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Rafkin
Member Posts: 9
Just a couple ideas..
How about having game lengths variable. Standard games run 14 days, but occasionally there will be one that'll run 3 weeks, or 4 weeks. Max runtime would be 6 months. (or less depending on how players and admin feel.)
Another idea would be passangers. Some ships could be created, or current ships used, as taxi, for to allow, along with cargo, dignataries, or other passangers who will pay to reach a specific starport or colony. (npc colony, perfered. due to most colonial defenses) This would be just like hauling cargo, except you don't pay anything at pickup, and thier destinations are specific, rather than general.
How about some method of finding a specific person within 10 jumps from current location. (or smaller number of jumps. if required.) or a probe that can travel 10 jumps, that you send in a specific direction, choosing it's path, from the galaxy starmap, and it sends you a scanner report from each system it goes through.
I agree with suggestions of marking planets that contain colonies, especially your own colonies, with a specific color, and the galaxy map showing systems where your colonies are located. Maybe a filter on the galaxy map to highlight systems where you have confirmed starports in, or systems where you're colonies are in, or the ones you have marked. (hrm.. mark, didn't think of that. till now.)
Comments
To be totally honest, I was thinking of programming my own space trading program. Then I found Starport. It has the same basis as what I was going to do, but with some differences as well.
Now that I have found Starport, I am considering not programming my own game. Mainly because of the work involved in the graphics part of the prgramming. However, I may yet still decide to buckle down and see what I can produce.
Still, the passanger taxi idea I suggested earlier was one of the things I was going to do in my game, that would also work well in Starport. Here is another idea, wich will also work well in Starport, if the programmer here decides it's viable to add in.
In my idea of a game, I was going to have the captain hire crew members to maintain, pilot, and take care of the ship. How many crew and of what type depended on the ship size and capabilities. These crew could even be trained to be upgraded. One of the types of crew, that one could hire were merchants.
Merchants didn't ride on the ship like the others, but were placed in starbases or planets. In the case of this game, the starports will do nicely. If you hired one, they would report to you, what each starport within a ten jump radius was buying and selling, and at what percentage of cost. (in this case, the demand or supply)
They would only report about starports you have visited (and thus left the merchant's business card at). Corporate owned merchants would work for the entire corporation, and report only of ports that members of the corporation have visited. They would also charge the corporation bank account, or split thier cost among the members.
With this feature, You can easily plan your route, and figgure out what product to buy and where you were going to take it. All for a mere cost of 100 credits a day or hour or percentage of profit.
After hiring several merchants, spread out over a greater area of space, you could easily plan your shipments with greater ease. It would only cost you so much per hour or day to keep these merchants in your employ.
Just another idea.