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[darkgod]

Many neat ideas!

I think the easiest way for you to start is probably a combat oriented game, since it's well known this can be done

As for easter egg, ahah yes But no Sher'Tuls please (unless restricted only to easter egg), I have my own plan for them in Eyal's universe (and yes they very much are space explorers)

[Rectifier]

lol spoiler alert from dg!
*goes to check out google doc*

Added some comments on the spreadsheet, just curious whats a good/best way for me to contribute?

[Canderel]

The best way is to take point in programming. I presume getting the example module running would be great. Also creating a git or svn repository.

Once we have a runnng prototype we can start building on that.

I presume plotting out the main stats for our first race/class is best.

For now we don't need races and classes, just one. Robots and genetics

Next we need to decide hp equivalent. Do we have that?

If programming is too daunting perhaps just conceptualising the above points is a good start.

[Rectifier]

I'd have to learn how to use .lua since all I know is some C++.

In my opinion concepts are the best way to initially begin a project as well as establishing design goals.

[bricks]

Straight HP seems OK to me. Tracking individual body part health might be smart, since we are talking about a lot of body modifications. Illustrating that and translating it into gameplay can be tricky though.

For the body parts, if we are going with electronics and genetic modifications, I'd call them Corruption (for electronics) and Rejection (for gene mods). They'd work more like equilibrium in that you get a failure if they get too high (either at a determined limit or based on probability). Really complicated parts could fail very early, while simple mods would pretty much always work.

Resources are a more complex problem; I'd just go with Power (for electronics) and Stamina (for gene mods). "Stamina" might sound mundane, but other terms like Fatigue, Metabolism, or Energy either don't parse right or have a confusing meaning. I think these should start with low regeneration rates, unless you choose a race with good innate regen (like robots or "chimeras", a term I think is appropriate for a facilitated gene splicer), and part of designing your character should be finding reliable means of regenerating these resources. There may be other resources like ammunition, but those are more on the side of equipment.

Word of warning: if there is no character leveling, you either need to level equipment or accept the fact that characters are going to plateau hard at some point. That's fine if the game is short, or if the emphasis is on tactics.

[lukep]

I have a few ideas bouncing around, most of them more detailed than necessary at this point in development, and none of them backed up by others. My ideas:

The Player Character: is made up of several pieces, each of which may (independently) be replaced in town/home base. The two main types are organic and mechanical, but there are many variations within each of the two types. The 10 body parts are:

Eyes (or cameras): for precise targeting. Provides boosts to accuracy and detection of both environment and enemies.
Ears (or microphones or radar): Provides non-LoS detection of enemies, but not very precise. Radar can detect everything, but cannot tell the difference between a wall and an enemy.
Right arm: Mainly used for combat. Gives bonuses to damage, accuracy, fire rate, and maybe special abilities. Most require a weapon to be effective. Some arms lack hands, instead having a gun, chainsaw, bone spear, or other device integrated into it, and cannot use equipment.
Left arm: Functionally identical to the right arm slot, though may be a different part (eg. hydraulic powered left arm paired with a gyro-stabilized right arm)
Organs (x3?): Provides boosts to blood and power, and limited mind and body augmentation.
(external) chest: Provides protection
legs/mobility: determines movement speed, terrain allowed, and encumbrance penalties.
Mind augmentation: Improves reflexes, and other mental attributes. Organic ones boost organic parts more and vice versa.
Body augmentation: Improves strength and other physical attributes. Organic ones boost organic parts more and vice versa.

Each body part also affects the inventory system, though most of the same piece are the same.

Items/Inventory
I imagine an X-Com style inventory, with tradeoffs between easy access and encumbrance. Items would almost exclusively be weapons of one kind or another, whether they be lightsabers, pistols, sniper rifles, grenades, miniguns or anything else. Ammunition would be limited, but players could carry a large store (at the cost of encumbrance and inventory space), and refill it at no cost at their home.

