Mars Attacks

You may be thinking, "What?! Rainboy started a topic suggesting that we're dealing with martians after dismissing the alien thing?!"

The basic idea here is that we have a TON of games that let you zip around the galaxy going 10 billion times the speed of light. Good luck! We'd have to set the game a few thousand years in the future to make that believable, and incorporate worm holes and/or hyperspace. We want a game that is educational while still being a fun game, right? Well, what if we set this a few hundred years in the future. No zippy space ships that go flying all over the universe, now we have more realistic space travel and a more realistic game. Think toned down Star Trek: Enterprise.

The USA has started a small population on Mars. As the years passed, Mars became a new frontier. Several countries, including the US, France, Great Britain, Chili and China, saw this as an opportunity to defuse the growing number of prison inmates and offered many a chance at a fresh start on Mars. Slowly but surly, the inmates grew in number and strength under the watchful eye of a mysterious inmate known only as Prisoner X (name can change, but it's grown on me a lot since I first typed it ).

Many things contributed to what happened next. It could have been the fact that China had an economic depression and stopped all funding to the venture. It could have been that the inmates had played their cards well and Great Britain, the nation heading up the development and security of the venture, had seen little reason to spend money securing prisoners who were 250 million kilometers away. It could have even been the poor relations between the US and France at the time, leading to a general neglect of the US space program, the primary means of transportation between the two planets. Whatever the case, the inmates took great advantage of their opportunity and seized control of their planet quickly and easily. For the next few weeks, they faked the standard reports and sifted through the unmanned delivery pods. But they knew they had to act fast...

Everything was quiet at NASA; another routine day for Christopher Clyne with no activity whatsoever. Well, that wasn't entirely true. The fourth international space station, currently orbiting and observing Venus, had reported a glitch that made system monitors incorrectly think the toilet in the science lab had a small air leak... but that was about as exciting as his current task: downloading and reviewing the weekly status report from the Mars settlement. Another half hour was about to go down the drain as he read about the happenings in a small settlement a hundred million miles away. And then there would be... but his thoughts were interrupted as he looked at the large print scrolling on his screen. He froze, not knowing what to do with such information. He slowly reached for the phone and, with a trembling hand, dialed his supervisor...

And thus the war began. The inmates acted quickly, securing and improving on the new stealth technology the US was experimenting with along with the wormhole prototype England had. The world would never be the same again... the first war in space had begun. Within two years, the war had


Needs a bit of improvement. This is NOT my pet project, please feel free to add to, or even remove, elements as you see fit. I believe the community can create a far better game then I can alone.

I see the inmates having cheaper tech that doesn't do as much, while the rest of the world has higher tech with higher cost. Unlike TNN, the Vig-like class would be on the earth side with the Pathmaker and Benefactor. The other three would be on the Mars side. All sides will have access to all the tools, but the tools of one side will work better for that side.

Example:
Stealth, when used by the Destroyer equivalent class, would avoid triggering the mines on a page. While anyone else would trigger the mine and avoid it.

Mines would be more realistic, in that when someone visits a page, ALL the mines on that page are triggered. There would then, of course, be a limit of 10-20ish for the number of mines a player could put on a single site.

Classes:
Mars:
Destroyer
Bedouin
Seer

Earth:
Vigilante
New: Detector
Pathmaker

Not Used/Global Use:
Benefactor

Tools:
X (Mine) - Proximity detection, no more then 10-20 mines could be placed by a single player on a single page. All mines on a site explode when a player goes to that page. When used by a Destroyer, the mine has triple the chance to go through shields.

Shield Generator (Armor) - Unlike TNN armor, the Shield Generator (see THIS video for the idea behind it) does not need to be reequipped after X hits. Instead, it runs on a battery that you buy in changes. It also has a small chance to not work on every hit that rises with more mines. (IE - you go to a page with 2 mines and it will have a better chance of hitting each one then if you go to a page with 10) When used by a Bedouin, it will disarm any mines that hit it and give them to the player.

Worm Hole (Portal) - Functions just about the same as a portal. If used by a Seer, they can limit the wormhole so only certain classes can travel through it.

X (Lightpost) - Functions just about the same as TNN Lightposts and missions. If used by a Pathmaker (or maybe if a Pathmaker takes a mission), players who take the mission will not trigger mines on the sites the mission goes to while they take it. (Could use some messing around with)

I like the idea as a whole, but there are two things that stick out in my mind as needing to be addressed.

The first is... I'm hesitant to have all the bad guys in one location. This is rarely how the real world works, and I'm afraid it will become limiting in both plot line and in gameplay. It would make more sense to me if the prison population included scientists, artists, hackers, and other political prisoners who spoke out about against the World Order/ World Government of the time, This allows for people who are intelligent and innovative to help the convicts and lends a bit of credibility to how the inmates were able to avoid detection and work the system. It also means that there could also be "bad guys" on the home planet of Earth-- be it corrupted government officials, etc..

