I kinda want to do a double-game, where the actions in the first game directly influence the second one...
The first has 12 players. Each player will be in charge of developing, testing, and producing an AG Racing ship (WipEout series) for each "era", or tournament class. A major tournament is held every three years, with a trial available once a year including tournament years for skirmishing and live testing.
Models will have a suffix on their name as to the class they are legal/non-obsolete in. Each company should produce somewhere between 3-6 ship types, though depending on the strength, actions, and placement of each company in the league, they may drop down to 1 or completely die off. Other players may offer to merge, and if no offers are made, it's game over.
Making ships requires a few things. Money is probably the most important. It takes hard cash to develop a good ship, and if the development stage is problematic, it will cost more than normal. You can also develop components- these are guaranteed things that you can add to any ship to make up for a bad roll- say, a reverse-wing airbrake system. Having that, even from older generations, can bring a failed design up from the grave. It does cost money to bring a system up to date, however, so very old designs might be better scrapped than kept around.
If I was trying to design a ship, with the plan "Maximize speed at all costs", I may go about it any number of ways in any level of extremity. I may have a tight cockpit and very light, weak shielding, or I could strip the craft of nearly everything, including steering, weapons, and speed control, and rely on air brakes and auto-acceleration. Players will need to explain what makes their ship what it is- how it looks, what it has.
Design does boil down to rolls, however. They also boil down to money.
Let's say it costs $200,000 to design a ship from the ground up. This is a mockup of all planned features, to aim for certain stats, and only involves a single roll for each of the four stats. Once that's done, I can try to fix design errors at $100,000 + n($50,000) where n is the number of times previously re-rolled. I can try to augment a design that I'm happy with, adding 1 point, for $350,000 + n($50,000) where n is the current number of augmentations on a certain design. I can try to add a unique feature to a ship for a base price of $100,000, no ship may have more than one. Unique features make a ship different from any other- such as mounted weapons as a permanent fixture, or the above "super-extreme" solution to maximizing speed.
You gain money from each good placement in races, which is semi random, and from sponsorships. Non-racing companies may like your ship and want to advertise. They'll give you a lump sum plus extra money for wins, though lose enough times and they'll quickly want to terminate their contract with you.
Since races are semi-random (A ship with more total points is more likely to win a race, there will be simulated tracks where certain stats are better than others, each simulated tournament has six courses total) some teams may just have hard luck. The goal here is to survive as long as possible.
Buying a player who's lost the ability to enter a new design isn't as simple as brokering a deal between yourselves. The buyer may have to pay anywhere from 1/4th to 1/2 the total worth (money spent) of the company they want, or a price set by the bank who now owns it.
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Once the game is played, a group of pilots begin playing the next game, working their way through every tournament level, repeating history as it happened. The company they pledge to/are randomly assigned to is guaranteed to never fully die (as even those who are not bought are "bought" by NPC companies). They will have access to the ships YOU build.
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Topic: Roller's Block (RTD Brainstorming Thread) (HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY) (Derm is 5k) (Read 702215 times)