The Ultimate Star Trek Game
I have been kicking around this Idea for a game the truely captures the feel and encompasses all of ST. I have bought and played just about all the latest ST game and software; Starship Creator, Birth of the Federation, Elite Forces, Armada I&II, Starfleet Command I&II, Away Team, Bridge Commander, The Captains Chair, and Dominion Wars. All of these had some great aspects but I have felt let down by most of them. I play The Sims and have used the ST downloads for that game to give some of my simhomes a ST feel. This got me to thinking about a full blown ST:The Sims game. Instead of a home you have quarters instead of a neighborhood you are on a ship or station instead of a career you have a post. If this game would be online then it would be a great place for fellow trek fans to hang out. And natually some one would use to roleplay. Then it would be great to have some way to fire phasers use computers even fly the ship. My idea began to grow and grow until I came up with this.
The game would be simple if you take each peice one at a time.
Characters:
A simple character creation process, Online/Computer RPGs have done this for years not to mention Book RPGs. take your pick of system LUG, Coda, D20 or a completely new system. Just some way to apply ablities and skills of a character into the game enviroment. So engineers can engineer. Pilots can pilot. Doctors can doctor.
Making the avatar has been done. I again point to The Sims. Just add the new alien races add more customization feature to give more variety
Interaction can again be taken from The Sims. Moving a cursor on an object and having a list of what one can do with that object is a simple way for a character to do things. This can be coupling that with basic FPS movement commands. Just Think of playing a FPS like ST:elite forces and walking into a room, running a mouse over objects like a chair replicator, or computer panel and options coming up for each like sit for the chair, order food, order drink, order object for the replicator, or access computer. Or even simplier just use replicator and a submenu comes up for that. You're still playing that FPS and you enter the bridge you can sit down at the Conn and fly the ship in a mode like Bridge Commander or a better spaceship simulator.
The enviroment:
This is the most complex part The enviroment would most likely be a Starship or Station which means everything would have to work like it does in the shows and in the tech manuals. These would have to be built system by system deck by deck. How the systems interact with each other and the characters has to be planned out in detail. But Things like ST:Starship creator and Spacedock rules have paved the way to make it easier. One might look at it like this; Everthing on the ship/station needs power (let's stick with a ship) The ship has a warp core, a power plant, provides X amount of power. Systems A, B, and C use various amounts of power as long as that doesn't excede X the ship is okay. A, B, and C need to be hooked up to the core via conduits. Those conduits can be cut or loose efficiency which may need to be repaired or cleaned. they need to be represented in the 3d enviroment so engineers can fix them ( this could just be walking to the right part of the ship a clicking on a panel "Remove Panel" click on a conduit "Repair conduit" and just watch a bar at the bottom of the screen grow longer This would represent your progress as the Game tests you skill vs the difficulty of what your doing with variables adding or detracting from the task such as equipment or lack there of or fatigue.
I got off subject a little there.
What need to be done here would be and Advance Starship creator in 3d. Ship's/Station's system must be broken down into the parts. Why? Engineering is one of the spices of ST as is working with the ships systems. Your ship might be sluggish because the antimatter injectors are clogged. Your engineers need to do regular maintance. So the injector needs to be simulated. How? Well the injector forces antimatter into the reactor if there is something wrong with it the ship might not get enough power (brown outs). It could cause an inbalance and cause a catastrophy I will not go through every part but this is just to illustrate that everything must be looked at to create a realistic ST setting. Gamewise it could be a build up of damage points what does the amount of damage do how does effect the connected system (usually a loss of power or slowing down of power. High maintaince standards could cause increase efficientcy).
More on this later I just want to share my Ideas and perhaps get a brainstorm going with others.