The second thing to stick out in my mind is my fear of how easily this could slip into an NI clone with Mars being similar to a post-apocalyptic world. I'm not sure how to avoid that given the landscape of Mars and the use of more primitive technology. There again, I see a reason for having scientists and inventors being imprisoned. They could help the prisoners develop what may at first glance to look like a more primitive product, but would actually be just as or slightly more effective.

In this scenario I see Earth soldiers as having sleek, shiny tools but no real understanding on how to fix it if it breaks. The inmates weapons may have a more crude design, but they know how to jimmy-rig it to make it work when it breaks. The way I would translate this into game play is it would cost less pings to repair for an inmate, or/and Earth soldiers would have more effective weapons but they would use more pings at a faster rate.

With that being said, I do see this as a very workable idea. It lends itself towards the realism we are hoping to stick with that will compliment the educational platform. I also really like the idea that the "stealth mode" prevents mines from being triggered, which gives it an actual effect of stealth rather than just a title.

I also like the idea of limiting the number of mines that can be laid on a page. I know this has been discussed in IRC, but I'm glad to see it here in writing so we don't forget. I'm not sure I would want to keep the limit as small as 10 or 20 (and I'm sure Illeria will agree--hehe) but I do see advantages to not being able to pile 1000 mines in one spot.

I would just like to see if there can be a third 'party' insinuated into the story/plot/game. There is seldom, if ever, only two sides to a conflict, though that is what most of us perceive. It would keep things from being just another 'good guys vs bad guys' situation and would lend itself to making deals, teaming up, and that sort of thing, and would also get away from having players decide to be good or bad.

Perhaps instead of Mars being a prison planet, maybe they could be a colony who is feeling neglected, taken for granted, not being properly represented back on Earth, or something like that. They become fed up with the situation and decide it is time to take control of what they perceive as their world and break away from just being a colony of Earth. Of course, the powers on Earth won't stand for this. There are also the corporations involved that see this conflict as an opportunity to make some serious coin. Maybe they could be based (headquarters) on the Moon to set them apart physically. Or they could simply have locations on both planets. Lots of possibilities.

Anyway, I hope you get the idea. I do love the more realistic type of setting (as opposed to gallivanting all over the known galaxy). Definitely lends itself to a more educational kind of game where real possibilities can be used instead of pure speculation or total sci-fi kinds of things.

Another quick thought: Tools that are only attainable through some sort of cooperative effort between two of the factions. Not sure this is workable in the type of game we are working on, but I though I would throw the thought out for consideration.

GiGi, the reason for the small limit on mines is the new idea that all mines on a page are tripped by the player who goes there. If there are ten mines on the page, the user gets blasted with ten mines when they first view the page. No spamming refresh for the Bedouin, and far less spamming of mines for the destroyer. The goal of TNN and NI has always been to encourage people to go 'jaunting through the web,' and I believe this idea will help encourage both the Destroyers and Bedouin to do just that. Where previously there was encouragement to stick to a single page and spam for CP, now there is encouragement for just the opposite.

Sleek Earth tech VS rigged Mars tech is what I'd envisioned, and the idea of having scientists and the like on both sides is a good one.

Elric, I agree with you, and dislike how my current ideas paint one side as bad and another as good. That idea is an great one, and actually draws on the same era I got my ideas from: North American colonization. History tends to repeat itself, so it is not far fetched at all to draw on the past to make a believable future.

The idea of a third faction is a great one also. It would set us apart from TNN more, and would meld well with the story.

Rain, if all the mines were tripped when someone went onto a webpage, what good does Blade's Overcharge ability do?

it doesnt do any good we would have to get rid of it so whatever im game either way

I'm not sure about tripping ALL the mines on a page when someone visits it, but I agree with Rainboy in that we should look at ways to keep players from just mining the hell out of a couple sites and not traveling around the internet becoming 'space' explorers. I think there has to be a happy medium that we can come up with to help limit or eliminate the spamming of a few sites.

Rainboy wrote:Sleek Earth tech VS rigged Mars tech is what I'd envisioned, and the idea of having scientists and the like on both sides is a good one.

The idea of a third faction is a great one also. It would set us apart from TNN more, and would meld well with the story.

So... I'm proposing a third faction on Venus
I'm suggesting that the third faction to be a group of pacifists that opposes the act of war. They will have only non-lethal weaponry, but they possess some really cool gadgets that neither Earth nor Mars have.

I tried typing this last night and my computer died and now the thoughts are out there in aetherland and not in my brains.
[Concentrate]
Let the Mars rebels try to disrupt the authorities webspace on Earth.
Tnn= battle for the internet, ni= battle to resurrect the internet, this could be freedom fighters in conquest of the internet, the repository of all information.

Let's try to remember to revise BADGES. Badges for astronomical, aerospace, and DOD-defense sites....


There are 1000s of asteroids, http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.What+is+the+number+of+asteroids%3F.net%2F - I haven't studied the wikipedia article, lol, that's the point of reboot, isn't it?

Moreover there is the mysterious Oort cloud, where I like to posit the Nostromo (Aliens) went to to mine ore.