Mainly, I just scribble ship sketches (they're very primative) down randomly when I'm bored, in everything from church bulletins (when I definately don't need to listen... don't want you guys to think I do it through the whole service. =P) to an actual notebook. Missions stuff I usually think up while my brain isn't doing much, like when I can't get to sleep (happens often). It just doesn't work when I put it down on paper.
One other thing that has ever worked on paper for me is putting down a galaxy. However, it's nearly pointless, because it mostly just helps me figure out how many races I have and what my main ideas are. Becasue by the time I put the systems of my galaxy in they were all nearly completely different from my first galaxy drawings, and only loosely based on my latest one. I didn't sweat over exact positioning like the Nova team did. Calling out numbers? What, are they crazy, or just pulling my leg?
The last thing that has worked for me is outfits. Putting down outfit ideas (no actual numbers... numbers are things you have to precisely enter later if you take them too seriously. It's better just to guess and tweak it during beta, not that I speak from experiance in beta testing... Anyways, ideas for outfits like how armor should really work, etc. etc. Even just writing down names and the types of outfits you want helps. It's always helpful not to be adding an outfit in Nova and then say "Dur, what the heck is it called?"
Anyways, I still have some of the best ideas on the fly. Like solving Nova's big-ship armor upgrade problem by not making it more expensive/more massive with increasing ship mass, but moving that stuff to engine upgrades. It might not be completely realistic, and it requires several levels of armor if you want small ships to be able to get anything, but at least it provides the type of gameplay I want: Large ships should be able to have substantial armor upgrades without actually being penalized for it, and engine upgrades should be relatively impossible on them. Who ever heard of a private captian adding an extra engine on his Star Destroyer?
Anyways, to summarize, the three things I've written on paper successfully on paper are these: Ship doodles, galaxies, and general outfit ideas. Also, Add names to the list, as it really helps to know a bunch of system names for human space... all I can make up are alien ones, like "Opatha." Then again, I get those from websites that tell real star system/planet names, so it's not like I brainstorm them on a sheet of paper, I just write the good ones down for future reference.
/end post.
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