Discussion about a 2d MOBA style Space game

[disturbed_one]

Ok, so here I go.
I know a lot of people here have different, almost hipster-like tastes in music, movies and videogames. I also think that a lot of people are like me and miss space sims and the likes.

Anyway, I know there already is a game out there that is kinda similar to other MOBA style games, I think it's called Stellar Impact. There are also Space Pirates and Zombies, and an upcoming game called Starfarer. I'm up for discussion and general brainstorming about how could a game like that work. I'm interested in mechanics, available ships, player controlled units and such.

How could people play with fighters and capital ships and why would anyone actually take a figher instead of a cap ship. Should the gameplay be limited to fighers and such or should small craft be controlled by AI and players control cap ships. What about construction of structures in space and questions like that. How could the game be balanced around big and small units, and could the player change his ship mid game and how could that affect the gameplay. How could a team secure resources for themselves.

Also any lore, technologies and weapons discussion is welcome. What could be the most likely weapons for us to use in space.


I hope this thread is interesting enough for some people because I want to hear peoples opinions before I delve into developing anything like that.

 

[disturbed_one]

A 2D sci-fi MOBA? Uh... it already exists, it's called Awesomenauts, and, like the name suggests, it's awesome. Whereas games like League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients 2 offer a strategic type of a fun, Awesomenauts provides an experience that's straight up fun. It's the only MOBA I've ever encountered that you can just "pick up and play," and I think it's a refreshing change of pace. It's an excellent way to blow off steam if you're a hardcore MOBA fan.

EDIT: Oh wait, I totally read the thread wrong... NEVER MIND!

Yeah, I've picked up an Awesomenauts 3 pack on steam. It's great, but not exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[disturbed_one]

This forum is sure full of good hearted people full of ideas.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Actually there already is one of these beasties called Stellar Impact

Sadly this one went by unnoticed and so the player base was always tiny, plus their F2P model actually means you aren't competitive at all until some money went into it so people don't stick around much, and every time I played there were horrible lag issues that just made you stutter all around the map... that just isn't nice to play.

It's actually a pretty good idea someone else goes in and does it with a more simplistic model like S.P.A.Z., but I would prefer if someone just does a straight up RTS with campaign and all.

 

[disturbed_one]

Actually there already is one of these beasties called Stellar Impact

Sadly this one went by unnoticed and so the player base was always tiny, plus their F2P model actually means you aren't competitive at all until some money went into it so people don't stick around much, and every time I played there were horrible lag issues that just made you stutter all around the map... that just isn't nice to play.

It's actually a pretty good idea someone else goes in and does it with a more simplistic model like S.P.A.Z., but I would prefer if someone just does a straight up RTS with campaign and all.

I've referenced that game in my first post. But yeah I don't want to even try it because their f2p model is awkward. I'm an active LoL player, I've put some money into it, but until I hit level 30 and started playing the game competitively I didn't buy anything. I think that type of game could have a playerbase, but the f2p model should be a bit like LoL, with more generous xp boosts and such.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about possible mechanics, but I'm kinda confused how people here are willing to comment and thrash on games, but have no actual ideas about how to make one better.

 

[Bostur]

How could people play with fighters and capital ships and why would anyone actually take a figher instead of a cap ship. Should the gameplay be limited to fighers and such or should small craft be controlled by AI and players control cap ships. What about construction of structures in space and questions like that. How could the game be balanced around big and small units, and could the player change his ship mid game and how could that affect the gameplay. How could a team secure resources for themselves.

For the big ship/small ship mechanics you could take a look at Eve Online for inspiration. Big ships can't hit small ships very well, but small ships don't do enough damage to big ships to make much of a difference. Small ships can however immobilize and snare big ships for others to kill. And of course small ships are faster so they can catch the bigger ships with ease, and generally choose their engagements.

Eve Online also use mechanics like jamming, preventing enemy ships from firing that may make sense in a MOBA.

Having mechanics where small ships are the first on the scene for a gank, but taking a risk doing so could work in a MOBA setting I imagine.

 

[disturbed_one]

For the big ship/small ship mechanics you could take a look at Eve Online for inspiration. Big ships can't hit small ships very well, but small ships don't do enough damage to big ships to make much of a difference. Small ships can however immobilize and snare big ships for others to kill. And of course small ships are faster so they can catch the bigger ships with ease, and generally choose their engagements.

Eve Online also use mechanics like jamming, preventing enemy ships from firing that may make sense in a MOBA.

Having mechanics where small ships are the first on the scene for a gank, but taking a risk doing so could work in a MOBA setting I imagine.

