What's left, I need to write some code for merchant and scientist ship training. I have the whole licencing/etc. system more or less worked out. I do however need to balance the training costs, learn rate, and so forth.
@p
I hope in the end that all these little systems end up as kind of fun. Typically, for instance, to get training, you'll have to complete a quest for your trainer, or otherwise influence them to like you. This is the real reason for all this stuff. Is to get the player running around the galaxy doing this and that, solving problems and discovering new things. All aside but yet neccesary for their main quest. Hopefully it works out in the end, huh?
@p
I was thinking of some fun system for the senate, but it's probably too big. The bottom line is, you have representatives from each culture/planet/city/whatnot who are elected to the senate. Their personality types will determine how they vote on one thing or another. You can draft bills with them in order to introduce some change to the laws, for instance lower taxes, change penalties or whatnot. However the coolest part that I had in mind was that you could change who was elected. Like, you could do something to defame some member of the senate, and increase the fame of somebody else whom you like, and at some point they would be elected instead. Then you can tilt the senate (I'm think it would have like 20-30 members) in your favour, and get bills passed. It's kind of complicated, but NPCs already have a "fame" flag which could serve this purpose quite well... It wouldn't be too hard to figure out how NPCs would vote on things based on their internal properties, anyhow. I'll have to mull this over, it would add something though...
@p
Before I get into the senate or anything though, I need to work and finish up this training stuff. I think I should also try and finish/tidy up the training/etc. for the weapons system. It's mostly in place but I do need to work out battles still a lot better, probably balance the training for weapons a bit, and also work out the code for when you get mugged (hehehe)
2005-01-13