[Flipside]

1 : Non-realistic Markets, even X2 only gets close.
2 : ‘Gates’ to constrict the flow of traffic, and make space seem ‘crowded’ - Even 'Elite' allowed more freedom.
3 : Unreal sizes
4 : Stupid AI
5 : Not enough opportunities/interaction with surroundings.
6 : ‘Pirates’ with special ‘Pirate ships’ etc?!? Pirates are rogue traders, not a race.
7 : ‘Psychic targeting’… ‘Oh look that ship over there is an enemy!’
8 : Player has too much influence and the ‘story’ involves the player too much.

I'd love to see a game in real scale, maybe with trade routes, but not fixed 'arrival' points. Where you can interact with planets/asteroids that behave in a proper astronomical manner, where markets behave properly, and where, if two traders meet outside a 'safe' zone, they might try a little bit of Piracy etc. I.e. something where you feel the universe is bigger than you are

[Ace]

We'll I've been working on a space/trading game for mobile phones, PDAs, etc. which is nearing beta and here's my thoughts on these issues:

1. Agreed, a lot of games have really simple economics. X2 has a good game economy, but a horrible interface.

2. Privateer, I-War 2, Freelancer, and X2 all do this. Games like Escape Velocity have a jump at the edge of a system and select one nearby system which is a little better.

3. 2d games can't pull off the real sizes, but yes it is silly that most of the 3d ones don't have good scale. I-War 2 is one with well done planetary systems and scales due to the newtonian physics.

4. It seems to be a universal issue with spacesims in general.

5. I'm assuming you're talking about "interactive space terrain" and such. If you're aiming for more realism it's hard to pull off Star Wars like asteroid fields or Trek like nebula. However, even some of the more arcadey ones don't have this done well.

6. A lot of games seem to have generic pirate factions with no backstory for why pirates have their own ships. In some settings though, pirates being their own faction works well.

7. Ship sensors detect a ship belonging to a group hostile towards you. I do think though that ships not belonging to an overall group should be harder to determine if they'll be friendly or not.

8. A lot gamers like to have a strong single player story. What would be nice is making this completely optional. Unfortunately some space sims like forcing you through the main campaign/quest so that you can unlock new systems and such.

[Nuke]

this is why elite is still the number one space trading game out there.  my biggest issue is that eventurally you get to a point where you cant buy anything new, which is where the game gets boring. freelancer has got to be my #2 favorite trading game, but id rather they do away with the crappy story and open up the universe abit.

while were on the topic, any word on when elite 4 comes out?

[Carl]

1 : you want inflation or something?
2 : gates make the gameplay possible. otherwise you'd have to make a huge map that would crash the game.
3 : objects that are too big will crash the game.
4 : That's a tech limitation.
5 : It would be nice to be able to interact with absolutely everything, but that means more dev time, more cost, and more disk space.
6 : so you want them to make a different ship for each individual pirate ship you come across in the entire game? that's more than you can expect them to do.
7 : you don't have to be psychic to know that a ship is hostile.
8 : yeah, if the game is centered on you, then that's to be expected. in FS however, you're not really that important.

[Flipside]

1: No, I want supply and demand, take Freelancer, for example, you often come to a manufacturing planet that sells goods for far far more than any other planet is buying at, it doesn't make sene.

2 : As stated before, gates weren't essential, it just means people have to accept that a lot of space contains very little.

3 : Not if the game is written correctly, that is an engine limitation, not a card limitation afaik. And remember when Jupiter is big, you won't be able to see most of the inner planets, even the sun would be tiny.

4 : One that can be repaired.

5 : True, I tend to mean here that you can mine asteroids etc, and, if we are going to pretend that nebs are as thick as water vapour, you can mine elements from Nebulae as well etc.

6 : No, I want Pirate factions to be using the same ships as normal traders/fighters.

7 : So if you are sitting in space and a ship comes out of Hyperspace or whatever near you, you are going to know before it performs any action whatsoever whether it is going to attack you or not? This is not realistic

8 : True, but, as I said, I'd much rather be a small part of a bigger plot, not the centre of a massive one

[DragonClaw]

Sounds like you need a healthy meal of good-'ol-borin'-EvE

[Flipside]

I thought Eve was slim on the Interaction side though, pretty, but apart from other ships, you couldn't really interact with much?

