This has been posted before, but drew very little response. Here it is again.

nikebro123 and I are planning on making a plugin concerning the fate of the primitive sentient race on the listed uninhabited F-somethingorother planet north of Saalia. We need all the help we can get; if you are willing to help with the actual plug making our adresses are CrazyTom9@hotmail.com and nicholasb27@hotmail.com.

If you just want to make a suggestion on how the plot should be, please respond to this post.

The race, which we have tentatively named the Fytinians, is in a very strategic location, basically right in the middle of the known galaxy. Under the right circumstances, they could swing the galactic balance of power to produce any result, so go wild with the suggestions of where the plot should go.

So far, we have planned to have them contacted by the Miranu for trade at the beginning of the Miranu strings, and then become more sophisticated once they have had some time, maybe after the nebula stuff. That could change if anyone has a better idea, though.

Once again, our adresses are CrazyTom9@hotmail.com and nicholasb27@hotmail.com. Any suggestions, help, constructive criticism, or cynical derision will be appreciated.

(edited to make much, much, shorter)

(This message has been edited by CrazyTom9 (edited 12-06-2001).)

Start by fixing your post alittle- every other line is only half filled. Also, you might want to use some paragraphs to make it easier to read. (Remember: we are not being paid to do this.) It's boring to read huge block of text, so I didn't.

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Approving someone else's work is not the same as creating it yourself- Bill Watterson, Author of Calvin and Hobbes
Silence is golden, till is screams- John Prine

Quote

Originally posted by NNNormal:
**Start by fixing your post alittle- every other line is only half filled. Also, you might want to use some paragraphs to make it easier to read. (Remember: we are not being paid to do this.) It's boring to read huge block of text, so I didn't.
**

Yeah, that's what you said last time...
Tom, here's how you copy and paste posts: go back to the original, then click on edit. Copy everything in there but your sig. Then come back here, edit your first post, and paste in the copied text.

-Matt

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'I' before 'E', except in "Budweiser".
Disclaimer: All claims made herein are hereby considered null and void. No guarantee of satisfaction is given, either explicitly or implicitly.
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Quote

Originally posted by CrazyTom9:
**
This has been posted before, here it is again because the first time drew little response.
**

I'm going to repeat something I've said before -- in a different post, and long ago. The books I've read on designing games agree with my experience in, well, most of the creative work I do;

You need to be able to boil down the entire concept to a sentence. Then expand it to a tight paragraph. When you develop the idea, you need to develop coherent parts of the idea, with each of those able to be expressed in a sentence.

Sounds imposible? I did it for a 95,000 word novel. I needed to do it for a 95,000 word novel lest I become completely lost and unable to finish.

At some point you will be trying to create missions and write DESC#'s. Which note would you rather look at when creating a new SPOB..?

"A race makes their first tentative steps into space -- and into the middle of a rekindled Strand War,"

or,

"...when they have had some time to back engineer the technology, you stop in
again. They have developed in secret a spaceworthy ship, and are ready to explore nearby systems. Obviously, the Fytinians themselves
will pilot the ship, as a matter of pride, but they have heard of the many hostile forces waiting to confront a race just getting it's
footing, and wish an armed escort (guess who). You escort their ship throughout nearby systems... "

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everywhere else, it's --
"Nomuse"

Well, it's a great idea for a plug, but for it to be fairly realistic time-wise, even for a fast-progressing race, you would have to discover them and do the first piracy mission fairly early in the game, then come back after the nebula explorations or something. This poses two problems:
1. Many players will have to start new pilots (not that its such a big thing, but still... I like my Cresent Warship... )
2. That early in the game, it's hard to do a piracy mission, unless you trade forever, and work up to a freight-courier and deck it out as a frigate.
Of course, you could always use the old standby: place a random cargo mission and a random merc. mission somewhere, unassociated with the Fytinians, and eventually, though it may take time, the player might accept this mission, and that would activate the rest of the string. But there's always the chance that the player won't find that mission, and then get frustrated. More reliable is a side-string of missions like that, with less randomness. Of course, it would take years for the Fytinians to realistically reverse-engineer the technology. But whatever, I'm confusing myself.

If you can understand any of that, feel free to use the ideas, but I can't decipher what I meant right now; it's too late...

-Matt

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'I' before 'E', except in "Budweiser".
Disclaimer: All claims made herein are hereby considered null and void. No guarantee of satisfaction is given, either explicitly or implicitly.
(url="http://"http://www.pacificnet.net/~restorer/3d/")3D Model Samples(/url)

(This message has been edited by Restorer (edited 12-06-2001).)

Thank you, Restorer, for your advice and for actually taking the time to respond.

For the rest of you, I will make the description much, much shorter. Sorry.

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If at first you don't succeed, use more duct tape.

Also make sure you have the new race with their ship be available when you complete missions. But you should make less missions for quick actions. 8 missions for the ships available are fine.

And for ship types:

Cruisers: Strong Stuff
Transports: Big, lots of cargo, weak
Warcruisers: Bigger and stronger
Carriers: Between the strengh of cruisers and warcruisers but carrys ships
Destroyer: So-So Stuff, faster than the cruiser
Fighter: Light Stuff, Fast
Light Fighter: Weak stuff, super fast
Heavy Fighter: Good stuff, slower than the Fighter
Strike Fighter (Big): Strong Stuff, Fast, heavy weapons
Strike Fighter (Small): So-So Stuff, Faster, Medium Weapons

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