I've thought about that. Also about big support ships and carriers that can support smaller or bigger ships. Also small utility ships that belong in the battle, but are not the damage dealers. I've considered the assasin/tank/dps/support/roamer dynamic and I've come up with some roles for different ship classes. But what about fighters.

What ship types should be player controllable. Should the fighter type ships be excluded?
Hard Sci Fi doesn't consider fighters a viable choice in space warfare, and I agree to some extent. If we have unmanned drones now, space drones should be a real possibility. The assasin hit and run role would be filled with small gunship/corvette types of craft.

 

[Bostur]

For the big ship/small ship mechanics you could take a look at Eve Online for inspiration. Big ships can't hit small ships very well, but small ships don't do enough damage to big ships to make much of a difference. Small ships can however immobilize and snare big ships for others to kill. And of course small ships are faster so they can catch the bigger ships with ease, and generally choose their engagements.

Eve Online also use mechanics like jamming, preventing enemy ships from firing that may make sense in a MOBA.

Having mechanics where small ships are the first on the scene for a gank, but taking a risk doing so could work in a MOBA setting I imagine.

I've thought about that. Also about big support ships and carriers that can support smaller or bigger ships. Also small utility ships that belong in the battle, but are not the damage dealers. I've considered the assasin/tank/dps/support/roamer dynamic and I've come up with some roles for different ship classes. But what about fighters.

What ship types should be player controllable. Should the fighter type ships be excluded?
Hard Sci Fi doesn't consider fighters a viable choice in space warfare, and I agree to some extent. If we have unmanned drones now, space drones should be a real possibility. The assasin hit and run role would be filled with small gunship/corvette types of craft.

It might be best to let gameplay and balance define what is viable. In Wing Commander fighters are used because it's a dogfighting sim. In a 2D game it probably won't feel very dogfightey anyway so it may be better implemented in another way.
A common way to model fighters would be to make it an active ability. In a traditional MOBA context fighters cold be the ultimate ability for a carrier with long cooldown. One would imagine those things need time to reload and refuel.

I imagine choosing a scale and sticking to it would be best. If a game is about small ships player controlled fighters would make sense, if it focuses on big ships fighters would be better handled as a gameplay abstraction. The game pace also enters into it. If you envision a fast paced action-oriented game small ships makes more sense. In a slow paced strategy oriented game large bulky ships would fit better.

There is of course also the option to let a player control groups of small ships, to let them handle a bit like a bigger ship and give them more survivability. For instance a squadron of corvettes instead of a single corvette. That may make it practical to accomodate more types of ships. A fixed squadron might have a large turning radius but a high top-speed. It could also allow for an interesting gameplay mechanic where damage is scaled by the amount of hitpoints left, as part of the squadron has taken damage.

 

[HellsingerAngel]

Everything you've suggested has been done and has worked successfully between two games: Stellar Impact and a WC3 custom map called Battleships. I'm not exactly sure what's to discuss considering the subject matter you've presented. MOBA is a fairly well defined genre. You have a large scale objective to protect while trying to destroy the other faction's similarly - typically identical - large scale objective. Until you actually decide on some ground work you want the community to look at, there's no real discussion to be had because you have no focal point that isn't clearly defined by the genre.

What role should big ships play versus smaller ships? Big ships should be the players, small ships should be the AI you destroy for resources to upgrade as you need smaller things for the players to support when pushing. How could people play both fighters and capitol ships? They couldn't, because fighters exist to dogfight, escort or bombard outposts of ground troops (I.E. the small push ships) and capitol ships blow them away with superior flak (or, in MOBA terms, support the push). What about construction in space? Construction should be non-existant from a player perspective and static emplacements created by players should be limited to keep away from turtle strategies. How can the game be balanced between big and small units? Big units are slow with lots of HP (tanks) while small ships are fast with low HP (support); everything else would be a balance inbetween (bruisers, fighters, damage dealers). How could teams secure resources? Small ships give individual resource while larger, static objectives give places to fight and control. These are all questions easily defined just by classifying your game as a MOBA.

 

[disturbed_one]

...

There are more options than you described here. Not all of the large ships have to be slow. Mabe some types can be fast but have limited mobility, so they can engage faster, get to objectives faster but can't turn in combat as fast etc. Also mobility could be used for limiting the ships ability to fight, with different weapon slots and types have different firing arcs. So the biggest ships have the most weapons, but their fighting power depends on the position of their weapons, as they can't use all of their firepower on 1 target. Some types of smaller ships could have an ability to target weak points in bigger ships, so they can be useful with hit and run strategies.