[Nuke]

trading games shouldnt have one story at all, more like a bunch of small ones. privateer2 and freelancer had nice large scale plots but i remeber both games i spent more time playing the game after the story than i did during the story. a bunch of small mini campaigns inbetween long trading binges would make the game more fun

also i dont like games where you have to read of bs. of trading games have newspapers and such. while they make a realistic way to pass infromation to the player they forget to realise its a game and reading virtual newspapers is not my idea of fun. the thing i liked about freelacer is that you could learn where the good deals are and what trade routes are most profitable by just listening to the in flight radio chatter.

frontier: elite 2 and frontier: first encounters (elite 3) were probibly the best in terms of planet scale and physics. the planets actually had cities on them with space ports you could land at, simulated atmoshere that yu had to reenter properly or burn up. the games had a time compression feature because of the extreemly lengthy amount of time it would take to accelerate/decelerate. it also made combat very difficult. however it did give one a realistic idea of how flying in space really is.

[Flipside]

Exactly Nuke, whilst I'm not a physics addict, and found the whole 'enter the atmosphere at the right andle' and stuff a bit over the top in Frontier etc.

I can understand the need to remove planetary flight anyway, a game with different terrain for every planet etc would be just too big Blame it on Biological control or something and make all trading in-station

I prefer the sort of idea where the story continues with or without you, and if you want to get involved, you might or might not impact enough to swerve the storyline, so you might be approached by the government to sabotage or spy, or even to hire your combat ships, for a fight in a war, and, although the outcome may effect you personally, it won't massively impact on the over-all storyline as such.

There could be critical moments where the player sends the story going one way or another, but they shouldn't be indicated by big red 'Which way would you like the plot to go?' indicators, if you see what I mean

[NGTM-1R]

Eh. Go play Escape Velocity: Nova for awhile. Yes, the player plays a huge role in the story, but on the other hand the story makes the game pretty good...although there's something to be said for wandering around taking out pirates. Trying to be a pirate, on the other hand, is a real pain...

However, under no circumstances should you ever ever trade in your souped-up Mod Starbridge for anything short of  a Polaris Scarab, Polaris Raven, anything Vell-os, or the Kestrel. I've learned that lesson repeatedly.

[Ghostavo]

If you want to have realistic sizes (planets and stuff) go play Universal combat... Jupiter is a scary place to be near of

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Flipside
1 : Non-realistic Markets, even X2 only gets close.
2 : ‘Gates’ to constrict the flow of traffic, and make space seem ‘crowded’ - Even 'Elite' allowed more freedom.
3 : Unreal sizes
4 : Stupid AI
5 : Not enough opportunities/interaction with surroundings.
6 : ‘Pirates’ with special ‘Pirate ships’ etc?!? Pirates are rogue traders, not a race.
7 : ‘Psychic targeting’… ‘Oh look that ship over there is an enemy!’
8 : Player has too much influence and the ‘story’ involves the player too much.

I'd love to see a game in real scale, maybe with trade routes, but not fixed 'arrival' points. Where you can interact with planets/asteroids that behave in a proper astronomical manner, where markets behave properly, and where, if two traders meet outside a 'safe' zone, they might try a little bit of Piracy etc. I.e. something where you feel the universe is bigger than you are

1/  Thing is... how do you convey the realism of a market?  Becuase, really, the economic situation should be as invisible to the player as possible

2/Fair enough.  Purpose of gates is really, I think, to place boundaries upon the player (because you can't have infinite space in a computer game, at least not at present).  The plus point, arguably, is forcing busy/focal points in what would otherwise be a very empty cosmos.

3/I think this is often for gameplay reasons, though.  i.e. in that having vast distances makes long boring journeys more likely.

4/Fair dos

5/Likewise.  I've often wondered if someone could develop a fractal-type system that would be able to artificially create content, within realistic boundaries.  i.e. if you had a planet, then this would be able to populate it artificially within set bounds (in terms of ground objects, etc).  The only problem is quality vs quantity (Battlecruiser being a prime example of the latter winning out)

6/I think pirate ships can be justified if they are ****e, and kitbash efforts.  Possibly the main reason for this is simply that the developers fear they'll be accused of laziness by reusing materials.  another is simply trying to incorporate visual variation between enemies.