Enemies would not drop "items", they would drop schematics (for mechanical) or genes (for organic). These could then be built into items at your base and used to equip yourself or replace body parts. Additionally, I don't see a use for money, unless it could be used to buy new genes/schematics in towns (which may or may not exist).

Dungeons/quests
There should be strong incentives to clear/reach the boss of a zone without the need to retreat to resupply. This will force a tradeoff between bringing a few powerful items and bringing more ammo, as 100 bullets take up the same space as 2 grenades (maybe). The reward should be a new schematic/gene from the boss, or a quest reward from the NPC.

Health
My system is too complex IMO, and should be simplified. There are four types of "health". Armour, Health, Blood, and Power.
Armour: reduces all damage to health. Does not regenerate without using a consumable item.
Health: normal health. It regenerates over time, through consumable item use, or through other means.
Power: mechanical health. When it reaches 0, all mechanical body parts stop working and must reboot, taking a few turns.
Blood: organic health. When it reaches 0, all organic body parts stop working and must recover, taking a few turns.

An example of how health and armour would work:
The player has 10 000/10 000 armour, 500/500 health, 100/100 power, 100/100 blood.
He gets hit for a burst of 100 damage
He now has 9 900/10 000 armour, The armour was at full strength, so it absorbs the maximum 50% of the damage, leaving 450/500 health.
later in the dungeon, after many fights...
The player has 1 000/10 000 armour, 500/500 health, 100/100 power, 100/100 blood.
He gets hit for a burst of 100 damage
He now has 900/10 000 armour, The armour was at 10% strength, so it absorbs 5% (10% armour* 50% maximum) of the damage, leaving 405/500 health.

The armour mechanic would penalize tanking through damage, though not making it impossible.

What does everyone think? I'm not much good at coding, but I'll help out wherever I'm able.

EDIT: In case it wasn't obvious, I'm looking at a tactical game, where you must plan out your body, weapons, and consumables to get through a single building/dungeon/mission. I didn't plan on using anything equivalent to mana to balance out skills, instead relying on the consumable nature of items and the fact that armour does not regenerate naturally. I'm also thinking of slight equipment/body part leveling, but not very drastic. I also imagine a single player class and race, with all changes being through body part replacement.

[yufra]

I'm fine chipping in with the programming, particularly since I don't have a learning curve. I put my name under the "Teams - Programmer" column and added a few notes to the Google doc. The resources that made sense to me are:

• Life/HP
• Homeostasis, the measure of genetic stability. I imagine it on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100-H being the percent chance a random (negative?) mutation occurs.
• Integrity/Coherence, the measure of connection between body and robotic implants. Again I imagine 100-C is the percent chance of a part failing (temporarily, maybe permanently).
• Bioenergy/BTUs, the amount of energy available through biochemical or other energy available to power talents.

Adding genetic modifications would reduce both homeostasis and integrity/coherence, but the later by more. Robotic implants would do the opposite. This would give incentive to specialize in one. It looks like bricks took the inverse approach, have a resource that scales from 1 (good) to whatever (bad). I prefer mine a bit since the bar will scale like the HP/health.

I was actually considering ripping off DG's inventory paper doll to do something like Lukep's suggesion on body slots for modifications, so that definitely gets a +1 from me. It wasn't until I was reading lukep's description of items that I realized I was actually intending on having NO items (gasp!). I'll think about that more...

I have no idea about combat mechanic, though. I like the idea of deteriorating armor, but beyond that I am still blank.

[Rectifier]

Combat doesn't have to use an exoskeleton for damage mitigation. Remember that "modern" sci-fi has characters with tight fits. Just look at mass effect or deus ex, I'm sure most people think of those avatars as representing the science fiction "look".

If you want the exterior degrading mechanic one of the item slots can be a forcefield type deal. This item should work for both robots and organic races unless they're some weird Luddite/Jedi faction.

