... what makes Spacers 'rock'!

 

 

 

Plenty of rockin' spacers around here... welcome to SSC.

Cheers Cody 🙂

Welcome to SSC Maksw

And I can't honestly remember the first kickstarter pitch, did a search couldn't find it on their website. But from the screenshots you are definitely building something great by what you said in your intro. And you are exactly right don't build your game after any other, build your own game. Maybe it's my age but now I think I look more for uniqueness and the little things in a game. Some of the possible features you mentioned are part of that. Automation without too much management is perfect for me 🙂

And going the route of Squadron 42/Star Citizen in the aspect of single player merging into MMO is a great idea and you are covering both types of gamers, and your even throwing in the possibility to be able to mod in both games.... I guess SolCommand going to be busy 😉

With not knowing the scale of Dominion yet, here is a couple possible additions to the gameplay...

• I have always been a huge fan of exploration and having your starmap be blank and it is opened up only by your adventuring, but would be nice for players to sell their own pieces of starmaps to players. Meaning you sell what you want and maybe you just want to leave out the sweet asteroid field you make cash from.
• Realistic damage. So if your ship is damaged it actually is damaged and acts properly as it should, and for more realism (if you can walk the internals on your ship) go to the damaged area and actually see damage.
• Ability to drop or leave mines/probes that could be a potential trap or notification that someone has found your favorite spot, and these probes or mines phone home to you and you would get an update of their destruction or sensor alert from a probe.
• Space is all about the unknown, why can't you mine or harvest something and when processed some microbes are released making people sick or unleashing a plague on the populous.
• Manufacture and or tweak your own weapons, not just power, but actually adding of modules... let people tinker.
• Different style of weapons, people always use lasers or torpedoes. Why can't we make some new weapons that really cause some havoc, if they get through the defenses. Make hull destroying weapons that if they make it to the hull they latch on and start drilling and when depth is reached it will plant an explosive. Which can be remotely detonated at the given time of the user. Things like that..

Well that is enough to think on, hats off to you in building your own engine and having it support all the main platforms that has to be one of the hardest parts right there. Your game doesn't need to be as flashy as Star Citizen to be successful, it just needs to be unique and offer things that most games don't. Maybe one day we will see SSC Station floating out at the edges of space 😉

Oh as always, I offer free forum space to any developer that wants it. Just need to PM me if your interested.

-D1-

Welcome to SSC mate  🙂

Cheers D1 🙂 and Time Bandit!

...the first kickstarter pitch, did a search couldn't find it on their website

That was precisely our problem - no-one knew about us - I was trying to hit KS before the bubble burst on "fag-packet-designs" getting funded. I hit it on the day it burst is seems 🙂 KS wouldn't feature us without a "gameplay video" - which I pointed out wasn't possible unless I got funding... even so - we got an average pledge of £59.58 from 43 backers - which shows it had promise!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maksw/dominion-episode-1

I have always been a huge fan of exploration and having your starmap be blank and it is opened up only by your adventuring

Exploration is a big thing for us - few "Spacers" seem to take advantage of this. Having a "Fog of War" which you reveal is very appealing. That said - we also want to become "MMO" at some point, so we're juggling this with the single-player experience.

Realistic damage. So if your ship is damaged it actually is damaged and acts properly as it should,...

http://dominion.maksw.com/video/destruction-its-the-name-of-the-game/

That's our prototype damage in action - vessels will have core systems (power, weapons, shields, life support) each can be targetted (if you have the schematics) and can be blown up/disabled - affecting your ship, until eventually it's "Kaboom" time. Handling we'd ignored for now - as the tech on offer in the universe sidesteps newtonian physics mostly - that said, there are "fly-by-wire" vessels which would/should be affected.

When in FPS mode and exploring your damaged ship - that's something that hadn't occured 🙂 It's an excellent idea, so we'll card it up!

Ability to drop or leave mines/probes that could be a potential trap or notification that someone has found your favorite spot,...

Catered for 😉 the prospect of being a pirate chased by a bounty hunter and laying a trap for them was too good to overlook! Salvage will also be "dicey" with booby-trapped hulks littering the universe.

...why can't you mine or harvest something and when processed some microbes...

I like - I see things like this as being a small data-trail around the action, easy to "implement" but more of a challenge UI and "consequence" wise. The prospect of a medical disaster on a station due to some "dodgy ore" - leading to a surge in price of medical supplies...

Manufacture and or tweak your own weapons, not just power...