7/It's not exactly inconceivable, i.e. if you assume any friendly ships will have an IFF system and those without are hostile or unknown.  Again, I think this is gameplay - there's no fun in being shot to **** because you didn;t know if the giant spaceship in front of you was hostile or not.  possibly related to 6, too

8/I think it's hard to do a good story in which the player has no impact... this is something people will struggle with for balance for an enternity, so I wouldn't expect it to be solved anytime soon.  I'd imagine you'll eventually get a system where the game generates a dynamic situation - such as a war - in  which the players action or inaction is registered.

[Nuke]

i stopped playing elite when i hit 3 million credits and a fully loaded ship. one thing they need to implement is dynamic tech development, where weapons and other upgrades have no maximum limit. freelancer had 10 levels of tech, but above that there was really nothing much left to buy. they need to make a game wich will dynamicly create new tech to keep the game intresting. a good trading game needs to be fully dynamic so that all things from weapons, races, hyperdrives, the economy and so on is always evolving. essentially have the game programmed in a way to create its own content as the game progresses. thats probibly how games like fronter managed to generate its solar systems. solar systems are abstracted to a bare minimum of data and the engine handels the rest to create a solar system. probibly making extensive use of prefabricated objects used in certain combinations to create an endless environment.

[phreak]

IWar 2 is a good Space/Trading game.  A little skimpy on the trading though since it uses a barter system.  and the capital ships don't have that many hitpoints when compared to other things.

I suppose the best trading simulation would account for distances between bases/planets and then factor in population and its growth or decline, prices, number of orbital facilities (shipyards/powerplants, etc), cheap imports, crime, and whether a war is going on to calculate prices and what is needed.  Not to mention that factions may want to construct bases in resource rich areas or establish them on inhabited/uninhabited planets which would futher alter prices and such.  obviously the player would be part of a faction (or on his own) and stuff

so who wants to start coding this?

[Flipside]

LOL That's the shole problem. An engine like that would need to run along the lines of the X2 engine, checking on the behaviour of thousands of ships at the same time. That's why x2's combat engine is so sucky, it's moving (though somewhat simplistically) loads of ships every 'iteration' of the game.

But yes Phreak, that is the sort of thing I am thinking, races have 'characters' i.e. aggressiveness, defensivness, greed, thrift, it should be possible merely to make general assumptions regarding planetary behaviour using the government type, the character and a bit of randomness. i.e. if a world has a Feudal government that spends most of it's money on Military goods, you will probably get a good price for food. Though, because the money available to 'Trade' is reduced by the military budget they may not be able to buy much (I like the idea of the landing and finding that, even though you'd get more money for some goods, people just don't want to buy them for whatever reason)

Now, even if you have only 50 systems, with 7-15 planets, and 1 inhabitable planet per system, in an open game like this you have two options, either traders appear at random, which would completely screw the shole supply/emand thing, or you are left with the same problem that X2 has

[aldo_14]

Of course, an MMO game solves - or rather sidesteps - that problem to a great extent by simply leaving the supply, demand, trade routes, etc largely down to the player.

you could probably, however, have a system which generated traders randomly, but based upon the key economic conditions.  I.e. the game wouldn't check the behaviour of ships, but construct an abstract economy model and alter the ships in game to act with the constraints of that.  For a degree of 'realism', it could be that a certain (representative) subset of ships are used to help calculate said model

[Ghostavo]

If Space Rangers was a space sim, you would be exactly discribing it...

[Flipside]

I suppose another option is to use Lods for the AI. Though this adds certain limitations to things like sensors in other systems etc. So that, close to the player, everything is dealt with on a 1-1 basis, but further from the player, in other systems, things are more and more 'generalised' so that trade, ship losses etc is simply worked out as an average in distant systems. That way, 'real time' AI only has to worry about the current system and a few around it in detail.

[MatthewPapa]

If any company could make an improved X2 like game people would so buy it in a heartbeat.  Someone should....

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Flipside
I suppose another option is to use Lods for the AI. Though this adds certain limitations to things like sensors in other systems etc. So that, close to the player, everything is dealt with on a 1-1 basis, but further from the player, in other systems, things are more and more 'generalised' so that trade, ship losses etc is simply worked out as an average in distant systems. That way, 'real time' AI only has to worry about the current system and a few around it in detail.

I think the issue with LOD-ing AI may be predicting the computational load, though.