Feel free to add your own:

1- Have several different kinds of missions:
It's nice to play those capture-the-enemy-planet levels, but they get boring after a while if there's nothing but them.

2- Don't make the enemy weaker than j00:
If you must, at least crank up their pilot AI and crank down their cost. The first version of Iron Fist was a disaster because it was so easy.

3- Occasional humor is nice, but constant humor looks unproffesional:
Ares is supposed to be a serious space-warfare game.

4- Be clear what to do in mission briefings:
It gets annoying when you have to make the mission up as you go along when you are playing it.

5- Use a background on your prologue/epilogue text:
It makes it less monotonous to read.

6- ALWAYS have a big bad ship at the end:
Worked in Star Wars, Escape Velocity/Override, Star Trek 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9....

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance

7- Think up a kewl story. It worked for Marathon/Star Wars/pretty much everything...

8- Throw some curve balls. Sudden reinforcements, mission objectives that change in mission (with notification via messages).

9- Give large, slow ships turrets. Do not give ships that don't meet both these qualifications (Gaitori cruisers and all HVDs) turrets.

10- Do something noone has ever done before. Sorry, destroying a flack drone has been done.

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

Sundered Angel's Appendix:

A) Code for contingencies:
Because of the way Ares is set up, and the random orientation of ships, sometimes missions will be easier than other times. Introduce conditions to balance this.

__Bigger is better, but too big is bloated:
Huge conflicts which decide the fate of the universe itself are fair enough, but so clichéd. Try something a little different and you'll garner more love from the critics.

C) If you don't like your graphics, don't include them:
There's no point in including additional graphics if they only detract from the plug. There's a lot that can be done with the graphics already included.

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Sundered Angel ,
The One and Only
Ares Webboard Moderator, and all-around Nice Guy

11. Do not copy an ares scnerario and change one or 2 things and call it your own and expect it to be a big sucess. This is boring, uneventful, easy, and if it were written, plaugerism(sp?)

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just take my post, and imagine everything is speeled right.
nickel count: 7

Mag's ideas:

1. Make it be challenging. I can't stress this enough.

2. Make the gameplay nice. If you have a sweet plot, but it isn't fun to play, I know that I, for one, wouldn't like it.

3. Make the plot nice. Either make the plot interesting, or make it a group of unrelated scenarios (the multiplayer levels are a good exaple of a group of unrelated scenarios).

4. Get the bugs out. Bugs are bad. We don't like bugs. We kill bugs.

5. Add something new. If you were to make an almost exact copy of Iron Fist and release it under a different name, people wouldn't like it, even though Iron Fist is a great plug that fits everything 1 through 4 (well, I think it's more like 2 through 4, but most people seem to think 1 through 4). Basically, the same old thing gets boring.

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"Oi, oi, oi, me got a hurt n here
Oi, oi, oi, me smell a ting is near
Me gonna bosh and me gonna nosh
An da hurt'll dissapear"

Well thought out reenactments are nice. I think that a recreated Star Wars assault on the death star would be cool. Or some other fairly epic space battle. Star Wars is quite famous for that, and it'll allow things like... Well, you couldn't build ships in most of them.

Some battles just don't seem like they should be able to build ships. Fighters... maybe.
I like my battles about tactics and good usage of forces, not advantage in numbers (though that's always nice).

New ideas like what? No building of ships during a battle?

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Ne Cede Malis Sed Contra Audientor Ito

A new idea (and a fairly big challenge, but managable if done right) would be protecting a ship that fires on everybody (like the bunker neutral bunker stations). You could give the player 1 very nice ship (a heavily modified HVD) or a group of nice ships that they would use to destract the enemies while he hung by the ship.

Also, building weapons (planetary nukes) would, if possible, rule. Traversing a minefield might work but would require "control" factors (time limit, no hyper) to make sure that the players don't cheat.

I'll leave it to the people better at Hera than me to try that. I hope that someone coughMagcoughorcoughSlugcough will try these.

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

No kidding! In StarLance there will be a cooperative net level where one player steers the shiip and the other player aims the turret on the ship: now that's teamwork!

