This is less of a feature request and more just a interesting idea I thought up in the middle of the night, that could become the basis of a feature.
So Jay has talked about maybe eventually doing star system movement in Neptune’s Pride in some form, eventually. So that got me to thinking if there should be any way to control the movement of your star systems. Then I thought: what if every time you launch a carrier, you subtly nudge the star you launch from in the opposite direction?
The magnitude of the launch can be either per carrier or per ship carried, but think of the possibilities! Two nearby systems can eventually be driven apart by overeager reinforcement loops. Fortress worlds can be launched towards enemy systems by sending several hundred carriers in the opposite direction! Sending too much reinforcements towards a forward outpost literally pushes it towards the enemy, whereas raiding the enemy pushes it back towards friendly space.
If the idea includes system location shifting due to landings, constant battles over systems could even push or pull systems towards one empire or another, literally changing the shape of the galaxy in their titanic struggles.
Now, would I like to see this in the game as suggested? Eh…? But I definitely think it’s a cool idea which can be discussed and which can form the basis of other features regarding star system movement.
Haha, this is an awesome idea, but I think it could be a whole other game.
We could make a space strategy game where you can pull you stars around with you, or push enemy stars around! I think there might be some intresting strategies to explore when you can move the resources around. Push them forward when attacking, pull them back to turtle?
So, BBB is the first of our new mini games - 3 months total development time. We already have plans for number 2, but this could be game 3 or 4. Our new minigames will be turn based, and probably on a hex map that wraps too.
Having it as a new game brings lots of possibilities! It can be all about managing newtonian physics, momentum, maneuvering different bases/colonies around resources and each other.
Right now I have a basic sketch of an idea, if you’re interested in further discussion. This game is sorta based on some kind of space-plant/station blob thing. Lots of ways to reflavor it, and readjust the gameplay to complement the flavor.
There are two types of matter. Living and Nonliving. Living matter generally form large “Colonies” which slowly increase in size/population. Living matter suffer friction/slowdown/waste which means they don’t travel forever. Nonliving matter are either floating resources which can be absorbed by living batter, or various projectiles ejected by colonies for various reasons.
For every reaction, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. In order to move your colony, you need to sacrifice some of your mass as “reaction mass” which turns into energy/momentum, and sacrifice some of your mass as “ejection mass” which helps dictate the end speed of your two components.
Living Ejections can be used to form two, more mobile but more vulnerable colonies. Additionally, these colonies would be launched away form each other for a period (until slowdown slows them down to effective stillness) which would help them access resources without too much overlap.
Non Living Ejections travel onwards forever. This means that a large ejection mass can travel the game world for several days, before appearing suddenly out of “sight” and smash into another local region. It can smack into other large ejection masses and coalses into a large resource pile. Still uncertain if ejection masses should be resource rich nor not.
Combat. There’s three types of combat. 1) Pure momentum combat is when you simply try to throw as much mass at something so that the two of you go in the opposite direction. 2) When living mass hits non living mass, some kind of “explosion”. Right now, I kinda feel like each “hit” does a static amount of damage. This way, players can build up resources to make multiple ejections and so do more of the same static amount of damage, as long as they hit. 3) When living matter of different affiliations hit each other, some kind of combat occurs. The end result can be they bounce off, they stick to each other and continue combat, they merge and continue combat. It’ll be interesting to develop!
For one basic idea, the damage caused by a nonliving to living “hit” is “static” (or at least, doesn’t change based on mass), but the number of ejections (or cool down between ejections) allowed increases over time. Therefore, in the early game it might be worth going for larger momentum strikes to buy time, and in the late game it might be worth ejecting lots of fast, small nonliving particles to deal damage.
More complex, damage can be a function of momentum/energy transfer.
This idea is kinda a mess, but I can see how divorcing it from NP proper allows the mechanic to flesh out and come into its own!
EDIT: some of the ideas on making projectiles and aiming come from Aurora 4x.
Just an example of something you can potentially do!
Would really suck doing some really precise manuvering when suddenly, a bunch of mass flies out of nowhere and knocks you out of position/into scan range prematurely.
IDK all the complete issues in explaining the science fiction to make your feature requests work correctly.
It might be faster and require less ships to capture the enemy star,
than to perform mass ejections towards the enemy star as reaction thrust to move my star out away from the enemy scan range.
It might be faster to research Scanning tech to increase scan range,
than to perform mass ejections to move an entire star with all the ECON IND SCI built on it out away from enemy scan range.
NP2 works with stars with ECON IND and SCI build in those star systems with Light Year distances between
Your ideas sounds like asteroids might be easier to move than star systems. The asteroids would also lose mass for those momentum changes, or gain mass or change momentum when ships arrive.
Using mass ejections to move asteroids might be Kardashev Type 1 technologies.
Moving stars might involve Kardashev Type 2 or 3 technologies, which by then might be far outside-the-box magic for us measly humans. By that time, mass ejections to move stars would seem like antiquated out-of-date tech. They might do something else instead, like maybe folding space or some kind of alternate space trans-location. IDK.
EDIT Like maybe somehow reducing the stellar mass like the way Star Trek station Deep Space 9 moved in the first episode “Emissary” .
