My head is full of Ideas... ;)

[Belphe]

In relation to my question from an earlier thread regarding what Naval Action will look like when it is finished (http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/1145-what-will-the-full-game-be-like/) I would like to suggest the following approach. 

 

1. I would love this game to be an "open region sandbox", with the Caribbean and perhaps the whole of African coast being the areas of player influence. Ideally however, I'd like the whole globe to be available for players to explore. As crazy as this may sound to some people it has been implemented into a computer game before in the Silent Hunter series of games simulating various WWII submarines where the players could venture everywhere they wanted as long as they stayed in the water. The coast was created based on a 2D map of the world and the sub commanders could travel to the coast of America, visit Japan or admire icebergs in the North Atlantic.

 

2. Since Naval Action will model TRUE ship behaviour, manoeuvrability and speed if the world is made in the correct 1:1 scale it will take the "right" amount of time to get from A to B. Therefore, it seems absolutely logical to build this game as a Massive Multiplayer Online title. What I hate the most about ANY MMOs is the feeling of them being too crowded and if it's a game about saving the world or being a messiah well, it seems extremely odd to see other messiahs running around doing the same stuff. Naval Action, being a game of realism and history (to some extent) should not fear for this as the true distances on the seas will prevent from overcrowding. If the game turns out to be the greatest success of all time in the gaming industry (which I hope it will anyway ) and we do face hundreds of ships everywhere which would kill the immersion and the special type of loneliness that accompanied the ship crews in their voyages then it would be a good idea to limit the cluster to a certain number of players playing together in on world instance. Perhaps an approach known from Diablo 3 would be a good solution where players only play together (Co-Op) when they both desire so. However, that would drastically limit the PvP side and require much more well scripted AI to serve the players with interesting content but I am not sure if we all want to borrow the approach known from EVE Online where PvP is possible absolutely everywhere and anything lost is lost FOREVER.

 

3. I'd like to be able to live a life as a ship captain in Naval Action, whether I would be an admiral leading the Spanish armada to battle against the English or a pirate plundering anybody and everybody, a merchant comparing the prices worldwide to buy cheap and sell to make profit, a privateer "working" for a king, a smuggler shipping contraband etc. That requires a VERY rich living world to be modelled away from the sea. I do hope we all understand how much effort it may take to build all this and implement into this game. The economy itself could be one of the biggest issues. Do we script it and make the player made goods "vanish" after they are sold to the NPCs with no impact on the price or do we make the customer demand and availability of products govern their prices? Do we again borrow from EVE and make 99% of the in-game goods player made (that would require the whole background of industry, plantations, mines etc.) or do we make them appear in the shops driven by AI? I know what I want but is this possible? Is this not too much?

 

4. Politics and historical accuracy could be a serious issue if we were allowed to own towns and ports, conquer forts and change governors. Naval Action would loose historical accuracy literary on the first day after release! But perhaps that's what would make it even greater. Overpowering governors and changing layout on the political map would be interesting and could serve us with the best possible global conflict option for PvP. One could either climb up the career ladder in the chosen Navy or try to make a quiet living on the edge of the raging conflict. Others could try to smuggle goods in and out of the "danger zone" and perhaps flip their banners accordingly and serve whomever pays more...

 

We truly have incredible potential within this project and using it wisely could produce THE best tall ship simulator out there. Let's not waste this opportunity! Please, at least consider the suggestions above. I am not making up the impossible. Various games already house all of those ideas. It is down to us to use them!

[admin]

if open world prototype works many of things you mentioned could be possible.