Anyways, forcefields can function a number of ways depending on the mechanic you want, or perhaps a combination of them.

• Tome shield rune
  Halo shield (tome shield but weaker in stats, automatic, and regenerates quickly)
  Permanent shield which degrades and requires fuel

Shields can be set in types too, such as:
Forcefield that blocks physical/impact damage (bullets, force push, giant monster attacks)
Energy Matrix that blocks laser damage (pew pew)
Bio-Buffer that blocks biological damage (alien acid spit)
Magnetosphere that blocks magnetic damage (sensitive electronics yo)
Exoskeleton that blocks almost all damage! (op heavy armor)

Furthermore, shields could be set as effective only against ranged attacks and are useless against melee range. And of course there could be some weapon/ability or even damage type exceptions that bypass shields altogether.

Put myself as part of the creative team, may do coding or odd jobs if needed.

[Devorius]

I think damage should be divided evenly, as in:

Actor:
(3 Tech Units + 2 Bio Units = 5 Total Units)

EMP Blast with an effective damage rating of 50 Electro Magnetic damage:

50 EM Dmg / 5 Total Units = 10 EM Dmg per Unit

10 EM Dmg vs Tech Unit 1 (no EMP shielding) | 5% Chance to Stun (vs Tech) + 10 Dmg Applied
10 EM Dmg vs Tech Unit 2 (EM Dampener [10% Res EM]) | 4.5% Chance to Stun (vs tech) + 9 Dmg Applied
10 EM Dmg vs Tech Unit 3 (Curse of Bad Wiring [EM dmg x 1.5]) | 7.5% Chance to Stun (vs Tech) + 15 Dmg Applied

10 EM Dmg vs Bio Unit 1 (Bio Intrinsic Res EM 80%) | (No Stun vs Bio) 2 Dmg Applied
10 EM Dmg vs Bio Unit 2 (Bio Intrinsic Res EM 80% // Reflex Boost Implant -20% Res EM) | 3% Chance Disable Implant + 6 Dmg Applied

[lukep]

I think damage should be divided evenly, as in:

Actor:
(3 Tech Units + 2 Bio Units = 5 Total Units)

EMP Blast with an effective damage rating of 50 Electro Magnetic damage:

50 EM Dmg / 5 Total Units = 10 EM Dmg per Unit

10 EM Dmg vs Tech Unit 1 (no EMP shielding) | 5% Chance to Stun (vs Tech) + 10 Dmg Applied
10 EM Dmg vs Tech Unit 2 (EM Dampener [10% Res EM]) | 4.5% Chance to Stun (vs tech) + 9 Dmg Applied
10 EM Dmg vs Tech Unit 3 (Curse of Bad Wiring [EM dmg x 1.5]) | 7.5% Chance to Stun (vs Tech) + 15 Dmg Applied

10 EM Dmg vs Bio Unit 1 (Bio Intrinsic Res EM 80%) | (No Stun vs Bio) 2 Dmg Applied
10 EM Dmg vs Bio Unit 2 (Bio Intrinsic Res EM 80% // Reflex Boost Implant -20% Res EM) | 3% Chance Disable Implant + 6 Dmg Applied

So, in the end, the player would take 42 HP worth of damage, have a 15.2% chance to be stunned, and a 3% chance to have the implant disabled? That's roughly in line with how I imagined damage to work, though I represented it as the damage per unit (10 in this case) instead of the theoretical total damage. The advantage of this system is that the character sheet could show resistances right away, in this case 16% EM resistance.

I'm fine chipping in with the programming, particularly since I don't have a learning curve. I put my name under the "Teams - Programmer" column and added a few notes to the Google doc. The resources that made sense to me are:

• Life/HP
• Homeostasis, the measure of genetic stability. I imagine it on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100-H being the percent chance a random (negative?) mutation occurs.
• Integrity/Coherence, the measure of connection between body and robotic implants. Again I imagine 100-C is the percent chance of a part failing (temporarily, maybe permanently).
• Bioenergy/BTUs, the amount of energy available through biochemical or other energy available to power talents.

