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Development & Discussion / [Suggestion] Communications Officer

« on: June 18, 2017, 01:17:50 PM »

I've written the post once, and accidentaly hit Ctrl-R to refresh the page, instead of Ctrl-T to open a new tab, so now I have to do it all over again...

Let me first say that I know UoN doesn't have a dedicated Communications Officer, as does Artemis, but instead combines Science and Communications into one role. However, for the purpose of this post, I'll refer to the Communications as a distinct role, since it makes it easier to discuss it.

I've had this idea while reading a one of the books from the Vorkosigan saga, a sci-fi story. Let's face it, the Communications Officer of a vessel in space is a very important role. One usually doesn't wish to be lost in space without the ability to contact anyone. Being lost at sea is terrifying enough; being lost in space is unimaginable.

Communication Officer's job in Artemis is, in my opinion, boring, even though I know people who specialize in it. So I've been thinking what would make it more interesting, when I realized what task such an Officer performs:

• sending encrypted messages,
• decrypting received messages,
• intercepting messages in the ether,
• collecting and filtering messages chatter,
• acting as the first level of diplomacy.

None of those tasks is trivial to the survival of the crew on a spaceship, and I don't think it should be trivial in the game. So, my answer to all those tasks are puzzles.

Yes, puzzles.

Disclaimer: I've no idea if other games have already handled this issue in a better way, or if Mark has even better ideas;
 I'm just stating what I think could be an interesting approach.

Let's think of this through a gameplay scenario:
Captain: Alright, John, what's the status of the unknown vessel?
Communications: They are sending us a message, sir. I'm decrypting it right now.
John, as the Communications Officer, sees that his scanners have picked up a message. He clicks the appropriate icon and opens a jumbled puzzle. John is an experienced Communications Officer, and has solved dozens of puzzles, but this type is new even to him. It takes him a whole minute to complete it. Once he does, the message decrypts and he reads it out to the bridge crew.
Communications: The message says: "We come in piece."
Tactics: Sir, they've just fired a torpedo on us. I've raised the shields and have locked on the torpedo and them.
Captain: Peace, John? Are you sure about that?
Communications: Uhh...
John takes another look at the puzzle, realizes that a certain part of it can be rotated to fit another way and loudly exclaims
Communications: It's not "We come in piece", it's "We come in pieces"!
Captain: Pieces? Are you sure about...
Captain's sentence trails off, as more unknown ships start to appear on the ships long distance scanners.
Captain: All hands, battle stations!

The puzzles could range from anything like the good old puzzles with pictures most us have arranged as children, over connecting lines akin to the old game where you guide the water through pipes or the Android game Infinity Loop, to something new and innovative. Similar approach would have to be taken when encrypting the message, perhaps solving a different kind of puzzle that would make it hard for enemies to decrypt.

Adding special codes to the messages that encrypt or decrpyt it is a possibility as well, but doing something like that requires diplomatic agreements the crew may not have access to because of the new alien encounter or other reasons. However, it would be the Communications Officer's task to know which codes to use for which destination.

Another thing the Communications Officer could do is intercepting messages between other (enemy or not) ships/stations/planets. Since most things travel as a wave (such as light and sound), some messages can be picked up by even those it's not intended for. Now the question is how far from source the message is picked up, and if it can be decrypted.

Some messages travel without encryption, but can still hold interesting information. It would also be the Communications Officer's job to read through the messages and filter out any that are interesting to the Captain. This can include enemy chatter that was not encrypted by mistake, but also civilian talks about the upcoming trade or political elections.

Finally, the Communications Officer is the first line of diplomacy, so it would be his job to review the info they have on each ship, faction and their crew. Diplomacy can include threats, bribing, mutual interest and other. Some diplomatic tasks would need to be raised to the Captain's level, but again, that would be the Communications Officer's job to know when to disturb the Captain in such regard.

I hope this was clear enough, and that you've found it interesting. I also hope I didn't just write something stupid or something that everyone already knows.

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Development & Discussion / Role-playing Questions

« on: August 06, 2016, 11:25:42 AM »

And now for some purely role-playing questions, I hope you don't mind those, hehe. (I'd add a smiley here, but the forum keeps putting them all at the end of the post, and it's starting to get a bit anoying, but it's not something you need to bother with.)

• How did you envision the relationship between the Operatives and the Tactical Officer? Is the TO their commander? This is basically a question on how the UNION's stellar navy is structured.
  