It is sci-fi, so it really does not matter, as long as all the game features can be reasonably explained and plays consistently with all other game features, then more players would play.
I’ll go through these points one by one. I love to discuss!
Yes, I agree that basic combat and generic research is probably faster. This, if applied to NP, would be like an edge mechanic which comes into play in long games and opens up interesting tactical possibilities.
And I agree the revised idea goes better with asteroids. (mhm, some kind of passive-aggressive war in an asteroid belt?)
Also, this kinda goes with my thoughts on Super-NP. The idea is basically after “winning” a 64 player galaxy, the survivors realize they are in a gigantic super cluster of galaxies. Infact, 64 of 64 player galaxies, in fact. And it would take loads of hyperspace and loads of scan to jump across the intergalactic void to gank some fools, but gank you can!
Well, IF this applies to NP2, which I agree with Jay it probably shouldn’t with the current state of the game, yeah I can see issues with the science.
Then again, we’d also probably think really hard what kind of jump drive would cost only 25 credits and can jump up “infinite” amounts of mass/ships at 0.3 light years per hour, and how warp gates exactly triple this galactic speed limit across civilizations, no more, no less, and how all warp gates are cross compatible :p.
If for example, three’s some kind of “base FTL” speed limit of 0.3 Ly/hr and a “base warp FTL” speed limot of 0.9 ly/hr, and we have researched “fast enough” drives that the difference doesn’t make sense, well that works right?
Honestly, we can’t really tell how the stars move until we figure out how the carriers move. Is it warping space? Maybe after the carpet’s unsrunched it moves an inch over. Is it simple mass conversion of say stellar energy into mass back into energy, and then exerting unimaginable force to expell this mass into interstellar space at incredible speeds? (2638 Light Years Per Year!).
As a setting, making it a passive-aggressive miner war in the/an asteroid belt or the moons/asteroid belt of a jovian planet is pretty intersting. You can launch resource rich asteroids into the star/gas giant if a rival is about to capture it. “Living Mass” is just a surface layer of temporary colonies built ontop of the main asteroid mass. Orbital mechanics would actually come into play, with gravitational wells. Kinda similar to macro-Jupiter’s folly.
So the important goals of explainable, consistency, compatibility with other game features, game code is maintainable ( bugs can be fixed by Jay ), enjoyable for target demographic of gamers ( NP2 players who want slow real time or turn based simple 4X space gaming ) , Sustainable ( earns money for IHG ), etc. . . are achievable, then gaming ( various development, coding, bug fixing, feature request, financial investment, etc. . . ) “cycles” are continually maintainable for this game.
In NP1, Speed tech could be researched, and Jay discovered that players could lose their entire empire during sleep. So that was not enjoyable for players. That was broken. So Jay created NP2 incorporating lessons learned from NP1. This is one reality of game dev and game play.
In our actual physical ( Carl Sagan & Steven Hawking, etc. . . ) reality, there may be multiple UFO alien races and empires researching multiple incompatible technologies, that have impact effectiveness in separate skew dimensions of measurement. One may have concealment & camouflage tech. Another may have armor evaporation tech. A third may have weapons teleportation tech. And so on, etc. . . In our real physical realities, these tech will all have real physical effects, and they all find common ground in our ONE common physical reality. All of these separate techs must have some way of being expressed and explainable, or mathematically modeled or in gaming code. If not, then the game cycles breaks down, and the game dev model becomes unsustainable.
So once a COMMON Framework is developed, that is able to accept and implement all those crazy numerous features, then they work compatibly with each other, and game dev can continue, towards all other game cycle goals.
It is one thing to make an approximate simulation of actual or possible sci-fi realities, which might help investigate questions about the universe or questions about plausible 4X war gaming environments. It is another thing to make an actual 4X game that is playable for a majority of players. There are separate groups of players for those two separate types of games. They are both fun due to different intellectual challenges, but not every gamer will feel the same way.
To be honst, you are being very high concept, and normally I’d love it.
However, Jay and I already agree that this doesn’t really match what NP2 is (or what Proteus is shaping up to be), so I definitely would like to adjust the discussion towards what it would match as part of a new game. What common framework this game would have, what audience this new game would attract.
For example, this could pique the interest of those who play “Physics Games”. Depending on the growth model used (exponential vs logistic) it can play around the idea of the balance between extraction of resources and safety, on a strategic level.
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Mhm… Are you talking about my feature requests in general? Like I said, they are less feature requests and more “Interesting thoughts on this game for your consideration.” In the Terraforming Facilities case, it fits into the mechanics that already exist for NP series than Newton’s Carrier Launches. If I’m actually pumped to make a feature happening, I’d format the request, explanation, and discussion much differently.
Overall, this idea is piggy backing the other one where star systems move naturally, and the carrier reaction mechanic would be basically the only way players would have to try to influence that movement.
Mhm.
Maybe we can build off the “Star Tag” mechanic Jay thought about using before and use that to show if a star’s position is unstable and so there’s a window in which it can be shifted by carriers?
Maybe it can be a unique facility? It would make it a lot more specialized though.
Maybe it’s only for Warp Gates, or Warp Gate to Normal Star jumps?