It looks like the life/robotic strength/genetic strength setup for health would work well in one form or another. I could get behind the idea of all abilities being powered by BTU's instead of consumables.

Adding genetic modifications would reduce both homeostasis and integrity/coherence, but the later by more. Robotic implants would do the opposite. This would give incentive to specialize in one. It looks like bricks took the inverse approach, have a resource that scales from 1 (good) to whatever (bad). I prefer mine a bit since the bar will scale like the HP/health.

Are you suggesting a variable number of modifications allowed? Also, would homeostasis and integrity be consumed by abilities, or just by damage? The problem that I have with emphasizing all-robot and all-mutant builds is that it could become quite difficult to adapt to a situation that the opposite of your specialization is better suited to. It's not a huge issue, and, on the plus side, it forces the player to make a stronger decision.

I was actually considering ripping off DG's inventory paper doll to do something like Lukep's suggesion on body slots for modifications, so that definitely gets a +1 from me. It wasn't until I was reading lukep's description of items that I realized I was actually intending on having NO items (gasp!). I'll think about that more...

If BTU's are used, then it could work to completely remove items, and have weapons integrated into the arms. The downside of this is that the player would have much less versatility, having a maximum of two different weapons as opposed to the half dozen or so (including single use ones) that could fit in a large inventory.

I came up with some revisions to by body part idea which would allow more unique player characters. In this system, everything would be attached to a main chest piece that determined all other body part slots. For example, a character might look like this:

Body Part (Chest): Steel Plated Chest (tech)
Mass: 75kg
Part Slots: 1x head, 2x arm (1 unmodified, 1 with -30% strength and agility), 1x pair legs/mobility, 3x organs/systems
Inventory: 30 kg (double base time to access)
Bonuses: +1000 armour, +50 HP

Body Part (Chest->Head): Cyclops (bio)
Mass: 5kg
Part Slots: 1x eye, 2x ears (+50% effect if a pair), 1x organ (+100% to mental bonuses)
Bonuses: none

Body Part (Chest->Head->eye): Cat's Eye (bio)
Mass: 0.01kg
Part Slots: none
Stats: 70 precision, 200' range, infravision

Body Part (Chest->Head->ear): bat ear (bio)
Mass: 0.01kg
Part Slots: none
Stats: 10 precision, detects enemies to 70', terrain to 20'
Modifiers:+50% effectiveness (paired ears)

Body Part (Chest->Head->ear): bat ear (bio)
Mass: 0.01kg
Part Slots: none
Stats: 10 precision, detects enemies to 70', terrain to 20'
Modifiers:+50% effectiveness (paired ears)

Body Part (Chest->Head->organ): Positronic Processor (tech)
Mass: 1.5kg
Part Slots: none
Bonuses: +20 to analysis, +15 to targeting
Modifiers:+100% mental bonuses

Body Part (Chest->arm): Hydraulic Grasper (tech)
Mass: 10kg
Part Slots: 1x augmentation
Stats: requires weapon, 20 strength, 5 speed, 80 precision

Body Part (Chest->arm->augmentation): Velocitizer (tech)
Mass: 0.01kg
Part Slots: none
Bonuses: +10 speed (to attached part)

...and the rest of the pieces as well. I like this type of modular building better than a straight slot system, though it may be more complex than we are aiming for.

[bricks]

How about an abstract "size" instead of a mass value? It could be used for both weight calculations (whatever those may be), and for determining how much damage a body part actually takes (smaller body parts may have less health, but they are also much less likely to take a direct hit). Also, it would probably be best to define something small, like an eye, as size = 1. Floating point weight values get a little messy.

[lukep]

If we go for an abstract "size" value, I'd be tempted to let eyes and other small things be 0, with a head being 1, arms 3 each, 8 for legs, and 10 for a chest, for example. This would change from part to part slightly, but not by much. That would set the size or a human at 25.