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
-Alduran Outlaw Rick Blazer
StarLance

Dood! That would be cool. How would one accomplish that though, with the two people on one ship?

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Ne Cede Malis Sed Contra Audientor Ito

Quote

Originally posted by Slug:
**No kidding! In StarLance there will be a cooperative net level where one player steers the shiip and the other player aims the turret on the ship: now that's teamwork!

**

Interesting... most interesting...

Decides to work out exactly how Slug plans to do this

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Sundered Angel ,
The One and Only
Ares Webboard Moderator, and all-around Nice Guy

Has come up with a "turret" that actually appears to track enemy ships (like a tank turret), but has no idea how to do what Slug is saying...

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"Oi, oi, oi, me got a hurt n here
Oi, oi, oi, me smell a ting is near
Me gonna bosh and me gonna nosh
An da hurt'll dissapear"

star lance is using a new application for ares, so slug can do whatever he wants...

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just take my post, and imagine everything is speeled right.
nickel count: 7

Quote

Originally posted by Pyro:
**star lance is using a new application for ares, so slug can do whatever he wants...

**

A new application doesn't change anything, unless he's reprogramming the engine. And I don't think even Slug's up to that (legal ramifications aside).

It has to be in Hera somehow...

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Sundered Angel ,
The One and Only
Ares Webboard Moderator, and all-around Nice Guy

Quote

Originally posted by Sundered Angel:
**A new application doesn't change anything, unless he's reprogramming the engine. And I don't think even Slug's up to that (legal ramifications aside)...
**

That's why I'm getting Nathann Lamont to help me

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If our military is so much better than theirs, then why don't we ever use it?

Ohh, do you think he could be prevailed upon to make a PPC only version that supports more objects in single player?
If the ring battle ever goes plug, it'll be ƒ¨ç°ing hard to make it seem right within the current object limit (since shots count, I presume).

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

Heh, just a hint that Nathan might be redoing Ares a bit for one person who's working closely with him, and we're already having feature requests...

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"Oi, oi, oi, me got a hurt n here
Oi, oi, oi, me smell a ting is near
Me gonna bosh and me gonna nosh
An da hurt'll dissapear"

Har har.
It wasn't really serious.
BTW I get that problem alot in the secret level for "The Rogue".
Is that supposed to happen?
Is there supposed to be no way to win?

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit

OK, here's my new idea.

Make a few new ships, one for each race. Give these ships little shields, fast engines and slow/no superlight.

Create an mine-type object that will destroy any of these ships in one hit, and recreate itself.

Then, make a level with the mine objects placed in tracks around the level, with the player placed at one end of this maze of mines, and an object placed at the other. Reaching a certain proximity from the object will win the level.

Finally, make another, mirrored version of the same maze, one the other side, and put player 2 there. The level is a race to the end.

Problems:
Object limit: How many mines can we place around the level...
Time: I for one do not have the patience to sit and place mines around a track for hours on end...

Still, if someone does, please try it!

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8 Lightnings
Fleet: Lightning 1, Surge, Eagle, Endurance, Voltare, Alecto, Magaera, Tisiphone
"CRUISER DESTROYED. 91 remaining" -Ares, chapter 9, Hand Over Fist

Have an interesting, twisting plot that is constantly changing. Have surprises, things that you wouldn't expect to happen. And if you give your people better ships, make sure to give the enemy equivalent or better ships at the same time or sooner. Give them better weapons, too.

I can't emphasize more on the plot. The plot is almost more important than the gameplay. The Rouge had a good plot, as did The Iron Fist.

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Long Live Apple! Long Live the Mac!
(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/salrillian")http://www.geocities.com/salrillian(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/evclassic")http://www.geocities.com/evclassic(/url)

Use new and different ideas. Missles that fire beams has been done in the tutorial, and I'm reserving the idea of weapons powerful enough to hit multiple targets (see beams in the origional Escape Velocity) for my (far, far, far, far) future plug.

Use movies (if I ever finish my plug, I will). Use them for anything spectacular that can't be done in the game (eg a nice huge beam destroying a planet, then a star).

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Error: target is violating the laws of physics
Error: target is locally exceeding c
Error: unable to determine if target exists or not
Error: target cannot be hit