• Do we have a navy and an army?
• Are the Operatives a part of the navy or the army?
• How heavily armed are the Operatives or how heavily armed can they be?
• If the navy is the one flying space ships, what's the army doing? Are they the infantry on conquests, like in Starship Troppers?
• What about the relationship between the Operatives and the rest of the bridge crew?
• Would some ships have additional marine platoons aboard that can be used to board other entities?
• How much people are there aboard a spaceship? I know it would be different per each ship, but you can probably give a rough estimate. We should have at least 2 officers for each bridge officer. The main and the night shift, so to speak. There's also the medical personnel, the cook, and what-not.
• Are we calling the ships spaceships or starships?
• Just how big are the ships, anyway?
• I'm gonna stop now... For now.

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Development & Discussion / [Progress - 29th May] How are things?

« on: May 28, 2016, 11:28:24 PM »

Didn't hear anything from you for quite a while. Can you share what you're working on?

I just hope the project didn't die.

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Development & Discussion / Game Master

« on: May 03, 2016, 12:35:58 PM »

I've realized we haven't mentioned one more "position" that we use in the TSN RP sessions: the Game Master.

Have you thought about adding it to UNION? Playing in a pre-written mission is different than playing with a live GM who can respond to the situations created by the players.

The GM should have possibilities of spawning ships (enemy or friendly), executing scripts, etc.

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Development & Discussion / Multimonitor support

« on: February 21, 2016, 10:45:09 AM »

I have a question about something that was not discussed in this post, but it is connected the UI, basically. Will you be able to support showing UNION on multiple monitors?

Let me make my quesiton a bit clearer. I have two monitors of different sizes: a big one (24'') and a small one (19''). The big monitor is my main, and is used for the gaming, but I love to have something game related on the other monitor. For example, in Fallout 4 or Skyrim, it would be great to have the map or the inventory on the other screen, so you don't have to open it up to check where you are or what you have. In Artemis, we open another client and connect to the Main Screen to see the outside, but it would be phenomenal if you could somehow support that in the game itself, in a single client.

Let's say the player is playing an Engineer. His main screen (the big one, in my case) would have the Power Wheel on. The other screen (the small one, in my case) could have the options to show the visuals of the ship, the stellar map or something entirely else that's useful.

What do you think about this?

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Development & Discussion / Torpedoes

« on: February 10, 2016, 09:46:02 PM »

Feedback on TORPEDOES, TORPEDOES, TORPEDOES (DEV LOG 6).
If torpedoes are fired in a straight line, it should be quite simple for a computer to calculate where the torpedo will be at any given time. That would allow the ship to fire at it or at the position where it will be at a specific moment, even with another torpedo. Vice versa, aiming with a torpedo should be left to a computer, since the computer can easily calculate the vector of the target, and know where will it be if it continues moving at the same speed or increasing (or decreasing) it's speed at a constant rate.

If the torpedoes can be navigated by the ship or the Tactical Officer, the torpedo can do some very interesting actions, such as avoiding collisions on course to it's target or entering a vent shaft of a space station.

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Development & Discussion / A Game of Chance - feedback

« on: February 10, 2016, 09:44:44 PM »

To read the story, head here: A Game of Chance (fiction).
A very nice story. Would love to read more of it. It would be quite cool (to us who have read the story) if you implemented all the characters from the story into the game, whether as high ranking Officers or as "just another UNION ship".

Got a few questions, though, since before the story the text says "Everything in the story below is based on the gameplay mechanics of UNION".

• First time I've heard of a "polywell drive". Googled it. Will you use that in the game?
• In Artemis it's a bit hard for two officers to communicate without everyone else hearing them, and there are things that noone else needs to hear, such as the frequency of enemy shields that Science Officer tell Weapons Officer. Will there be a way to circumvent this in UNION? For example, through consoles themselves? In the story, Tactical Officer Bedford used knowledge gained from Science Officer Kalt, without Captain knowing there was a communication. If you didn't already solve this issue, I think it would a great idea to implement prescripted communication between stations. In the story, that would be an option on Tactical Officer's console to ask the Science Officer for the weakest part of the enemy ship. Also, it would be nice if the Science Officer could send such information, without being asked for it. I would like to have this without a chat function (not everyone is a fast typer), but rather via a menu of sorts.
• Are "klaxons" anything in-game specific or is it just flavour text of the story? What will happen when the ship is hit? Will it be different it the ship is hit on shields (the crew and the ship probably shouldn't even feel that hit) and on the hull (the ship can now shake and the crew should feel it)?
• Will we be able to see what the enemy's hitting us with, frequency wise, as it is in the story?
• The Helm Officer Marriat said she bypassed safety limits on the maneuvering thrusters. Will something like this be possible in-game? Can you clarify? This could have massive repercusions across the bridge.