StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Since I've been playing crazy Space Rangers 2, I've been constantly struck by all the world and economic elements that it does in a surprising natural way. Many games either have fixed or scripted gameworlds (like Morrowind) where you can do all kinds of shit, but it doesn't actually CHANGE anything. Many games have some kind of conflict or war, but it never GOES anywhere, noone ever wins/loses etc: it's just an area for the players to fight in. And finally, games with trading elements pretty much NEVER have economic institutions like loans, insurance, etc.

As far as I've discovered so far, SR2 has an ongoing war that either side can win/lose in battles each side undertakes across the gameworld. The universe is randomly seeded, so the war runs differently every time, and you can affect it by supporting the military in combat or economically.

The game has google. You can search the universe for ships, commodities, prices, equipment and bases using a service provided by spaceports. Any information you recieve can be saved to a tooltip for later reference.

The game has natural inflation. If you buy thousands of units of something and throw them into storage, the price is artifically driven up. If heaps of agricultural worlds are lost, food becomes expensive, particularly on high-pop worlds.

The game has developing technology. Both sides of the war increase in capability, and you can help the coalition by providing them with artefacts to research or paying for more science bases. Emerging technology is big, rare and expensive, and everyone in the world doesn't magically get it.

There don't seem to be generated NPCs. My game started with 50 'rangers', and the score table tells me only 42 remain alive. Every ship is going somewhere, has goals, money and friends. I've had a pirate I nearly killed track me for months and try and kill me in the middle of a defensive battle against the bad guys!

Ive been playing space traders since Elite (and crashing into the starbase trying to make .1 on potatoes), and this is the most open, unscripted gameworld Ive seen. Its even possible to play in different ways: my character is on the front lines, kicking ass and taking names, whereas my friend is in safe systems, getting huge loans, making shitloads on trading and supporting the war through war bonds.

The sacrifice made for this flexibilty is storytelling. The plot progresses at whatever speed the player uncovers it, but it pretty much boils down to learning more about the enemy. It has none of the narration in games like EV Nova. I much prefer this, as a game developers idea of a good story usually isn"t very good: does everyone think the tradeoff is worth it? It"s extraordinarily difficult to get this game (being a tiny Russian import), but where do people like the flexibilty\story balance to be? Most people don"t like Final Fantasy style 100% rigid, but would you enjoy a game with a barebones story you fill in yourself but an amazing degree of natural flexibilty?

Even though I prefer games with more defined stories, I think the trade-off is worth it, at least in some cases. Half-assed customization in favor of a decent story hurts games, but freedom on the level you described really would make a bare-bones plot work. Of course, one can dream of a day when games combine that kind of freedom with a good story (ie, dozens of possible endings, coressponding to your choices in game.)

Arcanum had a nice balance between plot and ability to alter it, hell you could reduce cities to ruins during the campaign and not "break" the plot, but it would all have an effect in the end.

Then you've got a game like X2 or something where there is so much flexibility and scope that you could take forever trying to get it to work in your favour.

Ire, I agree it'd be great when we can have stories generated by the machine that are so engaging we don't notice. Games like Morrowind have a great deal of content, but to have *real* flexibilty you'd need an absolutely ridiculous amount more. EV Nova has several different game courses and endpoints, but it's let down by limited options in just what you can DO (ie, just kill and trade).

Ando, I was going to directly compare SR2s world with Xs: I've never played any X2+ games long enough to get past the first few weeks of incredibly boring slog, but the SR2 world seems more immediately engaging. My friend started a game, got a huge one year loan from a business center, and made enough to pay it back in a few months, then forgot about it, became late and got fined and chased by bounty hunters. The lack of an early-game boredom factor is important.

And it's cool to jump into a system protected by the 'Cash Only' squadron of battleships that I paid for. The ability to intercept communications between other ships, and see that they are cooperating, bribing, extorting, trading knowledge and calling for help even when you aren't around provides a great sense of a living world. The game has a 'flight log' feature, which allows you to watch a replay of the last month, where you can see everything - for the sole purpose of seeing that yes, everyone does have lives of their own.