Idea, Concept, Artwork needed for new Sci-Fi MMORPG

[Darkevilme]

I dont know if this has been mentioned but make the high end battleship guns cost a special resource to fire. This ammo requirement and associated infrastructure allows for neat cutting of supply lines and also keeps the battleships guild/clan/corporation related as only they can assure a reliable supply of deuterium pellets or whatever. Though of course you'd probably find neutered battleships in other hands armed with lasers or something that doesnt cost to fire. But the battleship gun should be it as far as major engagements go so the supply of battleships, battleship guns and most importantly ammo determines whether a corp is taken seriously.

[Starglider]

Having ship components that plug together like lego would be a genuinely differentiating feature. Just look at Battleships Forever; there's a big set of players that will sink huge amounts of time into creating crazy ship designs. This isn't even that implausible, given how modularised ocean ship construction already is and how much easier it is in space. Your artists would scream and bitch and whine that the player-made ships are so ugly and that letting them spend months designing lots of sleek starship meshes would be a better idea. But they are wrong. Everyone has sleek starship meshes. AFAIK no big 3D space game is capable of the kind of creativity that the 2D wireframe Battleships Forever is.

[Coalition]

I dont know if this has been mentioned but make the high end battleship guns cost a special resource to fire. This ammo requirement and associated infrastructure allows for neat cutting of supply lines and also keeps the battleships guild/clan/corporation related as only they can assure a reliable supply of deuterium pellets or whatever. Though of course you'd probably find neutered battleships in other hands armed with lasers or something that doesnt cost to fire. But the battleship gun should be it as far as major engagements go so the supply of battleships, battleship guns and most importantly ammo determines whether a corp is taken seriously.

Another method would be that you need special facilities to build the spare parts needed for heavy weapons. So you could have the deuterium ammunition made anywhere, but it requires a special facility to make them for the sizes wanted for the larger weapons. The spare parts would be on a similar scale.

I.e. a Battleship grade fusion gun needs Battle-ship sized fusion gun ammo for full effect. You can use smaller charges, but they only do the smaller amount of damage. When the battleship gun needs repair components, the ones used in the fighters or cruisers are simply to small, and the facilities used to make those weapons are simply not capable of building the larger weapons. Time to grab them from the place that does.

One thing that was done in Freelancer was that each ship had a maximum 'level' of weapons that could be attached to the hardpoints, and a recommended level rating as well. The maximum level on the fighter could be modified to be a security feature where low 'level' weapons are freely handed out, but higher 'level' weaponry is kept for military/trusted usage. The recommended level was a basically how much power the fighter put out.

One option I wanted to have done on a game server was where the pirates can have max level weapon mounts (they can find a way to bypass security), but low recommended level (they don't have the ability to build the higher ability reactors, or they have shifted mass to potential cargo capacity).

Of course for your game, each player would have to have a 'reputation' with the different forces, which reflects how they are treated (ranging from kill on sight, to absolute trust), and among the trusted options is varying access to better weaponry. Of course, there would be the requisite bribe system that allows someone to get a better relationship with one faction, at the expense of several others. Of course, since that is a bribe, not actual relationship, that better relationship doesn't last long but the bad relationship with the others would tend to stick.

[j1j2j3]

Thanks for all the interest and comments , everyone.

I've gathered what I can and relayed it to our team.

I will post again with specific concepts for discussion as soon as they are laid down in the development process.

Thank you, everyone!