of game that would be

A minimal gravity grid would just need to show the curvature of the grid near the gravity source. It could just "fade into the distance" in both directions, and all you would see is just barely enough for your mind to comprehend the size and depth and strength of the gravity in the only place it actually effects you in any significant way, right next to the planet. This works to convey the information, but 2-4 square wide doughnut-shaped grid "half-pipes" around each planet migh

That's actually the one thing I have been concerned about all along, when you mentioned how you felt as though you had to scratch and claw your way to barely make it through the game. SC2 is from a different era of gaming, when games were much harder. 21st century gamers generally want their hands held and to be walked through a game on easy mode. Most games made today are intentionally made to be easy and never impede the players progress, and in most cases to literally hol

I can never forget playing SC1, when it first game out, with my best friend in my tiny little apartment... on a 286/12, haha!

Cuoro, I could be wrong, but my impression of their "Living Galaxy" is just having other species, ships, etc, "in the background". You can interact with them if you choose to, they rarely (if ever) "bother" you. It's there for the realism, there is a lot more in the galaxy than just you and things directly related too you. If you want to contact/fight them, then they are there, but they rarely if ever force you to interact with them and are never a part of the primary story/

Speed, Thrust, Turn Rate, Energy, Health, Primary Weapon, Secondary Weapon. That's it. This is an arcade game with arcade space ships. When talking about customizing ships, or allowing the player to design ships, keep in mind that the above seven attributes are all that a ship in SCO is. That's all you've got to work with. The designs of ships at this arcade level is a kind of art form, and it's mostly about the Primary and Secondary weapon/systems. Take

I consider what Brad is calling a "Living Galaxy" to be necessary. Just think of it as an "active background". Without it, the background is empty. Literally just empty space, everywhere. He is just talking about bringing the background too life. So that the galaxy is not completely empty other than things that are directly related to you and the primary story. It's not something that will bog you down with milk run quests, it's more of an illusion. D

...and the Star Map notes are only visible when you open the Captain's Log.

I'm back on internet. It will still be a few weeks before I move into my new house and have internet that I will allow me to finally be able to play Super Melee.

I am going to disappear for about a month starting on August 20th. I won't have any way of getting on internet for about a month. After August 20th I will be gone for about a month, until the last week of September.

I realized that this probably isn't obvious... In balancing a guided missile against ships that have no defenses against missiles you can use the "ECM miss" in a few ways. The missile can either miss, fly by like in Faster Than Light. It can miss, but retain tracking and begin maneuvering back around to come after the target again. In this case it will keep pursuing the target until it runs out of fuel. Or it can detonate off target. You can make the warh

...and the stars look down. ;-)

This actually brings up something about Star Trek people don't usually think about. All the bouncing around back and forth between borders they do... Klingon, Romulan, Tholian, Gorn, etc, is much too far for them to have done in their lifetimes. Even just the trip to the center of the galaxy and back in ST:V would take longer than the crew would live. Which leads to what Enterprise actually is. What is seen in the story doesn't match the famous opening lines at all.

Yes, I've been way off on the time to Jupiter for a long time. 45 minutes is perfect and makes everything make a lot more sense. I'm really glad that this came up.

You are right. Wow, I had been way off on that for a long time. I have no idea how I managed to arrive at 21 days, the calculator says around 45 minutes like you say. Thanks, that helps me a lot;-)

At 1000 times the speed of light it would take about 120 years to fly across the length of the galaxy, assuming you never stopped or slowed down for anything. It is a lot bigger than people think it is. Even at the speed of light, it would still take about 21 days just to get to Jupiter. You can try to convey the true size of the galaxy within a game, but you can't make a game to scale. It's just way too big.

Guided weapons are a problem in a top down shooter, especially SC where each ship only has 2 systems. There is no good option in SC where each ship has only two systems. I had listed several in an earlier post. There are many counters for missiles. Point defense weapons, which don't really work for the 2-system design of ships in SC. A few ships might have something like this, but that doesn't help the rest. Electronic warfare or countermeasures can also

Actually, it would be a bad idea to separate the discussion. It is better to have it all in one thread, with the origin of it and where it lead all in one place. That way, if anyone is looking for it later they can find it. Otherwise, if someone goes looking for it later they only find the beginning of the discussion, and where the discussion led is likely lost (or very hard to find). We have 40 years of experience doing this, forum etiquette is often a very bad thing

Actually I do need someone who was born to write to edit the story, but I certainly wouldn't want them re-designing the games. That's what I was born to do, like they were born to write. They would be every bit as bad at what I do as I would be at what they do. I will never be happy with my own story until that happens, and it is a waste of time for me to try and learn to be as good as that person would be at it. Because they were born with that talent and I was not. &