This is already on our stretch-goal list. We want a lot of customisation (as per the modding) - so two "stock" Destroyers would have wildly different configurations - meaning the schematics aren't 100% reliable for planning an attack. Shield placements would differ, as could power. You could completely reconfigure your shield generator web within the hangar to fix "voonerable spots" inherent in the "stock" layout when you buy the ship. 

Further - Mr. T. (our designer) is champing after "Crafting" - so obtain certain parts, elements, resources - and take them to a skilled tech shop at a station to assemble you a 250% shield booster. Sadly this is high on the "stretch-goal-o-meter"!

Why can't we make some new weapons that really cause some havoc...

I read (and am inspired by) a lot of Sci-Fi, and I also write it (unpublished, hobby stuff). If I get to it - I have some corking offensive and defensive tech on the list which go well beyond plasma bolts and laser beams (though of course, they are the bread-and-butter offensives). The trick is balancing one powerful offensive with a likewise hugely powerful defensive to protect against it. I don't like doing things by halves - so when we put Anti-matter Warheads in a missile, I really want it to go "BANG" and let everyone in a light-year know it went off. Surviving something like that takes a lot of shielding 😉

Which can be remotely detonated at the given time of the user...

Nice!

Your game doesn't need to be as flashy as Star Citizen to be successful, it just needs to be unique and offer things that most games don't.

Ah, if we could compete with SC's visuals... but - we have a different ethos in Dominion (ignoring budget, staff, resources etc!). We're trying to isolate "uniqueness" - not to "beat" anyone - but just enough to make our little niche of the Space-combat Gaming world stand aside tall and proud. If we do that well enough, we'll be happy! And yes, if we get funded I thoroughly intend to keep SolCommand (and anyone else who'd be interested!) very busy...

Maybe one day we will see SSC Station floating out at the edges of space...

We put Planet Greenlight in after we got 5 stars on Greenlight Concepts as a thank you for their support.

I see no issue with an SSC Station 😉

BTW - if anyone is up for volunteering ideas (or content!) with a view to them going into the game - we're all ears - and anything we pick up will earn a "Design" credit in the game, and if it's awesome enough - a free copy on launch. Sadly we can't pay for all the cool ideas - but we'll do what we can, where we can!

Naturally D1 - you've already earned a mention and a copy! So that sets the bar for "awesome enough" 😉

Welcome to the forums Maksw.

Kickstarter seems to be a bit of a lucky  dip as weather a game is funded or not, seems to how much you ask for and if you can find the backers.

I see no issue with an SSC Station 😉

BTW - if anyone is up for volunteering ideas (or content!) with a view to them going into the game - we're all ears - and anything we pick up will earn a "Design" credit in the game, and if it's awesome enough - a free copy on launch. Sadly we can't pay for all the cool ideas - but we'll do what we can, where we can!

An SSC station 3D model ? Well, if you guys have any ideas, pics, or concept art I could use I may just give it a try to make a model as I made that destroyer for you, if you'd like.

That it is Pinback - we've been doing some research and it looks like if you don't get an initial spike of interest/backers in the first few days, you're pretty much 'doomed'. 

We're looking to do Kickstarter, IndieGogo and RocketHub this time - although we're keen to not seem too 'greedy' - but we have to maximise our chance of getting funded, which means increasing the chances/exposure. We'll probably stagger the campaigns based on how the previous on goes. Still up in the air though.

I think our previous pitch was too high a target, and was just too little, too late to get interest. I'm hoping we fixed that with the new pitch - we'll see 😉

Cheers for the welcome!

Hi SolCommand - that appeared just as I replied to Pinback 😀

Cool - I'll gladly donate Sol - but let's make it a free model on your site as well? That way the other projects on here (Paragon et al) can use it too? Or there could be variants specific to each project 🙂 Just ideas!

Any thoughts on a design D1? 

I would have to agree with Pinback on the Kickstarters, little hit & miss. But what most of the kickstarters that are successful have in common is the fact that updates were done and they had substance to them and of course you had a good initial write-up describing the vision and if you can show that in video or screenshots/art the better. Because people like all this and they need to think, yeah I think they can pull it off.

I wouldn't want any other person designing SSC than SolCommand, maybe we should leave this conversation for in your new area... 🙂

When we've sorted the stretch goals and rewards, I'll slap a preview up here if everyone's happy to give us feedback? I'm not precious about it 🙂 I want this one to work, so it has to be as good s we can make it to stand a chance.

I'm happy to move this to the new forum (thanks D1 for setting it up!) - although, the way my posts are going in this thread it looks like I'm trying for 'longest scrolling thread' 😉

I'll pop a cross-link in here as soon as I get chance to sort it out.

I made time 😉

http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3542-space-sim-central-space-station/