Janet

@Janet

22/9/22

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Janet
@Janet
amydentata
@amydentata
MOOMANiBE
@MOOMANiBE

I think what I want out of space games is a game about running some sort of long-haul space shipping job that is entirely about the vibes of being in a weird, dangerous, cool machine. Like you know how the landing minigame in Elite:Dangerous makes you feel like you're actually piloting a god damn ship? that philosophy applied to everything.

Every time I dock somewhere with atmosphere I want to be getting out and doing manual maintenance on the exterior of the ship, doing pressure checks for holes, part replacement etc. I want a collision to take 20 minutes to fix, not just patching up the exterior but laying messy cables across deck to reroute power, digging random screwdrivers out of storage to get a dashboard piece back in alignment, getting a big bottle to refill all the Power Steering fluid or whatever because it vented into space

I want a crisis to feel like that bit in the Apollo 13 landing where they were navigating by the sun and the horizon of the earth because they didn't have enough power to turn on their navigation computers. No dogfights, no combat. I just want a game where it's you and a hideously complex machine designed to keep you alive. That's the like ideal space game to me

amydentata
@amydentata

In addition to this I want to powerwash the exterior of the ship, which has accumulated dirt and grime via detailed simulation based on my actual in-game actions

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gatr
@gatr

idk if aura gets pinged for this too, but while dying from copium because my favourite space station 14 server hasn't been up for months, i stumbled upon Ostranauts which absolutely fits the bill.
i gotta actually learn it

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SomeEgrets
@SomeEgrets

i'm on the fence - which like, doesn't actually mean anything since it's your fantasy game!

but also like, i think it could be a fascinating systems game! systems are cool!

but if micrometeoroid holes or whatever just happen and take like fifteen minutes to fix, it's just going to get tedious and imo that's the worst thing a game can be

(i know we disagree here because you enjoy a brains-off grind session and that is literally the least appealing thing imaginable to me)

i think there's definitely an appealing idea (subjective!) in major repairs being the result of pilot error, or consequences of trying something high-risk/high-reward, or as an emergent behaviour of a systems based simulation, although i think i would prefer my simulated routine maintenance err on the side of low tedium. Which, to be clear, still leaves room for interesting things like "ah shit, been running this reactor for 400ly, gotta shut it down and replace the shielding" or whatever, the sort of thing you're describing definitely requires some source of friction and frustration to work

(i just wouldn't want that source of friction to be boredom right?)

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aetherlift
@aetherlift

i think the idea is that something like repairing the ship isnt inherently tedious. it can also be like, the main gameplay loop, in the same where where in a lot of games any action you take will pretty much lead to combat almost immediately, because combat is what the game is about

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SomeEgrets
@SomeEgrets

yeah for sure and i think it's a great idea for a non-combat sim!

tbh some of the more combat types of soace games fall into the tedium trap though, too. like, different genre but i barely finished Space Pirates and Zombies way back, it just committed the cardinal sin of getting boring by the end

its just like - the systems simulation angle sounds super interesting and has a lot of ways to generate interesting scenarios and interactions

im just wary of that level of depth in simulation resulting (not necessarily by desin) in a thing that feels like having fifteen minutes of my life chipped away for no particularly interesting reason and feeling like sort of randomized punishment in the end

(i don't necessarily think that aura would opt for that on purpose, it's just a result i could see causing some friction with me!)

i think theres a ton of room for actually interesting systems based play though!

like just off the top of my birdie brain im imagining all sorts of neat systems simulation stuff

  • dealing with high risk/high reward runs through navigation hazards, or the same for a narrative mission and dealing with the unpredictable conditions that could result
  • having to rig up temporary and maybe temperamental bodged patches because a power distribution system you were running past limits blew and nobody in the local system has a part that fits your ship
  • oops, you bought cheapo used junkyard thrusters and now your ship can only turn starboard and spins slightly when you accelerate
  • didn't replace the reactor shielding, now all your sensors can see is EM radiation. also i hope your pyjamas are radiation-hardened
  • your bridge computer doesn't have drivers for your super old FTL... your engineering computer does, but for some reason doesn't network to the bridge (broken data links?), so you can only FTL jump by physically going to engineering

having to operate systems and manually pilot the ship for landings sounds great. she cited Elite but kinda makes me think of Highfleet as well (https://files.egrets.ca/highfleet_landing.mp4)

and certainly the whole thing couldn't possibly be emergencies and problems. likely a lot of time for just kinda chill space cruise time in there too while things are routine

anyway sorry i've gone on a long ramble in Aura's comments again, lol

it's late and this kinda happens (and i promise i've only had to chomment so many rapid fire thoughts about this from the hip because i actually really like the broad concept and it has caused brain activation)

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Janet
@Janet

just you and the expanse... sounds real neat... the X games had alot of the "haul stuff from a to b" but the way the stations were placed just haphazardly in a box shaped system, connected to other systems via portals felt VERY off and boring...

i guess i could have enjoyed elite dangerous more... idk, felt kinda lost and bored pretty quickly and i didnt enjoy the dogfighting much either...

freelancer to me was a bit more fun, especially when playing with friends. maybe i couldnt quite get into ED because the friend i played this with was someone other than i played FL with a decade ago... ED felt like a chore while FL was just fun.

and FL's systems were arguably worse compared to the X games, very flat and also connected to other systems with portals. but somehow it felt more like you're in space compared to X

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Plyca
@Plyca

I have been desperately craving this game for years. It feels like nobody making space games sees the ship as more than a commuter car or a tank that goes space and it's so upsetting.

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stu
@stu

did you ever check out Objects In Space? it has a lot of this vibe - your ship doesn't even have an exterior view, it's all about fiddling with your instruments and manually swapping components.

it's not entirely complete (it did the classic jump out of early access when they ran out of money) but i had a good time with what's there

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queerinmech
@queerinmech

i was having a similar conversation with a friend yesterday about space game design

he was talking about how boring it is in star citizen during transit, and i was just generally thinking of games in my own universe with even slower transit times

even in elite it forces you away from the screens during transitions, or stops the vehicle on others, which means you cannot do anything useful until the process is over, which is infuriating because by then you probably want to be setting up your next navigation, so there is all this hurry up and wait with mind numbing downtime and you can never multitask

i do not want transit to be "we must fill this time with arcade games or busy work" but to be something that is rewarding and engaging and directly applicable to the universe and greater gameplay, not just something to distract the player while "Realism" is happening

some things i came up with are: crew relationships, spacebase like management and building, sciencing or resource gathering that only really makes sense in transit, ship maintenance and hot rodding, mapping and trajectory planning, and andromeda-like (the show not the game) slipstream navigation which lets you pilot directly in a surreal fast moving visual space to take risky shortcuts or just more efficient routes than the nav computer could do ahead of time

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cavalcadeofcats
@cavalcadeofcats

Pretty tangential, but I wonder if you'd like the Far games? (Far: Lone Sails and Far: Changing Tides.) They're much simpler than what you describe, but they're all about just... running around inside a huge machine to keep everything from catching on fire. And also, vibing.

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