Things to do in the spacelanes when you're masslocked
Posted: Sat Mar 09, 2013 1:07 pm
Cim has mentioned elsewhere the idea of both expanding the spacelane, and of making spacelane flight more interesting - so I thought it might be helpful (for a given value of "helpful") if we came up with some more-or-less wild ideas as to what players might want to do to divert themselves as they overhaul/work their way around another Python. There is of course a certain pleasure to be had in not doing anything, of just kicking back and enjoying the quiet - but that option is always open. What I'd like to discuss is what players might, in an ideal world, be able to do as well as, or instead of, relaxing and appreciating the downtime. This is all very much blue-sky thinking, and might well be impossible or impractical - but it might spin off a few useful ideas on the way.
As I see it, there are two kinds of activity the player can indulge in during these quiet times: passive, and active. There are already a few passive activities players can do, such as examining the market prices and (with randomshipnames) doing a bit of shipspotting. To this list might be added something like e.g. a randomly generated news service, along the lines of Snoopers, but with much less content (to see something of the sort of thing I'm thinking about, try the Daily Mail-o-Matic, which generates random headlines that might appear in that publication - "Human Rights Act Gives Britain's Swans Swine Flu", for example). We could conceivably have something like this operating in the game. It might even be possible to make some of them vaguely game-relevant, where certain kinds of "events" affect market prices in a system or area for a short period. Another similar sort of thing could be done via communication with NPCs: there could be a bit of random "chat" to be had with other merchants, which might contain some semi-useful trading tips. And of course there's the ability, demonstrated by the Ship's Manual, to display ebooks within the interface.
Passive stuff is (I imagine) relatively easy to do - compared to active stuff, at any rate. The problem is, passive stuff might get old quite fast. Active activities, though, require a player interface, and indeed a new set of skills, unless the activity is just going to be pointless busywork. Active events could be things like interacting with the station and/or other ships - trading in "futures", say, or participating in auctions in order to snag some slightly more advantageous cargo deal that could have time limits on them, i.e. they might expire if you don't get there on time. Or they could involve things like shipboard maintenance.
The former would be (I think) relatively easy to do via the existing interface - see for example the New Cargoes OXP. Ship maintenance though might have a lot of potential: players could save themselves time and money conducting running services and repairs on their own ship, and maybe even tweak a little temporary performance upgrade - as well as running the risk of screwing up and making things worse.
This sounds quite tricky to do (and no doubt it would be) but it might be easier to accomplish than it first appears - at least insofar as it might not be necessary to devise a whole new, original game model to simulate making the repairs. It's always possible to "borrow" from the existing canon of quick single-player timewaster games, and rejig them to represent "tracing the engine fault" or "smoothing out the energy grid" or whatever. Something like Wumpus Hunt could be turned into a procedure for pinpointing and repairing a fault (killing the Wumpus), whilst running the risk of "blowing the grid" and making things worse (getting eaten by said Wumpus). Something like Pipe Mania or Minesweeper might also be retooled to represent other forms of maintenance or repair.
By all means criticise these ideas (I expect no less!) but bear in mind this is all supposed to be open-ended and a bit starry-eyed. But are they interesting? Is there any desire for this kind of thing? What might be the problems - i.e. what happens if you're suddenly attacked in the middle of tracking down a Wumpus in the witchdrive? What other things, active and passive, might be enjoyable to be able to do?
As I see it, there are two kinds of activity the player can indulge in during these quiet times: passive, and active. There are already a few passive activities players can do, such as examining the market prices and (with randomshipnames) doing a bit of shipspotting. To this list might be added something like e.g. a randomly generated news service, along the lines of Snoopers, but with much less content (to see something of the sort of thing I'm thinking about, try the Daily Mail-o-Matic, which generates random headlines that might appear in that publication - "Human Rights Act Gives Britain's Swans Swine Flu", for example). We could conceivably have something like this operating in the game. It might even be possible to make some of them vaguely game-relevant, where certain kinds of "events" affect market prices in a system or area for a short period. Another similar sort of thing could be done via communication with NPCs: there could be a bit of random "chat" to be had with other merchants, which might contain some semi-useful trading tips. And of course there's the ability, demonstrated by the Ship's Manual, to display ebooks within the interface.
Passive stuff is (I imagine) relatively easy to do - compared to active stuff, at any rate. The problem is, passive stuff might get old quite fast. Active activities, though, require a player interface, and indeed a new set of skills, unless the activity is just going to be pointless busywork. Active events could be things like interacting with the station and/or other ships - trading in "futures", say, or participating in auctions in order to snag some slightly more advantageous cargo deal that could have time limits on them, i.e. they might expire if you don't get there on time. Or they could involve things like shipboard maintenance.
The former would be (I think) relatively easy to do via the existing interface - see for example the New Cargoes OXP. Ship maintenance though might have a lot of potential: players could save themselves time and money conducting running services and repairs on their own ship, and maybe even tweak a little temporary performance upgrade - as well as running the risk of screwing up and making things worse.
This sounds quite tricky to do (and no doubt it would be) but it might be easier to accomplish than it first appears - at least insofar as it might not be necessary to devise a whole new, original game model to simulate making the repairs. It's always possible to "borrow" from the existing canon of quick single-player timewaster games, and rejig them to represent "tracing the engine fault" or "smoothing out the energy grid" or whatever. Something like Wumpus Hunt could be turned into a procedure for pinpointing and repairing a fault (killing the Wumpus), whilst running the risk of "blowing the grid" and making things worse (getting eaten by said Wumpus). Something like Pipe Mania or Minesweeper might also be retooled to represent other forms of maintenance or repair.
By all means criticise these ideas (I expect no less!) but bear in mind this is all supposed to be open-ended and a bit starry-eyed. But are they interesting? Is there any desire for this kind of thing? What might be the problems - i.e. what happens if you're suddenly attacked in the middle of tracking down a Wumpus in the witchdrive? What other things, active and passive, might be enjoyable to be able to do?
So you could add new stories everytime someone writes one...
I didn't do it! 
Probably not too far from the truth... 