Ooh, random idea: As Devorius suggested, have each part have independent resistance etc... but then change what happens next slightly: AoE attacks every part, depending on the size, and single attacks hit one part, rolled randomly. Example:

You are hit by a 3 explosive power grenade. You take 3 explosive damage to the head, 9 to left arm, 9 to right arm, 24 to legs, and 30 to the chest. Each of these values is modified by explosive resistance of the part, then subtracted from your HP.

You are hit by a 30 kinetic power gunshot. There is a 4% chance for it to hit your head, 12% right arm, 12% left arm, 32% legs and 40% chest. Whichever one is chosen randomly gets its resistances applied to the damage.

Probably too complicated to be intuitively graspable, but it's an idea.

EDIT: I had the mass there, because it would determine what type of legs/wheels etc you could use. Heavier bodies would require slower movement.

[bricks]

I've actually played around with the math for such a system, I think it could be really cool. For display purposes, if you have a paperdoll up at all times, you could "flash" the body part that takes damage, even with the color of damage that hits it or a particle effect (fire etc.). The same could be done with enemies; it could focus on the last enemy targeted (or still alive) and also allow you to look at other with the mouse. Critical hits specific to being hit in special body parts - say, antenna, like in Fallout - could have really cool gameplay effects, and even simple things like arm shots and leg shots would make for fun gameplay.

Targeting can be done in the background; if you have a sniper rifle and Farsight Eyes, you could gain a bonus to hitting smaller, more susceptible body parts.

Edit: Edit to your edit. I may be alone in this, but I find varied movement speeds in turn-based games to be really unintuitive, unless they take integer values (and even then you wouldn't want to see more than 2x or less than 1/2x movement speed). Without some sort of turn indicator (even just as a toggle or an unobtrusive list), I'd rather everything just move at the same speed.

Edit2: Cooldowns - yes or no? For a handful of skills, it's fine, but I feel like having a bunch of small cooldowns just makes you cycle through a bunch of similar skills. We're already discussing a lot of resources, and a lot of different body parts to track at once, so adding cooldowns to the mix seems really excessive. We haven't really talked much about skills yet anyway, so it's hard to make this call. I'd rather see skills use a large amount of resources (the most powerful using >50% of the typical meter), and have resources recover quickly. Kind of like Doomed and Hate.

[lukep]

Targeting can be done in the background; if you have a sniper rifle and Farsight Eyes, you could gain a bonus to hitting smaller, more susceptible body parts.

This could work quite well. One way I see of implementing a system like this is to have a chance (could be 100%) of checking multiple times (anywhere from twice to 1000000 times), and taking the best result. For example, a pistol could have 1.7 precision modifier, indicating that it checks once, with a 70% chance of a second check. A rifle could have 3.2 precision, showing that it checks three times, with 20% chance of four times. I don't think that anything above 4 or 5 should be common.

Edit: Edit to your edit. I may be alone in this, but I find varied movement speeds in turn-based games to be really unintuitive, unless they take integer values (and even then you wouldn't want to see more than 2x or less than 1/2x movement speed). Without some sort of turn indicator (even just as a toggle or an unobtrusive list), I'd rather everything just move at the same speed.

Hmm, I didn't really think that through fully. It could just be a hard limit, anything above a certain amount is not allowed (or, reduces your speed to 0.5). Or, it could drain increasing amounts of power to move (if it is used).

EDIT: re: cooldowns, I imagined that very few abilities would have cooldowns, mainly recharging and healing bursts from organs.

[bricks]

Perhaps movement would require energy (of some type, perhaps dependent on what type of legs you have) once you go above a certain threshold, and then scale up from there.

Again, a far-reaching goal, but different "roles" (races or classes) could actually define different starting loadouts, instead of changing the story or innate powers, kinda like the gods in POWDER.